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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].

  • BTEC: why it’s important to Universities, Employers, Students…and Pearson too

    18 November 2016 by Rod Bristow

    This guest blog has been kindly provided by Rod Bristow, President, Core Markets for Pearson. A College to Career Pathway for Students in Britain and the World  This week, we are publishing the annual data for nearly three-quarters of a million BTEC qualifications taken in the past academic year. The…

  • Who are Jo Johnson’s Numskulls?*

    16 November 2016

    Source: http://ukcomics.wikia.com/wiki/The_Numskulls The recent WonkHE Power List 2016 was a bit of fun with a serious purpose. Asking who wields influence over any policy area is a really good question – even though, as with all the other higher education league tables, we can argue over the results. (I declare an…

  • How Philip Hammond could turn £1 of spending into £22 of savings

    12 November 2016

    In New Zealand, the third arrest of a student loan defaulter has recently taken place and a new data matching arrangement to identify defaulters resident in Australia has begun. The UK could learn from these successful initiatives. Like the UK, New Zealand faces severe challenges in recouping student debt, particularly when…

  • How long do vice-chancellors stay in post?

    3 November 2016

    HEPI has undertaken a small piece of desk research on the tenure of university leaders over the past half a century. For a full explanation of the chart below, see the new blog outlining the research on the Times Higher website. Postscript (added 4th November, 2016): We generally aim to make…

  • Stop wasting time and money by making outreach work

    26 October 2016

    This guest blog has been kindly provided by David Woolley, Head of Schools, Colleges and Community Outreach at Nottingham Trent University. If you are lucky, there may be a few times in your career when you are given the opportunity to really make an impact. For those of us working…

  • A considered view of the Diamond review of university funding in Wales

    12 October 2016 by Lucy Hunter Blackburn

    This guest blog on Ian Diamond’s review of university funding in Wales has been kindly provided by Lucy Hunter Blackburn, who is a Freelance researcher and postgraduate student at the University of Edinburgh as well as the author of the 2015 HEPI paper Whose to Lose?: Citizens, institutions and the ownership of…

  • Is there anything left to say on grammar schools? Maybe just one thing…

    30 September 2016

    A lot of nonsense has been expressed on both sides in the debate on grammar schools. But it can still be summed up like this: one side claims to have all the evidence while the other flounders when asked to provide any. Given this imbalance, the interesting question is not who is…

  • Will prestige issues disrupt the Teaching Excellence Framework?

    8 September 2016 by Nick Hillman

    There are some universities that are excellent at research and others that are excellent at teaching. There are some that are excellent at both, where insights from new research brighten the lectures and vice versa. But the incentives for universities have been out of balance, with good research favoured over…

  • New HEPI discussion paper argues for changes to the Teaching Excellence Framework

    8 September 2016

    A new paper by the Higher Education Policy Institute considers the most controversial aspects of the new Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) and proposes substantial changes to make sure it works. Tackling Wicked Issues: Prestige and Employment Outcomes in the Teaching Excellence Framework (Occasional Paper 14) includes two essays, written by…