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This paper is organized around a single interview with an academic colleague who was asked to reflect on his changing experience of Ph.D. supervision. Material from the interview is used to raise some questions about the nature of responsible supervision in the humanities and social sciences, and the ways in which the possibilities for responsible supervision in the UK are constructed by the effects of the audit culture in higher education (HE). Specifically, the interview is used to examine and illustrate concerns about the implications of the audit culture for the quality of doctoral work, for equity in students' access to and experience of doctoral study, for the autonomy of students and supervisors and for the nature of academic professionalism. In conclusion, it is argued that whatever procedures are in place to regulate student-supervisor relationships, there will inevitably be benefits and costs in terms of quality and equity: the challenges are to find forms of accountability that are less costly and for those with an interest in responsible supervision to be sensitive to the many ways in which quality and equity can be put at risk by well-intentioned procedures. (Contains 4 notes.)

The article discusses the attitudes to school choice and to City Technology Colleges of a sample of parents of children at the first City Technology College at Kingshurst, Solihull. In examining the views of these parents, wider questions about individualist and collectivist strategies towards education were raised. The City Technology College (CTC), Kingshurst was the first of what was planned to be a network of 20 new independent schools in Great Britain financed by industry and central government. According to a Department of Education and Science (DES) booklet on the scheme, these schools were to serve 11 to 18 year olds within specific catchment areas. The expressions of individualism and collectivism by individuals and families are often complex and contradictory. Such complexity perhaps reflects the individualist and collectivist dimensions of consumption. Sending a child to the CTC does not necessarily imply a commitment to a market system, individualism or a competitive system in education. Nor does it necessarily suggest hostility to Local Education Authorities or to comprehensive education. In many cases the choice of the CTC was simply a pragmatic response to a belief in uneven and inadequate local secondary school provision. Ideologies of individualism and collectivism coexist, with little evidence that the introduction of CTCs has fundamentally altered parents' attitudes.