Public lecture podcasts

In this episode of Policy Matters, hosts Matt Dickson and Franz Buscha spend some time reflecting back on their previous guests and discuss some of the key messages that each episode brought up. Why is social mobility important? Are grammar schools good for social mobility? Are there upsides to vocational education and why should HE students take care when selecting degrees? Both Matt and Franz highlight particular lessons learned and how they relate to current policy. Franz and Matt then look forward to this new season of Policy Matters and discuss topics such as health, crime, gender and happiness that will be explored in more detail in future episodes.

Sandra McNally, an expert in economics and vocational education, discusses the importance of vocational pathways for young people in modern Britain. Topics include the merits of vocational qualifications, the structure of the UK economy, and ways to enhance the vocational education system for both youth and older workers.

In this episode of Policy Matters, host Matt Dickson talks to Laura van der Erve from the Institute for Fiscal Studies about the merits of doing a university degree and what recent evidence suggests are the relative labour market returns to degrees in different subjects at different institutions. With almost 50% of young people in England going on to Higher Education, and with tuition fees of £9,250 for most courses, it has never been more important to understand the impact on earnings of studying different subjects and at different HE institutions. Laura describes recent research from the IFS looking at graduate outcomes and explains some of the difficulties in pinning down the impact of a particular course on later earnings and employment. Matt and Laura then discuss social gradients in attending university and the extent to which inequalities have been impacted by changes in tuition fees. Finally, discussion turns to thinking about the sorts of things that students need to know in advance in order to make an informed decision about where to apply and what to study, how the government can help with this and the limits of information provision as a policy.

In this episode of Policy Matters, hosts Franz Buscha and Matt Dickson are joined by Professor Paul Gregg from the University of Bath to consider the prospects for today’s young people leaving education and entering the labour market. We hear a lot in the news about the job market challenges facing young people and yet employment rates are at record levels, recent generations are the most educated ever with more and more people going to University and then enjoying a graduate wage premium – so what’s the problem? Paul provides an insight into how the economy has been changing over the last decade or so, the ways in which the recession following the 2007/8 financial crisis was unlike anything we’ve had before and how young people have suffered the most. Matt and Franz then discuss with Paul the ways in which the challenges for policy are different now to what’s often been the case in the past and consider what government policy can do to improve the prospects for young people today.

In this episode of Policy Matters, hosts Franz Buscha and Matt Dickson are joined by Dr Lindsey Macmillan from University College London to discuss the role that education plays in social mobility. Issues relating to education are never far from the policy agenda or the headlines – whether it is early years education, university tuition fees or the possible return of grammar schools. But what does academic research tell us about the role of education at each age and stage in improving life-chances of children from poorer backgrounds and what does this mean for policy? Franz and Matt discuss these issues with Lindsey and also consider the limits to what education policy can achieve given the way that the UK labour market and wider society is structured.

In the first of this new series, ‘Policy Matters’, Franz Buscha and Matt Dickson discuss social mobility – what does it mean, how do we measure it, what is it like in the UK and why is it an important issue? From Tony Blair to Theresa May, incoming prime ministers have talked boldly about the socially mobile Britain that their government will create, and social mobility has become a much-discussed topic in academia and public policy debates. But what would it mean to have a more socially mobile Britain, how could it be achieved and what barriers stand in the way? Taking a broad overview of the topic, Franz and Matt consider their own personal mobility and why it is so difficult for the political rhetoric to be translated into effective policy.

Electronic and Electrical Engineering PhD student, Leen Jabban, is researching sensory feedback for hand and arm prosthetics using non-invasive techniques.

Listen to the full discussion from 24 Feb 2021 between our six graduates from our MSc Engineering Business Management and MSc Innovation & Technology Management courses. They talk about their current jobs, the interview process, visas implications and their impact on employability.

In this online lecture, author, broadcaster and Founder Director of Forum for the Future, Jonathon Porritt, discusses decarbonisation and recarbonisation, and how securing a stable climate for the future of humankind depends as much on recarbonising natural systems, as it does on decarbonising our industrial economy. This lecture took place on 24 February 2021.

“Human-robot collaboration is one of the key technologies being developed in pursuit of industry 4.0, the 4th industrial revolution.” James Male, a PhD student in our Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, discusses his research which looks at developing methods for humans and robots to work together in an industrial manufacturing setting.