By . Every once in awhile it’s useful to take a look at how things are developing in other parts of the world. Today, a quick trip to the three Scandinavian countries.
Norway is by some distance the most affluent of the Scandinavian countries, thanks to a few bazillion barrels of offshore oil. But as the price of oil tumbles, financial pressures are appearing. More...
01 décembre 2019
Scandinavian Round-Up
Superstar Theory and Why Higher Education is Different
By . I spent part of this weekend reading Rockonomics: A Backstage Tour of What the Music Industry Can Teach Us About Economics and Life, by the late Princeton Economist Alan Krueger (whose work on higher education I highlighted here when he died by suicide earlier this year). More...
Student accommodation: A postgraduate reflects
On the one hand, we are expected to work full-time within a research group and make substantial contributions to publications, which ultimately aid the university’s Research Excellence Framework performance. On the other hand, we have no legal employment status, with no access to workplace pensions, mortgages or income recognised by landlords. More...Creativity Counts
What does a student look like in 2019? It is a question I would like to have asked Theresa May when she announced the Augar review of higher education. I would wager that along with other people I might casually ask on the streets of any town in the UK, she would have described someone aged between 18 and 22, planning ahead for a fifty-year working life, with a salary in mind and expecting to study full-time at a campus university for three or more years. More...How do you measure the impact of a think tank? How do we spend your money? And what should we do in future?
In a new initiative this year, HEPI is publishing an Annual Review. This is an edited version of a private report prepared each year for our Trustees and has not been published before. More...So what exactly are the manifestos promising on higher education?
Few people bother to read entire election manifestos. Indeed, even some candidates standing for election do not read their own party’s manifesto from cover to cover.But even though manifestos are a very far-from-perfect guide as to what will happen in the years ahead, they are important because they are the best guesses of what a party might do in office and they have a status above and beyond a regular political promise. More...
Trust in university finances requires both sides to put the work in
Universities are complex and unique organisations, with an impact that stretches beyond teaching and research on contained campuses. They have become key anchors in their local communities and regional hubs of economic activity. They are major employers, magnets for national and international collaboration and an important pillar of civil society. More...365 days of higher education policy
This week marks a year since I first joined HEPI as Director of Policy and Advocacy and it seems I couldn’t have picked a more interesting year to do so. In that year, I’ve seen three higher education ministers (Gymiah, Skidmore, Johnson and then Skidmore again), two Brexit deadlines passed and one election called. I’ve authored reports on students’ views on the financial sustainability of universities, on wellbeing and mental health at university, student polling on Augar, funding and the cost of living and this week, co-authored an election briefing. I’ve had the chance to visit universities up and down the country and across the breath of the sector. More...Calling academics who want to write about higher education
There are lots of reasons why but perhaps the principal one is that relatively few academics ever express an interest in writing for us. So it is a problem of supply more than one of demand. More...Student complaints and value for money
We run the student complaints scheme, reviewing student complaints once they have been through a higher education provider’s internal processes. Membership is compulsory for almost all higher education providers in England and Wales and we have over 800 members. More...
