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  • The Real Cost of IT Inaction in Higher Ed

    The Real Cost of IT Inaction in Higher Ed

    Technology expectations in higher education have never been higher. Students expect seamless digital experiences, faculty rely on stable, integrated systems to teach and conduct research, and institutional leaders need real-time data to make informed decisions.

    Yet many colleges and universities remain stuck, held back by aging infrastructure, limited budgets, or the belief that maintaining the status quo is safer than change.

    From where I sit, that belief is one of the most expensive misconceptions in higher ed today.

    IT inaction isn’t neutral. Standing still doesn’t preserve resources; it quietly drains them. Over time, those costs compound in ways that are harder to see, harder to control, and far more disruptive than proactive modernization.

    The hidden costs of doing nothing

    When institutions delay IT investment, the consequences rarely show up as a single line item. Instead, they surface as inefficiencies spread across budgets, teams, and timelines.

    Legacy systems are a prime example. Redundant platforms often require duplicated effort, separate maintenance contracts, and manual reconciliation between systems that should be integrated.

    Hardware that’s past its lifecycle can lead to unexpected outages and emergency spending that exceeds planned budgets. Older systems also demand specialized support, which is increasingly difficult and expensive to find as vendors phase out end-of-life technology.

    What’s most costly, though, is time.

    IT teams spend countless hours keeping outdated systems afloat by troubleshooting avoidable issues, applying workarounds, and responding to preventable failures. That’s time not being spent on strategic initiatives that improve efficiency, student experience, or institutional resilience.

    I often describe it this way: Maintaining legacy systems is like pouring money into a leaky boat just to stay afloat, not to move forward.

    Security vulnerabilities and reputational risk

    When it comes to cybersecurity, the cost of inaction is especially serious.

    Legacy systems that lack consistent monitoring pose a heightened security risk. Outdated software, fragmented technology environments, and limited visibility create prime opportunities for cyberattacks — particularly for institutions that handle sensitive student, faculty, and financial data.

    Compliance becomes more difficult in these conditions. Meeting FERPA, HIPAA, and other regulatory requirements is far more complex when systems aren’t integrated or consistently managed. Non-compliance doesn’t just carry financial penalties. It can threaten accreditation and erode institutional trust.

    The fallout of a breach extends well beyond remediation costs. Reputational damage can deter prospective students, strain donor relationships, and take years to repair.

    Simply put, institutions don’t want to make headlines because of a cybersecurity lapse they could have prevented.

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    Missed opportunities for strategic growth

    IT inaction doesn’t just introduce risk. It actively limits growth.

    Students move seamlessly across digital platforms in every part of their lives. When institutional systems don’t integrate, the student experience becomes fragmented, support slows down, faculty shoulder unnecessary administrative burdens, and leaders lose the data visibility needed to intervene early or plan strategically.

    I’ve seen institutions stuck on legacy SIS infrastructure that prevents modern integrations altogether. The result is manual reporting, delayed insights, and staff hours spent pulling data instead of using it.

    Outdated environments also restrict access to emerging technologies like AI, automation, and advanced analytics. These are tools that could drive efficiency, personalize engagement, and support enrollment and retention strategies. Without a scalable IT foundation, even well-intentioned growth initiatives increase cost and complexity instead of reducing them.

    IT staff burnout and talent drain

    The impact of chronic IT underinvestment is deeply human.

    Internal IT teams in under-resourced environments operate almost entirely in reactive mode. They’re constantly firefighting by responding to outages, security alerts, and system failures, all while knowing the underlying risks remain unresolved.

    That’s exhausting, and over time, it erodes morale.

    Talented IT professionals want to innovate. They want to build, improve, and contribute strategically. When their work is limited to keeping aging systems alive, frustration builds, and burnout follows. Eventually, institutions lose people they can’t easily replace.

    Recruitment becomes harder as well. Prospective hires can quickly identify an organization with no clear IT roadmap. They understand what that environment demands, and many choose to look elsewhere.

    This is where managed IT support can fundamentally change the equation.

    By shifting routine monitoring, maintenance, and after-hours support to a trusted partner, institutions reduce daily stressors on internal teams. Proactive management prevents crises before they escalate. Internal staff regain the capacity to focus on strategy, innovation, and meaningful institutional impact.

    Inaction is a choice (an expensive one)

    One of the biggest misconceptions I hear from higher ed leaders is that modernizing IT is too expensive, too complex, or too disruptive.

    The reality is that institutions are already paying for IT. They’re just paying in less visible and far less controlled ways. They’re paying through staff turnover, downtime, security exposure, and through leadership time spent managing exceptions instead of advancing strategy.

    Modern IT investment isn’t about chasing the latest technology. It’s about stabilizing operations, reducing risk, and making costs predictable. It’s a decision about institutional capacity, long-term resilience, and the people who make both possible.

    If I had 60 seconds with a higher ed president or CFO, I’d say this: The decision isn’t whether you’re spending on IT. That spend is already happening. The real question is whether you want it to be controlled and strategic, or hidden and reactive.

    Moving forward with confidence

    Higher education is navigating unprecedented change. Institutions that succeed won’t be the ones that avoid investment. They’ll be the ones that built strong, flexible foundations capable of supporting their mission long-term.

    If your institution is feeling the strain of outdated systems or reactive IT, now is the time to act. Collegis partners with colleges and universities to stabilize operations, reduce risk, and build IT environments designed for what’s next through our Managed IT Services for higher education.

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  • Snakes and Ladders: gamifying educational research to enhance practice

    Snakes and Ladders: gamifying educational research to enhance practice

    by Lucy Panesar

    I write here about an example of higher education research that has been gamified to enhance inclusive practices at the University of Kent. The original game of Snakes and Ladders had its origins in a ritual Indian game of knowledge, evolving to entertainment, and now again to education.

    Student Success Snakes and Ladders is a University of Kent staff development game I created with research associate Dr Yetunde Kolajo in 2024, to support colleagues to understand student barriers and identify appropriate solutions. It takes the classic Snakes and Ladders board game and adds cards explaining the reason for a student downfall or advancement. These scenarios were derived from longitudinal research by Hensby, Adewumi and Kolajo (2024) that tracked the higher education journey of 25 students in receipt of the Academic Excellence Scholarship (AES) at Kent. The AES research reveals factors influencing student retention, continuation and attainment along with associated institutional supports.

