Education (Higher Education) (Taught)

The information provided on this page was correct at the time of publication (November 2025). For complete and up-to-date information about this course, please visit the relevant University of Oxford course page via www.graduate.ox.ac.uk/ucas.

The MSc in Education (Higher Education) is aimed at future academic, policy, and practitioner leaders in higher education. It provides an introduction to research, theory, and policy, considering national, international and global lenses.

During this full-time course, you will have the opportunity to consider a wide range of issues that higher education systems, and, more broadly, tertiary education systems, around the world are facing today. These include:

• the social and economic contributions of higher education (HE)

• graduate employment and employability

• access and widening participation

• equity and social and epistemic justice

• fees and funding

• student mobility

• ‘research on research’

• the relationship between HE and vocational and technical education and training

• institutional governance

• rankings.

Teaching sessions will combine tutor input, class discussion, and working in small groups in order to examine these key issues and the discourses that shape them.

Course structure
You will study three core papers in the first two terms which consider a wide range of policy issues across higher education systems and the role higher education plays in the economy and society from theoretical, historical and empirical perspectives. Academic staff will also present their own recent research findings, ensuring that the course content reflects live debates at the cutting edge of the field of higher education studies.

In addition to these three pathway-specific core papers, two core papers in research methods will develop your understanding of key concepts and principles of educational research design and methodology, using quantitative and qualitative methods and data. You will benefit from the expertise available through the Qualitative Methods Hub and the Quantitative Methods Hub at the Department of Education.

You will also choose one assessed option paper in the second term, from a selection offered by academic staff across the department.

Research in the department is organised around three major themes:

• Language, Cognition and Development

• Policy, Economy and Society

• Learning: Pedagogy, Learning and Knowledge.

Within each of these themes there are several research groups and centres. All staff and doctoral students belong to one or more of these research groups, each of which has its own seminar programme to which graduate students often contribute. In addition, the department as a whole sponsors seminars and public lectures which attract distinguished national and international speakers.