Nick Hillman


Nicholas Piers Huxley Hillman is an English higher education policy adviser, previously a school history teacher and special adviser for the Conservatives. He has been the director of the Higher Education Policy Institute since 2014.

Career

Hillman studied as an undergraduate at the University of Manchester. He taught English at the University of Bucharest in Romania in 1992, then gained a PGCE in history at Christ's College, Cambridge before teaching history at St Paul's School, London from 1995–1998. He received an MA in contemporary British history at Queen Mary University of London, before going into politics. He worked on pensions for the Association of British Insurers from 2003–7, before returning to politics.
Since January 2014 he has been the director of a think tank, the Higher Education Policy Institute in Oxford.
Since 2016 he has been on the board of governors of his alma mater, the University of Manchester, and he became a fellow of another alma mater, QMUL, in 2016. From 2015-18 he was a school governor at Haddenham St Mary's. He has been a trustee of the National Foundation for Educational Research since April 2018 and he is a member of the Higher Education Policy Development Group at the British Academy. He was previously a research fellow with Policy Exchange.

Politics

Hillman worked for Conservative MP David Willetts, first as a Senior Research Officer from 2000–3, then from 2007 to 2010 as his chief of staff, and finally from 2010 to 2013 in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills as a special adviser when Willets was Science Minister. As a special adviser Hillman helped introduce higher university tuition fees.
Hillman stood for the Conservatives in the 2002 local elections in Hammersmith Broadway Ward, coming sixth in a three-seat election with 528 votes. He was the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Cambridge in 2010, selected from six candidates in an open primary in December 2009 after Richard Normington stepped down as candidate. A fundraising dinner was supported by Clarissa Dickson-Wright. He represented himself as a "liberal Tory", but The Independent reported he was "not getting much help from the party's big guns". Hillman came second behind the Liberal Democrat Julian Huppert with 12,829 votes.

Personal life

Hillman grew up in Banbury. He met his wife while they were undergraduates and they married in Cambridge. While a teacher in London he lived in Covent Garden. They have children and live in Haddenham, Buckingham.

Works

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