    We adapted Snakes and Ladders to gamify the AES research findings in a way that develops inclusive student support practices. Our version of the game rests on principles of “serious play” (Rieber et al, 1998), in the way that it supports players to understand and respond to the real lives of students with care, respect and a sense of collective responsibility. The classic Snakes and Ladders game we’ve adapted has a rich history in both entertainment and educational contexts, and this encouraged us to adapt it for our purposes.

    We have run Student Success Snakes and Ladders with over 200 colleagues now. When we ask who’s played Snakes and Ladders before, nearly everyone says yes, whatever their background, due to the game’s international popularity. And like many popular traditions in British culture, the game made its way to the UK via British colonialism. As a half-Indian Brit, it was a pleasure but no surprise to learn from Wikipedia that Snakes and Ladders originated in ancient India as Moksha Patam and came over to the UK in the 1890s.

    The image is a Jain version of Snakes and Ladders called Jnana Bazi or Gyan Bazi from India, 19th century, Gouache on cloth (Wikicommons).

    Mehta (cited in Aitken, 2015) explains: “Just as the board game of chess was designed to teach the strategies of war, so Snakes and Ladders was played ritually as Gyanbaji, the Game of Knowledge, a meditation on humanity’s progress toward liberation.” Topsfield (2006) explains how variants have been found across Jain, Hindu and Sufi Muslim sects in India and describes how: “… pilgrim-like, each player progresses fitfully from states of vice, illusion, karmic impediment, or inferior birth at the base of the playing area to ever higher states of virtue, spiritual advancement, the heavenly realms, and (in the ultimate, winning square) liberation (mokṣa) or union with the supreme deity.”

    This paints quite a different picture to the fun game of chance most of us played as children. Topsfield outlines how the game developed from its Indian spiritual origins into a more moralistic English children’s game in the late 1800s and then into the modern simplified derivatives familiar to us now.

    While the game is still played mainly for fun, it has continued to serve educational purposes across the globe. Snakes and Ladders is used to teach Jawai script in Malaysian primary schools (Shitiq and Mahmud, 2010); to promote moral education learning systems in Nigeria (Ibam et al, 2018); for Covid awareness training (Ariessanti et al, 2020), sex education (Ahmad et al, 2021) and to promote healthy eating in Indonesia (Thaha et al, 2022). An article on Snakes and Ladders being used for anatomy training in Iran concludes that the method “can excite the students, create landmarks for remembering memorizing methods and can improve their team work” (Golchai et al, 2012). In the UK, Snakes and Ladders has been used to facilitate Dignity in Care training by Caerphilly Council (2024).

    Inspired by these other examples of ‘serious play’ (Rieber et al, 1998), Yetunde and I adapted the game to develop inclusive student support practices at Kent. We bought existing copies of the board game and added bespoke snake and ladder cards, each with different scenarios from the AES research. When players fall on a snake or ladder, they read a corresponding card to understand the scenario leading to that advance or decline.

    Before sliding down any snakes, players can use a blank “Catch” card to propose an intervention to mitigate the snake and allow the student to stay put. This element prompts colleagues to collaborate to enhance inclusive and equitable practices, reinforcing values inscribed in the Advance HE Professional Standards (2023). If players fall on a yellow square, they can pick up a “Campus” card to reveal and discuss an aspect of campus life in relation to student success.

    Student Success Snakes and Ladders has been well received by Kent staff, including academics, and has proved to be an effective way of using institutional research to enhance student support practices. Our next step is to embed the game within mandatory training for academic and support staff across the university, to ensure that more students are supported to avoid slippery snakes along their higher education journey.

    Dr Lucy Panesar is a UK-based educator and educational developer focused on the development of inclusive and equitable higher education practices. Her first teaching role was at the University for the Creative Arts and her first educational development role was at the University of the Arts London, where she led various projects promoting curriculum decolonization. Since 2022, she has been a Lecturer in Higher Education at the University of Kent, supporting academic and curriculum development across the disciplines.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

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  • As a head of institution I need people to tell me when they think I’m wrong

    As a head of institution I need people to tell me when they think I’m wrong

    It’s now 30 years since I started my first academic role, and many of the most useful conversations I’ve ever had have been ones where people have disagreed with me.

    Quite often, I discover that I’m wrong and they’re right, and I get to adapt my thinking, learn, and improve. Occasionally, I’m right and they’re wrong, and I’m reminded of the need to communicate better and to empathise with different viewpoints. Very often, though, we decide that we’re both wrong, and we walk away with a much better understanding of the complexity of the problem we both thought we had solved. In contrast, many of my biggest mistakes have come when I’ve been overconfident because I’ve been bolstered by agreement.

    So, in my first six months as vice chancellor at Keele University, I’m taking what is perhaps a slightly unusual step of actively trying to get people to disagree with me as much as possible. If you read the higher education press, including Wonkhe, you might think that most vice chancellors find it very easy to get people to disagree with them. But what I’ve noticed is that in your first year, people are often extremely welcoming and supportive – and sometimes that means they don’t tell you that you’re wrong as often as they should.

    Constructive non-alignment

    As we set out to develop a new strategy for our University, I’m introducing the Keele Debates to try to raise the level of disagreement to something that is genuinely productive. These debates are designed to bring together people from across education, business, public policy and civic life to discuss the societal issues affecting higher education and the role universities can play in addressing them.

    The intention with the Keele Debates series is to create a space where disagreement is constructive and where different perspectives can be explored in a way that generates practical insight rather than simply reinforcing existing positions.

    The series focuses on some of the biggest challenges facing universities today, including internationalisation, artificial intelligence, graduate employability, and inclusivity. We want to encourage honest discussion across the sector about how universities need to adapt if they are to remain relevant, competitive, and sustainable.

    These topics have been curated to reflect the complexity of the situation our sector is facing in 2026, and the many varied and intertwining issues which not only have an impact on higher education, but one another. We live in a world where increased globalisation coexists with more division about immigration, and the increased pressure to adopt AI and automated technologies coincides with a graduate job market that has never been more competitive, and universities are under even more pressure to prepare their students for life after their degrees.

    These are the sort of challenges we want to grapple with in these debates, and hopefully by doing so we can ultimately strengthen the sector as a whole; but the journey there will demand these difficult conversations. Higher education has a profound and transformative impact on society, but precisely because of that influence, universities must be open to challenge, scrutiny and debate, and be willing to ask difficult questions about how they serve students, communities and the wider world.

