Blog

Our response to Lord Young’s report on enterprise, Enterprise for All
Alliance universities are enterprise universities. They lead the enterprise and entrepreneurship agenda with over 21,000 business links (including 14,000 SMEs) and 50% of all turnover and 40% of al...

Drawing from a wider pool
Growing up in Belfast during the 1970s and 1980s, I was the first person in my family to pass the 11+, to go to grammar school and then onto university. […]

Why more shouldn’t mean worse
Today University Alliance are publishing a report tackling one of the trickiest – yet most pressing – questions facing the HE sector. How can we ensure quality of the student […]
A socially mobile society is essential for a dynamic UK
There has been a growing interest in ‘social mobility’ in the last 10 years or so but there is a lot of confusion about what it actually means. For one […]

Social Mobility, Higher Education and the 21st Century
Article originally published on wonkhe. Growing up, I was acutely aware of the importance my family placed on education, despite my parents having left school without qualifications. They told me [...

Why universities are the best places to start a business
Article originally published on The Conversation. Creative ideas and how we turn them into successful business ventures and social enterprises are vital to the UK’s global competitiveness. But how ...

Learning lessons from other nations
You are unlikely to ever find a perfect policy in another country that you can implement in your own nation unchanged. In the improbable event that another nation has found […]

The transformational role of design
In a world where challenge is seemingly everywhere and expectations higher than ever before, the importance of design to transform, to add value and to enhance the usefulness of a […]

A Student Placement
Without my placement year I would not have experienced the opportunities I have had and I certainly wouldn’t be half as confident as I am in my skill set and […]

Design research driving commercial innovation and growth
I’m sure that many design-led organisations would support Stefano Marzano’s position on design as one of our key enabling strategic and driving functions. This is what he said in the […]