Why we need to redesign student life around inclusion, access and equity There’s no such thing as a typical student anymore. Today’s students are more diverse, stretched, and balancing financial pressures alongside study, care, and work responsibilities. Yet many university systems still assume a narrow definition of who students are…
In a HEPI note prompted by a Centre for Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance (SKOPE) conference, Nick Hillman asked: Should the seminal Robbins report inform the forthcoming post-16 strategy? He referenced the point made by Professor Robson of SKOPE about the need ‘to encourage place-based approaches … and replace competition…
Transnational education (TNE) is an increasingly prominent feature in the UK higher education landscape. The sector now has more than 600,000 TNE students, who study outside the UK for awards made by UK providers. Growth in the number and diversity of TNE students shows no sign of stopping. This has…
Rising costs are now a defining feature of the student experience in the UK. What once felt like an educational ‘coming of age’ for young people is, for many, becoming a difficult balancing act between academic ambition and financial survival. From housing and transport to food and essential tech, students…
As global economies come under increasing strain from technological disruption, demographic change and tightening labour markets, one long-held assumption is starting to fray: that an overseas degree guarantees stronger employment outcomes for international graduates returning home. For many years, particularly across Asia, this belief underpinned the value proposition of international…
Are universities super tankers, drifting slowly through the ocean while students are speedboats, zipping around them? That was one of the most arresting images from the recent Kings x Cadmus Teaching and Learning Forum and captured a central theme running through the Forum: the mismatch between the pace of technological and…
It has never been more important for providers across the sector to show that access and participation activities have an impact. With resources stretched, we need to know the work we are doing is making a measurable difference. New research from HEAT reveals a series of powerful findings: These findings…
Harassment and sexual misconduct have no place on our university campuses, nor in wider society. Yet, both continue to be pervasive. The Office for National Statistics reports that 1 in 10 people aged 16 years and over experienced at least one form of harassment in the previous 12 months, while…
Most discussion about the crisis in higher education finances has focused on fee income: how undergraduate fee income has lagged inflation for too long, and how volatility in international fee income has made universities’ planning more difficult. The challenges of research funding have been less frequently brought into the equation,…
‘Pouvez-vous s’il vous plaît me dire où se trouve la gare?’ – this is the extent that a colleague of mine can remember from his Introductory French module that he completed as part of a computing degree in the late 90s. That institution’s attempt at the time to embed flexibility…