Jack Whybrow

Jack was reappointed as a Lecturer in Business Statistics in May 2019. Prior to his appointment as a lecturer, he was a Business Tutor between Sept 2015 and April 2019. Before that and during his PhD he taught for both the School of Economics and Norwich Business School from 2011. Jack completed a PhD in Applied Econometrics and Policy Analysis in 2018 with the School of Economics at UEA and in 2019 a Post Graduate Certificate in Higher Education Practice. Jack became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2020.

This academic year (2024-25) Jack is the module organiser and delivers the bulk of the teaching for NBS-4104B Managing Data in a Digital World. This module is a large first-year undergraduate module for students registered on the business school’s BA programmes. Jack also co-leads a university-wide non-credit bearing critical thinking module. He is also a member of the teaching team for NBS-4107A Introduction to Quantitative Methods for Business, NBS-5102A Quantitative Methods for Business and NBS-7064Y Business Research Methods. The Quantitative Methods modules are for business students, first- and second years respectively, registered on the school's BSc programmes. Business Research Methods is part of the MSc programme. 

In previous years, Jack was module organiser for NBS-4009Y Cases in Economics for Business (now NBS-5135B) and taught a variety of other modules relating to Economics, International Business and Marketing.

Jack also holds several school administrative posts. He holds NBS UG Senior Adviser Directorship (from 2023/24 previously a deputy from 2019/20), Upper Ethics Committee Member (from 2022/23) and Equality and Diversity Committee Member (from 2019/20). He is also a member of the NBS Executive Team, Teaching Executive, Exceptional Circumstances Panel, Student Experience Partnership and Undergraduate Core Team.

Jack completed his PhD in 2018. This was undertaken with the School of Economics and investigated the determinants of UK Higher Education participation using two birth cohorts and a longitudinal study. His external examiners were Prof. John Micklewright (UCL) and Dr. Jo Blanden (Surrey). 

This PhD research is interdisciplinary but broadly falls under the Economics of Education. Specifically, he assesses the changing cultural and social influences with respect to UK Higher Education participation. To do this he utilises 3 cohorts, namely the National Child Development Study (NCDS), British Cohort Study (BCS70) and Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE). In his first chapter, he estimates a logistic model of HE participation for the NCDS and BCS70, controlling for a range of individual (including a measure of cognitive ability) and background characteristics. To this, he added some simple comparable measures (Principal Components Analysis) of Cultural and Social Capital. His second chapter estimates a more comprehensive model for the more recent LSYPE cohort. The main contribution of this chapter is to introduce additional measures of Habitus and contextual forms of Social Capital (at home and at school). His last empirical chapter, which also utilises the LSYPE, estimates a multilevel logistic model (given the data’s two-stage stratified sampling design), with the aim of assessing the role schools and their characteristics play in relation to these capitals and Higher Education more generally. To his knowledge this is the first UK focused study to explore the influences of these capitals on determining who goes on to study in Higher Education. 

Jack is an active pedagogical scholar and actively pursuing a variety of related research projects. He champions data-driven decision making. Active research projects he is pursuing relate to Blended Learning, Learning Metrics, Artificial Intellengence, Assessment Design, Widening Participation, Employability and Sustainability.