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Jan 12, 2025 | 
wonkhe.com | Jim Dickinson |Mark Leach |Mack Marshall
You’ve heard a version of this story before. The 16 days against gender-based violence campaign has been running around the world for over 30 years now, and manifestations on campus can include everything from assertiveness and self-defense workshops to panels on violence, discrimination and harassment in student life.
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Oct 29, 2024 | 
wonkhe.com | Mack Marshall |Jim Dickinson |Mark Leach
Ahead of the budget, Keir Starmer has announced that the cap on bus fares in England is to rise to £3 in England in January. Back in 2023 a cap of £2 for single trips was introduced on most bus routes as a cost of living initiative—initially for three months, and then extended until the end of this year.
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Oct 22, 2024 | 
wonkhe.com | Mack Marshall |Jim Dickinson |Mark Leach
Back in May 2022, I was invited as a student representative to give evidence to the House of Lords’ Industry and Regulator Committee’s inquiry into the Office for Students (OfS). I was asked whether I thought most students have much concept of OfS being their protector or their advocate. I said:I do not think students even know what the OfS is. For the most part, they do not need to.
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Sep 23, 2024 | 
wonkhe.com | Mack Marshall |Jim Dickinson |Mark Leach
While you’ve been queuing for hours on end at the UK border with your duty free allowance and your nasty stomach bug, we’ve been sat on the floor in the vestibule on the country’s ramshackle rail network with a suitcase of scented markers, Wonkhe stickers and multiple shapes of post-it notes – meeting, briefing, training and listening to this year’s crop of students’ union officers.
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Apr 25, 2024 | 
wonkhe.com | Mack Marshall |Jim Dickinson |Mark Leach
Student leaders in university meetings tell me that recently “student engagement” has been a hot topic. There’s a feeling of stress in the sector about engagement levels being low – and a rhetoric suggesting that universities are doing more than ever for students – but they’re still not turning up.
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Apr 10, 2024 | 
wonkhe.com | Mack Marshall |Jim Dickinson |Mark Leach
If you scanned the news over the summer for any mention of students there’s been a lot in local papers about rubbish left in student areas as they moved out. If you’re keeping an eye on the news over the next few weeks, it’s likely we’ll see some local newspaper talking about loud and rowdy students over welcome and freshers’ weeks.
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Jul 13, 2023 | 
wonkhe.com | Jim Dickinson |Mark Leach |Mack Marshall
Every year across the sector in the early part of spring, thousands of students put their name forward hoping to become the following year’s full time, elected student leaders for their university. Many only see the litter of leaflets, the lollipops being handed out by candidates in costumes, or the over-zealous estates jobsworth carefully removing posters from prohibited areas in the dead of night. It looks like – and in many ways is – a garish popularity contest.
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Jun 22, 2023 | 
wonkhe.com | Mark Leach |Ben Jordan |Jim Dickinson |Mack Marshall
News, analysis and explanation of higher education issues from our leading team of wonksThis week on the podcast the 2023 Student Academic Experience Survey is out, and it finds that more students are in paid employment than ever before. Does that matter? Plus the marking and assessment boycott is picking up pace, and the Lifelong Loan Entitlement has been in the Lords – we wonder where the demand is.
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May 7, 2023 | 
wonkhe.com | Sunday Blake |Jim Dickinson |Mark Leach |Mack Marshall
The Commons’ Women and Equalities Committee has published a wide-ranging and detailed report on attitudes towards women and girls in educational settings. Laying out laid out key recommendations for universities in tackling sexual violence both on and off campus – alongside recommendations for schools and colleges – it acknowledges that good work has been done in the sector on this issue.
