HEPI / Fair Access Coalition Roundtable dinner: Making the case for higher education

On Thursday 30 April 2026, HEPI and the Fair Access Coalition will host a roundtable dinner in London, bringing together a small group of organisations for a focused roundtable discussion on the shifting narrative around higher education and its impact on the young people we collectively support.

Across the Fair Access Coalition organisations, we are seeing the increasingly negative public discourse around higher education influencing the choices of young people who are already least likely to progress to HE. From our perspective, this trend is both worrying and urgent. We believe there is significant value in creating a shared space to compare insights, align thinking, and explore coordinated messaging.

Objectives for the discussion:

• Establish a common understanding of the problem
  • what shifts are we seeing, and how are they affecting young people?
• Frame key messages we can align around
  • what are the simple, accurate, positive messages about HE that our organisations can reinforce consistently?
• Explore scope for coordinated messaging
  • what is already planned across our organisations?
  • is there existing work we could amplify?
  • where might it make sense to focus on distinct audiences but with shared intent?

The aim of the discussion is to strengthen dialogue, share intelligence, identify synergies, and support one another in shifting the broader discourse – not build a formal coalition.

Please note this dinner is invitation-only. For any queries, please contact Carole [email protected].