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 new Debate section of the HEPI website was established partly to bolster HEPI’s evidence base by giving people an opportunity to submit their ideas and partly to provide a new forum to debate topical higher education issues. One question we would love your thoughts on is why are PhDs so rarely publishable in…
The beefed-up Wonkhe website is going from strength to strength at the moment. Recent interesting additions include a piece by Mark Leach on higher education wonks and one by Carl Lygo of BPP University on the true costs of a good higher education experience, which refers to the recent HEPI / HEA Academic Experience Survey…
Yesterday, the Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive of the University of Staffordshire, Professor Michael Gunn, said: “Too many politicians and political advisers look to the US where many students do not complete or default on their loans and to Australia to provide answers to what they hope will be some higher…
Nadine Dorries has just tweeted: @NadineDorriesMP: Written to former Labour Minister, now head of Bedfordshire University since 2012 to ask why university has done so badly in league tables It’s an interesting way for an MP to hold a local university to account. It doesn’t seem inherently unreasonable for an…
In a new book published today by Bright Blue, I argue: that tuition fees are probably here to stay; that higher education is unlikely to be a major election issue in 2015; and that the Coalition should change course on international students. The chapter is written in a personal capacity,…
Yesterday I spoke to a careers guidance conference. It was very good to interact directly with those who are in charge of giving advice to young people on their futures. As I said in my speech, my own experience as a secondary school teacher running a pre-university course showed me…
Having travelled a lot over the last few weeks, I’ve been musing on HE in other countries. Perhaps nowhere are the differences so stark as in two of the countries I’ve visited: Australia and North Korea. In 2012, Australia removed student number controls for undergraduate places at public universities. With…
The new report on Estimating the public cost of student loans authored by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and sponsored by Universities UK is an important and detailed piece of work. Let me try and explain why. Point 1: It confirms the Government’s warnings about the inherent sensitivities in calculating a…
As Chief Executive of University Alliance I am often asked to talk about the value of higher education, why we need more graduates in the economy and the need for smart investment in teaching and research. But I don’t always get to look at the detail of how this funding…
Earlier this month, the NUS annual conference took place in Liverpool. Toni Pearce, the NUS’s formidable President, was comfortably re-elected. It’s 15 years since I was a delegate at the NUS conference. It was in Blackpool, rather lively (£1,000 tuition fees had just been introduced) and a Robbie Williams impersonator…