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

Month: October 2023

  • Alternative Providers as Partners of Traditional Universities

    30 October 2023 by Mark Jeynes

    In this blog, we highlight the important role that Alternative Providers of Higher Education (‘Alternative Providers’ or ‘APs’) can play as partners to traditional universities. Alternative Providers are described by HESA as higher education providers who do not receive recurrent funding from the Office for Students (previously HEFCE) or another…

  • Student accommodation costs across 10 cities in the UK

    26 October 2023 by Unipol and HEPI

    In the last three years there have been big changes in rent levels and the supply of student accommodation, driven and shaped by global and national economic turbulence. High inflation, high energy costs, high building costs and high interest rates have combined to produce unprecedented rises in rent. Because of…

  • The Bologna Process 25 years on: higher education quality and international trust

    25 October 2023 by Tessa Blackstone

    As part of the Bologna Process, the UK is committed to the European Standards and Guidelines, internationally agreed good practice in quality oversight. QAA’s policy paper highlights that England has diverged from the standards in four areas: The policy paper outlines how realigning with this good practice could help retain…

  • Robbins, Specialist Institutions and Industrial Policy

    24 October 2023 by Andy Westwood

    The Robbins Report had a great deal to say about higher education in the UK and some parts are better known than others. Top of the list was that university places ‘should be available to all who were qualified for them by ability and attainment’ which has become known as the…

  • The Robbins Review – Lessons for the Future by Professor Huw Morris

    23 October 2023 by Huw Morris

    The Robbins Review report was published 60 years ago this October. The review made a series of recommendations which have provided a reference point for comment on UK Government higher education policy ever since. This article looks back at the report and considers what the lessons might be for politicians,…

  • Does the multiplication of alternative providers call for a new review of higher education?

    20 October 2023 by Gill Evans

    The proposals of the Robbins Report on Higher Education considered the role of providers of tertiary education. It concluded that to ‘confer degree-giving powers on all the existing’ Further Education Colleges ‘would be inappropriate because of the number involved, the variation in their sizes and the diversity of standards’. It…