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  • As EPA pulls back, advocates warn it’s schoolchildren who face the steepest risks

    As EPA pulls back, advocates warn it’s schoolchildren who face the steepest risks

    This story was produced by Floodlight and republished with permission. 

    President Donald Trump and his administration have called it the “Great American Comeback.” But environmental advocates say the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s reversing course on enforcing air and water pollution laws is more of a throwback — one that will exacerbate health risks for children who live and study in the shadows of petrochemical facilities. 

    The American Lung Association has found that children face special risks from air pollution because their airways are smaller and still developing and because they breathe more rapidly and inhale more air relative to their size than do adults.

    Environmental lawyers say Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s slashing of federal protections against toxic emissions could lead to increased exposure to dangerous pollutants for kids living in fenceline communities.

    Community advocates like Kaitlyn Joshua, who was born and raised in the southeast corridor of Louisiana dubbed “Cancer Alley,” say they are horrified about what EPA’s deregulation push will mean for the future generation.  

    “That is not an exaggeration; we feel like we are suffocating without the cover and the oversight of the EPA,” Joshua said. “Without that, what can we really do? How can we really save ourselves? How can we really save our communities?” 

    Kaitlyn Joshua is a native of the southeast corridor of Louisiana dubbed “Cancer Alley,” and has spent the last few years leading the fight against a hydrogen and ammonia facility being built within 2,000 feet of an elementary school in Ascension Parish. Joshua says she is ‘horrified’ about the recent deregulation measures the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently announced for the petrochemical industry.
    Credit: Claire Bangser/Floodlight

    Ashley Gaignard knows how hard it is to keep kids safe when pollution is all around. 

    When Gaignard’s son was in elementary school, a doctor restricted him from daily recess, saying the emissions from an ammonia facility located within 2 miles of his playground could be exacerbating a pre-existing lung condition, triggering his severe asthma attacks. 

    “I had asthma as a kid growing up, and my grandfather had asthma, so I just figured it was hereditary; he was going to suffer with asthma,” said Gaignard, who was born and raised in Louisiana’s Ascension Parish, also located within Cancer Alley. She’s now chief executive officer of the community advocacy group she created, Rural Roots Louisiana. 

    “I just never knew until the doctor said, ‘Okay, we have to think about what he is breathing, and what’s causing him to flare up the minute he’s outside’,” she said. 

    Gaignard said the further her son got away from that school, as he moved through the parish’s educational system, the less severe his attacks were. She said he’s now an adult living in Fresno, California — and no longer suffers from asthma.

    Related: How colleges can become ‘living labs’ for fighting climate change

    Zeldin sent shockwaves throughout the environmental justice sector on March 12 when he announced that the EPA was rolling back many of the federal regulations that were put in place under the administration of Joe Biden — many built around environmental justice and mitigating climate change. 

    Those included strengthening the Clean Air Act by implementing more stringent controls on toxic air emissions and increased air quality monitoring in communities near industrial facilities. The new standards were expected to reduce 6,000 tons of air toxins annually and reduce the emissions related to cancer risks in these communities in Texas, Louisiana, Delaware, New Jersey, the Ohio River Valley and elsewhere. 

    A new memo from the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, which serves as the law enforcement arm of the EPA — circulated the same day as Zeldin’s announcement — states that environmental justice considerations would no longer factor into the federal agency’s oversight of facilities in Black and brown communities. 

    Zeldin said the goal was “driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.”

    Port Allen Middle School sits in the shadow of the Placid petrochemical refinery in West Baton Rouge Parish, La. A 2016 report found nearly one in 10 children in the U.S. attends one of the 12,000 schools located within 1 mile of a chemical facility, which for environmental advocates highlights the danger of the recently announced rollbacks of air and water pollution regulations by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Credit: Terry L. Jones / Floodlight

    That means the EPA will no longer target, investigate or address noncompliance issues at facilities emitting cancer-causing chemicals such as benzene, ethylene oxide and formaldehyde in the places already overburdened with hazardous pollution. 

    “While enforcement and compliance assurance can continue to focus on areas with the highest levels of (hazardous air pollutants) affecting human health,” the memo reads, “…to ensure consistency with the President’s Executive Orders, they will no longer focus exclusively on communities selected by the regions as being ‘already highly burdened with pollution impacts.’”

    The agency also will not implement any enforcement and compliance actions that could shut down energy production or power generation “absent an imminent and substantial threat to human health.” 

    In is prepared video statement about the EPA’s deregulation measures, Zeldin said, “The agency is committed to fulfilling President Trump’s promise to unleash American energy, lower cost of living for Americans, revitalize the American auto industry, restore the rule of law, and give power back to states to make their own decisions. ”

    Related: How Trump is disrupting efforts by schools and colleges to combat climate change

    Top officials with the nonprofit environmental advocacy group Earthjustice recently said there is no way for the Trump administration to reconcile what it’s calling “the greatest day of deregulation” in EPA’s history with protecting public health. 

    Patrice Simms, vice president of litigation for healthy communities for Earthjustice, went a step further pointing out during a press briefing that the reason EPA exists is to protect the public from toxic air pollution. 

    “The law demands that EPA control these pollutants, and demands that EPA protect families and communities,” Simms said. “And these impacts on these communities most heavily land on the shoulders of children. Children are more susceptible to the harms from pollutants, and these pollutants are often happening right in the backyards of our schools, of our neighborhoods and our playgrounds.”

    A 2016 report published by the Center for Effective Government found that nearly one in 10 children in the country attends one of the 12,000 schools located within 1 mile of a chemical facility. These children are disproportionately children of color living in low-income areas, the report found. 

    For the past several years, Joshua has been leading the opposition to a hydrogen and ammonia facility being built within 2,000 feet of an elementary school in Ascension Parish. Air Products plans to start commercial operation in 2028 where an estimated 600,000 metric tons of hydrogen will be produced annually from methane gas.

    The $7 billion project has been touted as a clean energy solution because the company intends to use technology to collect its carbon dioxide emissions, and then transport them through pipelines to be stored under a recreational lake 37 miles away. 

    Carbon capture technology has been controversial, with skeptics highlighting the possibilities for earthquakes, groundwater contamination and CO2 leaking back into the atmosphere through abandoned and unplugged oil and gas wells or pipeline breaches. Pipeline ruptures in the past have also led to communities having to evacuate their homes. 

    Related: When a hurricane washes away a region’s child care system

    Joshua said these communities need more federal regulation and oversight — not less.

