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Nick Hillman

  • Free access to community college benefits students but not the nation by Donald E. Heller

    17 January 2015

    HEPI generally only publishes exclusive content, but there has been relatively little discussion in the UK of Obama’s new proposals for free two-year community college places. So we have decided as a one-off to reprint this recent article by Donald E. Heller, Dean of the College of Education at Michigan State University. It previously appeared on The…

  • A Christmas present from HEPI

    23 December 2014

    On 27th November, Professor Paul Wellings, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia, delivered the 11th Annual Lecture. Professor Wellings’s title was ‘The Architecture and the Plumbing: What features do the Higher Education systems in the UK and Australia have in common?’ We are today publishing the full text which, for the…

  • REF-eree! They think it’s all over. It is – for now

    18 December 2014 by Nick Hillman

    This blog post argues: the REF process has been run smoothly and complaints about the principle of research evaluation do not typically extend to the way the process has been run; the improvements in the UK’s research performance in REF2014 are not surprising but could lead to greater concentration of funding,…

  • The Public Accounts Committee, alternative providers and mission-group land

    15 December 2014

    The Public Accounts Committee hearing this afternoon on alternative providers of higher education was a bruising affair. Margaret Hodge was in the Chair and she and her cross-party members ferociously grilled the witnesses from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Student Loans Company, the Higher Education Funding Council…

  • Response to the Autumn Statement

    3 December 2014

    In response to the Autumn Statement, Nick Hillman, the Director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, said: ‘The new postgraduate loans deserve two-and-a-half cheers, which is as good as it gets in austere times. Postgraduate support was unfinished business from the 2012 university funding reforms and the new scheme is…

  • Three key questions on postgraduate loans

    3 December 2014

    There are strong rumours that the Chancellor will announce a new system of postgraduate loans in his autumn statement today. This would tackle some access problems by making finance less of a barrier. It’s not clear if George Osborne will announce a fully worked-out scheme or (probably more likely) promise to consult on the details.…

  • National Audit Office on alternative providers

    2 December 2014

    The National Audit Office have today published the Investigation into financial support for students at alternative higher education providers. It is interesting and timely.* It includes challenges for BIS, HE regulators and alternative providers. And it contains some useful new evidence, including examples of the adverts used to entice people on to courses.…