What does the university of the 21st Century look like? Virtual perhaps, with virtual tutors, video conferencing, and ‘distance learning’ students, all working harmoniously via broadband connections? Well, no actually!

That despite many proclaiming that it would be on the back of the IT revolution. But this forgets a crucial element, that for most of us this virtual interaction is not very rewarding when compared to ‘meat space’.

When one of Harvard universities senior administrators, J Summers, talks about constructing a truly 21st century university, his emphasis is not on the virtual, far from it. Rather it is to provide the most nuanced and direct education to their students, and this means increasing the faculty and changing the culture within those faculties to encourage interaction with students - this is what will provide a cuting edge education, the coming together of these two in real space, where the pedigree of an idea, in all its nuanced forms, can be explored, wrestled over and debated. This cut and thrust of debate, reasoning, reflecting and thinking, all in real time, is at the heart of a quality education.

What it is not is some new ‘distance learning’ course, with a reading list and a so called ‘on-line tutor’ to email whilst awaiting your essay grade. Harvard University know this, and whilst many of our new universities resolutely don’t, in the very least prospective students need to.

Yes, Oxbridge and the Ivy League do keep an eye on each other, and Harvard says it can learn from Oxbridge .. and the lesson is ‘face time’.

The international university league table puts Cambridge - the English one - ahead of Harvard for teaching quality, and Harvard is listening up. Their recommending smaller classes and providing more, and substantially greater, inducement for faculty and students to spend time together.

But this should be no surprise, after all people pay hansomely for face time. A seat at dinner with someone like Blair will cost £1000 or more, a seat at his table, a hundred times that. But the rewards can be great, your there with the main man, the big cheese, the big whahoobah, and you can have your moment to influence and to learn. So why isn’t face time a bigger deal at univeristies? How come people aren’t demanding more of it? And why don’t the government start measuring it (they measure everything else!).

Oxbridge and Harvard aren’t wrong - face time with your professor/tutor is an excellent educational quality indicator, and only political expediency prevents its adoption. After all, how many British Universities would look bad if even Harvard are improving their act?