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The UK's only independent think tank devoted to higher education.

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].

  • The Bologna Process 25 years on: higher education quality and international trust

    25 October 2023 by Tessa Blackstone

    As part of the Bologna Process, the UK is committed to the European Standards and Guidelines, internationally agreed good practice in quality oversight. QAA’s policy paper highlights that England has diverged from the standards in four areas: The policy paper outlines how realigning with this good practice could help retain…

  • Robbins, Specialist Institutions and Industrial Policy

    24 October 2023 by Andy Westwood

    The Robbins Report had a great deal to say about higher education in the UK and some parts are better known than others. Top of the list was that university places ‘should be available to all who were qualified for them by ability and attainment’ which has become known as the…

  • The Robbins Review – Lessons for the Future by Professor Huw Morris

    23 October 2023 by Huw Morris

    The Robbins Review report was published 60 years ago this October. The review made a series of recommendations which have provided a reference point for comment on UK Government higher education policy ever since. This article looks back at the report and considers what the lessons might be for politicians,…

  • Does the multiplication of alternative providers call for a new review of higher education?

    20 October 2023 by Gill Evans

    The proposals of the Robbins Report on Higher Education considered the role of providers of tertiary education. It concluded that to ‘confer degree-giving powers on all the existing’ Further Education Colleges ‘would be inappropriate because of the number involved, the variation in their sizes and the diversity of standards’. It…

  • Long Live the Robbins Principle! By Professor Peter Mandler

    18 October 2023 by Professor Peter Mandler

    Lots of things are claimed for the Robbins Report that don’t hold up to scrutiny.  It was responsible for the ‘plateglass’ universities of the 1960s. Nope – all of the famous ‘English 7’ plateglass universities were lined up before the Report was issued, and one (Sussex) was already open for business.…

  • The Robbins Report – a political bombshell By Professor Nick Barr

    16 October 2023 by Professor Nicholas Barr

    Perhaps it was because Lionel Robbins was a pillar of the establishment (LSE professor, Life Peer, Chairman of the Financial Times, Director of the Royal Opera House), that the 1963 Robbins Report on higher education landed like a bombshell. Its fundamental position (subsequently known as the ‘Robbins Principle’) was set…

  • A week is a long time in politics – a day in higher education can seem even longer

    12 October 2023 by Amanda Broderick

    On 12 September, the Office for Students (OfS) published its first set of findings from assessment visits focused on the quality of Business and Management courses. In conjunction with the announcements, HEPI ran a blog by Professor David Phoenix, Vice-Chancellor of London South Bank University (one of the institutions visited…