…urrent system. We’ve seen a 40% drop in part-time and mature entrants since 2011-12. This is not the direction of travel this should be going. With rapid changes in technology, globalisation and increased economic uncertainty we need a higher education sector that can drive the UK’s competitiveness and can anticipate a new type of labour market. We need a far more flexible, robust and affordable student loan system that allows people to be acquiri…
…port We need to underpin a higher education sector that can drive the UK’s competitiveness in a global knowledge economy and can anticipate a new labour market shaped by rapid changes in technology, globalisation and increased economic uncertainty. This needs to be about more than just supporting school-leavers entering higher education as the current system does. It needs to be about developing and growing global talent – supporting creativity, i…
…cuss excellence in universities and businesses working together for the benefit of students and graduates in the UK. The event will see the launch of a new study, Job Ready, which will demonstrate the positive impact of business-university collaboration on the UK economy and wider society. The event will bring together business and university leaders, Parliamentarians and community leaders to look at how we tackle the big questions facing the UK…
…hed a report by Libby Hackett, the chief executive of University Alliance, comparing the UK system with that of Australia. While focused on what the UK can learn from Australia, the report suggests where Australia could learn from the UK. “Funding on the basis of retention also provides more options for managing rising rates of non-completion or drop out, which is something that might be more relevant to the Australian higher education sector in a…
…student work visas. Sir, You are right to identify that UK universities benefit from being able to tap into the world’s brightest and most committed undergraduates (“Closing the doors to foreign students”, editorial, April 8). Worryingly, though, we are losing international students to competing nations, such as Canada and Australia, due to the UK’s restrictive policy on post-study work visas. Alliance universities (which deliver 50 per cent of al…
…to help the University Alliance team and I cannot begin to promote the benefits of doing a placement year enough. It is often said that you become a different person by the time you finish your placement year, and at first I considered this to be another cliché hook to try and entice you into doing a placement… but I was wrong. It is actually true, I know that I have become very different from the timid and inexperienced person I was on my first…
…interests. There is, of course, a particular interest from the Treasury, reflected in the 2014 grant letter from BIS which specifically asked HEFCE “to develop mechanisms that protect and assure the quality of the academic student experience when we remove student number controls in 2015-16.” There is a tricky path to be negotiated, to keep the best features of the current quality assurance system but to ensure that it is well adapted to new cond…
…. ‘Trends in young participation in higher education’ is available on the HEFCE website www.hefce.ac.uk . The report looks at how the proportion of young people who enter HE by the age of 19 has changed over time. It uses official HE enrolment data up to the 2011/12 academic year in conjunction with information on young people accepted to HE through UCAS. University Alliance is a non-partisan, non-political organisation working to promote, safegua…
…lying to higher education. This is important because: More jobs than ever before now require a higher education qualification while the number of jobs for non-graduates is rapidly declining. Graduates have been shown to live longer, healthier and happier lives bringing benefits to the individual and to the UK economy. Graduates earn considerably more than people with lower level qualifications. If students are not going on to higher education ther…
…ental redesign of the funding and regulatory system based on the next 10 to 20 years, not a series of short-term fixes.” Notes for editor Press contact: Andrew Henry | 0207 839 2757. Ref 1. University Alliance report – ‘The way we’ll work’ University Alliance is a non-partisan, non-political organisation working to promote, safeguard and sustain the public benefit delivered by universities together with our members. Our members are Bournemouth Uni…
