Write for Wonkhe

Wonkhe is a platform for commentary about, and analysis of, UK higher education. Our readers are generally higher education professionals working in and around UK universities, or the higher education sector, including in students’ unions, and we endeavour to make everything we publish useful and relevant to our audience.

We do not have a fixed editorial position on any issue. We believe that higher education is best served by the curation of an extended conversation, involving multiple voices and perspectives – including those of the various individuals who make up our editorial team.

We are always keen to hear from those with a view or perspective to share on any topic as it relates to UK higher education, especially those whose voices are less frequently heard in the higher education debate.

The best comment articles:

1. present a novel perspective or challenge, or offer new evidence or thinking on an established issue
2. are written in an engaging and accessible style
3. explain the wider implications for readers.

What gets published on Wonkhe is a matter of editorial judgement of what will engage and inform our audience, or what we find interesting and consider worthy of discussion. We do not pursue “clicks” for their own sake – some topics have an immediate resonance within the news cycle or current policy agenda while others are much more niche. We do not discriminate between topics that are highly newsworthy and those that are of more general ongoing interest.

We are often interested in summaries of research articles or new academic publications on higher education, where these have been written in an accessible style for a general professional audience. Currently, we only very rarely accept case studies or descriptions of practice, as we have found these are very hard to make engaging to read.

We do not accept pitches that have been published or submitted elsewhere, and we also respectfully request that authors do not publish very similar or only lightly reconfigured versions of an article published with us on other websites. You are welcome to repost an article in full on your own website, 24 hours after publication on Wonkhe, and with an attribution that says that the article was originally published on Wonkhe, and with a link to the original post.

How to write for us

We accept pitches and draft comment articles from named individuals with knowledge about or experience of higher education – please direct your pitch to our team email inbox and it will be assigned out to a member of our editorial team for review.

You do not need to be “expert” in the conventional sense – we publish articles from a wide range of voices – but you do need to know something about the topic you are writing about and have a clear sense of the argument you want to make or evidence you want to present, and the implications for higher education professionals.

You do not need to polish your pitch – just a sentence or two setting out the bones of your article will be fine – and we may be able to advise on the best angle to take to ensure you are moving the conversation forward.

Your pitch will be assigned to a member of the editorial team for review. Once we’ve agreed a final version with you, we will put the piece into our pipeline for publication. Generally speaking we can publish articles within a few weeks of having agreed to publish, but we are always managing the flow of editorial content in light of the external environment so please be patient if your piece does not come out as quickly as you had hoped.

You will need to supply us with a headshot and short biography to accompany the article. We do not publish anonymous or unattributed articles.

A useful word count to aim for is about 800-1200 words for a standard comment piece but we are flexible on length on the principle that the article should be the right length to make the argument most effectively. We can also publish “long reads” of 2000+ words where there is a case to do so. We do not set fixed deadlines – we know you are busy, so just get us your article when you’ve had the chance to write it!

We will edit your article for readability and house style and we will only solicit your sign off for substantive changes.

Some key house style notes

• Please use double quotation marks throughout
• Write out % in full: “per cent”
• Punctuation falls inside the closing quotation marks
• Numerals from one to ten are written out in full
• Avoid using double spaces between words or sentences
• Please use your own voice and try to avoid cliche and jargon, especially “corporate” management-speak or academic highly technical or theoretical terms
• Avoid capitalisation when not using proper nouns: some things that are not proper nouns include “university” “higher education” and “board of governors”
• When talking about universities say “universities” but when talking about the whole sector use “higher education institutions” or, if discussing regulation in England, “providers”

You do not need to come up with a pithy headline, subheaders, or one-line description of the article – you are welcome to make suggestions but there is no obligation to do so, and we may change these to suit our editorial style.

You might also like to take a look at our editorial standards to help inform your approach, especially if you want to write something that is polemical or potentially provocative.

Any questions, ideas, thoughts, clarifications feel free to get in touch with Team Wonkhe.