The HEPI Blog aims to make brief, incisive contributions to the higher education policy landscape. It is circulated to our subscribers and published online. We welcome guest submissions, which should follow our Instructions for Blog Authors. Submissions should be sent to our Blog Editor, Josh Freeman, at j.freeman@hepi.ac.uk.
Lucian J. Hudson is the lead author of Universities at the Crossroads (Policy Exchange, 2020). He is a former Director of Communications at the University of Oxford and The Open University. Spring green shoots have come early to the UK higher education sector with the publication of two new reports,…
This blog was kindly contributed by Claire Callender, Professor of Higher Education at both Birkbeck University of London and UCL, Institute of Education where she is Deputy Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education. Part-time undergraduate higher education study helps transform lives and drive economies. It is central to…
This blog was kindly contributed by Vincenzo Raimo, Chief Relationship Officer at Unilodgers and a former Pro-Vice-Chancellor. Having recently left university employment for the tech start-up Unilodgers, I am having to adapt to very different ways of working and (re)learning lessons which might also be valuable to some of my…
This guest blog has been written in a personal capacity by Dr Diana Beech (Head of Government Affairs at the University of Warwick). Diana was Policy Adviser for higher education to various Ministers for Universities and Science (Sam Gyimah, Jo Johnson and Chris Skidmore – twice!), a role she fulfilled…
This blog was contributed by Lucian J. Hudson, former Director of Communications at The Open University, University of Oxford and Foreign & Commonwealth Office. Lucian has co-authored a new paper with Iain Mansfield, which Policy Exchange has published this morning. This paper is based on more than 50 interviews with…
Many people do not appreciate just how huge the UK university sector now is. Together, it is worth around £100 billion a year to the country and supports nearly one million jobs. Some of the larger individual institutions have income and expenditure well in excess of £1,000,000,000 a year. Universities…
This blog was kindly contributed by Susan Smith, Associate Dean (Education and Students) at the University of Sussex Business School. All graphs in this article use data from the HESA Student Record. As the higher education sector prepares to help the government realise its ambitious target of 600,000 international students…
As we take stock of the Whitehall reshuffle and get to know the new Ministers responsible for the higher education sector, it seems like a good moment to think afresh about how to persuade policymakers most effectively. There is a lot of good advice on this issue available from recent…
This blog was kindly contributed by Megan Bowler, author of HEPI Report 123 ‘A Languages Crisis?’. Megan is in her third year at Oriel College, Oxford studying Classics. A recent report by the Education Policy Institute (EPI) and the British Council draws attention to the fact that there is a…
This blog was kindly contributed by Dr Sally Hancock, Lecturer in Education at the University of York. This blog features some of her research supported by a Society for Higher Education Newer Researcher Award (reference: NR201609). The dataset was prepared for analysis by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). In…