Welcome
The UPP Foundation was established to fund projects that help tackle the biggest issues facing UK higher education and provide a public policy platform for the sector and wider public to discuss and debate its future. With that in mind the UPP Foundation blog will include news and updates about the projects we support, and feature commentary, analysis and ideas on higher education policy and practice by sector leaders, experts, practitioners and commentators.
Our first posts come from the UPP Foundation’s Advisory Board and are adapted from the essay collection we published at our launch event in June.
Professor Mary Stuart, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lincoln, discusses the history of access and retention policy, arguing that students need to feel a sense of belonging to the institution they attend in order to establish a more open and successful higher education system.
Following on from Professor Mary Stuart is Nick Hillman, Director of the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI), who believes the focus on financial support in the wake of £9,000 fees, such as bursaries, has been a costly mistake.
And Emran Mian, Director of the Social Market Foundation (SMF) considers the riskier landscape in which university academics find themselves when it comes to public debate, and how meeting this challenge is critical to restoring the role of the civic university.
Over the coming weeks and months, we will be posting more insight into higher education as well as announcing grants that have been awarded by the UPP Foundation. If you have an idea for a blog post, please do get in touch by emailing upp-foundation@upp-ltd.com.
