Higher education

Blog

LSE British politics:

Burnham's Manchesterism can help universities drive local growth

Andy Burnham recently acknowledged that UK universities are capable of driving innovation and economic growth. But their ability to do so is being undermined by a higher education funding crisis. Manchesterism, with its ...Read more...

Aadya Bahl

14 July 2026

Blog

What works centre for local economic grwoth:

Estimating Graduate Supply: A Pathway Approach to Local Skills Data

In this guest blog, Aadya Bahl talks about the analysis done for the CEP report Hive of talent: what would it take to raise skills and productivity in Greater Manchester? published last week. For more information on avai...Read more...

Aadya Bahl

5 May 2026

CentrePiece article

Degrees of choice

Bolder applications mean that private school pupils end up at better universities than their exam results predict...Read more...

Jo Blanden, Oliver Cassagneau-Francis, Lindsey Macmillan and Gill Wyness

20 February 2026

Blog

LSE Europp:

Ten countries, five continents, one pattern - women are less likely to pick STEM subjects

Women make up only 35 per cent of STEM graduates globally. Andres Barrios Fernandez and Aspasia Bizopoulou show that while there is huge variety between countries in the educational attainment of men and women, young wom...Read more...

Andres Barrios Fernandez and Aspasia Bizopoulou

10 December 2025

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Elite school students end up in better universities than expected, based on their grades

Students of private and grammar schools are over-represented in elite universities. While some of that is explained by better grades, therse is also a degree of mismatch between how well students do in exams and the qual...Read more...

Jo Blanden, Oliver Cassagneau-Francis, Lindsey Macmillan and Gill Wyness

2 October 2025

CEP discussion paper

Private highs: investigating university overmatch among students from elite schools

Inequality in elite college attendance is a key driver of intergenerational mobility. This paper shifts the focus upstream to examine how elite high school attendance - specifically, enrollment in UK private, fee-paying ...Read more...

Jo Blanden, Oliver Cassagneau-Francis, Lindsey Macmillan and Gill Wyness

7 August 2025

Blog

LSE British politics and policy:

Universities are engines of growth and must be backed by policy

The Industrial Strategy identifies growth-driving sectors that will require a highly-skilled workforce. Higher education will be a key to unlocking this ambition. But as universities aim to recruit the best talent from a...Read more...

Aadya Bahl and Sandra McNally

21 July 2025

Blog

LSE Impact:

Banning NDAs in universities is only the first step toward a better research culture

The UK government is moving to ban non-disclosure agreements being used to silence employees who have suffered harassment or discrimination. Such a ban has already come into place in higher education, economists Dina Rab...Read more...

Dina Rabie and Almudena Sevilla

15 July 2025

Government consultation

Social mobility policy committee

To ensure inclusivity in the post-16 education system, the government must guarantee a clear progression route for the "other 50 per cent" of young people who are not on the academic track. The government should introduc...Read more...

Aadya Bahl, Richard Layard and Sandra McNally

23 May 2025

CEP election analysis

Further and higher education

There are not enough graduates for sectors in which the UK has a comparative advantage and there are too few people educated to sub-degree level compared to other countries....Read more...

Sandra McNally, Guglielmo Ventura and Gill Wyness

1 July 2024

Blog

LSE Inequalities:

The spiralling costs of higher education are hitting stay at home students harder

Since the pandemic, a new divide has emerged in higher education between commuter students, on the one hand, and on-campus students, on the other. Reporting on the findings of a new student money and wellbeing survey, Le...Read more...

Lee Elliot Major

9 April 2024

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Mapping changes in educational achievement across England

As part of the LSE Festival 2023, the Mapping People and Change exhibition visualises data through maps on various socio-economic issues, providing insights into the impact of a rapidly changing world on people and commu...Read more...

Lee Elliot Major, Andrew Eyles and Myung Jin

12 June 2023

Blog

IZA World of Labor:

Judging affirmative action

With the American Supreme Court preparing to hear two cases on the use of race-based affirmative action in university admissions, the stage is set for a landmark opinion that would prevent race from being considered in a...Read more...

