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].
Yesterday, the Guardian HE Network ran an article of mine under the headline ‘University vice-chancellors, start calling for a second EU referendum’. Many interpreted this as a call for a straight re-run of the 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU. They were wrong to do so, as…
The boarding-school model of higher education In Britain, we have a ‘boarding-school model’ of higher education. Enrolling at university as a young full-time student usually means moving away from home for a full-on residential experience. Compared to other countries, this is odd. Elsewhere, people typically transfer from a local school…
Earlier this week, I spoke to a group of students at the University of Oxford on how I ended up working in education policy. There was high demand for the session, so I am posting the remarks here in case other people seeking policymaking roles are interested in what I…
This guest blog has been written by Paul Marshall, Group Business Development Director at UPP. It recounts the discussions that were had at the HEPI-UPP roundtable events at the Party Conferences earlier this month. Following the proposals outlined in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy’s (BEIS) Green Paper on Industrial…
The wonderful human geographer Danny Dorling has expounded on his long-held view that our student finance system was designed by the rich to hammer the poor in a new essay for Wonkhe entitled ‘Why student loans are a confidence trick for the 85%‘. This claims student loans have been implemented…
This guest blog has been written by Professor Graeme Reid, Professor of Science and Research Policy at University College London. It first appeared on the Royal Society’s blog on 24 October 2017 and has been reproduced with kind permission for HEPI’s readership. Fresh from what is becoming my annual sojourn…
On Monday, 16th October 2017, Unite Students are publishing a new report on the non-academic parts of the student experience entitled ‘Everyone In: Insights from a diverse student population‘. The following blog is HEPI’s response to the important findings, which also appears in the document itself. It is sometimes said higher education is the only…
This guest blog comes from the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education. It was first published on 12 October 2017 on the Leadership Foundation’s own blog and has been reproduced here for the HEPI readership. We, at the Leadership Foundation, are delighted to have launched our 2017-18 governance year with a joint…
This guest blog has been written by Paul Hazell, Evaluation and Analytics Manager at the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA). It outlines findings from a report released today into sub-bachelor higher education qualifications. In just over 50 years the proportion of students studying for sub-bachelor qualifications – such as Higher National…
Yesterday, World Mental Health Day, prompted universities and colleges across the UK to reflect on their duty of care to students and staff suffering from mental health issues. In a sector dominated by data, it is all too easy to lose sight of the human stories behind the numbers. Improving…