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

Publications

In recent years, HEPI has produced over 20 reports a year. They are all available free of charge here on our website and all our longer reports are also available in hard copy from the HEPI office.

The version on the website should be regarded as the version of record.

  • Postgraduate Education in the UK

    14 May 2020 by Ginevra House

    Looking at how the UK postgraduate landscape has changed since the previous report was published a decade ago, this new report uses previously unpublished data to reveal the state of UK postgraduate education in the years before the Covid-19 crisis struck. The analysis considers how postgraduate education was affected by…

  • Pressure Vessels II: An update on mental health among higher education staff in the UK

    30 April 2020 by Liz Morrish and Nicky Priaulx

    Summary Analysis of 17 universities reveals a continued rise in staff access to counselling and occupational health referrals since Pressure Vessels was published in 2019. From 2016 to 2018, there was an increase of 16% in counselling at the 14 universities for which comparable time series data were obtained. Over the same…

  • Open for business? Students’ views on entering the labour market

    28 April 2020 by Rachel Hewitt

    Over three-quarters (79%) of graduates feel confident of getting a graduate level job once they graduate. However, when asked about their feelings towards entering the labour market, more (28%) cite anxiety as their number one feeling, ahead of confidence (23%), uncertainty (16%) and feeling overwhelmed by the prospect (16%). Only…

  • One for all or all four one? Does the UK still have a single higher education sector?

    16 April 2020 by Nick Hillman

    Using almost 60,000 responses to the HEPI / Advance HE Student Academic Experience Survey collected between 2015 and 2019, this report considers if the UK still has a single higher education sector – from the perspective of students. Some important differences are revealed among locally-domiciled students studying in England, Scotland, Wales and…

  • Getting on: graduate employment and its influence on UK higher education

    5 March 2020 by Rachel Hewitt

    In recent years there has been an increased focus on students’ transitions out of university and into the workplace. Policy changes have included the development of the Teaching Excellence Framework, the new Graduate Outcomes survey and the tracking of graduate salaries through the Longitudinal Educational Outcomes dataset. This report examines…

  • Making Universities Matter: How higher education can help to heal a divided Britain

    27 February 2020 by Natalie Day, Chris Husbands and Bob Kerslake

    The General Election of December 2019 ended the political gridlock of the previous three years. The question of whether we remained in or left the European Union was definitively settled, and not in the way universities had hoped. In this report, the authors call for fundamental change. Now, they argue,…

  • What affects student wellbeing?

    13 February 2020 by Tim Blackman

    The key findings in What affects student wellbeing? (HEPI Policy Note 21) include: a relationship between ethnic identity and dissatisfaction with life, with life satisfaction scores of under 7 (on a 0-to-10 scale) varying from 42% among Bangladeshi students to 28% among White students a similar relationship between ethnic identity and anxiety,…

  • Unheard: the voices of part-time adult learners

    6 February 2020 by John Butcher

    In this paper, John Butcher challenges policymakers and the English higher education sector to act urgently to address the decline in part-time higher education. Although the drop in part-time student numbers has been well-reported in a series of quantitative studies, the problem persists. The dramatic reduction in part-time learners disproportionately…