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

HEPI Guest Post

  • The climate for change: How university sustainability is impacting student decision-making

    12 July 2024 by Leigh Kamolins

    What matters to students continues to evolve as the world around them changes. Through QS data and analytics – including the International Student Survey which collates the perspectives and motivations of over 115,000 international students annually – it is becoming clear that a greater awareness of environmental and social sustainability…

  • We should have anticipated higher education’s ‘Grey Rhinos’

    11 July 2024 by Gert Jan Scheurwater and Mike Boxall

    It is not difficult, with the power of hindsight, to identify the three Grey Rhinos, and institutions’ responses to them, that have underpinned the current crisis facing UK universities.  Grey Rhinos are defined as “highly probable, high impact but yet neglected” systemic disruptions; they are not random surprises (like Black…

  • Lunchtime Reading: The higher education backgrounds of Keir Starmer’s new Cabinet

    10 July 2024 by Joseph Morrison-Howe

    As Keir Starmer’s first cabinet begins to govern, HEPI takes a look back to where and what the new cabinet members studied for their undergraduate degrees. Our analysis finds: The two undergraduate subjects studied by the most members of Starmer’s cabinet are Law and Politics, Philosophy and Economics (each studied…

  • The role of Higher Education in driving flourishing regions

    9 July 2024 by Andrew Connors, Katy Heaphy and Paul Kett

    Universities are invaluable to the national economy and important anchor institutions in their regions. In 2021-22 around 285 higher education providers across the UK hosted 2.9m students and contributed £71bn to UK GDP. However, both the UK’s regions and our universities are facing times of change and challenge, leading to…

  • What do we know about technicians?

    8 July 2024 by Lucy van Essen-Fishman, Sara Bacon, Jared Carnie, Ollie Manton and Savannah Lawson

    In autumn 2022, HEPI and Midlands Innovation released a ten-part blog series on technical talent, reflecting a growing interest in technicians in the higher education and research sectors. There is a particular interest in understanding employment quality for technicians, encompassing skills utilisation, career development opportunities, pay and contract terms. Information…

  • Weekend reading: How regional collaboration can help policymakers and employers understand the career readiness of students

    6 July 2024 by Marina Tapley and Bob Gilworth

    A Yorkshire Universities (YU) project has produced the first large-scale picture of student self-reported career readiness at the start of undergraduate study across an English region. Key findings have emerged around students entering higher education at the early stages of their career thinking and levels of interest in gaining experience.…

  • Link Between Stress and Belonging Uncovered, and Student Mentors Needed

    5 July 2024 by Isabelle Bristow

    In our last blog, Student Voices on AI: Navigating Expectations and Opportunities, we reported the findings of global research we commissioned with YouGov on students’ attitudes towards artificial intelligence (AI), and in May we hosted a roundtable dinner in London to discuss how important the human touch is in an…

  • Bridging the AI Divide: A Call to Integrate Industry Expertise into UK Higher Education

    3 July 2024 by Somayeh Aghnia

    As the UK approaches its next general election, both the Labour and Conservative Party manifestos outline various educational reforms. However, neither adequately addresses the critical need for a robust strategy to integrate AI education into our schools and universities. Schools are important in this debate as they impact the pipeline…