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

Nick Hillman

  • Employability: Degrees of Value

    10 December 2015

    On Thursday, 10th December 2015, the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) publishes Employability: Degrees of Value, a paper calling for higher education to improve graduate employability. The report is published as part of the HEPI series of polemical Occasional Papers. The paper highlights a misplaced focus on employment rather than employability and proposes…

  • Employability: Degrees of value

    10 December 2015 by Johnny Rich

    Enhancing the employability of graduates is a key aim of the new green paper on higher education. Yet it contains no proposals aimed directly at achieving it. This pamphlet starts by explaining why employability is not the same as employment. Employability is about securing a rewarding and fulfilling career, not…

  • The Buckingham Question becomes the Oxford Question

    8 December 2015 by Nick Hillman

    In a recent speech to a Universities UK conference, I pooh-poohed various conspiracy theories doing the rounds on the recent higher education green paper, such as the idea that the Government wants to put the right to raise the undergraduate tuition fee cap in the hands of a Secretary of State…

  • HEPI Partner Dinner, Les Ebdon, Director of Fair Access

    2 December 2015

    On the evening of Wednesday, 2nd December 2015, HEPI held a roundtable dinner with Les Ebdon, Director of Fair Access, who spoke about the proposals in the recent higher education green paper and responded to the general discussion that followed. The evening was chaired by Professor Sir Ivor Crewe, HEPI’s Chair of…

  • 2015 Annual Lecture by Andreas Schleicher, Director of Education at the OECD

    1 December 2015

    On Monday, 1st December 2015, Andreas Schleicher, Director of Education at the OECD, delivered HEPI’s Annual Lecture at One Great George Street in central London. The evening, including the reception afterwards, was kindly sponsored by Pearson and Wiley. HEPI published the text of the lecture in January 2016 and the slides from the presentation…

  • HEPI / King’s College London lunch with Andreas Schleicher

    1 December 2015

    On Tuesday, 1st December 2015, HEPI co-hosted a lunch with King’s College London at which Andreas Schleicher, Director of Education at the OECD, presented highlights from the OECD’s new Education at a Glance 2015 publication, with a particular focus on how the UK performs against other states. Baroness Wolf (KCL),…

  • Seven out of 10 students want the UK to stay in the EU – but that could change

    30 November 2015

    The Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) and YouthSight polled over 1,000 undergraduates on the UK’s place in the EU during October 2015. We questioned over 1,000 full-time undergraduate students to find out: their views and depth of feeling on the UK’s membership of the EU; their likelihood of voting in…

  • Response to the spending review

    25 November 2015 by Nick Hillman

    Nick Hillman, Director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, said: ‘Phew! ’The spending review could have been worse for universities and students than it has turned out to be. The improvements to postgraduate loans, the new support for part-time students and the protection of research spending are all welcome and…

  • After the green paper comes the spending review…

    17 November 2015 by Nick Hillman

    The publication of the higher education green paper a few days ago was a big moment for English policymaking – even if the chilling events in Paris have made such parochial concerns seem less important, as well as serving to remind people of an atrocity in which students at a Kenyan University were murdered in April.…