    “We had a community meeting … for our Ascension Parish residents, and the sentiment and the theme on that call was very much like ‘Kaitlyn, there is nothing we can do.’ Like, we just had to literally lie down and take this,” Joshua said. “We had to kind of challenge people and put them in the space, in time, of a civil rights movement. We have to get creative about how we’re going to organize around it and be our own version of EPA.”

    This screenshot from CLEAR Collaborative’s Petroleum Pollution Map models health risks from hazardous air pollution from petrochemical facilities around West Baton Rouge Parish near Port Allen Middle School. The map uses U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data analyzed by the Environmental Defense Fund. Environmental advocates have sounded the alarm on the dangers of the EPA’s rollback of air and water regulations for children in fenceline communities. Credit: Provided by The Environmental Defense Fund

    Sarah Vogel, senior vice president of health communities with the Environmental Defense Fund, said the move toward deregulation comes as the U.S. Department of Justice announced on March 7 that it was dropping the federal lawsuit the Biden administration lodged against Denka’s Performance Elastomer plant in Louisiana. That plant had been accused of worsening cancer risks for the residents in the surrounding majority-Black community. 

    The DOJ said its decision was tied to Trump’s moves to dismantle all federal programs tied to diversity, equity and inclusion.

    “What they’re trying to do is just completely deregulate everything for oil and gas and petrochemical facilities, just absolutely take the lid off,” Vogel said. “We have long known that children are uniquely susceptible to air pollution and toxic chemicals. Like they’re huge, huge impacts. It’s why what they are doing is so devastating and cruel in my mind.”

    Floodlight, which produced this story, is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

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  • How universities can use artificial intelligence to regain social license – Campus Review

    How universities can use artificial intelligence to regain social license – Campus Review

    Universities will need to prove to future students why university degrees are worth it in an artificial intelligence (AI) knowledge economy, speakers at Sydney’s latest generative AI meeting said.

    Please login below to view content or subscribe now.

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  • This Week In College Viability (Gary Stocker, TWICV)

    This Week In College Viability (Gary Stocker, TWICV)







    Higher Education Inquirer : This Week In College Viability (Gary Stocker, TWICV)







    This Week In College Viability (Gary Stocker, TWICV)

    College Viability provides a resource site for students, parents, community
    member, faculty and others to easily see the latest information on the
    financial health of private colleges.

    The College Viability App enables students, parents, leaders and others
    to compare the changes in a private colleges’ finances, enrollment, and
    outcomes over a period of 6 years. For families this information lets
    them make more informed decisions about their college choice — limiting
    the risk of choosing one whose financial results suggest viability
    concerns in the coming months and years.

    For higher education leaders, the App provides comparative data about
    competitors and potential merger or alliance partners.

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  • The Foreign Influence Registration Scheme has sector-specific implications

    The Foreign Influence Registration Scheme has sector-specific implications

    The Foreign Influence Registration Scheme (FIRS) emerged out of the National Security Act 2023.

    The idea was that, by way of the mandatory registration of activities broadly defined as involving “foreign influence” on the UK, both the UK’s political system and wider civil society would be made both more transparent and, in the case of certain countries’ actions, less of a national security risk.

    The government published light-touch draft guidance for FIRS in September 2023, promising further detail ahead of implementation – including sector-specific guidance for research, academia and higher education.

    FIRS trap

    Nothing happened for a while, and then following the general election news emerged of a delay to the scheme, seemingly tied up with the question of Labour’s (still ongoing) “China audit” and a (hotly contested) claim that guidance wasn’t ready to go live.

    One particular sticking point has become whether China would be put on the “enhanced tier” of the scheme, a development which would enormously increase the scrutiny faced by all organisations – including universities – involved in partnerships or collaborations with Chinese institutions. The Conservatives were rumoured to have been considering it while in power, and more recently Labour has reportedly been “resisting” such a move.

    Fast forward to today, and there is still no decision over China – but the government has laid draft regulations placing Russia and Iran on the enhanced tier, announced that FIRS will come into operation from 1 July, and published sector-specific guidance for academia and research.

    The additional wrinkle for higher education is that when the Department for Education announced that the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act would go ahead in revised form, it decided that the overseas funding measures in section 9 would be “kept under review” while FIRS was implemented and the interaction between the two was assessed.

    Tiers for FIRS

    You will be glad to learn that FIRS is not “a register of foreign spies” – we even get a short section in a fact sheet to make this clear. It is, however, a register of arrangements – and the individual or power who makes an arrangement with a foreign power (or controlled entity) has to let the Home Office know.

    At heart, FIRS is structured around two tiers: the “political influence tier” and the “enhanced tier”. All countries – except the Republic of Ireland – will be put in one or the other. And the difference between the two is vast.

    Political influence is restricted to specific “directions” from other countries to influence the UK’s political domain. So this involves things like elections and referenda (perish the thought), ministerial or departmental decision-making, political parties’ activities, or the actions of parliamentarians (including in the devolved nations). There’s also the wider concept of influencing “public life”, which includes certain kinds of communications and the disbursement of money.

    Where the Secretary of State deems it necessary to keep the UK safe or protect its interests, they will designate a foreign power (or part thereof) as being subject to the “enhanced tier”. This additionally requires the wider registration of “arrangements to carry out activities at the direction of a foreign power”, or activities carried out in the UK by specified entities controlled by a foreign power. In this case there is the possibility of a tailored approach to address particular risks.

    At each level, the requirement is that you register the activities to be carried out, their nature, their purpose, any intended outcomes – plus start dates, end dates, and frequencies where relevant. Of course registration will include passing on details of who is carrying out the activities, and which foreign power is directing them. Some of this information will be published – but this will be limited to what is needed to achieve the transparency aims of FIRS. Personal details, information that would prejudice personal safety or national security, and commercially sensitive information will not be published.

    Designating a country as being subject to the enhanced tier requires parliamentary approval – and as above this is currently being sought for Iran and Russia. How about China? As will be clear when we turn to some examples below, this is the big question when it comes to FIRS for UK higher education – China being moved up into the advanced tier would greatly complicate all kinds of educational and research initiatives.

    The Conservatives in opposition are pushing strongly for it, though they never bit the bullet while in power. Speaking in the House of Commons today, security minister Dan Jarvis said:

    For reasons that I completely understand, the shadow Home Secretary asked about China. He will recall the remarks I made to this House on 4 March, where I was very clear that countries will be considered separately and decisions will be taken by this Government based on the evidence. I said then, as I say again now, that I will not speculate on which countries may or may not be specified in future. That is the right way to proceed, and I hope he understands that.

