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

Nick Hillman

  • Three ways universities can prepare for a possible general election

    18 July 2019

    It is not beyond the realms of possibility that there will be a general election before the year is out – perhaps as early as September. I once thought a second referendum was more likely than a general election but, at this moment, it seems I was almost certainly wrong.…

  • The future for Augar is political

    4 July 2019

    Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of speaking at Wonkhe’s conference on Augar, in the final session of the day, alongside Rachel Wolf, on the politics of the report. Here are my remarks. On the day the Augar report appeared, I said on the radio that it felt like…

  • Comment on the National Student Survey results (and why the NSS needs another revamp)

    3 July 2019

    Responding to the new National Student Survey results from the Office for Students, Nick Hillman, the Director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, said: It is good that student satisfaction is rising, if only slightly and not everywhere. But as our own surveys show, you need to get underneath the student satisfaction data…

  • Forget the 2.4% target for research and development spending

    28 June 2019 by Nick Hillman

    When higher education policy conversations turn to research, they tend to dwell upon the UK Government’s commitment to increase the share of GDP spent on research and development (R&D) by public and private sources to 2.4% by 2027. This is a huge amount of money – more than three times…

  • Free Speech and Censorship on Campus

    27 June 2019 by Corey Stoughton

    There are few issues in higher education as controversial as free speech. In this report, Corey Stoughton, the Advocacy Director of the human rights organisation Liberty, looks at the issue through history, international experience and recent legal changes. She notes that asking disempowered people to accept a total right to…

  • Why it is so important to protect free speech in universities

    27 June 2019

    The Higher Education Policy Institute has published a robust defence of free speech in universities, Free Speech and Censorship on Campus (HEPI Occasional Paper 21) by Corey Stoughton. The author is the Advocacy Director and previous Acting Director of the Human Rights organisation Liberty and served as senior counsel to the Assistant…

  • Reasons To Be Cheerful (Part 8)

    19 June 2019

    It is easy to be pessimistic about future student demand, given the current environment in which higher education institutions are operating. We often write about the challenges facing the sector. But the slides below are designed to show there are broad grounds for optimism too. (With apologies to Ian Dury…