In the UK, students are more likely to live away from home than students in other countries, which affects the nature of the student experience in profound ways. In this paper, the Oxford historian William Whyte considers why the residential model is so dominant, looks at what it means for…
Election manifestoes are a set of promises about what people will do in office. They may not have any official constitutional significance, but they are clearly qualitatively different to other political promises – not least because our revising chamber, the House of Lords, has historically displayed a reluctance to oppose…
Elections are generally characterised by uncertainties but some things are certain. We wouldn’t be having this election if it weren’t for Brexit. The Prime Minister wants the election to be about Brexit, and the opposition parties agreed to an election because of Brexit. The Brexit Party’s announcement that they will…
There have been lots of analyses of the importance or otherwise of the student vote since the general election date was fixed for 12 December. You can find some of our commentary here and here. Commentators regularly and controversially point out that Leave voters, who tend to be older, are being replaced by younger…
Since the House of Commons agreed to an election on 12 December, there has been lots of interest in the student vote. Nonsense Lots of the chatter has been nonsensical. For example, people who used to claim that the newish individual electoral registration system would lead to lots of students…
There is a lot of nonsense talked about the voting power of students. HEPI has been tracking students’ political views and their potential electoral power closely since before the last-but-one general election. Here are some of the things we have learnt. There are some seats where students are thought to…
In a joint Policy Nrote, Student loans for those on long sentences, the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) and the Open University argue for an end to the rule preventing prisoners from accessing student loans until they are within six years of release. The proposal suggests letting longer-serving prisoners apply…
This report recommends that the Student Support Regulations for England and Wales should be amended to extend student loan eligibility to include people in prison who have more than six years to run on their sentence.
It used to be thought the modern age would herald meals in the form of small pills, supersonic travel and fewer working hours. It hasn’t turned out like that. Instead, we rather like slow food. We tend to prefer cheap to super-fast travel. More income has often proved more desirable…
In response to Universities UK’s new publication A Guide to Presenting Institutional Financial Information to Students, Nick Hillman, Director of the Higher Education Policy Institute (www.hepi.ac.uk), said: This is a great and overdue initiative. We have been calling for many years for students to receive more information about where their fees…