StephenTall.org

Last Friday’s Guardian-hosted #HElivechat on the role of the philanthropy in universities, on which I was one of the virtual panellists, covered a range of issues. One perennial issue that emerged was ‘What makes for a really good piece of direct-mail asking for money?’ I revisited the three principles of a good ‘ask letter’ that I blogged about here in  [ Read More ]

Last Friday’s Guardian-hosted #HElivechat on the role of the philanthropy in universities, on which I was one of the virtual panellists, covered a range of issues. Inevitably at one stage the question turned to the difference in cultural attitudes between fundraising the UK and US. In general, I’m quite sceptical of the focus on this area: too often it’s used  [ Read More ]

As I flagged here, my Friday lunchtime was occupied as one of the panel members on The Guardian’s #HElivechat on ‘The future of philanthropy in higher education’. You can catch up on the discussion — all 137 comments — here. It was fun and furious (the latter evidenced by my increasingly egregious typos), and hopefully of both interest and use  [ Read More ]

I’m one of the panel members on the Guardian’s live chat about the role that philanthropy can play in the future of university funding (Friday 17 February, 12pm – 2pm GMT): With an 80% cut in public spending set to hit universities, can an increase in philanthropic donations ease HEIs’ reliance on the market for funding? Chacona Winters Johnson, president  [ Read More ]

One of the most interesting (and, I think, healthy) aspects of Coalition politics is the insight into the give-and-take nature of negotations it provides. In the bad-old-Labour-days, the Blair/Brown disputes — which were rarely about actual policy — leaked out into the public domain through highly personalised off-the-record briefings. There’s (generally) a refreshing honesty to the candour of arguments within  [ Read More ]

By nature I’m an optimist. But sometimes, usually when reading The Guardian, I become depressed by the sight of intelligent people indulging in some form of middle-class dependency culture. Here’s an example I came across today. It’s an article by Paul Layzell, principal of Royal Holloway, University of London. Its title is pretty self-explanatory: ‘Higher education needs clearer directions from  [ Read More ]

The TES published an article — Maths – Put the brakes on — which has attracted a great deal of opprobrium in the last 24 hours for appearing to show a lack of aspiration in the state sector for children to excel. The author, Jonny Griffiths, is a current maths teacher. Here’s an extract which gives you a flavour of  [ Read More ]

Here’s an interesting slice of data-mining. The University of Oxford’s careers service surveys all undergraduate and postgraduates six months after they leave Oxford as part of the Government’s Destination of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) survey. According to the tables, published here, more than half the students from the following six ‘mixed colleges’ (ie, those with both undergraduates and prostgraduates)  [ Read More ]

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 aged 19+). This shouldn’t suprise  [ Read More ]

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 Mark Pack and Stephen Tall  [ Read More ]