Nick Hillman, Director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, said: ‘The Teaching Excellence Framework would have comprehensively failed if it had simply replicated existing hierarchies. It was always designed to do something different to other league tables and rankings – namely, to show where there are pockets of excellence that…
A few days ago, we imagined how the first conversation between a new Universities Minister, should there be one after the election, and his most senior official might go. Here, Dr Dean Machin, Strategic Policy Adviser at the University of Portsmouth, imagines the same conversation taking a rather different course. Minister: So what is our most…
The UK-wide HEPI / HEA Survey was first undertaken in 2006. This year’s results are challenging, showing students have: falling perceptions of value for money; continue to display relatively low wellbeing compared to the rest of the population; and have yet to love England’s high-fees model of funding undergraduate education. There are…
The 2017 Student Academic Experience Survey, published today by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) and the Higher Education Academy (HEA) reveals: how hard students are working; how satisfied they are with their lives; and what they think of recent government policies. Over 14,000 full-time undergraduates took part in the survey…
Now that we are in the week of the general election, we could be just days away from a new Universities and Science Minister – the third in three years. Either the Conservatives lose the election, in which place a new Minister is guaranteed, or they win, in which case…
As political campaigning resumes after the horrific attack in Manchester, HEPI is focusing on what the manifestos of the three biggest UK-wide political parties have to say on higher education. The main announcements are shown in the table below. Three things stand out: A real choice is being offered. On issues…
It was a busy weekend for higher education announcements. First, the Green Party announced a plan to pay off all outstanding student debt on graduates’ behalf. The details were sketchy but there is over £75 billion worth of outstanding debt in England alone. So it is a big policy whichever way you look at…
The official title of the Tory manifesto is, perhaps surprisingly, not ‘Strong and Stable’ but ‘Forward, Together’. Given that the Conservatives have been in office, in coalition or on their own, for seven years already, one could be forgiven for thinking it might have been ‘More of the Same’. There…
I am speaking this morning alongside Jo Johnson, the Minister for Universities and Science, at a Portland Communications event on the future of UK higher education. Here are my remarks. Thank you for inviting me. We don’t have long so I want to get straight into the swing of it. But, first, I must…
Last week, HEPI and YouthSight polled over 1,000 full-time undergraduate students entitled to vote. The results, which we are making available in full, show: considerable support for the Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn; a majority of students are registered to vote and expect to vote – but most expect to…