1,574 pieces
Newest first, since February 2011 · page 79 of 79
· Blog
Review: IPPR’s Critical Path
Sometimes in reading a report you spot what is missing before you see what is there. In reading through the new IPPR report ‘A Critical Path: Securing the Future of Higher Education in England’, one is struck by the lack
· Blog
We’re under fifteen feet of pure white snow
An avalanche is coming. An avalanche of nonsense. David Kernohan reviews the new publication ‘An Avalanche is Coming’ by Pearson’s Michael Barber and finds serious problems with the disease he outlines and even worse pro
· Analysis
Powder and the mirror: policy, fiction and storytelling
A policy-maker is a writer of fiction. And as writers of fiction we use the same narrative techniques and tropes as novelists, poets and film makers. Because what else can we do? The fiction industry – the multi-billion
· Analysis
Let’s MOOC the midnight bell
Quietly, imperceptibly, educational technology has become big money. A perception, fed by rising tuition fees and concerns about student satisfaction, that HE is not fit for purpose has transformed into a business opport
· Analysis
Highly provisional provision
Reading the HEFCE grant tables for 2012/2013 is like reading the racing form guide at the back of the Daily Mail. You know that most of what you are seeing is based on extrapolation and guesswork, and you feel fairly dir
· Analysis
MarginCore – the binary divide
Margin places have been allocated to institutions based on on “criteria of quality, demand and cost – only those institutions with average tuition fees in 2012-13 of £7,500 or less (net of fee waivers) were eligible to b
· Analysis
The AAB Opportunity: Anti-competitive?
I’m way of my depth here, but I was wondering how “average qualification on entry” data relates to some of the other aspects that the amazing UniStats data let me look at. You’ll remember earlier this week I examined the
· Analysis
AAB or AARGH? A schoolboy funding error in the HE White Paper
Okay, so much in the White Paper to process, probably the focus of many posts to come, but here’s the glaring issue for me. Paragraph 4.19: “We propose to allow unrestrained recruitment of high achieving students, scorin
· Analysis
I want you to know it was I who discovered your secret – R.A.B.
When a politician slips in to the dry, impenetrable terms of governmental accounting regulations, you know that he’s (and it is usually a guy, sorry chaps) trying to get something past you. Such was my reaction when I gl
· Comment
The student as labourer-consumer
One of the odder beliefs that our culture seems to have developed about markets is the idea of market efficiency. Specifically, the idea that – given the publicly available information presented at the time of action – t
· Data
Do Vice Chancellors love Cox? The 'celebrity academic' – a statistical analysis
You cannot have watched television on a Sunday night in the UK over the past few weeks without witnessing the wonders of Professor Brian Cox, the be-gortexed globetrotting human lens flare that has defined popular physic
· Data
Do Vice Chancellors love Cox? The ‘celebrity academic’ – a statistical analysis
You cannot have watched television on a Sunday night in the UK over the past few weeks without witnessing the wonders of Professor Brian Cox, the be-gortexed globetrotting human lens flare that has defined popular physic
· Comment
MarginCore and the dumb hand of the market
So, the hints coming out of the HEFCE annual conference regarding university funding were, firstly, the imminent appearance of the much delayed White Paper, and, secondly, further tweaks to the Willetts-Browne funding mo
· Analysis
The winning move is not to play: Game Theory and the Willetts funding model
During a speech at the Universities UK Spring Conference, David Willetts (UK Secretary of State for Universities) reiterated his warnings about the high potential cost to the taxpayer of universities electing to charge f