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HE-BCI major review

In January 2022 HESA launched the second phase of the Higher Education – Business and Community Interaction (HE-BCI) major review. Endorsed by the Office for Students and the four HE Funding Bodies, HESA received financial support from Research England, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), to continue the review of the record to meet Government and UKRI policy priorities and fulfil its responsibility to periodically review datasets. Over the last year HESA has continued to develop the outcomes of the initial consultation of 2019 and interim roundtable sessions held in the summer of 2021.

HE-BCI major review project mandate and project board

Review objectives

  • To undertake an investigation that meets the goal of specifying users’ needs for data on interactions between the HE sector, and the businesses and communities they work with, identifying output objectives, concepts of interest, and availability of data.
  • To run consultations and working groups aimed at understanding and confirming user needs.
  • To produce a business case for the design and build of new or improved data collection/ingestion instruments along with associated processing, analysis and dissemination plans (revised deadline of the end of the 2022/23 academic year).

Initial review timeline

The major review adheres to an 18-month project plan underpinned by five progressive milestones:

  1. February 2022: Synthesised previous consultation materials and established priorities for the review.
  2. April 2022: Developed statistical concepts; identified optimal/feasible approaches for addressing conceptual development.
  3. July 2022 onwards: programme of user engagement activities to identify user data requirements and outputs and further develop six priority areas.
  4. January 2023: Develop a draft proposal for future data collection: HE-BCI phase 2 consultation
  5. May 2023: Develop a response to consultation and outline proposals for changes to be designed and implemented for the 2022/3 collection year; identifying and prioritise further development work for HE-BCI collection beyond 2022/23.

Project priorities

To continue to be a data collection that adequately supports UK policy, facilitates transparent bench-marking and enhances academic research it the HE-BCI survey must be useful, robust, universal, verifiable and of proportionate burden to providers. 

The review will continue to address six priority areas:

  1. Geographic granularity
  2. Commercialisation
  3. Social and cultural interactions
  4. Equality, diversity & inclusion (EDI)
  5. In-kind contributions to collaborative research and partnerships
  6. Staff and students as agents of knowledge exchange (KE)

If you have any queries or feedback, please contact [email protected].

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