    Hot topic

    Our first debate – The Global University: Are we exporting education or exploiting students? – brings together speakers from across the sector and beyond including a former universities minister and the chief executive of Universities UK Vivienne Stern. By bringing together such diverse and often opposing voices, ones with very different experiences and viewpoints, we hope to surface ideas that help universities respond more effectively to the challenges and opportunities ahead.

    Ultimately, universities exist to help solve society’s most pressing problems and to enhance the lives of our students, staff and communities. For that to remain true, we need to be willing to challenge our own assumptions, listen to perspectives that we may not immediately agree with, and be open to changing our minds. For me, encouraging people to tell me that I’m wrong feels like a good place to start.

    Find out more about the Keele Debates and sign up to attend or access the livestream here.

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  • Student Loan Visual Trackers Should Be Restored (opinion)

    Student Loan Visual Trackers Should Be Restored (opinion)

    Since the end of the student loan payment pause, navigating repayment for borrowers in income-driven repayment (IDR) plans has been exceptionally difficult. About 13 million borrowers—roughly 39 percent of those serviced by the Department of Education—are enrolled in IDR plans.

    These borrowers confront a policy landscape marked by uncertainty and change. In 2023, the Biden administration rolled out the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan by automatically enrolling borrowers who were participating in the Revised Pay as You Earn (REPAYE) plan and encouraging borrowers from other IDR plans to enroll in SAVE. But in July 2024, a court halted implementation of the SAVE program and the Biden administration effectively stopped communicating with these borrowers. Moreover, a federal appellate court ruling raised the question of whether forgiveness under the Pay As You Earn (PAYE) and former REPAYE programs may be illegal, throwing extreme amounts of uncertainty into millions of borrowers’ lives.

    Compounding uncertainty, a recent proposed settlement between the Trump administration and the state of Missouri would effectively end the SAVE program. However, borrowers cannot simply return to REPAYE and must apply to temporarily go to PAYE, as Congress has phased these programs out while creating another IDR plan called the Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP), which will launch this coming July. Unfortunately for current borrowers, the RAP plan is less generous, as monthly payments will likely be higher and forgiveness is delayed to 30 years instead of 20 to 25 years.

    Borrowers who must transition from SAVE could have to wait more than 25 months as millions of applications must be processed by ED, which has intentionally been hobbled. This layering of disruption compounds uncertainty on top of long-standing operational failings: Even when fully staffed, ED has a documented history of miscounting qualifying payments and other IDR tracking errors, mistakes that have already delayed forgiveness for borrowers who should have qualified.

    Since the SAVE stay, government guidance to servicers has also been inconsistent. At the same time, servicers such as the Higher Education Loan Authority of the State of Missouri have been accused of and sued for practices including mishandling forgiveness applications and deflecting borrower calls—adding yet another layer of uncertainty for borrowers navigating an increasingly complex and quickly changing system.

    However, one low-cost, high-impact tool briefly offered a measure of relief: visual progress trackers. Implemented by the Biden administration in January 2025, these trackers increased transparency by displaying borrowers’ IDR qualifying payment counts and estimated time to forgiveness. Before implementation, my work presented to the Office of Federal Student Aid and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau documented strong demand for these low‑cost, transparent tools, and the trackers represented a rare, direct response to borrowers’ needs.

    Unfortunately, the trackers were removed in April 2025 by the Trump administration. Despite earlier assurances from the secretary of education that they would be reinstated, there appears to be no plan to restore them —another clear sign that this administration has been an unreliable partner for higher education. When the government removes these tools, it allows the system to operate with less scrutiny and leaves borrowers with less clarity—an outcome that appears deliberate.

    Visual trackers do more than improve transparency and accountability— they reduce borrowers’ distress and uncertainty. In surveys and in‑depth interviews, borrowers consistently describe how opaque rules, shifting plans and unclear progress toward forgiveness produce chronic financial and psychological strain. The stakes are high. In my survey work, roughly 19 percent of borrowers reported suicidal ideation, nearly four times the national adult rate of 5.3 percent—underscoring how financial distress and repayment uncertainty becomes a public health issue.

    Most IDR borrowers also faced negative amortization, so balances would grow over 10 to 25 years and the pressure compounds rather than eases. By contrast, as borrowers near forgiveness, their distress typically falls. Credible, predictable, time‑bound milestones represented on visual trackers are likely to meaningfully reduce financial and psychological strain and help people navigate a confusing, often changing system.

    Simply stated: Removing the trackers was not only an administrative choice to obfuscate oversight—it also likely heightened borrower uncertainty and eliminated a source of psychological relief, which has a wide range of individualized and societal spillover effects.

    Restoring the trackers requires urgent, nonpartisan action: It is an evidence‑based, low‑cost and low-touch step to restore transparency, hold the government and loan servicers accountable, and reduce borrower uncertainty, which has become a public health concern. Trackers provide predictable milestones, ease financial and psychological strain, and create a clear audit trail borrowers can use to verify their progress and trust the system.

    Reinstating trackers would immediately reduce anxiety for millions, improve borrower decision‑making and restore a simple, effective mechanism for transparency and accountability that tangibly improves well‑being. Removing the visual trackers and refusing to reinstate them is simply indefensible: It corrodes public trust and amounts to willful neglect of borrowers’ financial and mental well‑being.

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  • U of North Texas Cancels Exhibit With Anti-ICE Art

    U of North Texas Cancels Exhibit With Anti-ICE Art

    One piece features a paleta cart with the message “I.C.E. SCREAM.”

    The University of North Texas College of Visual Arts and Design removed an art exhibit that includes anti-ICE artwork, the artist told The Denton Record-Chronicle. 

    The exhibit, Ni De Aquí Ni De Allá (“Not From Here, Not From There”), by Brooklyn-based artist Victor Quiñonez, was scheduled to open officially on Feb. 19. The works explore Quiñonez’s Mexican and Mexican American identity and his experiences as an undocumented person in East Dallas, The Dallas Observer reported. Several pieces in the exhibit, which was originally organized by Boston University, appear to criticize United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement. One features a Popsicle cart with the message “I.C.E. SCREAM”; another shows a faux official seal with an eagle and a masked face that reads “U.S. Department of Stolen Land Security.” Below, it offers an alternative interpretation of the ICE acronym: “Inhumane and Cruelty Enforcement.”

