BU Research Blog

Digital Skills

The House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee have released a report warning that 12.6 million UK adults lack basic digital skills and that the country is facing a “digital skills crisis”. The report suggests the Government should encourage universities to provide ‘code conversion courses’ to help graduates from non-computer science backgrounds to enter the tech sector with a recognised qualification. You can view the report here.

HESA

HESA have published data on students in alternative providers in England during the academic year 2014/15. The findings show that just over 50,000 students were enrolled at alternative providers in 2014/15. The majority of students (54%) were enrolled on business and administrative studies designated courses. You can view the data here.

 Student Loans

A petition opposing a retrospective rise in the cost of student loans that obtained 120,000 signatures in just a few days has been rejected by the government. Government throws out student loans petition (The Guardian).

EU

Ministers campaigning to leave the European Union say that they will “continue to fund EU programmes in the UK until 2020” in the event of a Brexit, including research funding. Brexit government ‘would fund EU research programmes until 2020’. (THE).

HEFCE

Formulaic distribution of funding council support for English universities’ efforts to widen participation is set to end. Instead of receiving funding according to the number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds that they have, universities would instead have to apply for support from the National Collaborative Outreach Programme. Hefce reshapes support for widening participation. (THE).

A reminder that we have a workshop taking place on Monday 20th June 2016 09:30-11:00- P401. The workshop will address the  TEF and DLHE consultations. In particular the workshop will be looking at the following consultation questions:

TEF: Q3 Benchmarking, Q4 Coverage and timescales, Q5 Split by characteristics, Q6 Contextual information, Q10 Assessment process, Q11 Years of available data.

DLHE: Q6-9 Linked Data, Q18-22 Presentation and financing, Q29 Personal Data, Q42-44 Links to previous surveys, Q54-57 Salary, Q106-107 Cost v value, Q108-111 Cost base, Q114-115 3rd Party Methodology, Q116-121 Added Value, Q122 Implementation, Q123-124 Onward uses of data, Q125-127 Current uses of data.