This report examines the characteristics of the UK higher education system from a number of different dimensions, looking particularly at whether there has been a reduction in diversity over recent years. It concludes that whereas there may have been some minor convergence in some respects, the system remains extremely diverse, and it provides tables and charts that show the extent of this diversity.

There is a growing trend - not only in this country - for governments to seek to lighten the burden of regulation by focusing their attention on those bodies that are at greatest risk of regulatory failure. This is the approach to regulation of higher education that is proposed by the government in its White Paper on higher education.  This report, by Professor Roger King, examines risk-based regulation as it applies to higher education and the implications of this approach.

This report analyses the Government's White Paper on the future of higher education. It concludes that the Government's policies will succeed in their most important aim – that of reducing the level of tuition fees. However, the price will be much greater government control over universities than in the past, and a system where market mechanisms have had to be sacrificed to central direction. The reforms are also likely to lead to a polarized sector with a small number of institutions charging the maximum fee of £9000 and the majority reducing their fees to around £7500. The report concludes further that there are serious doubts about whether the new funding arrangements will lead to savings on the scale predicted by the government.

This report considers the implications of current developments in the provision of private higher education.  It concludes that private HE is a growing phenomenon, that can bring benefits to students, governments and society more widely, so long as measures are in place to ensure high quality.  However the current regulatory environment has developed piecemeal, and the Report argues that a new Private Higher Education Act is needed.  It also concludes that private providers should be treated on the same footing as public, and that differences in their treatment should exist only where fully and explicitly justified.

This reports considers the question of university governance and suggests that fundamental changes are needed because the balance of interests in our universities is rapidly changing.  Students are increasingly taking  on the full costs of their education, the state is moving towards being a loan facility rather than a granting body, and the pressures of competition are driving universities to be more entrepreneurial.  Yet, the one unique role of the university, its "neutral space" for the generation and dissemination of knowledge, must still be preserved at all costs.  The report looks at emerging questions for this changed new era.  Whose interests should institutional governors serve in future?   What skills should be required of future governors?  And what authority should they hold, or should be held over them?

Professor Edward Acton analyses the Government's proposals to class international students as migrants with the resulting restriction on student visas, and shows the devastating effect this will have on the recruitment of international students and so the financial health of universities, as well as the damage it will cause to the UK economy.

This is the sixth report on demand for higher education that HEPI has published, updated each year in the light of the most recent information. The previous report considered the extent of latent demand from under-represented groups - particularly males and disadvantaged social groups, as well as regional variations. It also showed that there were significant numbers of pupils with very good GCSEs who did not progress with their education. This year's report builds on these findings, and considers the extent of likely unmet demand in the future, in passing also shedding light on the previous educational profile of students entering higher education - in particular that more than one third of entrants have no UCAS tariff points.

The government has recently announced its policy intentions towards higher education and student finance, in response to the Browne Review's recommendations.  In this report we first provide a summary of the differences between the Browne Review and the government's proposals. We then look at whether these proposals meet the two main objectives: to reduce public expenditure and to improve the quality of university teaching by increasing student choice; we also examine the claim that the repayment scheme is progressive. Those who leave university without a qualification have been airbrushed out of the debate; we consider how the proposals will affect them. Finally we describe the likely responses to the changes of prospective students, universities and government.

New versions of the full report and annexes were uploaded on 22 November 2010 and an addendum was published on 14 December 2010.

Download HEPI's modified version of the BIS Ready Reckoner spreadsheet which shows details of the calculations we made to produce this report. (This file is large (22MB) and may take a considerable time to download.  The workbook contains functions which are not available in earlier versions of Excel.)

The Independent Review of Higher Education and Student Finance, by Lord Browne, was published earlier this week.  This report is HEPI's response to the proposals.

A new version of the report was uploaded on 19 October 2010.

This report supplements the research published by HEPI in June 2009 on “Male and female participation and progression in Higher Education”. It is in two parts. The first part provides further information on the employment outcomes of graduates, using more up-to-date data than was available when the original report was published. The second part reports on some further work done following comments and responses to the original report.

This report discusses the issues involved in comparability of degree standards. It is in two parts. Part 1 begins by outlining the means by which individual universities and colleges and the academic community collectively protect the standards of UK degrees. It then describes the historical attachment to comparability and the pressures which have led to questions being raised about it. Part 2 considers whether genuine comparability is still feasible, and what options may be open to UK higher education if it were found to be impracticable.

This report assesses the strength of the UK's research base, and at a high level examines how that strength is distributed between institutions. It concludes that a very small number of institutions and individuals within them produce the truly exceptional research that puts the UK among the world's leaders in research, and that below those peaks of excellence performance is more evenly spread between institutions. Whereas the present policy of selectively funding excellent research wherever it is found has had the effect of concentrating research funds in a relatively small number of institutions, there is no general case for explicitly funding research according to historical institutional characteristics.

In 2004 HEPI produced a report reviewing the extent and nature of postgraduate education. The present report updates the 2004 study and looks in more depth at a number of issues:

• Nature of postgraduate education
• Students - current numbers, profile and trends
• Institutional differences and regional disparities
• Costs and benefits of postgraduate education
• Quality assurance and public information
• Future demand

  This is a joint publication with the British Library and is also available on their website.

This study  looks at Oxford and Cambridge universities and considers the extent to which they are distinctive compared to the rest of the UK higher education sector. It looks at the nature of their undergraduate student bodies, the outcomes of their teaching, the extent and quality of the research done in those universities and finally at the resources at their disposal. It concludes that from all of these perspectives - certainly when all are considered together - these two universities really are different from others in the sector, including the small number of peer institutions with which they are sometimes compared.

The UK higher education funding bodies have published their proposals for the design and conduct of the Research Excellence Framework (REF), which will replace the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) as the method by which research will be assessed for the purpose of the allocation of their research funds. This paper is HEPI's response to the proposals.

There has been continuing interest in the use of vouchers as a mechanism for funding higher education institutions.  In this report, HEPI analyses the pros and cons of vouchers, and looks at the implementation of voucher systems elsewhere in the world.

This report analyses the differences in the participation of men and women in higher education, and in their success when there. It shows that on virtually all measures women outperform men, and it discussses some of the possible causes for this and the implications.

An annex to this report was published on 4 July 2010.

This report follows HEPI's two previous surveys of the academic experience of students in English universities, in 2006 and 2007, updating the results against the baseline established by the earlier surveys.

Leading HE experts Professor Roger Brown and Professor Sir Peter Scott, Vice-Chancellor of Kingston University, present two contrasting views on the role of the market in higher education. This report has been produced in partnership with the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education, as part of their fifth birthday celebrations.

This is the fifth report on demand for higher education that HEPI has published, updated each year in the light of the most recent information. Last year's report extended the review beyond 2020, to 2029-30. This year’s report incorporates the most recent population projections from the Office of National Statistics and the Government Actuary's Department, and it also incorporates some regional analyses. There are two main influences on demand for higher education – changes in the population from which students are drawn, and the ability and willingness of this population to participate in higher education (as well as the extent of that participation ). This report looks at each in turn, both nationally and regionally.