    “The agreement with Boston University for this exhibition was terminated, and UNT has informed Boston University and Mr. Quinonez,” a UNT spokesperson told the Record-Chronicle in an email. The spokesperson did not say why the exhibit was canceled. 

    UNT officials told Quiñonez the exhibit was canceled via an email signed with only a first name.

    “I am writing to let you know that the university has terminated the art loan agreement with Boston University Art Galleries for ‘Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá,’” said the email, which Quiñonez shared with the Record-Chronicle. “The university is making arrangements to return the exhibit to Boston University. Any activities associated with the exhibition are no longer necessary. However, please let us know if you have incurred travel expenses related to the exhibition for reimbursement.”

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  • Can We Please Stop Calling Them “Elite” Colleges? (column)

    Can We Please Stop Calling Them “Elite” Colleges? (column)

    I often feel like the skunk at a garden party.

    That’s not uncommon for journalists: Our job frequently requires us to ask hard questions and to say what others might be too polite to say (out loud, at least). I can’t blame it all on my vocation, though; I’m that way by nature, and this old dog isn’t changing.

    Several times in the last couple years I’ve found myself at gatherings of college leaders that included representatives of highly selective, wealthy institutions. Without fail, during discussion of some higher education issue or another, one or more of them will refer to their own institution as “elite.”

    That’s a record-scratch moment for me. Sometimes I can let it go, but at a Washington gathering hosted by an Ivy League university not too long ago, I couldn’t help myself. I had kept quiet for a few hours, but I couldn’t contain myself as participants (from what my colleague Rachel Toor calls “fancy-pants schools”) kept referring to themselves as “elite” while bemoaning why their relationship with the federal government had soured.

    I started (rather obnoxiously, I’ll admit) by reading a definition of the word: “a select group that is superior in terms of ability or qualities to the rest of a group or society.” I suggested, (dis)respectfully, that if we had some clear definition of “superior” that everybody could agree on, it might be reasonable to refer to the Yales and Amhersts and UVAs of the world that way.

    But I’d posit that in higher education, there is no clear definition of “superior” or any other synonym of elite. Some colleges and universities are often perceived as the best because they’ve been around the longest, or because U.S. News and other rankers, with methodologies that usually favor wealth and selectivity and research output, have deemed them so. Or because my colleagues in the national media focus on them obsessionally at the expense of thousands of other institutions.

    (As I wrote recently, I’m totally up for a rigorous discussion about how we might go about defining “best” or most valuable—those that do the most to help their students reach their educational goals they’ve set, say, or whose learners learn or develop the most during their time at the institution. Anyone interested?)

    When we call a set of colleges and universities “elite”—and when people at those institutions refer to themselves that way—what are we really communicating?

    Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries define “elite” as “belonging to a group of people in society that is small in number but powerful and with a lot of influence, because they are rich, intelligent, etc.”

    And Thesaurus.com’s top synonyms for the word are “exclusive” and “silk-stocking.”

    Now we’re getting somewhere.

    There is nothing inherently wrong with exclusivity or with being influential, and goodness knows that the dozens of highly selective, usually wealthy, most visible and powerful colleges and universities that journalists and pundits frequently refer to as “elite” contribute enormously to our society. They generally do well by and for the students fortunate enough to get admitted, they produce important research and knowledge, they prepare leaders, and they deliver hefty economic benefits to society and their students. (I, it’s important to acknowledge, am one such individual beneficiary.)

    And it feels a little unfair to be kicking them while they’re on the defensive, which they are more than ever in the 40 years I’ve paid close attention to higher education.

    But as the name of this column indicates, I’m raising this issue out of (tough) love. Yes, these institutions contribute enormously, but several aspects of how they operate have helped put them in their currently difficult spot (which has been made much worse by a Trump administration that is punishing these institutions for its own political, class-warfare reasons).

    Among the reasons why the most highly selective private and public colleges and universities (appropriately) find themselves under scrutiny:

    • Their benefits disproportionately accrue to the already privileged. Yes, most of them have made recruiting lower-income, first-generation and minority students a higher priority in the last 10 to 15 years than they had previously, and they (with help from organizations like the American Talent Initiative) deserve credit for doing so.

    But the 2017 publication of the so-called Chetty data (more formally known as Opportunity Insights’ social mobility index), which reinforced years of work by the Pell Institute and others, showed that many of higher education’s best known institutions reinforce rather than combat a social order than advantages the wealthy and the white. While the Chetty study has been unreplicable, this recent graphic from James Murphy (focused on representation of low-income learners) speaks volumes.

    While this is most problematic at selective private colleges, many public flagship universities have also been moving in the wrong direction on the accessibility front, as they chase wealthier out-of-state learners over working-class and transfer students from their own backyards.

    • They often aren’t good citizens of higher education broadly. There are plenty of examples of wealthy institutions behaving in service of their less fortunate counterparts: Ivy League institutions like Brown, Princeton and Harvard have worked with historically Black universities, and Stanford’s Community College Outreach Program and Ed Equity Lab do great work with needy institutions and students, to name a few. And many creations of wealthy and selective universities have benefited the rest of higher education (and the world), like the internet.

    But pursuing their own agendas, as they can reasonably be expected to do, often comes at the expense of the rest of higher education. Using their wealth advantage to eliminate loans for low-income students obviously helps those students fortunate enough to get one of their precious slots, but it also ratchets up the national financial aid competition in ways that are bad for other institutions. And right now, flagship universities around the country—seeing their international enrollments threatened—are increasingly picking off talented (and full-tuition-paying) domestic students from their regional public university peers.

    Self-interest trumps good citizenship in other ways, too. Most highly selective and wealthy institutions are grudging participants, at best, in national associations of colleges, and they’ve bristled at accreditation, often arguing that they should be treated differently from other institutions.

    As an old guy, I hold some historical grudges, particularly against the institutions that helped shape me. In one particularly galling moment from the Obama administration’s review of accreditation in 2011, a Princeton lobbyist, channeling then-president Shirley Tilghman, argued to a federal accreditation panel that institutions can learn best from those “with the same backgrounds and the same experiences in higher education.” (Princeton was upset that its accreditor, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, had dared to ask the university to prove that its undergraduate thesis requirement benefited its learners.)

    Tilghman suggested that it made no sense for Princeton and its neighbor Mercer County Community College to be judged by the same accreditor. “It is a very fine community college,” Tilghman wrote. “It serves the student population it serves exceedingly well. But I have nothing in common with Mercer County Community College … There is so little that we have to say to each other, other than that we reside within the same county.”

