There is much speculation about the impact of MOOCS and their potential to transform global higher education. Some fear that they will largely replace traditional courses and programmes and that students will stop going to physical universities. Although mass market online learning is unlikely to replace the brand value of…
As the Coalition Government’s HE reforms begin to have a real impact, discussion is now focused on the best strategies to effectively ensure the health of the sector over the longer term. With a recent survey of senior university leaders suggesting that some universities may close as a result of…
A recent report from the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission provided new evidence of the scale of the fair access challenge within HE including an estimate that there are 3,700 state-educated students ‘missing’ from Russell Group universities in England. Part of the explanation, according to the Commission, is that…
A criticism of universities in the past has been that they are excessively focused on research and pay inadequate attention to students. Whether or not it is a rationalisation, one of the stated purposes of the Government’s reforms and the focus on “putting students first” has been to change the…
As students pay more towards the cost of their education, questions are now being raised about whether expenditure on higher education (both personal investment and public expenditure) is so obviously a good investment as before. The balance between the public and private returns is likely to have changed. At the same time,…
The opening speeches in each of the four seminars can be found here.
On 2 March 2011, Sir Martin Harris, Director of the Office for Fair Access and Professor Susan Price, Vice-Chancellor of Leeds Metropolitan University and a member of HEFCE’s Widening Participation and Fair Access Strategic Advisory Committee gave presentations at the third in a series of four HEPI seminars at the…
Second seminar in a series of four in the House of Commons, supported by i-graduate and Wiley. The issues around student financing have dominated debate from the moment student fees were introduced in 1998. The Independent Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance, chaired by Lord Browne, has made…
In his report produced for HEPI, Professor Roger Brown considers recent developments in higher education in the USA. He concludes that recent developments mirror those in healthcare, and that if the government does not take action to hold down spiralling costs, the US higher education system will come to resemble…
First seminar in a series of four in the House of Commons, supported by i-graduate and Wiley. The past ten years have been years of plenty for the HE sector – that much is clear with hindsight – but with the public finances now strictly controlled and universities challenged to…