In a new paper, Opportunities to improve university governance in England (HEPI Report 155), Dr Alison Wheaton considers how university governing body members in England perceive their roles and what this means for the higher education sector. The report, which is based on Dr Wheaton’s recent PhD, finds a shift towards more…
In a new report, Research Leadership Matters: Agility, Alignment, Ambition (HEPI Report 154), Matthew Flinders, Professor of Politics at the University of Sheffield, asks what research leadership is and why it matters. Professor Flinders identifies, at worst, a research leadership vacuum and, at best, a leadership lag and far-reaching concern about lost leaders.…
This speech was delivered this morning by Nick Hillman, Director of HEPI, to the GSA / HMC University Admissions Conference. Recovering from COVID Thank you for inviting me to speak at this annual conference on university admissions once more. I first did so back in November 2014, exactly eight years ago.…
A new report by the Higher Education Policy Institute shines a light for the first time on university debating unions and the speakers they invite onto campus. The new research by Josh Freeman, published as No Platform: Speaker Events at University Debating Unions (HEPI Report 153), is based on statistical analysis of…
The European Union’s Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, Horizon Europe, will soon start its third year but UK participation remains uncertain. This uncertainty, arising originally from the outcome of the Brexit referendum and now prolonged by the dispute over the Northern Ireland Protocol, has led to less participation in EU-funded…
A new Policy Note published by the Higher Education Policy Institute, Thirty years on: Leadership convergence between newer and older universities (HEPI Policy Note 37) by Rohan Selva-Radov, explores the changing tenure of UK university vice-chancellors. The report shows that while the vice-chancellors of post-1992 universities used to serve much longer terms…
HEPI has generally paused its output during the period of official mourning for Her Majesty the Queen, but we are running this one piece by HEPI Director Nick Hillman that looks partly at the changes to higher education during her long reign between 1952 and 2022. It is based on…
The Higher Education Policy Institute (www.hepi.ac.uk) has published a new collection of pieces entitled Research Evaluation: Past, present and future (HEPI Report 152), edited by Dr Laura Brassington. The dozen different authors consider the origins of UK research evaluation, the outcome of the latest Research Excellence Framework (REF 2021) and options for…
The Higher Education Policy Institute has published its annual Soft-Power Index, which shows how many serving world leaders were educated in countries other than their own. In the first year of the Index (2017), there were more world leaders who had been educated in the UK than in any other country, including the…
Congratulations to all those getting their results today – I used to spend every results day at the UCAS headquarters in Cheltenham with the Minister for Universities, where there was always a media scramble. When asked how the Government should respond to the kerfuffle, my advice was always: start by congratulating…