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This blog is an edited transcript of a speech delivered by Professor Nigel Seaton, Principal and Vice Chancellor of Abertay University, at the PwC / HEPI conference on the 18th October. PwC are longstanding supporters of research into the Higher Education sector, and without their support the conference would not…

Election manifestoes are a set of promises about what people will do in office. They may not have any official constitutional significance, but they are clearly qualitatively different to other political promises – not least because our revising chamber, the House of Lords, has historically displayed a reluctance to oppose…

There have been lots of analyses of the importance or otherwise of the student vote since the general election date was fixed for 12 December. You can find some of our commentary here and here. Commentators regularly and controversially point out that Leave voters, who tend to be older, are being replaced by younger…

This blog was kindly contributed by Mary Curnock Cook who chairs the Advisory Board for the Student Room’s development project and the university pilots. Worries about students’ mental health and wellbeing are seldom far from the news and the higher education sector is taking seriously what seems to be a spiralling increase in low wellbeing and poor mental health. Now, three universities are piloting a technology-driven approach to tackling the problem. Back in…

There is a fairly clear consensus in higher education that we have a lot of work to do to tackle racial inequality. Students from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic groups (a controversial classification in its own right) have poorer experiences at university than White students. Numbers of Black academics are…

Since the House of Commons agreed to an election on 12 December, there has been lots of interest in the student vote. Nonsense Lots of the chatter has been nonsensical. For example, people who used to claim that the newish individual electoral registration system would lead to lots of students…

"The very same universities that oppose unpaid work often rely on unpaid student reps themselves."

There is a lot of nonsense talked about the voting power of students. HEPI has been tracking students’ political views and their potential electoral power closely since before the last-but-one general election. Here are some of the things we have learnt. There are some seats where students are thought to…

Fatima’s is a remarkable story, one of lucky escapes and pure determination that has taken her from her home country Syria to a refugee camp in Jordan and then to Greece in search of a safe haven before coming to the UK. Life here was hard. I have experienced stigma…

It used to be thought the modern age would herald meals in the form of small pills, supersonic travel and fewer working hours. It hasn’t turned out like that. Instead, we rather like slow food. We tend to prefer cheap to super-fast travel. More income has often proved more desirable…