    The nation’s most powerful institutions have sometimes stood idly by when other colleges and universities have been under attack. Most said and did little to nothing when Ron DeSantis and other Southern governors targeted their states’ public universities with attacks on diversity, tenure and governance in the early part of this decade.

    Of course, the critics eventually came for the Ivies and the other wealthy and most selective colleges and universities, and they’ve arguably been left with far fewer friends and defenders because of their arrogance and selfishness.

    These institutions have disproportionate visibility and significance and power, and we all need them to thrive. They will be fine—beyond fine—but they have serious work to do to regain public confidence and trust.

    One place to start would be to stop viewing themselves as superior to their peers and to more fully engage as parts of a larger ecosystem that benefits them as much as it does the community colleges and regional public and private colleges that successfully educate a far greater proportion of Americans than the “elite colleges” do.

    Can we please stop using that term?

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  • Beyond the thesis: how PhD training is changing — and where it still needs to improve

    Beyond the thesis: how PhD training is changing — and where it still needs to improve

    This blog was kindly authored by Charlotte Fawcett, PhD Student in Genomic Epidemiology and Public Health Genomics at the University of Leicester and current HEPI Intern.

    Over the last couple of decades, doing a PhD has significantly changed. While the core idea is still the same – carrying out original research under supervision – the experience of being a PhD student now looks very different from 20 years ago. One of the biggest shifts has been the growing emphasis on training alongside research.

    There are a few reasons for this change. Firstly, there are simply more PhD students than ever before. As doctoral education has expanded, universities and funders have felt a stronger need to define what a PhD should include and what support students should receive. Training has become a key component of that conversation.

    Secondly, there is now widespread recognition that most PhD graduates will not stay in academia. Many go on to careers in industry, policy, communications, education, or entirely different sectors. This has brought transferable skills – such as communication, project management, collaboration and problem solving – to the forefront. A PhD is no longer seen as preparation for a single career path, but as training for a wide range of futures.

    Against this backdrop, a survey of 35 Wellcome Trust-funded PhD students and 10 PhD programme administrators, explored how PhD students experience training and where gaps might exist. While the study was limited in size, it offers a useful snapshot of how students and programme staff think about PhD training today.

    What kinds of training were studied?

    The survey looked at eight broad areas of training commonly offered to PhD students:

    • Professional development, such as writing or presentation workshops.
    • Wellbeing and support, including mental health resources.
    • Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) training.
    • Engagement and outreach, including science communication.
    • Personal development and management, including time management and research integrity.
    • Career development.
    • Cohort-specific training, designed to bring students together.
    • Technical training, which includes learning specialist software or lab techniques.

    The role of programme administrators

    When surveyed, administrators painted a picture of training as highly variable. While some areas – like technical, professional development, and wellbeing training – sometimes used external providers, most training was delivered in-house. Formats ranged from workshops and seminars to online modules and partnerships with other organisations.

    Even though all PhD students surveyed were on programmes funded by the same organisation, the type, timing and consistency of training differed widely. This lack of standardisation means that two students on similar programmes could have very different training experiences.

    The strengths

    Overall, students said that training was both useful and important. Two areas stood out clearly: technical training and cohort-specific training. Almost all students agreed that technical training was valuable, regardless of their year of study. This makes sense – learning the tools and techniques needed for research is essential to making progress and building confidence. Cohort-specific training refers to training where Wellcome-Trust funded PhD students are trained together, at the same university, at the same time, using a training programme designed to meet to meet the requirements of PhD projects under a shared theme. This helps to strengthen the bonds between members of the cohort for peer support.

    When students were asked to rank training by helpfulness, technical training came out on top, followed closely by professional development. In contrast, EDI training and wellbeing training were more often ranked near the bottom.

    That does not necessarily mean students think these areas are unimportant. Instead, it may reflect how training is currently delivered. Some students may feel that wellbeing or inclusion support would be more effective if offered in different ways – for example, through access to counselling or clearer signposting to support services, rather than formal training sessions.

    Encouragingly, most students felt positive about the bigger picture. Nearly 90 per cent believed their training would help them become good researchers, and three-quarters felt it would prepare them for careers outside academia.

    The gaps

    Despite these positives, students consistently highlighted areas where they wanted more support, including project management and personal development. Many PhD students find themselves juggling experiments, deadlines, teaching, and life outside research, often with little formal guidance on how to manage it all.

    When invited to suggest future training topics, students mentioned careers advice, ethics, finances, grant writing, professional skills, and – once again – project management. These are practical concerns that directly affect day-to-day PhD life and long-term career prospects.

    What can we learn from this?

    The study had a small sample size and was limited by not having a pilot study. It captures only a narrow slice of PhD experiences, and more research – including the perspectives of supervisors – would help build a fuller picture. It also focuses on PhD students in the life sciences and it is unclear how these findings may translate to other fields of study.

    That said, the findings point to some sensible recommendations including:

    • Continue investing in high-quality technical training. Technical training is ranked the most highly rated training type and is important to student’s specific research.
    • Rethink how wellbeing support is provided. Wellbeing support such as mental health resources were often ranked the least helpful of the eight categories, whilst being an area that students felt ill-equipped to manage, suggesting that a re-consideration of wellbeing support is required.
    • Expand training in project management and personal development. Project management is an area highlighted where students wanted both more support and further training.
    • Consider standardising core training across programmes. Surveying both students and programme administrators showed significant variation across different programmes, which influences students perceptions of training.

    Taken together, these steps could help ensure that PhD training better reflects the realities of modern doctoral study – supporting students not just as researchers, but as people preparing for diverse and meaningful careers.

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  • Teachers facing more problems with disruptive students

    Teachers facing more problems with disruptive students

    by Jackie Mader, The Hechinger Report
    February 17, 2026

    SAN MATEO, Calif. — School had been in session at Lead Elementary for less than an hour, but already Andrea Quinn had paused teaching her first graders nearly 20 times.

    First, there was the child who had zipped his entire face inside the hood of his green sweatshirt.

    “Is that a good choice?” Quinn asked.

    “Yeah?” responded a muffled voice.

    Then, there was the girl in pink leggings who stood up from her seat, wandered over to Quinn as she was teaching and stood next to her at the front of the room.

    “Can you go sit in your spot?” Quinn whispered. The girl stayed put.

