A new vision for validation in the HE sector

Blog published on 8 September 2016 by Alexander Proudfoot, Chief Executive of Independent Higher Education. Our pilot project with the OU and QAA has been announced today and the press release is available here. For most people the word validation means to be praised, to receive a good result and to be recognised for something you have excelled […]

Students and the HE Bill: A Second Look at the Second Reading

Guest blog by Ruth Lyons It is often said of young people that we are not engaged politically; we are apathetic and utterly disinterested. Yet after sitting in a bare Chamber as the HE Bill was being debated, it appeared that politicians were equally disinterested in the future of young people. Considering the number of […]

A student perspective on the HE Bill

Guest blog by Jedrzej Szymanski After the first year of my degree, I was proud to be on track for a 2:1, only to read the same week that this is the most common grade for English university students . With endless one-to-one tutorials and seminars, weekly essays of 2,000 words, and hours spent reading […]

Understanding the alternative HE sector: the first HESA release

Just a few weeks ago, before the drama of Brexit began to unfold, HESA released its “Experimental Statistical First Release (SFR)” of Undergraduate Designated Courses at Alternative Providers. Collected in collaboration with BIS and HEFCE, the data covers 63 of the largest HE providers outside of publicly funded universities and colleges. This group is the first round of providers […]

The White Paper proposals will bring order to the independent sector

The past two decades have seen a steady growth on two fronts: in the number of students seeking higher education and in the number of institutions (both public and independent) providing it. This is not coincidence, but cause and effect. Following the university expansions of the 1960s and 1990s, which gave us the Universities of York, […]

Time for a higher education revolution

An edited version of this blog first appeared on the Higher Education Academy’s website. The world looked very different in 1991. Tim Berners-Lee made the World Wide Web available to the public for the first time. The first digital mobile phone networks launched in Europe. The Soviet Union collapsed after 70 years. And Bryan Adams […]