Mark is a leader and policy expert in UK higher education, having radically opened up the HE policy debate by founding Wonkhe, which is now depended on for information, intelligence and policy analysis by every UK university as well as policymakers, politicians and businesses with a stake in the future of the sector. In 2025, He founded The Post-18 Project – an initiative aimed at providing policy solutions and ideas for post-18 education during the current parliament. In June 2023 he was appointed MBE for services to higher education in the King’s Birthday Honours.
195 pieces
Newest first, since January 2011 · page 1 of 10
· The Post-18 Project
The Post-18 Project: How to reform university governance
In a time of increasing challenge for boards, we ask how higher education might reimagine its governance arrangements, and look to help restore the social licence between universities and the people they serve
· The Post-18 Project
The Post-18 Project: Realising the ambitions of the post-16 white paper
On the publication of the government’s post-16 white paper, Debbie McVitty and Mark Leach respond to the challenges it poses both to universities and colleges as well as policymakers, if the ambitions are going to to tra
With Debbie McVitty
· Comment
The first multi-university group arrives
The University of Greenwich and the University of Kent are moving together into a single governance structure. Mark Leach and David Kernohan report on the sector’s first “super university”
With David Kernohan
· Comment
Why I wouldn’t bet against a fee rise after the election
A big majority for Labour at the coming general election could give the new government cover to raise fees as part of a package to help universities get to safety
· Comment
Seven questions we’ll be debating at the 2024 Festival of Higher Education
The Festival of Higher Education is back in November 2024, brought to you by Wonkhe and the University of London. Mark Leach and Alistair Jarvis ponder the strategic questions facing higher education
With Alistair Jarvis
· Comment
The sector needs to change its lobbying tactics over fees and funding
With Labour resigned to frozen fees and a fixed envelope of spending, Mark Leach goes on the hunt for wriggle room at its conference in Liverpool
· Comment
It’s time to take a closer look at an “opaque corner” of higher education
Mark Leach argues that universities need to get ahead of the regulatory and reputational issues surrounding franchising courses to for-profit colleges
· Comment
The journey from Wonkfest to The Festival of Higher Education – and why you should come in November
As we launch The Festival of Higher Education, Wonkhe’s editor in chief Mark Leach looks back at the journey our festival has been on
· Wonk Corner
Let’s call a Place a place – how the sector got its caps lock stuck
Why do people in universities capitalise things that they shouldn’t? And why should anyone care either way?
· Comment
Like Clippy, only on steroids
Generative AI tools are about to be ubiquitous. Mark Leach reviews the week that might have changed everything for HE.
· Comment
The debate over student number controls is only one piece of the future policy puzzle
Student number controls remain a source of significant controversy in the sector, but they are not the last word on the system we wish to create
· Comment
Ten things the government could do for higher education right now
Mark Leach lists ten policy measures that would be cheap, practical, simple, and mean a great deal to the higher education sector
· People
Queen Elizabeth II – 1926 – 2022
We reflect on the life of Queen Elizabeth II and her longstanding connection to higher education, as the nation mourns her loss
· Wonk Corner
Expanding higher education and levelling up – lessons from Conservative Party Conference
More HE, not less, could be the answer to some of the government’s levelling up agenda. Is anyone listening?
· Comment
Wonkfest returns to Build Back Higher
Wonkhe’s editor in chief Mark Leach introduces this year’s Wonkfest – a chance for the sector to come together a forge a shared post-Covid agenda
· Comment
The continued threat of reducing fees will not help students or universities
An interim response to Augar is here, but the really big question of tuition fee levels remains dangling over the sector. Mark Leach argues that the indecision will cause big problems later this year.
· People
The very best of Wonkhe in 2020
With our awards on ice, we’re taking a moment to recognise the very best from Wonkhe in this most extraordinary of years.
· Analysis
Who owns admissions policy and where will it end up? The government just complicated the picture
From PQA to PQO, the sector and government are at loggerheads over admissions reform, but could there be a consensus way forward underneath the political bluster? Team Wonkhe unpicks the latest drama.
With Jim Dickinson, Debbie McVitty and David Kernohan
· Comment
The sector must collaborate to escape the government’s triple lock of policy failure
With universities facing a crisis in grades, admissions and capacity, Mark Leach argues that a new way of thinking about how the sector works together must now emerge.
· Comment
This dumbed down higher education policy won’t help the government “level up”
With the universities minister declaring decades of HE expansion and contextual admissions to be a failure, Mark Leach argues government policy is as confused and contradictory as it has ever been.