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

News

  • UK is (just) number 1 for educating the world’s leaders

    5 August 2017 by Nick Hillman

    A new study by the Higher Education Policy Institute (www.hepi.ac.uk) reveals the UK’s higher education sector has educated more of the world’s leaders than any other. Among 377 serving heads of state and heads of government, 58 attended universities and colleges in the UK. This places the UK just ahead…

  • New report calls for comprehensive universities to improve social mobility

    20 July 2017

    HEPI is today publishing The Comprehensive University (Occasional Paper 17) by Professor Tim Blackman, the Vice-Chancellor of Middlesex University. The report argues the comprehensive ideal is the best way to fix how the UK’s class-based university system is holding back social mobility. The paper’s recommendations include: measures to ‘desegregate’ and diversify…

  • University applicants set for shock to the system

    4 July 2017

    New report says more can be done to prepare young people for university. The first major survey of its kind, Reality Check: A report on university applicants’ attitudes and perceptions, produced by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) and Unite Students, shows a significant gap between what university applicants think higher education…

  • Hey, big spenders!

    22 May 2017 by Nick Hillman

    It was a busy weekend for higher education announcements. First, the Green Party announced a plan to pay off all outstanding student debt on graduates’ behalf. The details were sketchy but there is over £75 billion worth of outstanding debt in England alone. So it is a big policy whichever way you look at…

  • Why we must protect university autonomy

    3 April 2017

    HEPI Director, Nick Hillman, will today deliver a major speech on university autonomy at the inaugural meeting of the G20 – a group of Presidents from independent (or independent-minded) colleges and universities around the world – taking place at the University of Buckingham. In his speech, he will: note the benefits that institutional autonomy provides UK universities in…

  • Getting bang-for-buck from university communications

    30 March 2017

    On Thursday, 30th March, the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) publishes a new report by Richard Garner, the UK’s longest-serving education correspondent, entitled Return on investment? How universities communicate with the outside world (Occasional Paper 16). Drawing on over 35 years’ experience at the Independent, the Mirror and the Times Educational Supplement, the author: recounts initiatives that…