So my boss for 10 years, David Willetts, has finally left the Government. By the end of his tenure, he was the only person to have attended shadow cabinet and cabinet continuously for over 15 years – since William Hague made him shadow Secretary of State for Education in 1998.…
As I travel around the country visiting higher education institutions (HEIs), I am asked surprisingly often what UKIP’s policies on higher education are. There is particular interest in the question within HEIs that sit in areas where the party has a strong local presence. I’m not complaining: it is a…
As SW1 prepares for an expected ministerial reshuffle, it is a timely moment to consider the landscape of Whitehall alongside the personalities that reside there. In the latest edition of Insight, a new magazine published by the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference, the Director of HEPI, Nick Hillman, considers where responsibility for higher education…
Introduction Thank you for inviting me. HEPI is the UK’s only specialist think-tank on higher education: we are independent, non-partisan and a registered charity. Our goal is to shape the higher education debate for the better, with research. Or, to put it another way, using evidence to help politicians resist…
Sir Andrew Green, who heads up MigrationWatch (‘an independent, voluntary, non political body which is concerned about the present scale of immigration’), has poured cold water over the recent HEPI survey of Conservative election candidates on international students. In particular, he complains it was small. It was indeed, but then…
As reported in today’s Daily Telegraph, the Higher Education Policy Institute has conducted a small survey among Conservative candidates in place to fight the 2015 general election (excluding sitting MPs). The survey shows: 78% of Conservative candidates think international students should be excluded from any target for reducing migration 69% of Conservative candidates think the UK…
Back in April, HEPI produced two publications comparing the English and Australian student loan systems. Today, we were lucky enough to host a seminar with Professor Bruce Chapman (often described as the architect of the Australian loans system), jointly with the University Alliance and Royal Holloway. One issue that came up is…
New research published by the Department for Education has recommended that universities operating contextualised admissions should treat selective and non-selective state schools differently. It is an important contribution to the debate on school type versus school performance. Earlier this year, some people wondered if the battle was over when HEFCE said…
Higher education policy doesn’t stop at the weekend in think-tank land, at least not when there’s less than a year to a general election. So Policy Exchange hosted an event today looking ahead to the educational policies that might be presented to the electorate in 2015 – see #PXed2015…
This new Debate section of the HEPI website was established partly to bolster HEPI’s evidence base by giving people an opportunity to submit their ideas and partly to provide a new forum to debate topical higher education issues. One question we would love your thoughts on is why are PhDs so rarely publishable in…