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].
Yesterday we focussed on the story so far for the OfS. It has been troubled, but the course can be corrected. Today we set out some steps that can be taken to find common ground and a create regulatory environment that is accepted by all but beholden to none. 1…
Public debate is focused on what might happen after the General Election. Change is in the air, and everyone wants a piece of it. Will higher education be high up the list for reform? Unlikely, with health, the economy, and global security in the top spots. The Office for Students’…
Recently, I visited a Chinese restaurant in The Netherlands. As usual, we ordered a 7-dish smorgasbord of carbs and protein alongside a guiltily ordered vegetable dish. Upon ordering, the waiter explained that we had ordered way too much and recommended that we minimise our order to only 3 dishes. We…
There’s one certainty about higher education funding in Wales: whatever you say about it, someone will shoot you down in flames. (And there will be more heat than light.) Five years ago, we published a paper, Is ‘progressive universalism’ the answer? The new student funding arrangements in Wales, which pointed…
The arrival of the ‘alternative provider’ In 1997 the Dearing Report saw diversity in British higher education institutions as an advantage ‘especially in providing for student choice; in programme and pedagogic innovation’ and ‘in the ability of the sector as a whole to meet the wide range of expectations now…
The Higher Education and Research Act of 2017 (HERA) asserts that both the Secretary of State and the Office for Students ‘must have regard to the need to protect the institutional autonomy of English higher education providers’. HERA s. 8 defines this autonomy in terms which have been accepted since they…
While Margaret Thatcher was the Secretary of State for Education and Science in the 1970s, she instructed people working in independent educational institutions to: ‘never apologise for independence. It is worth stimulating and nurturing for its own sake. You do not have to justify it. It is those who wish to…
On 30 January, the National Union of Students launched our Manifesto for our Future which represents the aspirations of the millions of students across the UK. We developed these ideas based on consultation with over 10,000 students. Regular polling has afforded us a clear picture of the big issues for…
As the student body in most universities becomes ever more heterogeneous, one of the greatest challenges has been to see and understand students beyond a single administrative demographic label or identity. As universities begin acknowledging students’ complex, intersecting social identities, staff approaches to engaging and supporting students become much more…
The HE sector is in danger of letting a major opportunity pass by due to its tendency to focus on what it does do, not what it could do. Whatever colour of Government we have over the next five years, surely the Levelling Up agenda is here to stay. This…