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, Rose Stephenson, at [email protected].
How should we judge today’s report on the review of post-18 education and funding? Just over a year ago, HEPI published ten points-of-note that the post-18 review would have to get to grips with to fix the broken parts of our education and training system. Here’s how the review stacks up…
When we start planning each year’s HEPI Annual Conference – which this year is taking place on 13 June at a prestigious central London venue – our first act is always to check our informal ‘HE clash calendar’. Higher education policy is such a busy field these days that it can…
Theresa May has announced the date for her departure and another Tory leadership contest is upon us. While the new Prime Minister’s first focus may not be higher education, the imminent announcement of the post-18 education review means tuition fees are a topic they will likely have to take a…
The Russell Group have just changed their official guidance for school students. They have moved away from a list of traditional ‘facilitating’ subjects. Instead, they are offering an online tool that gives course-specific guidance on what subjects are essential or useful to get onto different university disciplines. The new Informed Choices…
A guest blog kindly contributed by Dr Liz Morrish, author of today’s new HEPI Occasional Paper 20: Pressure Vessels: The epidemic of poor mental health among higher education staff. There has recently been a significant amount of media concern surrounding the poor mental health of academics. In February 2018, Paul…
A guest blog kindly contributed by Scott Caizley, who is a PhD researcher at Kings College London looking at the experiences of low-income state school pupils at elite UK music conservatoires. Access and participation amongst state schooled students in UK conservatoires throughout the past years have remained at an all-time…
Lucian J. Hudson writes in a personal capacity. He is interim Director of Public Affairs and Communications at Oxford University, and a past Director of Communications at The Open University and Foreign & Commonwealth Office. In Lampedusa’s novel, The Leopard, chronicling upheavals in Sicilian society, one of its characters offers…
One issue on which most academics agree is how not to judge the value of different university courses. But, unfortunately, no one can agree on the right way to do it. This matters because the lack of consensus cedes power to people who may care less about the health of our sector.…
This book review has been kindly contributed by Francis Green, Professor of Work and Education Economics at UCL Institute of Education, and co-author, with historian David Kynaston, of ‘Engines of Privilege. Britain’s Private School Problem’, (Bloomsbury 2019). Private school leaders and sector authorities are sometimes more informative and thought-provoking when…
It is mental health awareness week so – quite rightly – your newsfeeds will be full of articles about mental health. At HEPI we’ve written about these issues at length before. But that is not what this blog is about. As our own Rachel Hewitt pointed out in last week’s…