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Blog

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].

  • HEPI 14th Annual Lecture: A perspective from Asia

    8 December 2017

    Last night, HEPI was honoured to host Professor TAN Chorh Chuan, President of the National University of Singapore, who delivered the 14th HEPI Annual Lecture. It was striking how many people said afterwards that the Lecture made elements of the UK’s current higher education debate seem rather too parochial. So we…

  • Parents: Your student children need your ££££

    6 December 2017 by Nick Hillman

    Martin Lewis, the Money Saving Expert, has been on the warpath in recent months regarding parental contributions towards students’ living costs. He has, quite rightly, pointed out that – for all but the poorest students – the maintenance loan system rests upon an assumption that parents will contribute to living…

  • Universities must listen to what international students think about value for money

    29 November 2017 by Paul Raybould

    This guest blog comes from Paul Raybould, Marketing Director at QS Enrolment Solutions As HEPI’s latest report on research funding showed, international students provide a vital source of research funding. On average, over the duration of their degree, each non-EU student contributes over £8,000 to UK research. With international student…

  • How I got into education policymaking – Part 2

    27 November 2017 by Diana Beech

    Earlier this month, HEPI Director Nick Hillman shared his story of how he got into education policymaking to help those seeking similar roles in the future. Having come to the profession from a completely different angle, I wanted to share my own story too, as it strikes me as important…

  • Exploring the changing global environment for universities

    23 November 2017 by Diana Beech

    Earlier this month, HEPI collaborated with PwC to host a roundtable dinner in Leeds on the changing global environment for universities, attended by senior leaders from across the region. The dinner was the first in a series of three HEPI/PwC roundtables which will be taking place around the country over…

  • Review of David Willetts’s ‘A University Education’ by Professor Andy Westwood

    23 November 2017 by Andy Westwood

    Last night, HEPI – kindly supported by the UPP Foundation and Oxford University Press, as well as Warwick Business School – hosted an event to mark the launch of David Willetts’s new book, A University Education. After Lord Willetts had run through some of the key arguments in the book, Sir Michael Barber…

  • Another referendum?

    21 November 2017 by Nick Hillman

    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…

  • Can we learn from boarding schools to help commuter students stick?

    20 November 2017 by Nick Hillman

    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…

  • How I got into education policymaking

    2 November 2017

    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…