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

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].

  • Response to Anthony Seldon’s call for reform to UUK

    25 March 2019 by Roger Brown

    This is a guest blog kindly contributed by Roger Brown former Vice-Chancellor of Southampton Solent University. He was previously Chief Executive of the Higher Education Quality Council, Chief Executive of the Committee of Directors of Polytechnics, and Secretary of the Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council. As the only person, so…

  • Shakira Martin on Widening participation

    22 March 2019 by Shakira Martin

    This is a guest blog based on the speech Shakira Martin gave at HEPI/Advance HE’s House of Commons seminar on Widening Participation.  Widening participation in education and improving social mobility have been central issues of focus throughout my, now almost two year, presidency of the National Union of Students (NUS).…

  • Response to HEPI’s International Students research from Shadow Higher and Further Education Minister, Gordon Marsden MP

    21 March 2019 by Gordon Marsden MP

    Responding to the Higher Education Policy Institute and Kaplan International Pathways research commissioned from London Economics on the financial contributions of international students, Shadow Higher and Further Education Minister Gordon Marsden MP said: “Today’s report underlines everything Labour and the sector have been saying about the vital contribution international students’…

  • Has Derry’s time come? The case for expanding HE in Northern Ireland’s second city

    20 March 2019 by Jonny Roberts

    A guest blog contributed by Jonny Roberts, Associate Editor at Westminster Forum Projects where he previously led the Westminster Higher Education Forum and was involved in the launch of the Policy Forum for Northern Ireland. He writes here in a personal capacity.  When Lord Adonis recently took his one-man anti-Brexit…

  • What ever happened to Open Data?

    19 March 2019 by Mick Fletcher

    A guest blog kindly contributed by Mick Fletcher, Honorary Fellow at the Post 14 Centre for Education and Work, UCL Once upon a time the UK government took pride in the fact that it was a world leader in open data. Back in 2012 the Cabinet office released a White Paper entitled…

  • How should we judge the Augar proposals when they appear?

    18 March 2019

    HEPI is not a lobby group nor a mission group but an independent charity. We do not, generally, respond to official consultations. But we make rare exceptions to this rule. So we responded to: the 2015 higher education green paper; the Diamond review of higher education funding in Wales in…

  • Universities have lost the country: Here’s how UUK must reform to win it back

    14 March 2019 by Anthony Seldon

    This guest blog has been kindly contributed by Anthony Seldon, Vice-Chancellor at the University of Buckingham. Universities in the UK have lost the country. If not the entire country, the elites at least have given up on us. Sometime, earlier this decade, their perception of us began to change from…

  • Everybody wants to recruit the world: our Tier 4 fears (and how to fix them)

    13 March 2019 by Adam Haxell

    This is a guest blog kindly contributed by Adam Haxell, Senior Parliamentary Officer for MillionPlus, the Association for Modern Universities. Opinion on higher education policy is starkly divided across the political spectrum. What should be on offer, where, when and who pays for it – every position appears hotly contested.…