    It’s likely the question will continue to recur, every time an issue involving national security and China (or other countries) rears its heads – we should expect calls in Parliament and in the press for a country seen as a national security threat to be moved over to the enhanced tier.

    Direction and production

    For the purposes of FIRS, “direction” implies a power relationship – a contract or conditional payment on the one hand, coercion or the promise of future benefits on the other. So for our purposes a genuine collaboration, or a very generic request, would not count as direction. Neither is something “direction” simply because it is funded by a foreign power.

    The actual registration and publication will be done by a special unit within the Home Office. This will also be the means by which the Secretary of State can issue “information notices” to get more information, or remind you to register activity should you be doing something that it is felt you should tell the Home Office about.

    FIRS is an information gathering tool – it doesn’t restrict anyone’s ability to do anything in and of itself, it simply requires that activity is registered appropriately. And it only applies where you are directed by a foreign power – anything else you do or say on your own behalf is not covered by these requirements.

    At FIRS I was afraid

    The meat of the higher education and research guidance (framed oddly as the “academia and research sector”) is a series of 34 examples, illustrating where registration is required and where it would not be. There’s a potential impact in every area of university and related activity – but rather than go through every example here it would make sense to pick out a handful of points to illustrate some key impacts on research, teaching, and SUs – both for enhanced and political tiers. If this stuff is your job, or becomes your job, chances are you’ll be getting to know these examples very quickly anyway.

    Teaching and recruitment

    Let’s start at the beginning (example 1) – the education department of country A (not subject to the enhanced tier) wants to build a relationship with a UK university: the university gets more students via promotion and enticements within country A, but it also has to lobby the UK government about a short-term visa study programme for students from country A.

    Clearly this is registerable – there’s an arrangement with country A, it is directed, and requires the use of political influence.

    A lot of the concerns that led to the requirements that went into the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act were about the potential for foreign powers to influence what is taught at universities. In example 6, a student from country G (enhanced tier) is studying a human rights course at a UK university, which includes material on the oppression of an ethnic group in country G by its government. The country G embassy contacts the students, and requires them to change course – threatening to force them to leave the UK if they don’t.

    Here it is the student that is obliged to register – they have been obliged, with coercion used, by a foreign power, to change their course. What’s not at all clear is what would convince said student that this would be a good idea, or what protections would be available to them when they reported their own government to UK authorities.

    But what about universities reporting back to an enhanced tier government on student behaviour? Examples 15, 16, and 17 all deal with reporting back to country V: we learn that a student reporting back on their progress, or a university reporting back on results, is not registerable. However, where the student is coerced into organising a protest about a speaker critical of country V, this is registerable (again, by the student).

    Elsewhere on the enhanced tier regulations, there’s been an important concession (following consultation responses) regarding scholarships, which are now exempt from being registered. And importantly, activities carried out wholly at overseas universities – such as transnational education – will not require registration either.

    A Swiss cheese of foreign influence

    The more tedious and public end of the free speech debate has been concerned with otherwise low-profile, little known, escaping the public attention student activity. Student societies, students getting together in their own time, and reasonable debate. Almost entirely absent from the public but not policy discourse has been the regulation of research activity. Put bluntly, the ways in which other countries influence research into lethal weapons has had less political attention than which culture issue The Telegraph is upset about this week.

    The new guidance provides that agents of specified foreign powers will have to register under the enhanced scheme where they are “undertaking a research project directed by a specified foreign power or specified foreign power-controlled entity.” As we learn from the Minister of State for Security Dan Jarvis the current specified countries under the enhanced tier are Iran and Russia.

    This means that individuals directed by Iran, Russia, and whoever else comes under the future ambit of the scheme, would be required to register that they are being directed by these states and declare they are undertaking state directed activity. Somehow, this seems extremely unlikely to capture the full range of state directed activity even with the threat of a five year custodial sentence.

    The scheme is narrowly applied and broadly defined as to avoid capturing a broad swathe of activities. Under the political tier

    Registration would only be required under the political tier if the research formed part of an intentional effort by a foreign power to influence the UK’s democracy, for example, a specific area of government policy.

    This is a really high bar to clear. As we learn further in the guidance activity which is funded and directed by a foreign power will not necessarily count as political influencing activity if researchers are free to arrive at their own recommendations. In other words, it is possible to influence the terms of the debate but not its conclusions and remain outside the scope of the scheme.

    One of the oddities of the regulation is that “activity is only registerable where carried out in the UK.” This would seem to mean that where there are campuses abroad which included UK researchers, researchers from other countries, and researchers who would be a specified power within the UK, activity would be outside of this scheme.

    The political influence tier of activity is designed to capture activities which are directly aimed toward parliamentary mechanisms and procedures. Aside from any debate on whether the specified countries are broad enough this means that political but not parliamentary political activities are not covered either. The guidance specifically states that

    …any published research which intended to influence a political process would not require registration under the political influence tier, if it was clear on the research report that it was completed as part of an arrangement with a foreign power.

    The scope of the research element of the scheme feels very narrow. The examples make clear that a UK provider would need to register under the political scheme where they are lobbying the UK government to further the interests of a foreign power as part of a funding arrangement. An individual would need to register under the political tier where they are acting as an intermediary for selling the technologies of a foreign power. And under the enhanced tier UK universities cannot rely on the ambiguity of a relationship and would seemingly have to register where there are future potential income opportunities.

    It is also made clear that just because activities clear these schemes they do not get a clean slate for other legislation like the National Security and Investment Act. As long as a provider is not taking funding from a foreign power, and especially specific foreign powers, to direct research, funding, and influencing outcomes, they should not be impacted by FIRS. This does not mean they will not be impacted by the bureaucracy of every other scheme.

    FIRS is helpful in setting an obvious floor for what is in scope but the ceiling is cavernous. There is significant latitude for influencing UK politics outside of parliamentary procedures and without directing research outcomes. The participants in the research ecosystem will on the one hand favour the flexibility but will rue the potential for being personally liable for another addition to an increasingly complicated web of international research rules.

    Societies, SUs and CSSAs

    One of the major concerns floating around the press coverage and the think tanks has been the activities of student societies on campus – specifically (but not exclusively), Chinese Students and Scholars Associations (CSSAs).

    Last year a Henry Jackson Society report, Studying Abroad to Serve China, alleged that CSSAs are closely tied to and influenced by the Chinese government, presenting themselves as cultural organisations while actually being integral to China’s “United Front Work” strategy.

    Meanwhile, the Telegraph has published allegations of Chinese students facing serious repercussions, including detention and interrogation in China, after participating in protests or making critical comments about the Chinese government while studying in the UK – which involve CSSAs locally and nationally.

