For decades, successive governments have struggled to create the economic conditions that would allow the UK to close its chronic productivity gap. More...

One of the Government’s stated aims in the current round of higher education reforms is to ‘make it easier to set up high-quality new universities to give students more choice’. For the most part, the focus of policy – and debate – has been on potential new entrants to the higher education sector. More...

University changed my life, just as it will change the lives of those school leavers who enrol for the first time this autumn. More...

Amidst the countless graduates taking the first steps towards launching their careers, more and more have moved away from seeking employment in favour of establishing small businesses of their own. This new wave of entrepreneurial ambition has likely been triggered by a combination of factors, from the economic downturn, to the growth of ecommerce and ‘digital nomadism’. More...

The summer showed that vice-chancellors’ pay is a matter of public interest. Counter-intuitively, and in contrast to almost every other issue affecting universities, the best way to address the concerns might be for institutions to become a little more inward-looking. In other words, or so I have argued elsewhere (‘On v-c pay, clarity begins at home‘), they could focus a little more on how leaders are performing relative to each institution’s  goals and a little less on how each leader’s pay compares to those of other senior leaders in higher education or elsewhere. More...

Last week, the Universities UK Annual Conference at Brunel University was all over the newspapers, particularly in relation to the important speech by Jo Johnson, the Minister for Universities. More...

Recently, someone asked me which HEPI reports had been most widely read. There is no perfect way to measure this because we send out the same number of hard copies of each report and it is up to the recipients to decide whether to read them or not. More...

In the lead up to the General Election on 8th June, politicians campaigned across the country on issues such as Brexit, student funding, NHS provision, and national security. As was well documented, students and young people engaged with this election to an extent unprecedented in recent years. More...

More than half of all UK universities now draw on contextual data about the socio-economic circumstances of applicants when making undergraduate admission decisions. In doing so, these universities recognise that ‘equal examination grades do not necessarily represent equal potential’ and that ‘it is fair and appropriate to consider contextual factors as well as formal educational achievement, given the variation in learners’ opportunities and circumstances’. More...

Listed as an under-represented group in government guidance to the Director of Fair Access since 2011, care leavers are included in approximately 80 per cent of 2016/17 university access agreements. Yet while care leavers remain a target group according to the Office for Fair Access (OFFA) website, it is concerning that strategic guidance for developing 2018/19 Access Agreements does not identify them as a priority group. More...