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The national strategy for access and student success By Professor Les Ebdon, Director of Fair Access to Higher Education I’m delighted that the Government has now published the national strategy for access and student success which OFFA and HEFCE developed at its behest. It’s an ambitious strategy that makes wide-ranging…

With thanks to Julian Gravatt, Assistant Chief Executive of the Association of Colleges, who is our second guest blogger. In Unfinished business, Nick Hillman makes the case for a higher education bill and identifies some priorities. He suggests action is needed to control new student loans properly, secure fairer competition between established…

‘Robbins Rebooted’ is a good title for Liam Byrne’s first really important speech on higher education. It is consciously based on a pamphlet written last year by David Willetts (to which I contributed, to declare an interest). The Robbins report has gradually come to play the role the Beveridge report…

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) have published new research on degree performance according to the backgrounds of students. It is incredibly important research and shows, for example: large gaps in the performance of students from different ethnicities – almost three-quarters of white students with BBB in their…

There has been fervent debate about the Resource Accounting and Budgeting charge, known as the RAB charge, in recent days. I was even invited to speak about this rather technical concept on the Radio 4 Today programme last Saturday. It is all because the Government has just increased the figure…

Hepi thanks Andy Westwood for becoming the first guest blogger on the new Hepi website. Higher education is facing the biggest shake up of agencies and quangos for over twenty years. Politicians, think tanks and commissions are queueing up to create new organisations in HE and to simplify what looks…

‘Lobbying’ is a dirty word but, done well, it can mean telling people in power things they don’t already know.