In recent years, HEPI has produced over 20 reports a year. They are all available free of charge here on our website and all our longer reports are also available in hard copy from the HEPI office.
The version on the website should be regarded as the version of record.
The government has recently announced its policy intentions towards higher education and student finance, in response to the Browne Review’s recommendations. In this report we first provide a summary of the differences between the Browne Review and the government’s proposals. We then look at whether these proposals meet the two…
The Independent Review of Higher Education and Student Finance, by Lord Browne, was published earlier this week. This report is HEPI’s response to the proposals. A new version of the report was uploaded on 19 October 2010.
This report supplements the research published by HEPI in June 2009 on “Male and female participation and progression in Higher Education”. It is in two parts. The first part provides further information on the employment outcomes of graduates, using more up-to-date data than was available when the original report was…
This report discusses the issues involved in comparability of degree standards. It is in two parts. Part 1 begins by outlining the means by which individual universities and colleges and the academic community collectively protect the standards of UK degrees. It then describes the historical attachment to comparability and the…
This report assesses the strength of the UK’s research base, and at a high level examines how that strength is distributed between institutions. It concludes that a very small number of institutions and individuals within them produce the truly exceptional research that puts the UK among the world’s leaders in…
In 2004 HEPI produced a report reviewing the extent and nature of postgraduate education. The present report updates the 2004 study and looks in more depth at a number of issues: Nature of postgraduate education Students – current numbers, profile and trends Institutional differences and regional disparities Costs and benefits of postgraduate…
This study looks at Oxford and Cambridge universities and considers the extent to which they are distinctive compared to the rest of the UK higher education sector. It looks at the nature of their undergraduate student bodies, the outcomes of their teaching, the extent and quality of the research done…
The UK higher education funding bodies have published their proposals for the design and conduct of the Research Excellence Framework (REF), which will replace the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) as the method by which research will be assessed for the purpose of the allocation of their research funds. This paper…
There has been continuing interest in the use of vouchers as a mechanism for funding higher education institutions. In this report, HEPI analyses the pros and cons of vouchers, and looks at the implementation of voucher systems elsewhere in the world.
This report analyses the differences in the participation of men and women in higher education, and in their success when there. It shows that on virtually all measures women outperform men, and it discussses some of the possible causes for this and the implications. An annex to this report was published on…