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I’ve blogged a few times this week about the post-£9k tuition fees university application figures — here are a further three quick thoughts: Mature students Largely missing from the media’s coverage of the headline-grabbing drop in overall applications, is the stark gap between applications from teenagers, broadly flat, and the plummet among mature students (those [...]

Over at LibDemVoice, Mark Pack and I debate how Lib Dem party higher education policy can move forward now £9k tuition fees are a reality. You can find the original piece, with comments thread, here. Below is the blatantly copy ‘n pasted version… In the week of the publication of university application figures, LibDemVoice co-editors [...]

There were two alternative ways of reporting yesterday’s figures on the university application figures, the first since the introduction of £9k maximum fees. The Guardian’s reality… The first way is to look at the figures, and try and understand what they might be saying even if they don’t fit with your ideological position. To its [...]

Here’s a graph from UCAS’s analysis of university applications showing the application rates for 18 year-olds from the most disadvantaged areas — and it shows the application rate in England this year is higher than in any other year bar 2011: Here’s what UCAS says the figures indicate: In England the application rate for this [...]

Yes, you read that headline right: applications to university have gone up by 16% this year — when compared with 2009: 2009 – 464,167 applications (by Jan. deadline) 2012 – 540,073 (+16%) I’m being deliberately selective, of course. This year’s round of applications — the first under the new fees regime — show a drop [...]

With tuition fees of up to £9k due to kick-in for this year’s university entrants, the thorny issue of application numbers is bound to generate controversy: has the price hike deterred potential students, or had no effect? The release of early data in October, suggesting an inital sharp drop, sparked controversy, not all of it [...]

The school league tables were published yesterday, and this snippet from The Guardian caught my attention: The tables also show the average state secondary school spends £5,712 per pupil, but 30 state schools spend more than £10,000 per pupil. In state schools where over 90% of pupils achieve five or more grades at A* to [...]

My chairman at the Education Endowment Foundation, Sir Peter Lampl, was in the headlines today for his call for the government to fund places for bright children from poor backgrounds at the best private schools. Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Sutton Trust, said leading independent schools should be fully open to pupils whose parents [...]

Back in October, I was invited by the good folkski at the Russian Donors Forum to their annual conference to talk about Oxford Thinking: The Campaign for the University of Oxford — the hows, whys, wherefores and what-absolutely-not-to-dos of fundraising for higher education. To prove I visited Moscow here’s a picture of me there: And [...]

Last February, I chaired a conference on Asking for Major Gifts organised by the Institute of Fundraising. Other than trying to keep the day’s speakers to time — something at which I failed almost as badly as they did — my principal other task was to offer a ‘keynote speech’ to kick off proceedings. I’ve [...]