Targeted Tuition Fees: Is means-testing the answer?
The UK’s Higher Education Policy Institute and Canada’s Higher Education Strategy Associates are jointly publishing a new research paper on charging people from poorer backgrounds less for higher education. Targeted Tuition Fees: Is means-testing the answer? by Alex Usher and Robert Burroughs is being simultaneously published in the UK and Canada. More...
What have people been reading about higher education in 2017/18?
The top 20 most-read entries were, unsurprisingly, headed by our ground-breaking research with Kaplan International Pathways and London Economics on the benefits to the UK of hosting international students. We remain hopeful that this will have helped the Migration Advisory Committee come to sensible conclusions in their soon-to-be-published report. More...
Thoughts on today’s (woefully-disappointing) Migration Advisory Committee report on international students.
They have very odd things to say about including students in a net migration target. In fact, they are trying to ride two horses at the same time. First, they say there is no problem with including students in the target because most students leave the UK after their studies (which is true). Then, elsewhere, they say the Government and educational institutions should continue seeking to increase the number of international students. More...
Universities need incentives too
HEPI’s report on means-tested tuition fees and / or maintenance support is a welcome contribution to the debate about how to pay for mass higher education without making higher education appear too expensive for students from lower-income backgrounds. But it is not just lower-income students who need encouragement. More...
It’s time to broaden out the Apprenticeship Levy
In April, the Open University released a report showing that, a year after its introduction, 92 per cent of apprenticeship Levy funds went unspent, to the tune of almost £1.3 billion. Since then, concerns have continued to grow that organisations are simply writing the Levy off as a tax and Freedom of Information requests submitted for his piece have shown the percentage of unspent Levy funds is yet to decline. More...
Using the law to tackle essay mills
There are laws against essay mills in New Zealand and 17 states of the USA, with Ireland and Australia set to follow. The UK risks being left behind. The reputation of UK higher education depends entirely on the integrity of the degrees earned by students. If essay mills are banned in these other countries but can openly carry on their business in the UK, then the UK higher education sector will be at a serious disadvantage. More...
Higher education co-regulation: Where do we go from here?
The advent of the Office for Students has genuinely changed the oversight of higher education – here, perception is reality. Funders, such as HEFCE, looked at provision but the OfS regulates for students – a real difference certainly. It is right that students and the student interest should take centre stage. More...
The Case for a Graduate Tax
Tuition fees are a visceral subject for many students, who resent the fact that the generation which went before ‘pulled up the ladder of opportunity’. But with the number of young people going to university increasing tenfold since the 1950s, reform was always going to be necessary. More...
Mind the gap
Research by Advance HE on attainment gaps by ethnicity shows an attainment gap in England of 15.6 percentage points, and there have been no resolutions in reducing this gap over the last two decades. Across UK higher education, this scale of gap persists when all other factors are accounted, which raises several points we have a moral duty to our learners to address. More...
The Post-18 Review in England: A Story of Two Loans?
Income contingent loans are viewed as either a tax liability or personal debt. Viewed as debt, the inclination of stakeholders across post-18 education is to turn fee loans and maintenance loans into teaching grants and maintenance grants. More...
