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The UK's only independent think tank devoted to higher education.

Blog

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 [email protected].

  • The best for universities over the next few years is not good

    19 December 2019 by Anon

    A senior member of a staff at a British university writes anonymously about what to expect from the new Government. Boris Johnson’s thumping majority means that he can do pretty much what he likes to the higher education sector. Assuming we don’t get a Secretary of State with a pathological…

  • So did students have any impact on the election?

    18 December 2019 by Nick Hillman

    Many people thought students could boost the election results for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. Over time, as the proper academic studies of the election drip out, we will come to know for certain if that happened or not. In the meantime, we have undertaken a quick-and-dirty exercise to test the proposition:…

  • Widening Participation: an agenda for the 2020s

    17 December 2019 by Maria Neophytou

    This blog was kindly contributed by Dr Maria Neophytou, Director of Public Affairs at Impetus. 2019 has been a year of high political drama, unmatched by substantive policy change. Brexit has dominated, with domestic departments caught in a holding pattern. The Augar commission was launched by the last Prime Minister…

  • The Office for Students respond to ‘Social mobility and elite universities’

    17 December 2019

    This blog was kindly contributed by Chris Millward, Director for Fair Access and Participation at the Office for Students and is written in response to HEPI’s recent report: ‘Social mobility and elite universities‘. If you found the general election campaign frustrating, spare a thought for the nation’s public officials, who…

  • A welcome argument, but only half of the argument

    12 December 2019 by Tim Blackman

    ...the only way to address this problem is to return to student number controls at an institutional level and require institutions to use entry quotas banded by grades above a minimum matriculation requirement to create mixed ability intakes across the board.

  • Last-minute election musings

    12 December 2019 by Nick Hillman

    This has been an odd election. Many of the original expectations about it – such as the idea that the vote would be almost solely about Brexit or that the parties would eschew the leader-centric campaigning that didn’t work for Theresa May or that smaller parties would benefit from greater…

  • HEPI Election Resources

    11 December 2019 by Michael Natzler

    With the polls opening in just over 24 hours, we saw it fit to draw together all our content from the last six weeks related to the race for No. 10. For a comprehensive run down of the key issues affecting UK higher education in this election, look to our…

  • What is the ideal method of delivering material to improve student welfare?

    10 December 2019 by Bede Rauh

    This blog was kindly contributed by Bede Rauh, Co-Founder of Thrive and Survive. Recently the joint HEPI / Unite Students New Realists report delivered the resoundingly accurate statement: Part of the misunderstanding about today’s school leavers comes from an unwarranted assumption that people miraculously become fully fledged adults between leaving…