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

Nick Hillman

  • It is time to tackle the part-time crisis

    16 November 2017

    HEPI is pleased to host this important contribution to the debate about the collapse in part-time higher education – and what to do about it – by the Vice-Chancellor of the UK’s largest university. Fixing the broken market in part-time study: Open University says part-time students ‘learning while earning’ need direct…

  • New report shows each international student pays £8,000 towards filling gaps in UK R&D spending and calls on Philip Hammond to invest a further £1 billion in the Budget

    9 November 2017

    A new HEPI report How much is too much? Cross-subsidies from teaching to research in British universities (HEPI Report 100) by Vicky Olive considers the scale and sustainability of university cross-subsidies and calls on Philip Hammond to boost research and development funding in the Budget. The report finds: a research deficit…

  • How much is too much? Cross-subsidies from teaching to research in British universities

    9 November 2017 by Vicky Olive

    More than a decade ago, the UK Government committed to fund the full economic cost of publicly- funded research. Initially, some progress was made. But since austerity began to bite, we have been moving backwards. Under three-quarters of the true costs of UK research are covered from funds designated for research.…

  • How I got into education policymaking

    2 November 2017

    Earlier this week, I spoke to a group of students at the University of Oxford on how I ended up working in education policy. There was high demand for the session, so I am posting the remarks here in case other people seeking policymaking roles are interested in what I…

  • Were student loans designed by the rich to soak the poor?

    27 October 2017 by Nick Hillman

    The wonderful human geographer Danny Dorling has expounded on his long-held view that our student finance system was designed by the rich to hammer the poor in a new essay for Wonkhe entitled ‘Why student loans are a confidence trick for the 85%‘. This claims student loans have been implemented…

  • HEPI response to ‘Everyone In: Insights from a diverse student population’

    16 October 2017

    On Monday, 16th October 2017, Unite Students are publishing a new report on the non-academic parts of the student experience entitled ‘Everyone In: Insights from a diverse student population‘. The following blog is HEPI’s response to the important findings, which also appears in the document itself.  It is sometimes said higher education is the only…

  • The Seven-Year Itch

    3 October 2017 by Nick Hillman

    This blog about the Conservative party Conference by HEPI’s Director, Nick Hillman, first appeared at the weekend on the website of Research Fortnight (at http://www.researchresearch.com/news/article/?articleId=1370475). See @HE_Analyst on Twitter for further information. The number seven has many special properties. There are seven days of the week, seven colours of the rainbow, seven notes in a musical scale, seven ages of…

  • The Positive and Mindful University

    21 September 2017 by Anthony Seldon and Alan Martin

    In this HEPI Occasional Paper, Sir Anthony Seldon and Dr Alan Martin explore the concept of a ‘positive university’ by looking at the approaches used by positive psychology and mindfulness. With increasing concern about the health of students and staff, this report considers the importance of a proactive approach to…

  • Helping students and staff by creating positive and mindful universities

    21 September 2017

    Leading educationalist Sir Anthony Seldon and the University of Buckingham’s Dean of Psychology Alan Martin have drawn up a 10-point plan for the creation of a ‘positive university’ based on the approaches used by positive psychology and mindfulness. Sir Anthony launched the country’s first positive university at Buckingham, where he…

  • Why the current higher education debate is aiming at the wrong target

    19 September 2017

    The main currency of politics is killer facts: striking points that move a debate on. In higher education, current killer facts include the claim from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) that the poorest graduates in England leave university with debts of £57,000 and that interest on student loans has…