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Blog

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].

  • Does Augar present ‘evidence-based policy’, or ‘policy-based evidence’?

    15 July 2019 by Greg Walker

    Today’s guest blog, from Dr Greg Walker, CEO of MillionPlus, is a full and thoughtful critique of the Augar review, and we urge people to read it carefully.  As someone with experience with independent reviews of higher education, I understand the energy and effort that panel members and officials put…

  • Steering a course through the chaos

    12 July 2019 by Paul Woodgates

    A guest blog kindly contributed by Paul Woodgates, at PA Consulting  It’s hard to remember a time when universities faced so many unknowns. Will the Augar Report recommendations ever become reality? How much money will the sector have? What will Brexit mean? Will the economy nosedive? What kind of government…

  • Predicting the future of research

    10 July 2019

    At a recent HEPI roundtable on the future for global research the focus of discussion was the major recent study by Elsevier, produced in partnership with Ipsos Mori, which set out three future research scenarios – Brave open world, Tech titans, and Eastern ascendance – and explored how they could…

  • The NSS: Unfit for Purpose

    8 July 2019 by Richard Budd

    This is a guest blog from Dr Richard Budd, from the Centre for Higher Education Research and Evaluation (CHERE) at Lancaster University. The National Student Survey (NSS) has supposedly tracked the quality of undergraduate provision across the UK since 2005. It is apposite that universities are encouraged to pay attention…

  • The Augar report and the not-so-missing middle

    5 July 2019 by Dr Greg Walker, Chief Executive of MillionPlus, the Association for Modern Universities.

    MillionPlus has been at the forefront of organisations calling for the Level 4 and 5 education space in England to be revived as an outcome of the Augar process and it is pleasing to see this agenda picked up in the report. These important qualifications, such as Foundation degrees or…

  • The future for Augar is political

    4 July 2019

    Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of speaking at Wonkhe’s conference on Augar, in the final session of the day, alongside Rachel Wolf, on the politics of the report. Here are my remarks. On the day the Augar report appeared, I said on the radio that it felt like…

  • How Informed Choices can help support access to competitive universities

    3 July 2019 by Sarah Stevens

    This a guest blog, by Sarah Stevens, Director of Policy at the Russell Group is kindly contributed as a response to a HEPI blog, by Hugo Dale-Harris “Will new online guidance on ‘facilitating subjects’ help or hinder fair access to highly-selective universities?” Recently, the Russell Group launched a new interactive website to host our Informed Choices guide explaining how subject…

  • Is students’ well-being what really matters?

    2 July 2019 by Dean Machin

    This guest blog from Dean Machin, Strategic Policy Adviser at the University of Portsmouth responds to the debate around the publication of HEPI’s Policy note 13 on measuring wellbeing in higher education. He writes in a personal capacity.  Universities are investing more resources in their students’ well-being. This is right.…

  • Why Augar’s confusion provides a clear sense of where the TEF should go in the future

    1 July 2019 by Paul Ashwin, Professor of Higher Education at Lancaster University

    As we await the outcomes of Dame Shirley Pearce’s review of the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), it is worth reflecting on what Sir Philip Augar’s Post 18 Review of Education and Funding tells us about the possible future of the TEF. In doing so, it is first worth considering four…