    Like plenty of religious, political and sporting groups on campus, societies of this sort will say that they affiliate to a national body. Many rarely discuss or disclose the ways in which overt or covert control or influence may be placed on their activities.

    The sector-specific guidance covers “student bodies, societies or associations” – but there’s a problem. It appears from the guidance that Home Office officials think that student societies are legally separate bodies from their students’ union. But in the vast majority of cases, they have no separate legal personality – they are part of the SU. That matters because it impacts who has the legal duty to register.

    For example, in a section designed to reassure universities about their own liability to register, the guidance says:

    Where a registerable arrangement is made by a student society of a university: the society is required to register.

    And across three case studies discussing different types of activity, there’s the same issue. So where one describes a society being directed by the government of a country to sign a petition and campaign against a UK government decision, the guidance says:

    The student society is required to register as they are in an arrangement with the government of Country P (foreign power) from whom they receive funding (direction) to undertake campaigning activities to influence a government decision (political influence activities).

    But legally, in most universities the student society doesn’t exist. It’s a part of the SU – placing the onus on the SU to register – and so places duties on underfunded student activities staff to risk assess and probe the activities of societies in ways that many will object to.

    Separate guidance for charities then puts onerous duties on the trustees in the usual way.

    The upshot is that CSSAs – and any other international society undertaking activity of this sort – will soon clock that they themselves are under no legal duty to register. Universities will also take comfort in guidance that makes clear “societies” are separate and have their own reporting duties.

    The buck lands on the SU – who will be thinking hard about disproportionate scrutiny over a group of students that share protected characteristics, and who may object to their treatment by the SU to the university under OfS’ new harassment expectations.

    Not only will the SU not have experience of what amounts to a whole new type of complex risk assessment, it will all happen in a way that actually discourages joined-up risk assessment and sensible concern over the sorts of things the HJS and the Telegraph alleges. You really couldn’t make it up.

    If you believe the allegations that swirl around CSSAs, there are major student welfare concerns here – both for students who might be “under surveillance” from their colleagues, and for students who might be being coerced into watching others and reporting them. If you’re less sure that what the Telegraph or the HSJ say is widespread or even real, then there’s welfare and harassment concerns that surround poking around and applying heavy scrutiny to a particular group of students. And in England, the moment you start to think about potential interactions with free speech requirements and OfS’ new harassment requirements a headache ensues given both seem to cover SUs and societies without directly regulating them.

    If nothing else, the guidance repeatedly states that it’s not that the activity is per se illegal – and if not, is it “free speech within the law” or does the influence chill free speech, and so on and so on and so on.

    It would certainly seem like a good time to consider whether those straight-line cuts to the SU’s already tight budget are wise if junior staff are about to start to have to offer training on these complexities – and front out difficult conversations with those running international student societies.

    Upshots

    All of these new duties kick in on July 1st – so there’s very little time to understand the implications and get houses in order. The question on China and its tier allocation will be one to watch – the allegations are unlikely to go away.

    There are several “foreign influence” offences, including a failure to register a foreign influence arrangement, and carrying out political influence activity where the overarching arrangement is not registered and the person knows that the activity is being directed by a foreign principal. The maximum penalty for failure to comply with the requirements of the political influence tier is 2 years imprisonment – and the maximum penalty in the enhanced tier is 5 years imprisonment.

    If there are those who are carrying out what is currently covert activity who are under pressure to keep it that way – whether through incentives, or threats, or both, there is a real question about the way in which those individuals might evaluate that against any rules put in by a university (or so) in pursuit of the scheme.

    More broadly, it’s yet another thing in terms of regulatory burden – and another one of those things where a duty is being placed on a public authority to do what many would argue is not their job to do at all, that they’re not sufficiently funded to do, and have not even been properly consulted on.

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  • Hindsight is a wonderful thing – but foresight is better

    Hindsight is a wonderful thing – but foresight is better

    If students think that they’ve made the wrong choice – either of course, university or both – depending on how deep in they are, there’s often not much that can be done.

    That’s a problem – one that has appeared to be considerable in successive waves of the HEPI/Advance HE Student Academic Experience Survey, despite higher education policy in the last decade supposedly making it both easier to choose, and easier to switch.

    “Regret” in the SAES – measured by asking students if they had a second chance to start again, knowing what they know now, what they would do, has been running at between 35 and 42 per cent since 2018.

    The pandemic will have hit that – but it’s still a large proportion of (in this case) undergraduates given that most of them will be paying for those decisions for decades to come.

    To work out what to do about it, we’d need research on what lies behind the figures – and now a research collaboration between Bristol University, HEPI and Advance HE (along with a steering group including UCAS and UCL’s COSMO project) has produced some – all under the careful eye of former Office for Students CEO turned Professor of Practice in Higher Education Policy, Nicola Dandridge.

    Via two surveys, each of 2,000 students (one for students and graduates), The benefits of hindsight tells us only 2-3 per cent felt higher education was the wrong path altogether – it’s the choices within that that are the issue.

    Similar (enough) to the SAES, 65 per cent of undergraduates were happy with their institution and course choices. 10 per cent would study the same subject at a different university, 6 per cent would change courses at the same institution, 6 per cent would do both, and the rest would have preferred an apprenticeship, a gap year, or direct employment.

    If you’re thinking that that would improve post-graduation, there’s bad news – only 48 per cent of graduate respondents (aged 25-30) were happy with their original decisions, while 15 per cent would have chosen a different course at the same institution, 11 per cent the same course elsewhere, and 12 per cent both – with a further 8 per cent wishing they’d chosen an apprenticeship.

    Why? Students primarily cited “happiness” and better “fit” as reasons for wanting different choices, with 40 per cent acknowledging insufficient research. Graduates, unsurprisingly, were more concerned with career opportunities, with a similar percentage suggesting they needed better career guidance.

    Under the microscope there are two things – the structures and support for choice, and the structures and support for transfer. Neither come out well.

    I travelled each and every highway

    The report kicks off with some historical and international comparisons.

    A HEFCE report from 2016 surveyed graduates 3.5 years after graduation and found 32 per cent would have chosen a different subject, 21 per cent a different institution with ethnic minority graduates most likely to express choice regret.

    International surveys show varying levels of choice satisfaction – 83 per cent of Irish students and 73 per cent of Dutch students report they’d have chosen the same institution or program again.

    OfS analysis from 2021 suggested that less than 3 per cent transfer to different providers (with fewer than half transferring credits), and a 2016 DfE study said that 23 per cent of students who changed providers found the process difficult or very difficult. The data stopped being returned in September 2021 when DfE asked the OfS to stop in the interests of reducing burden.

