The quality of the student experience is under the spotlight like never before. The Government wants students to be consumers but is frustrated at the pace of change. Students say they want to be partners in learning but do not always get sufficient attention. Higher education institutions say they are…
Invite-only seminar for HEPI University Partners focusing on the policy challenges in HE looking ahead to the General Election of 2015, chaired by Nick Hillman, HEPI Director. Download: Agenda: Annual Policy Briefing Seminar for HEPI University Partners
There is much speculation about the impact of MOOCS and their potential to transform global higher education. Some fear that they will largely replace traditional courses and programmes and that students will stop going to physical universities. Although mass market online learning is unlikely to replace the brand value of…
The Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) have published new research on degree performance according to the backgrounds of students. It is incredibly important research and shows, for example: large gaps in the performance of students from different ethnicities – almost three-quarters of white students with BBB in their…
There has been fervent debate about the Resource Accounting and Budgeting charge, known as the RAB charge, in recent days. I was even invited to speak about this rather technical concept on the Radio 4 Today programme last Saturday. It is all because the Government has just increased the figure…
As the Coalition Government’s HE reforms begin to have a real impact, discussion is now focused on the best strategies to effectively ensure the health of the sector over the longer term. With a recent survey of senior university leaders suggesting that some universities may close as a result of…
Hepi thanks Andy Westwood for becoming the first guest blogger on the new Hepi website. Higher education is facing the biggest shake up of agencies and quangos for over twenty years. Politicians, think tanks and commissions are queueing up to create new organisations in HE and to simplify what looks…
‘Lobbying’ is a dirty word but, done well, it can mean telling people in power things they don’t already know.
A recent report from the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission provided new evidence of the scale of the fair access challenge within HE including an estimate that there are 3,700 state-educated students ‘missing’ from Russell Group universities in England. Part of the explanation, according to the Commission, is that…
The new Director of the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) comments on his first Hepi report, Unfinished Business? Higher education legislation.