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].
There is a trend afoot, encouraged by the funders of research, to ask PhD students and other academic researchers to design posters explaining their work. The aim, I think, is to provide an accessible means of explaining (often unfinished) academic work. It’s a nice idea, but many of the posters end…
On Tuesday, 31st March, HEPI will be hosting a big conference in conjunction with Elsevier at the Royal Society in London to look back at the REF and forward to the future of research assessment. It will end with a presentation on higher education, the election and the spending review. Coming just…
We are keeping a roving eye on the higher education policies of the smaller political parties as the 2015 general election approaches. We have already covered what Ukip is promising on this blog and the Green Party’s higher education policies have been usefully covered in some detail by Wonkhe. One very small party…
Hepi is delighted to host this guest blog by the (Labour) MP for Sheffield Central – the constituency that has the highest proportion of students and one of the smallest majorities (165) in the House of Commons. Paul Blomfield is Chair of All-Party Parliamentary Group on Students, Secretary of the All-Party…
Women are woefully under-represented in UK national life, including in the leadership of our higher education institutions. For example, while there are some outstanding female Vice-Chancellors, they remain the exception rather than the norm. Arguably, the imbalance starts at the very top as the last few people with responsibility for…
Our recent collection of essays on where higher education institutions spend their fees and how their strategies have changed since £9,000 fees came in included a chapter by Professor Edward Acton, the former Vice-Chancellor of the University of East Anglia. We are delighted to publish this response, in the form of…
The (HE) world is waiting with bated breath for the Official Opposition’s position on undergraduate tuition fees in England. The only certainty is it won’t have to wait much longer, given the proximity of the election – and perhaps for only a few more hours. Those close to the Labour…
The higher education mission groups and representative bodies are in the process of making recommendations for the next Government but each Vice-Chancellor does not typically produce their own manifesto. So HEPI is particularly pleased to host this guest blog by Professor Quintin McKellar, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hertfordshire, in the form of his personal…
Tomorrow – Wednesday, 18th February 2015 – is University Mental Health Day. The 2014 HEPI / HEA Student Academic Experience Survey suggested that, on average, students’ wellbeing may be lower than that for the population as a whole. Last week, the excellent new Student Mental Wellbeing in Higher Education: Good Practice Guide…
Along with many other people in higher education, we are today mourning the sad loss of Professor Sir David Watson, a prolific author and commentator on higher education, who was the first Vice-Chancellor of the University of Brighton and, more recently, Principal of Green Templeton College, Oxford. Hepi is honoured to have been able…