Times Higher Education

Times Higher Education (THE), formerly The Times Higher Education Supplement (The THES), is a British magazine reporting specifically on news and issues related to higher education.

TPG Capital acquired TSL Education from Charterhouse in a £400 million deal in July 2013 and rebranded TSL Education, of which Times Higher Education was a part, as TES Global. The acquisition by TPG marked the third change of ownership in less than a decade for Times Higher Education, which was previously owned by News International before being acquired by Exponent Private Equity in 2005.

In March 2019, private equity group Inflexion Pvt. Equity Partners LLP acquired Times Higher Education from TPG Capital, becoming THE's fourth owners in 15 years. Following the acquisition by the private equity group, Times Higher Education was carved out as an independent entity from TES Global. The investment was made by Inflexion's dedicated mid-market buyout funds.

The exclusive advisor for the acquisition by Inflexion was Houlihan Lokey, an investment company which has previously assisted several private equity groups acquire for-profit educational organisations. Post-acquisition, Houlihan Lokey noted that the existing Times Higher Education team will work to meet the demand for data and branding products, and look at cross-selling to existing clients.

From its first issue, on 15 October 1971, until 2008, The Times Higher Education Supplement (The Thes) was published weekly in newspaper format and was born out of its sister paper, the Times Educational Supplement (TES) and affiliated with The Times newspaper.

Its founding editor, Brian MacArthur, recruited a team of talented young reporters to chart the expanding higher education sector, including Peter Hennessy (now Lord Hennessy), David Henke, David Walker, Christopher Hitchens, and Peter Scott, who was appointed editor in 1976. Scott remained editor until 1992, leading a team of journalists that included Robin McKie, John O'Leary (who would later return as editor after a period at The Times), and Peter David. Other staff reporters in this period included Ngaio Crequer and Judith Judd. Brian Morton, Lynne Truss and Olga Wojtas have established careers as writers.

In the 1980s, The Thes pioneered comparisons of the reputations of university departments through peer review conducted by consulting academics in the field under scrutiny. Managed by O'Leary, this become the foundation for the league table of United Kingdom universities that was launched under his stewardship as Education Editor of The Times.

The Thes was a supporter of the then "binary divide" between the established universities and the polytechnics and the links between the latter and the local education authorities, which ended with the Further and Higher Education Act 1992.