The HEPI Blog aims to make brief, incisive contributions to the higher education policy landscape. It is circulated to our subscribers and published online. We welcome guest submissions, which should follow our Instructions for Blog Authors. Submissions should be sent to our Blog Editor, Josh Freeman, at [email protected].
This blog was kindly contributed by Dr Monika Nangia, Director of Student and Academic Services at SOAS, University of London. When designing digital strategies, universities must recognise the importance of enabling social connections among learners. Universities can go some way to achieving this by investing in building innovative and new…
This blog has been kindly contributed by Dr Richard Boffey, Head of AccessHE, the pan-London network driving the higher education access, success and progression agenda for underrepresented learners across the capital. You can find Richard and AccessHE on Twitter at @rgboffey and @AccessHE. Of the 24 recommendations put forward in…
This blog was kindly contributed by Jenny Shaw, Student Experience Director at Unite Students. You can find Jenny on Twitter @jennyshaw. Come with me, for a moment, back to 1998; to a fusty office somewhere in north London. From the radio in the corner, Cher is asking us if we…
This blog was kindly contributed by Mark Corver, Founder of DataHE. You can find Mark on Twitter @markcorver. Inflation in the UK has been at modest levels for thirty years. And it remains so. For May 2021 the Retail Prices Index (RPI) statistic recorded a 12-month price change of 3.3…
This blog was kindly contributed by Dennis Sherwood who has written a wealth of articles for HEPI on A levels and Ofqual. You can find, follow and debate Dennis on Twitter @noookophile. On Friday 9 July, the Times ran an article under the headline ‘One better grade at GCSE could…
This blog was kindly contributed by Dean Machin, Head of Policy at the University of Portsmouth, who writes here in a personal capacity. Today the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill comes to the House of Commons. The sector seems split on its significance. Is it an attempt to trigger…
John Cater is immediate past Chair of the UniversitiesUK / GuildHE Teacher Education Advisory Group, a former Chair of both the Accreditation and Audit Committees of the Teacher Training Agency and its successor body. John is also the author of HEPI Report 95, ‘Whither Teacher Education and Training? ‘(2017). He writes…
I had the pleasure at speaking at one of the excellent webinars organised by the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE) the other day. Ostensibly, the event was an opportunity both to talk about HEPI’s recent publication with London Economics on the options for changing student loan features and to hear a…
Nikita Khandwala (@nikitakhandwala) is an Insights analyst at LinkedIn and co-founder of Unbox. She graduated from the University of Oxford in 2020 and is a member of the UPP Foundation Student Futures Commission, chaired by Mary Curnock Cook (@MaryCurnockCook), who has also contributed to this blog. COVID-19 has accelerated the…
This blog was kindly contributed by Tom Fryer, a PhD researcher at University of Manchester. Tom has written for HEPI before about comprehensive universities and about how to define a graduate outcome. You can find Tom on Twitter @TomFryer4. HESA’s report from 8 June 2021, Graduate Outcomes: A statistical measure of…