    Anyway, the results. Among those who would have made different choices, 85 per cent say they would have made a significant difference in their lives, with regret increasing by year of study – 25 per cent of first-years versus 41 per cent of third-years.

    Satisfaction varied by region too – 74 per cent in Scotland vs. 64 per cent in England – as well as by subject, health related students were 10 points happier than social science students.

    For graduates, those employed in highly skilled occupations or pursuing further education reported greater satisfaction with their choices than those in less skilled positions or unemployed.

    You can read all of that, along with various other splits by region, stage and so on, in two ways – either a lot of regret isn’t about the course at all, or a lot of it is about the extent to which a student believed a course might set them up for the labour market, and then (at least a few years on), failed.

    Cracked up to be

    The focus group findings fill in some of the statistical blanks. Learning-related concerns were prominent – with students expressing disappointment about course content, teaching quality, and facilities. One lamented inadequate professional knowledge development:

    I found that the knowledge they had to offer, the experiences of the tutors themselves, and the actual equipment and facilities weren’t that great.

    Many noted discrepancies between university marketing and reality, with one observing:

    I think the way that it was sold is not quite exactly how it is now.

    Resource constraints were also cited, with one student describing how financial issues at their university led to their course being “gutted” with many modules eliminated.

    Career limitations emerged as another regret, particularly among STEM graduates struggling to find employment. One explained her degree’s narrow academic focus rather than industry-relevant skills, and cost of living concerns also featured, with one student regretting moving to Bristol, which they discovered was:

    …the second most expensive for rent outside of London.

    And as seen in studies on value for money (not least the one commissioned by Nicola Dandridge when OfS was set up), financial pressures intensified students’ critical assessment of their education:

    The fact that I’m so aware of the cost of it makes me think more critically.

    Much of that intensifies in the graduate results. Career limitations emerge as a dominant theme – with many lamenting overly specialized degrees that restrict employment options:

    I regret the course that I picked: it’s too specialised. It has limited where I can work – I can work on a children’s ward and nothing else.”

    Several pointed to insufficient internship opportunities as hindering their career progression. One theatre studies graduate wished that employability had been emphasised more – another regretted not completing a placement year.

    Making good choices

    On the assumption that getting the choice right to start with would have helped, for those in the regret camp, 41 per cent of undergraduates thought they should have researched more themselves.

    Students reported universities presenting misleading information at open days and in prospectuses, failing to provide detailed module information, and “putting on a show” that didn’t accurately reflect the actual experience.

    External pressures also significantly influenced regretted decisions with many students choosing subjects based on parental expectations rather than personal interests. Cultural expectations – particularly pronounced among Asian students – and social pressures prevented students from exploring alternatives.

    Preparing for exams whilst decision making also compromised decision quality – many selected “safer” universities based on predicted grades rather than aspirations. Timing was also a key factor in regretted decisions.

    Many wished they had taken gap years to gain clarity on their goals and undergraduates regretted looking “backwards” at subjects they enjoyed in school rather than “forwards” to potential careers. Graduates particularly lamented not understanding the labour market, wishing they better understood the importance of work experience and placements.

    Students who regretted their choices identified some things that could have helped – more transparent information about course content, better integrated career guidance, “taster courses” allowing students to experience subjects before committing, and targeted support for first-generation students.

    But 37 per cent of undergraduates and 21 per cent of graduates believed nothing would have enabled them to make different decisions – social, family, or educational influences overwhelming whatever agency they thought they should have had.

    I did what I had to do

    If students do get their choice wrong, one of the solutions – at least one promoted heavily in the last decade and the now largely abandoned duties given to the Office for Students in the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 – is transfer.

    And interestingly, the majority who regretted their choices would have transferred to another course or institution if possible – 59 per cent of undergraduates and 63 per cent of graduates.

    But multiple barriers prevented it – nearly half of undergraduates believed transferring wasn’t worth the effort and disruption. 52 per cent of graduates said a lack of information or support was their primary barrier, and many (38 per cent of graduates, 22 per cent of undergraduates) were completely unaware that transferring was an option.

    Additional barriers included financial concerns, poor timing (realizing too late), and family pressures.

    Students and graduates identified two major factors that would have enabled transfers – better information and guidance and financial support.

    Many also suggested early intervention systems – first-month “grace periods,” independent advisors, and regular check-ins with first-year students – to identify dissatisfaction before students became too established to transfer easily.

    But again, a significant minority (23 per cent undergraduates, 19 per cent graduates) believed nothing could have enabled them to transfer regardless of support offered.

    There’s some interesting demographic and characteristics splits. Students from lower participation areas reported their choices having greater consequences, higher proportions of private school students wished they attended different institutions for different courses, and Asian students were more influenced by university rankings but less by social media and career advisors.

    Worryingly disabled students showed significantly higher rates of regret and a stronger desire to transfer than the average. Focus group participants highlighted late diagnosis of neurodiversity, or a lack of disability support.

    I planned each charted course

    You do wonder whether, knowing what they know now, having looked at the results, the team would have chosen a different set of questions. What the results tell us is a lot that we already know – both about how students choose a course and university, and how they evaluate the value of that experience.

    If anything, the problem is the paradigm – the assumption in the hypothesis being that students either need to make the right choice first time, or that they need to be able to transfer if they don’t.

    Insofar as the research tests the central solutions to potential regret in both Students at the Heart of the System from 2011 and the OfS (F2) duty to facilitate transfer required via the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, it’s pretty clear that those solutions have failed.

    As such, we might expect the potential solutions on offer to at least contemplate something more radical than “do those things only better.”

    Sadly not. Students should conduct more comprehensive research earlier and consider gap years; schools should shift focus from university attendance to appropriate course/institution matching; graduate perspectives are to be incorporated into school career guidance; and universities are mildly exhorted to make sure that information is “accurate and realistic,” eradicating any “blur” with marketing and promotional material. Good luck with that.

    Meanwhile, work-related learning and the embedding of employability in the curriculum should be “scaled up in universities,” information and guidance should be available and accessible to students to support transfer arrangements, and consideration should be given to UCAS playing a “greater and more visible central coordinating function” in supporting students who wish to transfer.

    If none of that feels like it will shift the dial, that’s perhaps because there’s a dead-horse flogging aspect to them – coupled with nothing in the report that recognises the lack of incentives on universities to make much of that happen. It’s perhaps in the lone recommendation on the LLE that some better solutions might be found.

