Higher Education for Capability (HEC) was a response to the RSA's Education for Capability Manifesto. The overall focus was on promoting ways of giving HE students opportunities to be responsible and accountable for managing their university learning thereby helping them to become capable graduates at work and in life. This approach to the HE curriculum emphasised the importance of the learning process in the development of personal skills and qualities and as such was relevant to all main-stream subject areas, including Science, Humanities and Engineering.
Between 1991 and 1998, HEC organised over 40 national conferences focused on developing student capability via the mainstream HE curriculum. Over 3000 academics and employers took part. The style was one of providing a forum in which academics could share experience and learn from each other rather than presenting top-down solutions to curriculum challenges. As such the material represents a unique picture of the state of debate and innovation within the HE sector at that time.
Each HEC event featured case studies, reports from the field and discussion papers on what at the time were innovative curriculum developments. Many of the papers were included in books published by Kogan Page and others, conference reports and HEC's journal CAPABILITY. Overall, more than 500 cases were presented, many of them documented.
HECA - The HEC Archive
The HECA archive has been compiled by John Stephenson, national director of Higher Education for Capability from 1988 till 1998 as a web-based resource available for present day innovators and researchers into the debates of the time.
You can download all of the HECA materials using the link below.