As a higher education outreach practitioner, I try to keep up with the latest research, data and academic insights our field; it is interesting and it is important. But day-to-day I am faced with the challenge and the frustration that no matter how robust and informative the data, it is not useful to our schools and colleges in meeting their priorities. More...

The end of a decade offers the chance to reflect on how higher education policy has changed in the past and where it will go in the future. Higher education has been through a turbulent time in recent years and there is no reason to assume the 2020s will be any different. But where did we predict we’d be entering this new decade. More...

Even on pensions, we talk more about investment returns, the structure of benefits (defined benefit or defined contribution?) and the right contribution rates than we do about the dramatic increases that have taken places in how long people are expected to live. More...

The graduate route, more commonly referred to as the Post-Study Work visa allows international students who achieve a qualification at undergraduate level or above to remain in the UK for up to two years to seek or do work. It is proposed that this will apply to international students who complete their studies in the summer of 2021 and beyond. More...

One of the difficulties in discussing university experience is the particular lens through which it is often viewed by a majority of university leaders and policy makers. That is of their own experience in ‘traditional’ halls of residence or colleges. More...

When it came out, exactly a year ago on 10 January 2019, we were told the numbers were wrong and the arguments were invalid. After publishing the paper, one well-respected academic told us on Twitter ‘to disband’ – possibly providing unhelpful succour to those who believe universities hamper rather than promote free speech. More...

Over the Christmas and new year period, there were more stories about building a UK ARPA, based on the US DARPA, which stands for Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Whether or not this is a good idea as a way of distributing research funding, and it may well be, has been debated elsewhere. But one interesting feature of the recent media coverage is the apparent desire to put any new institution outside the so-called ‘golden triangle’ of Oxford-Cambridge-London. More...

For me, looking back has meant reflecting on the publication at the end of 2019 of a commemorative edition (20/20) of the international journal Widening Participation and Lifelong Learning, marking 20 years of the journal. I wonder if an agenda for widening participation for the 2020s might be informed by research published over the last two decades, during which 69 issues of the journal were published, with over 450 articles going from peer review to publication. More...

Oxbridge, despite the best endeavours to widen access by the two universities, constituent colleges, successive governments and the Sutton Trust, is still widely viewed as a bastion of elitism, with the Oxbridge admissions interview at the dark heart of the process perpetuating privilege. More...

We have pulled together a list of the blogs and releases which have proved the most popular. What stands out is the variety of issues and authors, with blogs featuring from from across the year, reflecting a year of dynamism in higher education policy debate, covering a range of areas from Augar to the general election, international students and staff mental health, to name just a few. More...