    A few minutes later, there was the boy spinning around uncontrollably from his corner of the carpet in the front of the room, kicking students near him with his black and white sneakers.

    “Your feet are not safe,” Quinn told him. He stopped and sat on his knees, bouncing up and down as Quinn continued her lesson. 

    Teaching first grade has always involved dealing with wiggly and talkative kids. But it hasn’t always been quite like this. Over the past 10 years, Quinn has seen an increase in challenging behavior and more emotions among her 6- and 7-year-olds, with a particular ramp-up since the pandemic. 

    Elementary teachers nationwide say they’re seeing the same trend: worsening — and increasingly severe — behavior problems in young children. Students are more disruptive. They sometimes lash out physically at classmates and teachers. They’re more defiant. It’s pushing many teachers and schools to try new methods to bring classrooms under control, with districts and states sharply divided over the right approach.

    Related: Young children have unique needs, and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks the issues. 

    While policymakers have been focused on stalled academic progress and math and reading interventions, far less attention has been paid to understanding why students are displaying more challenging behavior and supporting and training teachers as they try to manage it. Federal data shows educators want help: The percentage of elementary schools where educators say they need more training on classroom management increased from 51 percent in May 2022 to 65 percent last year.

    Even though these children were toddlers, infants or not even born when the pandemic began, experts say that the disruption has had long-lasting repercussions. In 2021, researchers at Brown University found that toddlers who were born during the pandemic had significantly lower verbal, motor and overall cognitive performance compared to toddlers born in the previous decade. Those “pandemic babies” would now be around 6 years old and in first grade.  

    In a 2025 survey, 76 percent of elementary school leaders said they “agree” or “strongly agree” that the pandemic has continued to negatively affect the behavioral development of students.

    Many young children missed out on preschool and other social experiences during the pandemic that could have helped prepare them for school. A study published last year showed that children whose early childhood education was highly disrupted by the pandemic suffered from more emotional problems and lower reading skills compared to students who were in more stable programs.

    These children are also entering into challenging environments. Over the past two decades, schools have started requiring even the youngest children to focus on more challenging academic tasks. At the same time, children are getting less time for recess even though recess is proven to improve behavior and learning. Children are also on screens now more than ever, which is believed to contribute to more anxiety, depression, aggression and hyperactivity. 

    “A lot of things have changed since the pandemic,” said Wendy Reinke, co-director of the Missouri Prevention Science Institute, a research group, and a professor of school psychology at the University of Missouri. Those years “really disrupted a lot of children’s social-emotional development and routines, and the profession of teaching is not as sought after as it used to be. There are a lot of staffing shortages and there’s a lot of mental health indicators going on,” she added. “I think teachers are seeing that and feel undertrained to deal with some of those things.”

    Dealing with disruptive kids makes it harder to teach and harder for kids to learn, whether they are the ones with the behavioral challenges or the ones watching it all unfold in their classroom. 

    “There has been — in research for decades — very clear, established connections between kids’ academic skills and kids’ behavioral skills,” said Brandi Simonsen, a professor of special education at the University of Connecticut and co-director of the university’s Center for Behavioral Education and Research. A child may act up in class to avoid lessons that are too hard for them or get kicked out of class because of their behavior and then miss academic time.

    “Then you get into this vicious cycle where both skills are struggling,” Simonsen added.

    Related: Preventing suspensions: Tackle discipline problems with empathy first

    Quinn, who has taught at the same Northern California school for 21 years, says child misbehavior was relatively minimal during the first decade of her career: kids who couldn’t sit still or who would blurt things out when she was speaking. 

    In the years leading up to 2020, she started to notice students weren’t as independent and struggled more to manage their emotions, get started on assignments and ask for help when they didn’t know what to do. Then the pandemic hit, and as kids navigated tough situations at home, isolation, more screen time and school closures, misbehavior got worse. 

    “They’re just so much more physical,” she said. “We’re struggling with kids being able to talk to each other and talk to adults in a respectful manner, and say, ‘I need a new pencil. That’s why I’m angry,’” she added. “It’s a lack of understanding how to interact with others.”

    Educators are overhauling their classroom management approach to cut down on the chaos.

    In New Jersey, kindergarten teacher Tahnaira Clark said she has seen more challenging behaviors with her current class of “Covid babies” than previous student cohorts. Her students have more trouble controlling their bodies and expressing their feelings. They also spend more time on phones and tablets outside of school, which she believes has contributed to noticeably shorter attention spans. “Getting them to sit on the carpet for a long book can be challenging,” she said. 

    Clark spent six weeks at the beginning of this school year setting up and practicing classroom routines and procedures with her students. She was as explicit as possible about her expectations. “I’m explaining everything from how you throw your trash in the trash can to how you hold your pencil,” Clark said. She rewards good behavior in her young students with a sticker. 

    Kindergarten teacher Cristina Lignore, who teaches in New York City, said, “There’s a lot of interruptions. And a lot of times when I have to pause and address behaviors over and over again, that can interfere with students who are 100 percent ready to learn.” 

    From 2022 until 2025, Lignore says she benefited from a behavior coach sent from the Child Mind Institute, a nonprofit focused on child mental health. Her coach observed her frequently and gave feedback on classroom management, something she felt she didn’t learn much about even after getting her master’s degree in education. 

    The coach also pulled small groups of challenging students out of Lignore’s class to teach them social and emotional skills and helped Lignore make and consistently use behavior charts with her students. She still uses many of the strategies she learned, though she tweaks them based on the needs of students in her class. 

    “It’s hard teaching a class, especially by yourself when you don’t have an aide or assistant, trying to balance behaviors and trying to teach,” Lignore said. “You have to find what works for you and make it your own.”

    Related: Five tips to help manage behavior in young children 

    Across the country, schools are divided in how to handle these problems. Some are backing away from exclusionary discipline like suspensions and expulsions and have embraced schoolwide approaches that reward positive behavior and provide social skills practice through games and role-playing. Others are opting for restorative practices, which emphasize group conversations where students share feelings and perspectives to build community and resolve conflict.

    In Texas, the International Leadership of Texas charter school network hired more behavior coaches and specialists to support teachers after seeing an increase in “pretty severe behavior issues” post-pandemic, said Laura Carrasco, assistant superintendent of the network. Each K-8 school in the network now has three counselors, each of whom focus on specific grade levels. 

