In the spring of 2002 I approached Sir Howard Newby, recently appointed Chief Executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), where I had been Policy Director for more than 10 years, with the proposition that HEFCE might support me in establishing a think tank devoted to higher education policy analysis.
I had for some time thought that there was need for such a body – other subjects of public interest like health, foreign affairs, environment and so on had think tanks devoted to them – but not higher education. It was true that HEFCE did some outstanding policy analysis – the HEFCE Analytical Services team produced what I still think was some of the very best research on higher education, unmatched before or since – but their work was limited to HEFCE’s immediate policy concerns.
I had previously made the suggestion to Sir Howard’s predecessor but without success. However, Howard Newby is a distinguished social scientist with a keen interest in policy – he had been Chief Executive of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) – and he readily agreed. The slight fly in the ointment was that I was at the time a civil servant on secondment from the Education Department and for me to lead this new body he had to get the agreement of Sir David Normington, the Permanent Secretary. No objection was raised, and the establishment of HEPI was announced in the summer of 2002.
