Typical questions

• • I need to find recent articles on widening participation.

• • Are there any statistics on student outcomes from Russell Group universities?

Starting points

• • This section focuses specifically on higher education resources. The Education chapter also contains resources on pedagogy, educational theory and general statistics. The Courses and Qualifications chapter has a sub- section on university rankings.

• • Increasing numbers of documents produced by government departments and educational think tanks are being published on the web rather than in print. These may not be indexed on academic library catalogues. Students should be reminded to search the internet for these.

Recommended resources

Key organisations – UK government bodies

Recent government reports are usually online, while historic materials may only be available in print. Check major research libraries, including those listed in the Education chapter and the Government and Parliamentary Publications chapter. Departmental names often change so these may require verification.

Another good free source for older materials is the Digital Education Resource Archive (DERA) (dera.ioe.ac.uk) maintained by UCL Institute of Education. This has over 30,000 full text documents.

Department for Education

www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-education

Currently responsible for higher and further education. Access policy, consultation, documents and full text reports on the website.

Office for Students

www.officeforstudents.org.uk

Independent regulator of higher education in England. Its website has a register of all recognised institutions, plus details about their performance, value for money, diversity and student satisfaction ratings. Its blog includes discussion of policy.

Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA)

www.qaa.ac.uk

Seeks to safeguard standards. Website provides free access to quality codes and large collections of its reviews of standards, in particular subject areas and institutions.

Key organisations – professional and staff – UK

Use these to locate information on academic and professional services, staff conditions, employment and pay. They often contain criticism of government policy!

Advance HE

www.advance-he.ac.uk

Formed in March 2018 by the merger of the Equality Challenge Unit, the Higher Education Academy and the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education Charity which seeks to improve university leadership and management, teaching and learning, and equality, diversity and inclusion. Website includes news, events, commentary, analysis and reports on these topics.

Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL)