There was an educational moment to savour last month at Westminster. The occasion was a breakfast meeting – not usually a social instrument of choice for me – devoted to the place of arts, humanities and social sciences in the UK. It was a true reason to be cheerful. Why? Because for once, politicians, civil servants and those engaged in higher education talked about what really matters – scholarship, the thrill of the intellectual chase, the transmission of knowledge generation upon generation.For an hour and a half we were free of the acronymia, the jargon, the stilted, constricted language in which the business of higher education has come to be transacted. Of all the professions that should have been able to resist the virus of management consultese, it is the schola