    I ate it up and spit it out

    Some of the material from students in the report looks at the balance between the theoretical and the practical, and some at (over) specialisation. Both point clearly to programme design, and flexibility within it – at just the point that providers are busy ripping choices and pathways out in favour of more efficient core module credit.

    As Jim noted in this piece on marketisation, it’s the opposite that students want – both in terms of majors and minors, and students being able to accrue credit for learning outside of their subject area through work and service.

    Clear signals to that end in the LLE would help – as would some actual rights in that space over credit transfer and accumulation. Providers that don’t want to play ball don’t have to be able to access the student finance system.

    We note, for example, that in Poland students have the actual right between 25 and 30 per cent of their credit as optional, non-core. In Latvia the minister is about to afford students the right to accrue credit across universities. In Austria, course reps have the right to input on and sign off on a programme’s electives before they are finalised for the year ahead, and in plenty of countries the right to accrue credit for learning via work and service is enshrined.

    More broadly, the lack of student rights in general in the UK – and the lack of a role for student organisations in promoting and enforcing them – is also a barrier. This kind of stuff isn’t going to happen by asking nicely. And the mis-selling thing is only going to change if, for example, OfS applies that new fairness condition to everyone, and strengthens students’ confidence to complain.

    Some of the material is about age – and I’m reminded that across the OECD, the UK has pretty much the youngest entrants and youngest Bachelor’s graduates. The first of those is about everyone in the system normalising a pause – the second is about a credit and student finance system that allows pauses, setbacks, reductions in study intensity and other wheezes that would prevent a student from thinking that they weren’t able to experience what they wanted through no fault of their own.

    Naturally, the stuff on costs needs tightening up – the woeful state of information that both encourages fiscal illusions and reduces any effort in getting those costs down – and the idea that rent or other participation costs can’t be properly researched at least at subject level through some of the national survey infrastructure that we have now is endlessly frustrating. The fact that the UK is one of the few countries in Europe where students have to keep paying their rent if they’ve dropped out means that bigger structural solutions are required.

    There are some ironies in the incentives currently hurled at universities that the report misses too. Anyone that thinks that regret, as described here, will improve while OfS is dangling damocles over continuation is naive; anyone that thinks that similar stats for PG would be improved when our “big sell” is getting a Master’s done in a year and UKVI looks down on changing course, is also kidding themselves. And a student finance system that continues to treat adults as dependent (the means test in the maintenance loan) almost guarantees that parents will hold more sway than their children.

    But as we talked about at The Secret Life of Students, reimagining what “full-time” study means in an era when most students must work to survive is arguably the most important task. If we force students to choose between earning, learning, and contributing, there’s going to be regret – over “fit” and happiness, work experience, skills acquisition and the inability to stop and think in general.

    Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but foresight is better. Unless central government sets itself the task of slowing down both the initial choice and the experience itself – supported by a framework of structural change and actual student agency – we expect that the relentless efficiency demanded of both students and their universities in a mass system will continue to overwhelm whatever OfS does on DiscoverUni or whatever providers think a lonely webpage is doing on the facilitation of transfer.

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  • Rosemont College in Pennsylvania to combine with Villanova University

    Rosemont College in Pennsylvania to combine with Villanova University

    Dive Brief:

    • Villanova University plans to absorb Rosemont College, which will take on the former’s name after a multiyear transition period set to begin in 2027, the two Catholic institutions in Pennsylvania said Monday.
    • After the merger is complete, Rosemont — less than a mile away from Villanova — will become “Villanova University, Rosemont Campus,” according to a press release. The deal requires approval from their accreditor — they have the same one — and from state and federal regulators.
    • Following the transition period, Villanova will take on Rosemont’s assets and liabilities and bring on three members of Rosemont’s governing board, according to Rosemont. Tenured and tenure-track faculty will be offered contracts at Villanova and can apply for tenured status via the university’s guidelines.

    Dive Insight:

    Villanova University President Peter Donohue described the merger with Rosemont as a “unique and powerful opportunity for our two institutions given our shared commitment to advancing Catholic higher education, our close physical proximity and deep alumni connections.”

    In a community message, Donohue also noted that Villanova and Rosemont students for years have taken classes and participated in programs at each others’ campuses.

    With 777 students in fall 2023, Rosemont is dwarfed by Villanova, which enrolled 10,111 students for that period. 

    Student bodies have shrunk at both colleges, though Rosemont’s has done so at a faster clip. Between 2018 to 2023, fall enrollment plunged 17.8% at Rosemont compared to a 8.3% drop at Villanova.  

    Rosemont, founded in 1921 by the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, is also the weaker of the two financially. It racked up a total operating deficit of $914,220 in fiscal 2023, more than triple the previous year’s budget gap, according to its latest financials. Villanova, meanwhile, has posted surpluses in recent years.

    Rosemont’s fiscal 2023 audit also contained a going-concern warning, indicating there was “substantial doubt” about its ability to keep operating. The audit cited the college’s failure to meet the U.S. Department of Education’s benchmarks to be considered financially responsible.

    However, in response to the financial issues flagged by auditors, Rosemont made several moves, including cutting executive-level positions, nixing a handful of vacant positions to reduce overall staffing and consolidating its student housing, moving to sell one of its residence halls. 

    The college also borrowed $7 million from its endowment to support operations and pay down a credit line. 

    College leaders said they believed those efforts, as well as marketing initiatives and enrollment partnerships — such as one with the Fraternal Order of Police — alleviated the going-concern doubt, auditors noted. 

    But merging with Villonova is meant to add to both institutions’ strengths. 

    “We are committed to securing the best possible options for our students, faculty and staff and believe this merger with Villanova offers the best opportunity to ensure that the Rosemont College history and legacy endures,” Rosemont President Jim Cawley said Monday in a statement.

    Rosemont will continue operating as a separate entity through the transition period and maintain its academic programming during that time. According to the institutions, Rosemont students who haven’t completed their degrees by 2028 will have multiple options to do so, including transferring to Villanova’s professional studies college.

    Student athletes on Rosemont’s NCAA Division III teams can move to club sports after the spring 2026 semester — given that Villanova is a Division I university. The college is looking for other D-III institutions that could provide quick and easy transfer pathways for student athletes from Rosemont, according to the institution. 

    The merger agreement also calls for the preservation of Rosemont’s chapel as “a place of gathering and inspiration.” To maintain Rosemont’s legacy, the institutions said an endowed scholarship will be created after the transition “supporting the mission” of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus.

    This isn’t Villanova’s only recent expansion. In 2024, the university bought the 112-acre Pennsylvania campus of Cabrini University following the Catholic institution’s decision to close. Per the agreement, they renamed the site Villanova University Cabrini Campus. 

