Tributes have been paid to a leading higher education researcher who championed the interests of part-time students and warned of the impact of a growing debt burden on learners in England.

Claire Callender, who held joint professorships at the UCL Institute of Education and Birkbeck, University of London, died on 15 April after suffering from lung cancer.

She spent nine years as deputy director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), based first at UCL and later at the University of Oxford, and was awarded an OBE in 2017 which recognised the impact of her research on higher education policy.

In particular, she worked to highlight how the increase of English tuition fees to ?9,000 in 2012 had led to a collapse in entrants to part-time higher education, with older learners typically proving less keen to take on high levels of debt than school-leavers.

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Her research also highlighted how the life choices and opportunities of graduates more broadly were being reshaped by growing debts, warning that ¨C despite continuing post-2012 increases in enrolments ¨C large numbers of young people from poorer backgrounds were being deterred from applying to university.

Former CGHE director Simon Marginson, now professor of higher education at the University of Bristol, said Callender would be ¡°much missed¡±. He remembered how she ¡°focused her formidable capacity for rational thought on matters to which she was committed, her gravitas that held the room when speaking, and the warmth that she evoked without fail in old and new acquaintances¡±.

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¡°Her passing at a relatively young age has sent a wave of sadness through UK and world higher education,¡± Marginson writes in an published by the Higher Education Policy Institute.

¡°She touched the lives of many as a scholar, colleague and mentor; played a central role in policy and public discussion for three decades; and had much respect and friendship in the sector.¡±

Callender held academic roles at University College Cardiff and the universities of Leeds, Bradford and Sussex early in her career, before serving as professor of social policy at London South Bank University for a decade from 1998. From 1999 to 2000 she was seconded to the Cabinet Office as head of research in the Women¡¯s Unit.

She was a visiting scholar at Pennsylvania State University and Harvard University before becoming professor of higher education at Birkbeck in 2008, and professor of higher education studies at the IoE two years later.

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¡°She juggled the respective cultures, needs and demands of the two rather different neighbouring institutions with aplomb,¡± Marginson writes.

¡°Her heart might have been with Birkbeck, and there her policy focus on part-time, adult and evening students had its natural home, while UCL IoE placed her squarely in the centre of the university-policy interface and brought multiple opportunities for fruitful collaborations and ongoing academic friendships.¡±

Callender is survived by her partner.

chris.havergal@timeshighereducation.com