There is a great deal of hope that the Government’s long-promised international education strategy will move the UK to a better place when it comes to educating people from other countries. I hope it does. Few other policy areas have so much positive evidence going for them. But writing and…
This guest blog responding to HEPI’s new report on university pensions has been kindly provided by Matt Waddup, the Head of Policy at the University and College Union. If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going is the message that underpins Nick Hillman’s rags to riches story of the…
The role of a think tank is – in large part – to make potentially dry subjects interesting, engaging and impactful. But just sometimes, our job is the opposite. It is to try and help temper subjects that have become so divisive that it is hard to make reasonable progress.…
The Higher Education Policy Institute has published a new analysis of the biggest university pension scheme, the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS). The USS: How did it come to this? (HEPI Report 115) by Nick Hillman considers the history of the Scheme, from before it began in 1975 to the recent lengthy…
The Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) was founded in 1975, when it replaced an outdated set of pension arrangements for university staff. The USS was stable for nearly four decades but, in recent years, it has undergone considerable turbulence. The causes include tighter pension regulations, growing life expectancy and lower financial…
Before Christmas, I tweeted that anyone who wants to write for HEPI should get in touch. >Have you got strong views on higher education?>Can you write in plain English?>Do you want to have an impact on policymakers? By the end of 2018, we will have published more papers than in…
Over the past week, HEPI has been at the centre of a social media storm about academic selection. Last week, we published a report in our Occasional Paper series which looked at the question of how different school types fare in access to higher education, especially selective higher education, including…
Like many people, I feel conflicted about grammar schools. I live in a part of the country where they are a mainstream part of the school system. The minority of local children who pass the 11+ have high chances of thriving at one of our three local(ish) grammar schools, but…
A new paper published by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) looks at the impact of selective schools in ensuring progress to higher education. The Impact of Selective Secondary Education on Progression to Higher Education, HEPI Occasional Paper 19, by Iain Mansfield shows grammar schools increase the likelihood of progression…
HEPI had its busiest ever year in 2018 with, for example, a record number of hits on this website – double the number we received just a couple of years ago. So it seems a good moment to take stock of some of our output over the past year. The…