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].
On Thursday evening, Sam Gyimah gave an entertaining speech at the Times Higher awards. It showed a shrewd grasp of the main issues facing the sector. He also told us he was due to leave for Brussels at 5am the next day for meetings. Perhaps it was the prospect of…
Yesterday the long anticipated (at least by those of us with an interest in HE data) Office for Students (OfS) data strategy was published. This provides greater clarity on the OfS understanding of their future role as they approach the halfway point through their transition year. Much within the data strategy…
A guest blog from Alan Palmer, Head of Policy and Research at MillionPlus. Johnny Rich’s paper for HEPI on a graduate levy to fund higher education benefits from being much-needed new thinking in the debate about how to fund our university system. The current approach places the burden of repayment heavily…
Novel and radical policy ideas are a rare thing. But Johnny Rich’s new HEPI Policy note Fairer funding: the case for a graduate levy represents a truly sweeping overhaul of university financing which would change many of the fundamentals of how universities are incentivised. There are many details to be…
The 2018 HEPI Annual Lecture and subsequent reception were kindly sponsored by Pearson, to whom we are very grateful. Introduction When reflecting on the legacy of Nelson Mandela, the founding father of South Africa’s post-apartheid democracy, now one-hundred years since his birth and almost five years since his passing, I…
This blog is our first from HEPI’s new Director of Policy and Advocacy, Rachel Hewitt. Today’s report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies on The impact of undergraduate degrees on early career earnings in the UK has some interesting new perspectives on graduate earnings. It uses the Longitudinal Educational Outcomes (LEO) data…
Last week, I wrote a blog predicting our newest paper, which looks at the uses of tuition fees, would turn out to be one of our most controversial ever. That prediction has already turned out to be true, but not for the reasons I outlined. I had thought challenge would…
Our latest publication shows where student fees really go. As such, it has the potential to be one of HEPI’s most controversial reports ever. That is unintentional. We never stoke controversy for the sake of it. But exposing the uses to which England’s £9,250 undergraduate fees are put reveals things some…
There was an interesting announcement, or more truthfully an interesting re-announcement of a previous re-announcement of an old announcement, by the Department for Education overnight. The Government are re-committing themselves (once again) to an increase in the tuition fee cap for two-year degrees. This is a good idea, as it means the…
HEPI generally only publishes original material, but we felt this historical-but-timely article by John Taylor, Visiting Professor in the Department of Educational Research at Lancaster University (originally published on The Conversation website), deserves a wider readership. November 2018 marks the centenary of the end of the World War I. It was…