    “They help remove some of the barriers that prohibit kids from learning, or in some cases, their peers,” Carrasco said. The team also offers more support for teachers: If they are struggling with a student, they can call their school’s administrative team and a counselor will be in their classroom within 90 seconds.

    Research has found restorative practices can improve student behavior and academic performance. Still, these schoolwide systems are not always rolled out correctly or get all teachers to buy in, which can affect their success. 

    Some states are taking a different approach to student misbehavior, saying that the answer is to bring in more consequences and give teachers more power to punish disruptive students. 

    For example, a West Virginia law passed in early 2025 gives teachers more power to exclude disruptive students from their classrooms. The law also creates a discipline process for preschool and elementary students where there was none before. Young children who are violent must go through a behavioral intervention program and can be removed from the classroom if they don’t make adequate progress. 

    President Donald Trump has also called for a return to what he called “common sense discipline policies” in an April executive order. The directive repealed federal guidance that schools work to avoid racial disparities in school punishments.

    Related: Teachers offer their wisdom on how to stay sane dealing with your kids’ crazy behavior

    As behavior challenges persist, educators say teacher preparation programs could better prepare new teachers. Only 27 percent of teacher preparation programs surveyed by the National Council on Teacher Quality in 2020 mandate that aspiring teachers practice the effective management skill of reinforcing positive behavior before they graduate. Only 53 percent of programs require aspiring teachers to practice addressing serious misbehavior. Difficulty managing student behavior is frequently cited as one of the main reasons why teachers quit. 

    Some teacher preparation programs are trying to evolve to meet the need. At Relay Graduate School of Education, a nonprofit, independent institution of higher education that offers teacher and administrator preparation programs and professional development, Challa Flemming, the assistant dean of clinical experience, said the program has added a focus on trauma-informed teaching practices and restorative practices over the past few years. They now teach aspiring educators strategies like having a “calm down corner,” where students can go when they are having big emotions, and a system to check in with each student daily to see how they’re doing.

    “Behavior has meaning,” said Flemming. “If we can reposition ourselves to be curious about why students are doing what they’re doing, and help them move through that, then we can end up in a much stronger place in terms of classroom culture.”

    Quinn has cycled through various management techniques over the past two decades. She no longer relies on popular strategies like offering treasure chest prizes for good behavior or a “clip chart,” where clothespins with student names are moved up and down a chart based on how good or bad their behavior is. Not only were they ineffective, Quinn said, the public shaming made behavior worse. 

    Now, she focuses on affirming positive behavior, hoping students will want to then emulate it. She tries to assume there’s a reason behind students acting out. It’s an immensely challenging, exhausting job that on some days feels impossible to do alone. “I’m just one person,” Quinn said. “My real purpose is to teach them content. … I’m not trained in psychology. I’m not trained in social work,” she added. 

    Simonsen, from the University of Connecticut, said there’s a need to provide more education on research-backed strategies that can support teachers and improve behavior at school, like teaching social skills and improving school environments, so they’re not going it alone. 

    “We know a lot about the science of behavior,” she said. “It’s never talked about as much as it should be. To me, it all starts with this.”

    Contact staff writer Jackie Mader at 212-678-3562or [email protected].

    This story about disruptive students was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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  • The new TEF must not take a one-size-fits-all approach to specialist institutions

    The new TEF must not take a one-size-fits-all approach to specialist institutions

    The UK is home to an amazing collection of world-leading specialist institutions, leading the fields in areas as diverse as the arts, health, business, engineering, and science. Yet UK higher education policy routinely misunderstands or overlooks the needs of these institutions despite their impact and role in revolutionising their fields.

    The proposal to extend Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) participation requirements to more small specialist providers, and to bring postgraduate-only institutions into TEF for the first time, is a prime example of this. Policy is still too often designed around large, comprehensive universities.

    These specialist institutions are deeply invested in the student experience, often with intensive teaching models, highly-specialised equipment and spaces, and tailored support reflecting the professional demands of specific industries. They share the mission of providing high quality education and student support that actively benefits both graduates and the UK economy.

    However, rather than developing meaningful measures of quality for a diverse sector, the current proposals on TEF expansion appear to assume a predominantly undergraduate and comprehensive university context, embedding expectations around scale, data, and process that do not translate easily to postgraduate-only or specialist provision. The impact of this approach on providers who have not previously been part of TEF – whether through size or through being postgraduate-only – creates structural disadvantages in addition to short-term adjustment issues.

    Misalignment

    If an institution hasn’t participated in TEF before, its work around student experience and outcomes – no matter how high quality – will not be aligned with the data and processes required by the new framework. Smaller specialists have no economies of scale and run with no slack. Participating in TEF will mean adding the costs of new staff, or at the very least additional pressures on already stretched small teams.

    The risk, however, is not just administrative burden, but distortion of teaching-intensive, specialist pedagogies. To create a TEF model that is capable of recognising fundamentally different educational designs, particularly those built around intensive, specialist, and professionally-embedded teaching, the Office for Students (OfS) will need both time and a wide range of inputs. Representatives of specialist institutions joining the new OfS provider panel is welcome, but with many experts already involved in REF 2029, the breadth of specialist advisers and assessors needed will be in short supply, or only available if they have left academia.

    Postgraduate-only institutions face additional pressures. The proposal to link the TEF and access and participation plans (APPs) overlooks the fact that APPs are currently primarily designed for undergraduate institutions. For postgraduate-dominated institutions with highly international cohorts, outcomes data must also reflect global graduate destinations, as UK-centric employment measures risk under-representing success in internationally competitive creative and professional labour markets.

    The upshot

    All of this matters. First, the current TEF proposals suggest using results to determine funding, particularly world-leading specialist funding, which is critical to specialists who face high costs of teaching delivery. Second, the UK’s specialist institutions are prominent parts of a highly competitive global academic environment. Poor student experience rankings due to an inappropriately calibrated system would harm student recruitment at home and internationally with serious financial and reputational consequences.

    The Royal College of Art and many other specialist institutions are ready to engage with the OfS, and welcome the chance to help develop a TEF process that is informed by detailed understanding, that respects nuance, and that is fair and proportionate for smaller institutions.

    However, we need to be mindful of the additional pressures that even this level of engagement will create in lean institutions. Consideration should be given to funding streams to support small specialists – in particular with pilots or with releasing much-needed expert staff to act as assessors and advisers.

