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The proposals of the Robbins Report on Higher Education considered the role of providers of tertiary education. It concluded that to ‘confer degree-giving powers on all the existing’ Further Education Colleges ‘would be inappropriate because of the number involved, the variation in their sizes and the diversity of standards’. It…
It is great to be back in Bradford. Thank you for inviting me. I have visited a few times since becoming HEPI’s Director 10 years ago. The other day I looked back to what I said to you during my first visit, at the end of the 2014/15 academic year…
The English Social Mobility Index, which is compiled by London South Bank University (LSBU) and published by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI), compares the performance of individual English higher education providers. The Index measures the social distance travelled by graduates from each institution as well as the proportion of…
It was a brief one-day visit for me this year to the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool, but I was there long enough to sense that there was a new mood afoot: the crazy Judean People’s Front leafleteers that used to congregate along the Brighton seafront were less numerous (albeit…
Since HEPI was founded in 2002, it has published around 160 Reports (blue books), 50 Policy Notes and over 30 Debate Papers (red books, but originally yellow Occasional Papers) as well as over 1,500 blog posts. This is not anything like a complete record because some of HEPI’s written output,…
After teaching for 31 years in primary and middle schools, including eleven as head teacher, I retired (at the age of 52) in 1997 and a year later created my first website, which contained, in addition to an assortment of personal material, an education section consisting of the essays and…
To measure is to know Attributed to William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin (1824–1907) As HEPI marks 20 years of debate and constructive criticism on matters relating to higher education in the UK and beyond, it has invited expert researchers, practitioners and commentators to reflect on the way that tertiary education…
It has sometimes felt like the past year has seen a torrent of valuable books on education, including higher education, even if there has not always been the time to read and digest them properly – there are good reasons why HEPI papers are designed to be read in one…
I’m not completely sure anyone wants or needs another round in the HEPI / Wonkhe (or more accurately Hillman / Leach) debate on student number controls. I’m not even completely sure I do, despite being its instigator and one of the pugilists. But against my better judgement and because the…
Steven Jones, Professor of Higher Education at the University of Manchester, is one of the nicest people I have met in our sector. As I saw first-hand when he was a staff governor of his institution, where I am a lay governor, Professor Jones knows how to deliver effective change without…