    Several Catholic liberal arts colleges have struggled in recent years along with their secular peers. Facing enrollment and financial challenges, some have sought mergers. 

    This year, Gannon University and Ursuline College, for example, announced a formal merger agreement. And Iowa’s St. Ambrose University is working to acquire Mount Mercy University as part of a plan announced last year.

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  • Trump administration suspends dozens of Princeton University’s research grants

    Trump administration suspends dozens of Princeton University’s research grants

    Federal agencies have suspended “several dozen” federal research grants to Princeton University, the Ivy League institution announced Tuesday. The move comes as the Trump administration attacks high-profile colleges over campus antisemitism allegations.

    Multiple agencies, including the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Department of Defense and NASA, notified the university of the freezes on Monday and Tuesday, Princeton President Chris Eisgruber said in a community message. 

    He noted that “the full rationale” for the agencies’ cancellation wasn’t clear yet but stated the university will comply with the law and is “committed to fighting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination, and we will cooperate with the government in combating antisemitism.”

    He added that Princeton would at the same time “vigorously defend academic freedom and the due process rights.”

    A reporter for The Daily Caller, a conservative outlet, reported late Monday that the Trump administration was pausing $210 million in funding to Princeton amid an ongoing campus antisemitism investigation. 

    The Education Department on Tuesday did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation of the pause.

    Like many college campuses, Princeton saw significant protest activity last spring, including a hunger strike, an encampment lasting three weeks and over a dozen arrests. During that time, the Biden administration opened an investigation into the university after a complaint was filed by a conservative activist, who filed more than 30 similar complaints at U.S. educational institutions.

    In March, the U.S. Department of Education under President Donald Trump named Princeton as one of 60 institutions that could face enforcement action over unaddressed antisemitism, though the agency didn’t specify any specific civil rights law violations. 

    The suspension of Princeton’s research grants is just the most recent of the Trump administration’s escalating financial attacks on colleges and the higher education sector. 

    On Monday, the administration announced it was reviewing billions of dollars in federal grants and contracts at Harvard University, another well-known institution mentioned on the Education Department’s March list. 

    Those moves come less than a month after the Trump administration canceled $400 million in research funding to Columbia University. 

    The Ivy League institution ceded to many of the government’s demands — including by adding three dozen security officers and appointing a senior vice provost to review its regional studies program. Late last month, the Trump administration called it “a positive first step in the university maintaining a financial relationship with the United States government.”

    Following the weeks of turmoil at the university, Columbia Interim President Katrina Armstrong stepped down late last week after less than eight months.

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  • Trump Dismantles US Institute of Museum and Library Services (YT Daily News)

    Trump Dismantles US Institute of Museum and Library Services (YT Daily News)

    The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has put its entire staff on administrative leave following President Trump’s executive order to eliminate seven federal agencies, including IMLS. 
     
    Keith E. Sonderling has been appointed as the acting director during this transition. Staff were notified via email about their 90-day paid leave, which included instructions to return government property and had their email accounts disabled. 
     
    IMLS is a small federal agency, with about 70 employees,
    that awards grant funding to museums and libraries across the United
    States. Last year it granted $266 million to support essential cultural institutions.


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  • New Food Security Threats 5 Years After COVID-Era Effort to Feed All Kids – The 74

    New Food Security Threats 5 Years After COVID-Era Effort to Feed All Kids – The 74

    A multi-pronged attack on food aid by Republican lawmakers could mean more of the nation’s children will go hungry — both at home and at school.

    The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently cut two federal programs that provided roughly $1 billion in funding for the purchase of food by schools and food banks. 

    And the Community Eligibility Provision, which reimburses tens of thousands of schools that provide free breakfast and lunch to all students, may tighten its requirements, potentially pushing some 12 million kids out of the program.

    These moves come at the same time the House Republican budget plan calls for deep cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The program fed more than 42 million low-income people per month nationwide in 2023. In 2022, 40% were younger than 18.  

    This recent shift reflects a stark reversal of earlier, nationwide efforts to keep families fed during the pandemic. Many districts, such as Baltimore, organized grab-and-go meals sites days after schools were shuttered in March 2020 with no identification or personal information required. Those initiatives led to the nation’s food insecurity rate dropping to a 20-year low when it reached 10.2% in 2021, down from a 14.9% high a decade earlier, according to the USDA.

    It has since crept back up to 13.5% and now, five years after schools utilized USDA waivers to deliver meals in innovative ways, they are bracing for what could be massive cuts from the federal government.

    Latoya Roberson, manager at Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School in Baltimore (Baltimore City Public Schools) 

    Elizabeth A. Marchetta, executive director of food and nutrition services for Baltimore City Public Schools, said 31 campuses — serving 19,000 children — would lose out on free breakfast and lunch if the Community Eligibility Provision changes go through. They are among 393 schools and 251,318 children statewide who would be shut out. 

    “It would be devastating,” Marchetta said. “These are critical funds. If we are not being reimbursed for all of the meals we’re serving … the money has to come from somewhere else in the school district, so that is really not great.”

    Map: Eamonn Fitzmaurice/The 74, Data:Food Research & Action Cen

    Nearly 48,000 schools in more than 7,700 districts benefited from the Community Eligibility Provision in the 2023-24 school year. The program reimburses schools that provide universal free meals based on the percentage of their students who automatically qualify for free and reduced-price lunch because their families receive other types of assistance, like SNAP. 

    In 2023, after the COVID-era policy ended where any student could receive a free school meal regardless of income, President Biden lowered the percentage of high-need students required for a school to qualify from 40% to 25%, greatly expanding participation. 

    House GOP Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington now seeks to raise the rate to 60%. The budget proposal would also require all students applying for free and reduced-price meals to submit documentation verifying their family income.

    School meal debt, a barometer of food insecurity among students, is already on the rise. It will almost certainly increase if universal school meals disappear for students whose families make too much to qualify for free and reduced-price lunch but too little to afford to buy meals at school. At the same time, kids who are eligible for free and reduced-price meals could lose that benefit if the required paperwork becomes harder. 

    In the fall of 2023, across 808 school districts, the median amount of school meal debt was $5,495. By the fall of 2024, that amount reached $6,900 across 766 districts, a 25% increase, according to the School Nutrition Association.

    It was just $2,000 a decade earlier. A trio of Democratic senators is pushing to erase the $262 million annual debt total, with Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman saying in 2023, “‘School lunch debt’ is a term so absurd that it shouldn’t even exist. That’s why I’m proud to introduce this bill to cancel the nation’s student meal debt and stop humiliating kids and penalizing hunger.”

