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Nick Hillman

  • Second consecutive year of students reporting better value for money

    13 June 2019 by Nick Hillman

    The 2019 Student Academic Experience Survey of over 14,000 full-time undergraduate students from the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) and Advance HE shows rising value-for-money perceptions. The key findings in the 2019 Student Academic Experience Survey by Jonathan Neves, Head of Business Intelligence and Surveys at Advance HE, and Nick Hillman,…

  • Student Academic Experience Survey 2019

    13 June 2019 by Jonathan Neves and Nick Hillman

    The Student Academic Experience Survey has been recording the views of students since 2006. Between 4 February and 11 March 2019, 14,072 responses were collected from YouthSight’s Student Panel. Weighting has been applied to the responses to ensure the sample is balanced and reflective of the full-time student population as a…

  • HEPI / UPP Foundation Lunch

    11 June 2019

    On Tuesday, 11 June 2019, HEPI and the UPP Foundation jointly hosted a roundtable lunch with guest speaker Robert J Zimmer, President of the University of Chicago, on ‘Advancing the Civic University: Cities and Universities’.

  • Implementing Augar

    3 June 2019

    Last week’s Augar report divided opinion. At HEPI, we were at the more positive end of the spectrum, not least because the report addressed, in a serious way, pretty much all the points we had said it should. We were, and remain, determined not to fall down the biggest rabbit hole…

  • Initial response to the Augar proposals

    30 May 2019

    In his initial response to the publication of the long-awaited Augar report on post-18 education, Nick Hillman, the Director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, said: “The report that universities and colleges have all been waiting for has finally landed. The immediate focus will be on the proposed reduction in…

  • Discussing Augar, the Tory Leadership election and what university is for

    29 May 2019 by Nick Hillman

    When we start planning each year’s HEPI Annual Conference – which this year is taking place on 13 June at a prestigious central London venue – our first act is always to check our informal ‘HE clash calendar’. Higher education policy is such a busy field these days that it can…

  • Theresa May and higher education

    25 May 2019

    HEPI Director Nick Hillman looks back on what Theresa May’s premiership has meant for higher education and universities. Back in 2015, during her final Conservative Party Conference speech as Home Secretary, Theresa May took a sharp dart from the box labelled ‘populism’ and fired it directly at universities: I don’t…

  • Pressure Vessels: The epidemic of poor mental health among higher education staff

    23 May 2019 by Dr Liz Morrish

    Across the higher education sector, we see increasing numbers of staff being referred to counselling and occupational health services. This report attributes the deterioration to factors such as excessive workloads, insecure employment and punitive metrics-driven performance management policies and argues that universities need to become healthier environments in order for…