Richard Murphy and Gill Wyness

14 November 2022

Blog

Economics Observatory:

US student debt forgiveness: should the UK follow suit?

A recently announced policy package will ease the burden of student debt for millions of Americans. Richard Murphy, Stuart Campbell, Gill Wyness and Lindsey Macmillan contend that, due to differences between the national...Read more...

Stuart Campbell, Lindsey Macmillan, Richard Murphy and Gill Wyness

26 September 2022

Blog

VoxEU:

Inequalities in student to degree match

Researchers find students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to be undermatched to their degree courses both academically and in terms of earnings potential. Women are more likely than men to be underma...Read more...

Stuart Campbell, Lindsey Macmillan, Richard Murphy and Gill Wyness

13 February 2022

CVER Research Paper

The Effects of College Capital Projects on Student Outcome

The general debate on the relationship between school resources and student outcomes is an old and controversial one (for reviews see, for example, Hanushek, 1989, 1997 and Gibbons and McNally, 2013), although there is l...Read more...

Stephen Gibbons, Claudia Hupkau, Sandra McNally and Henry G. Overman

23 November 2021

CentrePiece article

Learning loss since lockdown

Young people in education have lost significant amounts of time in school during the pandemic - and this carries risks of lifetime scars. Lee Elliot Major, Andrew Eyles and Stephen Machin reveal the scale of learning los...Read more...

Lee Elliot Major, Andrew Eyles and Stephen Machin

15 October 2021

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

Entry through the narrow door: the costs of just failing high stakes exams

In many countries, important thresholds in examinations act as a gateway to higher levels of education and/or improved employment prospects. This paper examines the consequences of just failing a particularly important h...Read more...

Stephen Machin, Sandra McNally and Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela

1 October 2020

Journal article

Education Economics:

Minority report: the impact of predicted grades on university admissions of disadvantaged groups

We study the UK's university application system, in which students apply based on predicted examination grades, rather than actual results. Using three years of UK university applications data we find that only 16% of ap...Read more...

Richard Murphy and Gill Wyness

3 July 2020

CEP discussion paper

Inequalities in student to course match: evidence from linked administrative data

This paper examines inequalities in the match between student quality and university quality using linked administrative data from schools, universities and tax authorities. We analyse two measures of match at the univer...Read more...

Stuart Campbell, Lindsey Macmillan, Richard Murphy and Gill Wyness

28 August 2019

Journal article

Economics of Education Review:

The economic impact of universities: evidence from across the globe

We develop a new dataset using UNESCO source materials on the location of nearly 15,000 universities in about 1,500 regions across 78 countries, some dating back to the 11th Century. We estimate fixed effects models at t...Read more...

Anna Valero and John Van Reenen

1 February 2019

CEP industrial strategy paper

Universities and industrial strategy in the UK: review of evidence and implications for policy

As producers of human capital, innovation and as large institutions in their own right, UK universities can make important contributions across the five foundations that underpin the government's Industrial Strategy: peo...Read more...

Ghazala Azmat, Richard Murphy, Anna Valero and Gill Wyness

4 October 2018

CEP discussion paper

Higher education funding reforms: a comprehensive analysis of educational and labour market outcomes in England

This paper investigates the impact of changes in the funding of higher education in England on students? choices and outcomes. Over the last two decades ? through three major reforms in 1998, 2006 and 2012 ? undergraduat...Read more...

Ghazala Azmat and Stefania Simion

2 February 2018

CEP discussion paper

The end of free college in England: implications for quality, enrolments and equity

Despite increasing financial pressures on higher education systems throughout the world, many governments remain resolutely opposed to the introduction of tuition fees, and some countries and states where tuition fees ha...Read more...

Richard Murphy, Judith Scott-Clayton and Gill Wyness

9 October 2017

CEP discussion paper

Testing means-tested aid

Inequalities do not end once students enter higher education. Yet, the majority of papers on the effectiveness of higher education aid examine its impact on college enrolment. In this paper, we provide evidence on the ca...Read more...

Richard Murphy and Gill Wyness

17 December 2015