    Research shows students benefit mightily from free meals: those who attend schools that adopted the Community Eligibility Provision saw lower rates of obesity compared to those who did not. Free in-school meals are also credited for boosting attendance among low-income children, improving classroom behavior and lowering suspensions.

    Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America. 

    Joel Berg, the CEO of Hunger Free America, said further cuts will greatly harm the poorest students. 

    “Over the last few years, things have gone from bad to worse,” he said. “We were all raised seeing Frank Capra movies, where, in the end everything works out. But that’s not how the real world works. In the real world, when the economy gets a cold, poor people get cancer.”

    Hunger Free America found the number of Americans who didn’t have enough to eat over two one-week periods increased by 55.2% between August-September 2021 and August-September 2024. The states with the highest rates of food insecure children were Texas at 23.8%, Oklahoma at 23.2% and Nebraska at 22.6%. Georgia and Arkansas both came in at 22.4%. 

    The USDA slashed the $660 million Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program for 2025 — it allowed states to purchase local foods, including fresh fruits and vegetables, for distribution to schools and child care institutions — and $500 million from the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program, which supported food banks nationwide. 

    Diane Pratt-Heavner, director of media relations for the School Nutrition Association, said that as families struggle with the high cost of groceries, the government should be doing more — not less — to bolster school meals and other food aid programs. 

    “We’re urging Congress not only to protect the federal Community Eligibility Provision, but to expand it,” Pratt-Heavner said. “Ideally, all students should have access to free school breakfast and lunch as part of their education.” 

    SNAP benefits stood at $4.80 per person per day through 2020 before jumping to more than $6 per person per day after they were adjusted for rising food and other costs. Even then, the higher amount was not enough to cover the cost of a moderately priced meal in most locations. 

    Republicans in Congress seek to cut the program by $230 billion over the next nine years, possibly by returning to the pre-pandemic allotment of $4.80 and/or expanding work-related requirements, said Salaam Bhatti, SNAP director at the Food Research & Action Center. 

    Another possibility, he said, is that SNAP costs could be pushed onto states — including those that can’t afford them. 

    “This would be an unfunded mandate,” Bhatti said. “States would have to take away from their discretionary spending to offset the cost and if it is not a mandate, then states in rural America and in the South that don’t have the budgets just won’t do it.” 

    Food-related funding decreases come as the child tax credit, created to help parents offset the cost of raising children, is also facing uncertainty, said Megan Curran, the director of policy at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University.

    The American Rescue Plan increased the amount of the child tax credit from $2,000 to $3,600 for qualifying children under age 6, and $3,000 for those under age 18. Many taxpayers received monthly advance payments in the second half of 2021, instead of waiting until tax filing season to receive the full benefits. The move cut child poverty nearly in half. The expanded child tax credit was allowed to lapse post-pandemic and now even the $2,000 credit could revert back to just $1,000. 

    All food-related and tax benefit cuts — plus the unknowns of Trump-era tariffs — will leave some Americans particularly vulnerable, Curran said. 

    “It’s shaping up to be a very precarious time for families,” she said, “especially families with children.”


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  • Almost 2,000 Schools and Districts Choose Lexia® English Language Development™ to Support Emergent Bilingual Students’ English Language Acquisition

    Almost 2,000 Schools and Districts Choose Lexia® English Language Development™ to Support Emergent Bilingual Students’ English Language Acquisition

    BOSTON (March 31, 2025) – In recent months, almost 2,000 schools and districts have purchased or renewed licenses for Lexia English Language Development (Lexia English) from Lexia, a Cambium Learning Group brand. Using powerful speech recognition technology, the program supports students in grades K-6 to build their linguistic confidence in academic English.

    “More than 162,000 students and 77,000 educators at 7,400 schools used the program during the 2024 school year. In addition, those students practiced academic conversations 4.3 million times in the program,” said Lexia President, Nick Gaehde. “The numbers show just how much students and educators have needed access to a culturally responsive language learning solution.”

    One of those educators who used the program is Lynmara Colón, the director of Student Opportunity and Multilingual Services at Prince William County Schools in Virginia. After a pilot, the district has allowed individual middle and elementary schools to purchase Lexia English during the 2024-2025 school year. Prince William County Schools serves more than 20,000 English learners who speak 140 languages. “We are the 10th most diverse district in the nation,” Colón said. “But when I try to find tools for diverse students, there’s not a lot that meets the specific needs of the student population we serve.”

    Colón noted that the program had boosted student growth to the point of reducing her worries about providing staff with a high-quality tool focused on helping Emergent Bilingual students. She expressed appreciation for the way the program helps her forecast and make sense of language acquisition data. “With Lexia, I can have visibility into how they’re doing with language comprehension,” she said. “I always know to expect the best from our Lexia partners. I have high expectations, and they never disappoint.”

    Lexia English’s approach to English language learning is to empower emergent bilinguals by honoring their heritage languages and offering culturally responsive, adaptive learning pathways to foster academic and linguistic growth. Seventeen characters with diverse backgrounds help students practice speaking skills by engaging with content in academic subjects such as math, science, social studies, and general knowledge.

    Gaehde concluded, “With Lexia English, educators can celebrate multilingualism in the classroom, providing students with the tools to succeed in both English language development and overall academic achievement.”

    About Lexia

    Lexia®, a Cambium Learning® Group brand, is transforming literacy education, driving change in 1 of every 3 school districts across the United States. For more than 40 years, Lexia has been a thought leader in literacy education, delivering award-winning, research-based solutions grounded in the science of reading. With a full spectrum of offerings, including professional learning, curriculum, and embedded assessment tools, Lexia provides educators with Structured Literacy solutions that are proven effective and designed to drive meaningful literacy outcomes. By empowering educators with unparalleled ease of use and the knowledge and tools they need, Lexia helps more students unlock their potential to read, write, and speak with confidence. For more information, visit lexialearning.com.

    About Cambium Learning Group

    Cambium Learning Group is the education essentials company, providing award-winning education technology and services for K-12 educators and students. With an intentional collection of respected global brands, Cambium serves as a leader, helping millions of educators and students feel more seen, valued, and supported every day. In everything it does, the company focuses on the elements that are most essential to the success of education, delivering simpler, more certain solutions that make a meaningful difference right now.

    To learn more, visit www.cambiumlearning.com or follow Cambium on Facebook, LinkedIn, and X. The Cambium family of brands includes: Cambium Assessment®, Lexia®, Learning A-Z®, ExploreLearning®, and Time4Learning®.

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