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].
This guest blog post is written by Dean Machin, who works for Trilateral Research. Learning analytics is arriving on university campuses. To universities it offers higher student retention rates and, at £9000pa per student, many are keen. Learning analytics uses a combination of data about students and their university engagement to trigger…
Rumours of the demise of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (established in 1992) continue to grow. HEPI will have more to say about the Government’s overall approach to higher education – pros and cons – once the green paper is published in the next few days. But, for…
This is an extract from a speech made by Nick Hillman, HEPI Director, to the Committee of University Chairs Autumn Plenary, held in central London on Friday, 16th October 2015. The instructions I have received for this event advise that ‘our most successful speakers are those who encourage the audience to reflect on what…
There’s quite a bit of chatter here at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester about the Government’s commitment to double the proportion of people from the least well-off socio-economic groups that make it to higher education. Joy Carter, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Winchester, mentioned it, for example, at…
On Tuesday, 29th September 2015, HEPI co-hosted a roundtable discussion at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton. It focused on some new research exploring students’ views on applying to higher education, alternatives to higher education and employability. A similar event will be taking place at the Conservative Party Conference in…
On Monday, 28th September 2015, HEPI’s Director, Nick Hillman, spoke at a Demos / Physiological Society fringe meeting on teaching in higher education at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton. The sound file of his speech can be accessed below. .
…by the look of this banner currently up at the University of the West of England. But anyone who finds the transition to higher education tricky should know they are in good company. At a HEPI / HEA breakfast on student wellbeing earlier this year, a leading figure in the sector said the one thing…
This guest blog is written by Tom McKenzie, Lecturer in Economics at the University of Dundee and Fellow of the London Centre for Social Studies. It is, in part, a response to HEPI’s recent publication comparing the UK and German higher education systems. University academics multitask. Broadly, our time is split between research, teaching and administrative…
The Government is, rightly in my view, committed to raising the salience of good teaching in higher education. Its preferred means for doing so is a new Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). No one yet knows exactly what that will look like. Only two things are certain: one, that the TEF will be hard…
In mid-July, I blogged on the seemingly ever-changing forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (or OBR) on future student numbers, which can be read here. The OBR has treated that blog as a formal ‘request for further detail’. I wholeheartedly welcome their willingness to respond to my comments and their response can be…