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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].

  • Reconnecting the civic university with the climate agenda: thinking globally acting locally.

    4 March 2020 by Keri Facer

    This blog was kindly contributed by Keri Facer, Professor of Educational and Social Futures at the University of Bristol and Zennström Professor in Climate Change Leadership at Uppsala University. From 2012 – 2018 she was Arts and Humanities Research Council Leadership Fellow for the UKRI Connected Communities Research Programme. As…

  • Making universities matter: two reports call for radical change

    2 March 2020 by Lucian J Hudson

    Lucian J. Hudson is the lead author of Universities at the Crossroads (Policy Exchange, 2020). He is a former Director of Communications at the University of Oxford and The Open University. Spring green shoots have come early to the UK higher education sector with the publication of two new reports,…

  • Will the Augar Report’s recommendations stem the decline in part-time study?

    28 February 2020 by Claire Callender

    This blog was kindly contributed by Claire Callender, Professor of Higher Education at both Birkbeck University of London and UCL, Institute of Education where she is Deputy Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education. Part-time undergraduate higher education study helps transform lives and drive economies. It is central to…

  • Can universities learn anything from the start-up sector?

    26 February 2020 by Vincenzo Raimo

    This blog was kindly contributed by Vincenzo Raimo, Chief Relationship Officer at Unilodgers and a former Pro-Vice-Chancellor. Having recently left university employment for the tech start-up Unilodgers, I am having to adapt to very different ways of working and (re)learning lessons which might also be valuable to some of my…

  • Visit planning: my top 10 tips for hosting ministers and MPs

    25 February 2020 by Diana Beech

    This guest blog has been written in a personal capacity by Dr Diana Beech (Head of Government Affairs at the University of Warwick). Diana was Policy Adviser for higher education to various Ministers for Universities and Science (Sam Gyimah, Jo Johnson and Chris Skidmore – twice!), a role she fulfilled…

  • Universities at the Crossroads

    24 February 2020 by Lucian J Hudson

    This blog was contributed by Lucian J. Hudson, former Director of Communications at The Open University, University of Oxford and Foreign & Commonwealth Office. Lucian has co-authored a new paper with Iain Mansfield, which Policy Exchange has published this morning. This paper is based on more than 50 interviews with…

  • How is university governance changing?

    21 February 2020

    Many people do not appreciate just how huge the UK university sector now is. Together, it is worth around £100 billion a year to the country and supports nearly one million jobs. Some of the larger individual institutions have income and expenditure well in excess of £1,000,000,000 a year. Universities…

  • What about me? International student attainment in UK higher education

    20 February 2020 by Susan Smith

    This blog was kindly contributed by Susan Smith, Associate Dean (Education and Students) at the University of Sussex Business School. All graphs in this article use data from the HESA Student Record. As the higher education sector prepares to help the government realise its ambitious target of 600,000 international students…

  • How should the higher education sector seek to persuade our new Ministers?

    19 February 2020 by Nick Hillman

    As we take stock of the Whitehall reshuffle and get to know the new Ministers responsible for the higher education sector, it seems like a good moment to think afresh about how to persuade policymakers most effectively. There is a lot of good advice on this issue available from recent…