Spill The News

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Jim Dickinson gets across DfE's latest news on Alternative Student Finance – and finds the government has accidentally reinvented the graduate tax for Muslim students

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Jim Dickinson gets across DfE's latest news on Alternative Student Finance – and finds the government has accidentally reinvented the graduate tax for Muslim students

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This week’s card from Hugh Jones’ postbag takes us to the heart of Bloomsbury

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This week’s card from Hugh Jones’ postbag takes us to the heart of Bloomsbury

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At Education Questions in the Commons today, Department for Education (DfE) minister Josh MacAlister said this unprompted:

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But why now?

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Director of The Post-18 Project John Blake sets out why thirty years of policy struggle has left England without the higher education system it deserves

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Director of The Post-18 Project John Blake sets out why thirty years of policy struggle has left England without the higher education system it deserves

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Iceland's higher education system was built to serve a national purpose. Jim Dickinson and Mack Marshall report from Reykjavík – and ask what the UK's system is for when the salary returns stop adding up

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Iceland's higher education system was built to serve a national purpose. Jim Dickinson and Mack Marshall report from Reykjavík – and ask what the UK's system is for when the salary returns stop adding up

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On 7 May 2026, voters in Scotland and Wales go to the polls.

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This week’s card from Hugh Jones’ postbag cooks up a treat!

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Entrepreneurship education is of increasing importance, yet Aleksandra Bavdaz and Rami Al-Sharif have noticed that gendered expectations in the classroom still shape who sees themselves as a future entrepreneur

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As OfS tells ethics committees to rein themselves in and prioritise academic freedom, Joe Mintz makes the case that values can't be wished away – they have to be argued over in public

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A new ongoing condition of registration gives a familiar refresh to ongoing registration conditions on consumer protections. David Kernohan has the detail

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For Jo Irving-Walton, generative AI use is just one angle in a wider dopamine problem in higher education

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Kashan Pirzada explains how leadership systems which prioritise immediate and countable outputs may generate short-term activity without longer-term impact

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Jane Robinson breaks down the barriers between global ambitions and civic responsibility in growing the UK's economy

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Jane Robinson breaks down the barriers between global ambitions and civic responsibility in growing the UK's economy

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Jane Robinson breaks down the barriers between global ambitions and civic responsibility in growing the UK's economy

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Joanne Caldwell argues that the sector can no longer afford to ignore the enormous contribution that professional services staff can make to doctoral education

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Jakob Feldfos Christensen asks what your equality, diversity, and inclusion approaches need in an increasingly complex and unstable world

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Stepped student loan repayments sound progressive. Jim Dickinson argues they distract from an accounting structure that structurally rewards chancellors for squeezing graduates and hides the lack of public subsidy

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Keeping systems and buildings in working order takes investment and time. For AUDE's Syd Cottle both are in worryingly short supply

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Culture isn't about economic growth but sometimes it is economic arguments that secure its future. James Coe squares this very big circle

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The Westminster government has announced that interest on Plan 2 and 3 student loans in England and Wales will be capped at six per cent for a year from 1 September.

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With "close to home" now the fourth most important factor in university choice, Mack Marshall and Jim Dickinson argue that DfT's failure to recognise students as a transport user group is becoming an access and participation problem

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Exams are everything in the compulsory sector, but higher education is moving towards authentic assessment. Gianina Harvey-Brewin asks why we can't be consistent

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Spaces designed specifically for students from widening participation backgrounds offer a scalable way to build the social capital that traditional support structures struggle to provide. Amara Anyogu and Emmanuel Adukwu explain

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For the past few months I’ve been waiting patiently for the Department for Education’s (DfE) annual equality impact assessment on its changes to student financial support.

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James Coe has been on his travels and has lessons from Serbia on the future of UK research

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James Coe has been on his travels and has lessons from Serbia on the future of UK research

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James Coe has been on his travels and has lessons from Serbia on the future of UK research

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Essays used to be a prompt for dialogue, but more recently that conversation has been stripped away. Nigel Francis, David Smith, Kevin Campbell-Karn and Steve Rutherford reflect on how student generative AI use has surfaced a deeper problem

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A report found a correlation between EDI spending and free speech compliance failures that controls for institution size. William Mackesy argues the findings deserve scrutiny, not dismissal

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Just for a minute (well, five or so years), I thought one bit of the UK wouldn't be a laughing stock in Europe on student participation. Alas, it wasn't to be.

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If we have indeed found evidence of DfE plans to prop up the sector, what might such a scheme look like?

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Rita Gardner stresses the benefits of deeper embedding of robust social science evidence and methodologies in the world of government policy

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With universities treating free speech as a compliance problem, Peter McColl argues the sector is missing a chance to improve the culture of debate itself

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We're a few days on from the Department for Education's (DfE) decisive action on weekend course misclassification, and the fallout is starting to build.

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Setting up new international partnerships can sound like an easy win. But for Joe Lyons, where there’s little at stake we should expect little in return

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Danny Clegg argues that equality impact assessments must shift from records of compliance to tools for co-production and foresight

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For a couple of months, it looked like the headline maximum rates for maintenance loans in England (along with everything else linked to forecasts of RPI-X) would be favourable next year.

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The public critique of higher education governance is making some boards anxious. Poppy Short, Matthew Howling, Richard Sykes and Debbie McVitty work through what can reasonably be expected from governors when sustainability is on the line

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The plate glass universities were founded on intimacy, radicalism and community. Adam Wright asks whether an obsession with growth has made those promises impossible to keep

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Media stories about foundation years, entry qualifications and weekend delivery all lead back to the same place. Jim Dickinson follows the data

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Jim Dickinson finds that disadvantaged students use AI as a production shortcut while their better-off peers treat it as a learning tool – and that the hidden curriculum explains why

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Jim Dickinson unpacks the fallout from a DfE crackdown on weekend course misclassification – and finds students caught between forced repayment, forced delivery changes, and a system that is unlikely to accept blame

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Jim Dickinson unpacks the fallout from a DfE crackdown on weekend course misclassification – and finds students caught between forced repayment, forced delivery changes, and a system that is unlikely to accept blame

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Jim Dickinson unpacks the fallout from a DfE crackdown on weekend course misclassification – and finds students caught between forced repayment, forced delivery changes, and a system that is unlikely to accept blame

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With placement students routinely clocking 75-hour weeks across study, unpaid work and paid employment, Mary Lawler, Adrian Wright, Mark Wilding and Martin Lowe argue the system needs safeguards it currently lacks

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Brianah Carter and Kathleen M. Quinlan find that the everyday labour of navigating predominantly white spaces shapes how Black British students see themselves – and their education

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And on what basis?