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Nick Hillman

  • Students: What are the polls saying about the next academic year?

    9 June 2020 by Nick Hillman

    The latest polling of students arrives this morning from Unite Students. A rapid survey of 1,000 people, students and parents, undertaken last month, it tells us some interesting things about what people expect in the midst of the pandemic. Overall, the results are positive for the higher education sector. The…

  • Are we on the cusp of a wave of university mergers?

    26 May 2020

    There is huge interest at the moment in whether higher education institutions will be more likely to merge with one another as a result of the financial pressures caused by the pandemic. The Universities UK list of asks to the Government included the important suggestion of ‘A transformation fund to support…

  • Postgraduate Education in the UK

    14 May 2020 by Ginevra House

    Looking at how the UK postgraduate landscape has changed since the previous report was published a decade ago, this new report uses previously unpublished data to reveal the state of UK postgraduate education in the years before the Covid-19 crisis struck. The analysis considers how postgraduate education was affected by…

  • Light at the end of the Path(way)?

    12 May 2020 by Nick Hillman

    The official support recently made available to higher education institutions, such as the bringing forward of payments from the Student Loans Company to universities, relates almost wholly to home students. This is unsurprising: they are the students who receive support from UK taxpayers, who will foot the bill for any…

  • Why the new student number cap is unworkable, by Bahram Bekhradnia

    5 May 2020

    Bahram Bekhradnia founded HEPI in 2002 and was its Director until January 2014, since when he has been HEPI’s President. Before establishing HEPI, he was the Director of Policy for the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). This is his first HEPI blog. The Government’s introduction of controls over the…

  • New report suggests further falls in the wellbeing of university staff

    30 April 2020

    The Higher Education Policy Institute (www.hepi.ac.uk) is publishing a new report on the mental health and wellbeing of academic and professional services staff in universities. Pressure Vessels II: An update on mental health among higher education staff in the UK (HEPI Policy Note 23) by Dr Liz Morrish, a Visiting…

  • Pressure Vessels II: An update on mental health among higher education staff in the UK

    30 April 2020 by Liz Morrish and Nicky Priaulx

    Summary Analysis of 17 universities reveals a continued rise in staff access to counselling and occupational health referrals since Pressure Vessels was published in 2019. From 2016 to 2018, there was an increase of 16% in counselling at the 14 universities for which comparable time series data were obtained. Over the same…