The Dearing Report 25 years on: Student loan reform in U.K. – Did it work?

Nicholas Barr is Professor of Public Economics at the LSE and author of numerous articles and over twenty books, including The Economics of the Welfare State (2020), Financing Higher Education: Answers from the UK (with Iain Crawford) (2005), and Pension Reform: A Short Guide (with Peter Diamond) (2010). His policy work includes spells at the World Bank and IMF, and active participation in the debate on financing higher education, in which he and his colleague Iain Crawford have been described as the architects of the 2006 reforms in England. A range of academic and policy writing can be found on http://econ.lse.ac.uk/staff/nb/.

Claire Callender is Deputy Director of CGHE and is responsible for CGHE Project 4, ‘Graduate labour market and equity’ and CGHE Project 5, ‘Student loan debt and graduate decision-making’. Claire is Professor of Higher Education Studies at IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society and at Birkbeck, University of London. One of her first studies on students was commissioned by the Dearing Committee and published as Report 2 of the final Dearing Report – ‘Full-time and Part-time Students in Higher Education: Experiences and Expectations’. She also co-authored Report 4 on ‘Administrative and Support Staff in Higher Education: Experiences and Expectations’. These studies were a springboard for her subsequent research, writing and policy advice on student finances in higher education and related issues.

Bruce Chapman is Professor of Economics at the Australian National University and was a CGHE Co-Investigator on the former Project 2.5, ‘Issues in the economics of higher education financing’.

Charles Clarke was Member of Parliament for Norwich South from 1997 to 2010. He served as Education Minister from 1998 and then in the Home Office from 1999 to 2001. He then joined the Cabinet as Minister without Portfolio and Labour Party Chair. From 2002 to 2004 he was Secretary of State for Education and Skills and then Home Secretary until 2006. Charles was previously Chief of Staff to Neil Kinnock, Leader of the Labour Opposition and a councillor in the London Borough of Hackney, chairing the housing committee. He now holds Visiting Professorships at Lancaster University and Kings College London and works with educational organisations internationally. He is a consultant on international education reform for Cambridge Assessment International and Cambridge University Press. In 2011 the Centre for European Reform published his ‘The EU and Migration: A Call for Action’. In 2014 he published ‘The Too Difficult Box’, an analysis of the problems which need to be overcome in promoting change, and in September 2015 two studies in political leadership, ‘British Labour Leaders’ and ‘British Conservative Leaders’; in 2015 he wrote, with Professor Linda Woodhead, “A New Settlement, Religion and Belief in Schools”; in 2020 he wrote, with Professor Ed Byrne, “The University Challenge”. Mr Clarke read mathematics and economics at Kings College Cambridge and was then President of the National Union of Students. Born in 1950, Mr Clarke married in 1984. He and his wife Carol have two sons.

Lorraine Dearden is Professor of Economics at IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society and was a CGHE Co-Investigator on the former Project 2.2, ‘HE choices and post-HE destinations to age 25: parental background and effects of higher education funding reform in the UK’.

Nick Hillman has been the Director of HEPI since 2014. He worked for the Rt Hon David Willetts MP (now Lord Willetts), the Minister for Universities and Science, from 2007 until the end of 2013, as Chief of Staff and then Special Adviser in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

Simon Marginson is Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), Joint Editor-in-Chief of Higher Education, and a Professorial Associate with the University of Melbourne. Simon’s research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, the global science system, higher education in East Asia, the contributions of higher education and higher education as a public good, and higher education and social inequality. At Oxford he team teaches in the MSc Education pathway on Higher Education. Current books are Changing Higher Education in India (edited with Saumen Chattopadhyay and NV Varghese), and Changing Higher Education in East Asia (edited with Xin Xu), both published by Bloomsbury.

Professor Anna Vignoles is Director of the Leverhulme Trust: one of the largest research funders in the UK. An education economist and previously a Professor at the University of Cambridge, her research focuses on the relationship between educational achievement and social mobility and the role played by skills in the economy. Her first research assistant role was to support Frank Coffield who worked on the Dearing Review and since then she has written extensively about widening participation in, and the outcomes from, higher education. She has advised numerous government departments, including the Department for Education, of Business, Innovation and Skills, and HM Treasury.

Gill Wyness is a Professor in Economics at IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society and was a CGHE Co-Investigator on the former Project 2.2, ‘HE choices and post-HE destinations to age 25: parental background and effects of higher education funding reform in the UK’.