A source within the Department for Education and Employment confirmed my initial literal reading of the text: the question whether there should

A source within the Department for Education and Employment confirmed my initial literal reading of the text: the question whether there should be (or, as some might say, continue to be) broadly comparable degree standards across all the higher-education institutions of the UK is itself something that the Government expects Sir Ron and his colleagues to address.Maintaining that broad comparability is no longer an immovable cornerstone of the Government's (and, presumably, since it has welcomed the Dearing inquiry, the Opposition's) higher-education policy. So I fully expected Mr Patten's concern, echoed just five months ago by Mrs Shephard, to be reflected in the Dearing terms of reference.But it isn't. All that is said is that Sir Ron's inquiry should have regard to the principle that "standards of degrees and other higher education qualifications should be maintained and assured".For a moment I thought that I was being too pedantic. Surely, I reflected, "standards of degrees" also means - must mean - broad comparability of standards.I was wrong. I recalled that in the letter the Education Secretary, Gillian Shephard, wrote on 21 September to the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals, she assured the universities that she attached "much importance to the enhancement of quality and the maintenance of broadly comparable degree standards". I recalled that in professing this deep preoccupation, Mrs Shephard followed hard on the heels of her predecessor, John Patten.It was, after all, in the summer of 1994, in response to Mr Patten's invitation to play closer attention to "broad comparability of standards", that the CVCP asked the Higher Education Quality Council to consider the development of the threshold standards for undergraduate degrees.Since then the HEQC's Graduate Standards Programme has been very busy undertaking this developmental work. I remembered this maxim as I read the terms of reference (announced last week) of the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education, chaired by Sir Ron Dearing.

Terms of reference are important for what they leave out, as well as for what they say and the way in which they say it. Wriggle though the British may in the negotiations ahead, Mr Major looks set to get more than he reckoned for from his ins and outs study.. France, which had enjoyed steadily rising export penetration of the European market, also suffered a reverse. Meanwhile, the UK share of total European exports rose by one percentage point.No wonder the hard currency countries are insisting on a return to some form of ERM for the outs if EMU goes ahead. Not surprisingly, German and French exports to their European partners were hit hard.Between 1992 and 1994, the German share of total intra-European exports fell by 3 percentage points.

Even larger gains in cost competitiveness were made by Italy and Spain.The converse was also true: hard currency countries like France and Germany saw substantial increases in both their nominal and real exchange rates. Only 4 per cent of this fall was thrown away in higher wage costs, leaving an overall fall in the real exchange rate of 7 per cent. The pound fell by 11 per cent against other European currencies between the third quarters of 1992 and 1995. It argued that "structural factors largely dominated exchange-rate effects" over this period.

It stressed that "past experience with devaluations shows that they have not brought lasting success in economic policy terms".The reality, however, was that the study showed - to the Commission's embarrassment - that the devaluations of the 1990s had paid off. This had been commissioned at the Cannes summit in June, following political pressure from French and German industries hit by the effects of the big devaluations against the French franc and German mark after Black Wednesday.When the Commission reported back last autumn, it emphasised the longer- term trends in trade share from 1987 to 94. The decline in the pound and the lire have brought about a real gain in competitiveness: exchange rates have fallen in real as well as in nominal terms.This was clearly demonstrated in a study conducted by the Commission on the effects of the exchange-rate turbulence of the early 1990s. For once, depreciating countries have not thrown away their immediate gains in a subsequent inflationary surge.