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The UK's only independent think tank devoted to higher education.

Month: March 2019

  • What ever happened to Open Data?

    19 March 2019 by Mick Fletcher

    A guest blog kindly contributed by Mick Fletcher, Honorary Fellow at the Post 14 Centre for Education and Work, UCL Once upon a time the UK government took pride in the fact that it was a world leader in open data. Back in 2012 the Cabinet office released a White Paper entitled…

  • How should we judge the Augar proposals when they appear?

    18 March 2019

    HEPI is not a lobby group nor a mission group but an independent charity. We do not, generally, respond to official consultations. But we make rare exceptions to this rule. So we responded to: the 2015 higher education green paper; the Diamond review of higher education funding in Wales in…

  • Universities have lost the country: Here’s how UUK must reform to win it back

    14 March 2019 by Anthony Seldon

    This guest blog has been kindly contributed by Anthony Seldon, Vice-Chancellor at the University of Buckingham. Universities in the UK have lost the country. If not the entire country, the elites at least have given up on us. Sometime, earlier this decade, their perception of us began to change from…

  • Everybody wants to recruit the world: our Tier 4 fears (and how to fix them)

    13 March 2019 by Adam Haxell

    This is a guest blog kindly contributed by Adam Haxell, Senior Parliamentary Officer for MillionPlus, the Association for Modern Universities. Opinion on higher education policy is starkly divided across the political spectrum. What should be on offer, where, when and who pays for it – every position appears hotly contested.…

  • What can we learn from other countries about abolishing tuition fees?

    11 March 2019 by Alison Kershaw

    In this guest blog, the education journalist Alison Kershaw writes about what she has learnt about abolishing tuition fees during a stint in Chile – and what it could mean for plans to do the same back at home in England. In 2011, just months after students in England took…

  • University – the best times of our lives?

    7 March 2019 by Graham Galbraith

    A guest blog kindly contributed for University Mental Health Day by Graham Galbraith, Vice-Chancellor at the University of Portsmouth. When my generation reflects on our university days, we tend to think they were the best years of our lives. These days, with the media focus on poor student mental health, young…

  • Students back bailouts: Students’ views on the financial health of universities

    7 March 2019 by Rachel Hewitt

    In this new Policy Note, Rachel Hewitt, HEPI Director of Policy and Advocacy, reports on the results of a new poll on of students on their views on what should happen to universities in financial difficulty. Key points: most students (83%) are confident their own institution is in a strong…