HEPI, LEO and VFM

Monika Antal, Executive Manager

Last week I attended the Hepi Annual Conference in London. Sam Gyimah MP, Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation, opened the event with a keynote speech that focused on value for money, innovation and transparency.

The minister began by calling on universities to “focus relentlessly on value for money”. By value for money, the assumption was that value for money should be measured, in part, by graduate earnings, which just happened to be the subject of a new report published the same day by the Institute for Fiscal Studies/Department for Education looking at relative labour market returns to undergraduate degrees, and which draws heavily upon Longitudinal Educational Outcomes (LEO) data.

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Building Stronger Places

Dr Peter O’Brien, Executive Director

Yesterday, I was in Leeds to hear Research England (RE) and Innovate UK (IUK) spell out the approach of their parent body – UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) – to place and to find out more about the new Strength in Places Fund (SPIF). For those unfamiliar with the alphabet soup of acronyms and institutional arrangements in the UK higher education sector, RE and IUK are ‘constituent members’ of the UKRI family of councils.

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Developing a local industrial strategy for The Humber

Dr Peter O’Brien, Executive Director

On Thursday, I had the pleasure of being in Hull to attend two events organised by The Humber Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) that were designed to illustrate the work of the LEP and its partners over the past year, and to also showcase a blueprint for a new local industrial strategy that the LEP is putting out to public consultation. Both meetings were part of the annual ‘Business Week’ programme.

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Making a Place and Catalysing Collaborations

Read the latest guest blog from our colleague, Bill Walker the Director of Strategic Relationships and Knowledge Exchange at the University of Hull on the importance of place and the Industrial Strategy.

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Yorkshire Universities appoints new Executive Director

Dr Peter O’Brien has been named as the new Executive Director of YU, the membership association representing all 12 higher education institutions in Yorkshire.

A local and regional development specialist, Dr O’Brien joined YU as an associate in 2017 and has made a significant contribution to the economic development and place-based leadership work of YU ever since.

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International students: economic and social impact

The commission to the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) specifies a series of themes on which the government would like advice under the broad framework of the economic and social impacts of international students in the UK. As well as considering the overall impact, evidence and advice is being sought on the following: the impact of tuition fees and other spending by international students on the national, regional and local economy and on the education sector.

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Office for Students Draft Regulatory Framework

In October 2017, the Department for Education (DfE), on behalf of the Office for Students (OfS), launched a formal consultation on a new Regulatory Framework (RF) for the HE sector. The consultation will inform the approach taken by the OfS in its new regulatory role, enacting legislation laid out in the Higher Education and Research Act 2017.2

On 29 November 2017, the YU Board (comprising the region’s vice-chancellors) met Nicola Dandridge, Chief Executive of the OfS, in Leeds. At the meeting, YU was encouraged to submit a response to the consultation and in particular to consider how the RF should reflect the importance of ‘place’. This dimension has been given added significance following the publication of the Industrial Strategy White Paper. The YU response is designed to complement individual HE institution submissions and those made by national-level HEI membership bodies.

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Industrial Strategy White Paper: Building a Britain fit for the future?

Dr Peter O’Brien, Executive Director

So, ten months after the government trailed its set of initial ideas for a ‘new’ approach to industrial policy in the UK, the long-awaited Industrial Strategy White Paper has been published today. In seeking to navigate a course through the choppy waters of an uncertain Brexit, diminishing productivity and widening regional and local economic disparities, the White Paper is, to some extent, seeking to lay out a long-term framework for building on some of the opportunities and addressing some of the structural economic challenges facing the UK.

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