In a new HEPI Policy Note, REF2028: Outputs Matter, Professor Sir Nigel Thrift, the former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Warwick, argues the Research Excellence Framework (REF) is becoming overloaded – thereby diluting its core purpose. Professor Thrift argues: Academics’ actual contributions to knowledge are being devalued in favour of bureaucratic…
This is one of the questions which we have considered at length in our new book. As HEPI remind us in their 20th Anniversary Collection, the nature of academic work, roles and identities has changed over time. If the sector is to continue to thrive, we need more inclusive academic…
ForThe100 is a national group campaigning for higher education students to be owed a minimum standard of legal protection enshrined in a statutory duty of care. The group wants a clear and transparent legal requirement for institutions to act reasonably and responsibly, so that students are not harmed by things…
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…
The higher education landscape in England has been evolving rapidly thanks in part to the government’s 2017 Higher Education and Research Act (HERA). One way this has happened is through the Act paving the way for the establishment of new higher education institutions (HEIs) across England. These institutions promise to…
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…
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 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,…
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…
Government intervention in British universities really took off after the 1963 Robbins Report. Some expansion had already begun – my alma mater, the University of Sussex (BSc 1983, MSc 1987), was set up in 1961, one of seven new “plate-glass” universities established prior to Robbins. But there were 25 other…