Johnny Rich is an award-winning writer of fiction, guidebooks and journalism. Here is a small selection of his creative work.
Jump down the page to:
- Novel: The Human Script
- Short fiction samples
- Non-fiction
- Policy & research papers
- Journalism
- Books
- Quotations
The Human Script
Johnny’s debut novel was first published in April 2013 by Red Button Publishing. Click here for more details.
The Human Script is available in both print and Kindle formats from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com. Please follow @human_script on Twitter and ‘Like’ The Human Script on Facebook.
You can read a sample extract here.
Short fiction
Johnny occasionally writes short fiction for which he has won a few awards. Here are two samples:
Non-fiction
Johnny is the published author of a wide range of non-fiction books, papers and journalism, including:
The Push Guides: a series of guidebooks to universities and student life.
- The Push Guide to Which University was published in 12 annual editions and became the best-selling guide to UK universities. Johnny wrote or co-wrote the first three editions and edited all further editions.
- Johnny also wrote two other Push guides: The Push Guide to Choosing a University and The Push Guide to Student Money, not of which appeared in three editions.
- The final print editions of Push’s books were published in 2011, after which the content moved to the Push website where Johnny continued to edit a rolling programme of updated content.
Policy and research papers
Johnny has written or co-authored a number of policy and research papers on various aspects of education and employability. Among these are:
- ‘STEM and BTEC’, Holding talent back? What is next for the future of Level 3? (2022) p55-60, Higher Education Policy Institute
- Engineering opportunity: Maximising the opportunities for social mobility from studying Engineering (2021), Engineering Professors’ Council
- Fairer Funding: the case for a graduate levy (2018), Higher Education Policy Institute
- Employability: Degrees of Value (2015), Higher Education Policy Institute
- Experience Enhanced: Improving engineering degree apprenticeships (2018), Engineering Professors’ Council (co-author)
- ‘How a better HE funding system could make everybody happy’, Blue Skies: New Thinking about the future of Higher Education, Vol 1 (2012), Pearson
- ‘Engineering: why higher education must deliver employability not employment’, p225, The State of Engineering (2018), Engineering UK
- ‘Threading employability into the tapestry of higher education’, Blue Skies: New Thinking about the future of Higher Education, Vol 3 (2014), Pearson
- Initial impact of Brexit on European students and academic staff in UK’s engineering higher education (September 2018), Proceedings of the SEFI Annual Conference 2018 (co-author)
- ‘Employability and social capital’, Inspiring policy: Graduate outcomes and social mobility (February 2016), The Bridge Group
Journalism
A woefully incomplete selection of articles on a range of topics:
- ‘Is it time for Oxbridge interviews for all?’, Wonkhe (1/8/2022)
- ‘Why the Home Office ‘top graduate’ work visa plans won’t work’, University World News (4/6/2022)
- The Home Office plan for ‘high potential visas’ is no master card, LSE Impact (1/6/2022)
- ‘Why put every student into the Clearing scramble?’, Wonkhe (30/4/2021)
- ‘The true potential of a national student survey’, HEPI Blog (19/4/2021)
- ‘The Fair Access Coalition: 10 requirements for a fair admissions process’, (writing as the Fair Access Coalition) HEPI Blog (22/3/2021)
- ‘Augur and the four horses’, HEPI Blog (12/6/2019)
- ‘TEF won’t sweeten my rankings rancour’, Wonkhe (8/4/2019)
- ‘Keeping the sinking apprenticeship afloat’, Wonkhe (14/6/2018)
- ‘The antidote to league tables’, Wonkhe (1/5/2017)
- ‘Bell’s agency cocktail needs added vision’, Wonkhe (17/2/2017)
- ’31 Questions to give your brain a workout’, Huffington Post (16/9/2016)
- ’35 reasons to vote #Leave’, Huffington Post (7/6/2016): a ironic and comic look at the fallacies behind the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign. This article because HuffPost’s third most shared blog of the year.
- ‘We need to talk about employability, not employment’, Times Higher Education (10/12/2015)
- ‘Why TEF must measure employability not employment’, Wonkhe (1/12/2015)
- ‘The pros and cons of rejection’, Huffington Post (26/10/2015)
- ‘Clearing up the information landscape’, Wonkhe (29/9/2014)
- ‘A profitable alignment of interests’, Times Higher Education (27/3/2014)
- ‘Do Universities Give You Value for Money?’, BestCourse4Me (13/6/2013)
- ‘Five reasons that UK universities cannot do outreach on their own’, The Guardian (24/12/2012)
- ‘Change of heart: Why do so many students abandon the professions for which they trained?’, The Guardian (7/9/1999)