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, 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…
This blog about the Conservative party Conference by HEPI’s Director, Nick Hillman, first appeared at the weekend on the website of Research Fortnight (at http://www.researchresearch.com/news/article/?articleId=1370475). See @HE_Analyst on Twitter for further information. The number seven has many special properties. There are seven days of the week, seven colours of the rainbow, seven notes in a musical scale, seven ages of…
This guest blog has been written by Dilly Fung, Professor of Higher Education Development and Academic Director at University College London’s Arena Centre for Research-based Education (formerly CALT). A recent international conference at University College London (UCL) explored international perspectives on creating a more ‘connected’ higher education sector. More than 300…
Party Conference season is upon us once again. And judging by the mounting debates about tuition fees over the summer, higher education policy is bound to feature prominently in the Conference programmes over the next few weeks. To ensure the key issues are being addressed, HEPI is pleased to announce…
The main currency of politics is killer facts: striking points that move a debate on. In higher education, current killer facts include the claim from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) that the poorest graduates in England leave university with debts of £57,000 and that interest on student loans has…
On 21 July, HEPI published a guest blog by Alison Baverstock detailing Kingston University’s Big Read initiative. Earlier this summer, Alison kindly gave me a copy of Kit de Waal’s My Name is Leon – the book being sent out to all Kingston freshers starting university this term. Having just had…
The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Students held a lively discussion in the House of Commons earlier this week on the topical issue of the ‘student voice’. We are reproducing here, with permission, the helpful note produced to stimulate the conversation. The All-Party Group, is chaired by Paul Blomfield MP (who…
Recently, someone asked me which HEPI reports had been most widely read. There is no perfect way to measure this because we send out the same number of hard copies of each report and it is up to the recipients to decide whether to read them or not. It is…
Last week, the Universities UK Annual Conference at Brunel University was all over the newspapers, particularly in relation to the important speech by Jo Johnson, the Minister for Universities. But somewhere on the wall in the Gents’ loo in Brunel’s students’ union building was a message that could be more…
The new academic year is almost upon us. The legislation is now on the statute books, the TEF has been rolled out and we have a tiny bit more clarity on the status of international students, with a Government review currently underway. There remains, however, a rich agenda still to…