Women are woefully under-represented in UK national life, including in the leadership of our higher education institutions. For example, while there are some outstanding female Vice-Chancellors, they remain the exception rather than the norm. Arguably, the imbalance starts at the very top as the last few people with responsibility for…
Our recent collection of essays on where higher education institutions spend their fees and how their strategies have changed since £9,000 fees came in included a chapter by Professor Edward Acton, the former Vice-Chancellor of the University of East Anglia. We are delighted to publish this response, in the form of…
The (HE) world is waiting with bated breath for the Official Opposition’s position on undergraduate tuition fees in England. The only certainty is it won’t have to wait much longer, given the proximity of the election – and perhaps for only a few more hours. Those close to the Labour…
The higher education mission groups and representative bodies are in the process of making recommendations for the next Government but each Vice-Chancellor does not typically produce their own manifesto. So HEPI is particularly pleased to host this guest blog by Professor Quintin McKellar, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hertfordshire, in the form of his personal…
Tomorrow – Wednesday, 18th February 2015 – is University Mental Health Day. The 2014 HEPI / HEA Student Academic Experience Survey suggested that, on average, students’ wellbeing may be lower than that for the population as a whole. Last week, the excellent new Student Mental Wellbeing in Higher Education: Good Practice Guide…
Along with many other people in higher education, we are today mourning the sad loss of Professor Sir David Watson, a prolific author and commentator on higher education, who was the first Vice-Chancellor of the University of Brighton and, more recently, Principal of Green Templeton College, Oxford. Hepi is honoured to have been able…
Louisa Darian from Which?, who partnered with HEPI on the 2013 Academic Experience Survey, writes exclusively for HEPI on how to support people in the midst of choosing what and where to study. We are grateful to Louisa for this guest blog. Next month the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is due…
Last week, we featured six questions that need to be addressed by those joining the chorus calling for lower tuition fees for STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) students in England. Differential fees by discipline would be novel for the UK, but (as we explained in a 2014 pamphlet) they have existed for a long…
A new rumour has been sucked into the vacuum where Labour’s student fees policy will eventually be – a lower fee cap (£6k) for STEM undergraduates. Isabel Hardman is an excellent journalist, but I stress I’ve no idea if the party really is seriously considering the policy. UKIP claim the idea…
HEPI generally only publishes exclusive content, but there has been relatively little discussion in the UK of Obama’s new proposals for free two-year community college places. So we have decided as a one-off to reprint this recent article by Donald E. Heller, Dean of the College of Education at Michigan State University. It previously appeared on The…