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

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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].

  • Study from home? What if you don’t have a home?

    17 March 2020 by Eluned Parrott

    This blog was kindly contributed by Eluned Parrott, Director of the Unite Foundation, the UK’s biggest provider of scholarships to care-leavers and estranged students. As the sector responds to the spread of Covid-19, the question of whether our thought processes are entirely inclusive once again springs to mind. Working with…

  • What might Covid-19 mean for PhD students & postdocs?

    16 March 2020

    This blog has been written by Bethan Cornell, a PhD student at King’s College London. What might be the implications for doctoral (PhD) students and postdoctoral researchers that are unable to work due to Covid-19, either because of self-isolation or departmental closure? Work on projects may have to stop –…

  • Michelle Donelan: harbinger of Augar? Or Michelle Donelan: something more?

    13 March 2020 by Michael Natzler

    It is fair to say that many of us working in higher education policy knew little about the new Universities Minister Michelle Donelan and the new Science Minister Amanda Solloway at the time of the recent reshuffle. Some commentary focused on the wider reshuffle, interpreting the appointment of many new…

  • FE versus HE, HE versus FE?

    12 March 2020 by Nick Hillman

    Very often, people speak as if there is a trade off between further education and higher education. It is vocational versus academic. Useful versus ivory towers. Colleges versus universities. Anyone who spends more than a few seconds thinking about this swiftly realises it is largely nonsense. Higher education originally trained…

  • The effect of education agents on prospective Chinese students

    11 March 2020 by Ying Yang

    This blog was kindly contributed by Ying Yang, formerly an education agent in China. Ying is pursuing a PhD at Manchester Institute of Education investigating the role of education agents in the marketization in China of British postgraduate programmes. For many academics, the important role of education agents in shaping…

  • Tackling the BAME attainment at the Claude Littner Business School

    10 March 2020 by Suresh Gamlath

    This blog was kindly contributed by Dr Suresh Gamlath, Dean of the Claude Littner Business School, University of West London. The Claude Littner Business School was named Business School of the Year at the Times Higher Education awards in 2019 in light of work to reduce the ethnic minority student…

  • Mind the gap: gender differences in higher education

    7 March 2020 by Rachel Hewitt

    International Women’s Day always offers a good opportunity to reflect on how far we have come and how far we still have to go when it comes to equality between the sexes. In fact, there is a positive story to be told when it comes to women’s place in higher…

  • An unenviable challenge for HESA

    6 March 2020 by Paul Hayes, Dean Machin and Paul Spendlove

    This blog was kindly contributed by Paul Hayes, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Dean Machin, Strategic Policy Adviser, and Paul Spendlove, Graduate Outcomes Manager, at the University of Portsmouth. Graduates’ destinations – the jobs graduates do – are clearly a central part of the value for money debate. Until recently, data about graduates’…

  • 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…