Today, the 2016 HEPI Annual Conference: The Student Journey was hosted by Regent’s University London, focusing on the different stages (i.e. student retention, student satisfaction and graduate success) of ‘the student journey’. Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI), the organiser of the event, is the independent, UK-wide body informing HE policy development through research. Director Nick Hillman describes HEPI as going ‘where the research and the evidence takes us, and sometimes that means making ourselves unpopular in the corridors of power and elsewhere’ (Scheuber, 2015).
The conference commenced with a keynote address by the Minister for Universities and Science, Jo Johnson, who highlighted that the “economic case for a diverse and widely accessible HE sector is as strong as ever.” Jo Johnson stated that students should be able to make informed choices about the courses and institutions they are interested in. He also mentioned that the government would like to see more employer integration into UK HE as universities play a vital role in the UK’s skills base.
The conference had an impressive list of speakers with some prominent figures in UK HE, such as: Prof Les Ebdon, Director of Fair Access to Higher Education; Dr Mark Jones, Chief Operating Officer at HEA; Iain Mansfield, Deputy Director of TEF and Quality at BIS to name a few. Dominant themes included delivering the TEF, the student experience, and the student journey to employability.
The full results of the 2016 HEPI & HEA Student Academic Experience Survey were also presented by HEPI director Nick Hillman, which is the poll that, as the HE Green Paper demonstrates, matters most to policymakers. The results suggest that students demand better value for money, and that students’ perceptions of good value has declined significantly over the years.
Source: HEPI
Jo Johnson responded to these significant findings from the report, and suggested that survey findings on satisfaction and value for money support the changes outlined in the HE White Paper that was published in May.