    Timing is also critical. Institutions new to the TEF need sufficiently early sight of benchmarks to enable planning within very tight resource envelopes. Achieving a fair and considered set of measures and a proportionate implementation approach feels challenging given the stated aim of all providers being assessed by autumn 2030. The postgraduate aspect of the new TEF proposals in particular is light on detail about how this will work for the full range of higher education institutions.

    Accepting that evaluation of the changes will continue on to at least 2035, and that the first assessments of these new institutions will generate unexpected challenges in practice, it would be high risk to link results to funding in this first phase. The ask here is not to avoid scrutiny, but to ensure that TEF enacts a basic principle of regulatory fairness: institutions entering a framework for the first time should not face financial consequences before the system has been tested, evaluated, and refined in practice. First-time institutions should also be supported through additional feedback and discussions to ensure they can learn and improve for their next assessment.

    Many of the world’s leading subject-specialist institutions are based in the UK. They are highly ranked and globally sought after. The Royal College of Art, for example, has topped the art and design world subject rankings for 11 consecutive years now, and we know that providing an outstanding education to our students is essential to our world-leading position. I welcome the opportunity to develop an assessment system that accurately captures what makes the RCA and other specialist institutions successful, and that also supports us in further strengthening our teaching provision and graduate outcomes.

    But for that system to work, it is essential to avoid a one-size-fits-all approach.

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  • Only a Fraction of Programs Expected to Qualify – The 74

    Only a Fraction of Programs Expected to Qualify – The 74


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    Students across the country will soon be able to receive Workforce Pell Grants to use toward tuition and fees for certain short-term workforce training programs.

    Established by the federal budget reconciliation bill in 2025, Workforce Pell Grants expand traditional Pell Grant eligibility to programs that are between 8-15 weeks, lead to a high-skill, high-wage, or in-demand job, result in a recognized postsecondary credential, and articulate credit into a certificate or degree program, among other requirements.

    In December, the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) held a negotiated rulemaking process to develop new rules for Workforce Pell Grants. In one week, negotiators reached an agreement on draft regulations, which will be used as the basis of DOE’s forthcoming consensus rule. That consensus rule will be open to public comment before a final rule is published.

    In the meantime, states are working to identify potentially eligible programs ahead of Workforce Pell’s anticipated launch on July 1, 2026. States play a critical role in implementing Workforce Pell — under the law and proposed regulations, governors must approve any eligible program before a federal approval process takes place.

    However, during a Feb. 11 meeting of the Governor’s Council on Workforce and Apprenticeships, Jeff Cox, president of the N.C. Community College System, expressed caution about the number of programs that may ultimately qualify for Workforce Pell in the state due to the program’s federally-established eligibility criteria. Eligible programs must demonstrate a 70% completion rate, a 70% job placement rate within 180 days, and a positive return on investment, demonstrated through a value-added earnings requirement.

    “Just out of these initial screens — the number of hours and then the job placement and the completion rates — I think only about 4% or so of our overall short-term credential programs are going to qualify,” Cox said.

    The status of Workforce Pell in North Carolina

    During its February meeting, the council heard an update on the status of Workforce Pell Grant implementation in North Carolina from Andrea DeSantis, assistant secretary for workforce solutions at the N.C. Department of Commerce.

    DeSantis opened with an overview of Workforce Pell Grants, highlighting that they provide a new opportunity to quickly move students into the workforce through short-term training programs, but that eligible programs must meet high standards.

    “This is really a huge departure from the way that federal funding happens right now and the accountability measures for institutions,” DeSantis said.

    Screenshot of a slide presented to the Governor’s Council on Workforce and Apprenticeships.

    DeSantis then outlined the federal timeline for Workforce Pell, noting that she participated as an alternate negotiator during DOE’ negotiated rulemaking process in December. DOE’s goal is to have a final rule by the spring, and according to statute, the program should launch on July 1.

    “That timeline is going to move quick, and that means us as states, we have to move quickly too,” DeSantis said. “What will that mean in July? While we have not heard official dates from the Department of Ed, it means that the Department of Ed intends to be able to start reviewing applications from institutions that have programs that were approved at the state level.”

    Screenshot of a slide presented to the Governor’s Council on Workforce and Apprenticeships.

    As states consider potentially eligible programs, DeSantis said that it is not the federal government’s expectation that all short-term training programs will be eligible for Workforce Pell. Instead, she said, “states should take this as an opportunity to say, ‘What are the needs in communities, and what programs are really essential for us to improve and fund?’”

    DeSantis then provided an update on where North Carolina stands in Workforce Pell implementation. Since November 2025, staff from the Governor’s Office, Department of Commerce, and higher education agencies have worked with Education Strategy Group, a national consulting firm, to develop the state’s Workforce Pell approach.

    This includes:

    • Defining what a high-wage, high-skill, or in-demand job is: DeSantis said these definitions will build off assets from the Labor & Economic Analysis Division (LEAD) within the N.C. Department of Commerce. To define in-demand jobs, DeSantis said LEAD has pulled a list of occupations that are in-demand at both the state and local levels. She added that high-skill jobs are those that require a license or additional postsecondary credential, and that no definition has been determined yet for what qualifies as a high-wage job. Importantly, to be eligible for Workforce Pell, a program must lead to a job that meets at least one of these three criteria. For example, a job that is in-demand but low-wage could still be eligible.
    • Defining stackability and portability: These are two additional federal requirements for Workforce Pell — programs must result in a recognized credential, and they must articulate credit into a related certificate or degree program.
    • Developing an application process: DeSantis said the group will also develop an application process that accounts for the data that a program must report and the high standards it must meet to qualify for Workforce Pell. “How do we leverage existing assets within the Department of Commerce and our eligible training provider list as a potential pathway for institutions to apply?” DeSantis said.
    • Determining how Workforce Pell can be leveraged for apprenticeships: DeSantis said that Workforce Pell can be used to cover portions of the cost of related instruction for a Reegistered Apprenticeship Program, which is a component of the policy the group is working on.

    In April, the state hopes to have a draft policy and application for Workforce Pell that would be available for public comment. On May 13, the NCWorks Commission, the state’s workforce development board, would review the policy and application.

    “Assuming that the federal level has put out their final guidance, we would then plan to have an application available sometime in late May,” said DeSantis. “This would give us enough time to approve initial applications before the July deadline.”

    Screenshot of a slide presented to the Governor’s Council on Workforce and Apprenticeships.

    DeSantis also noted that the N.C. Community College System (NCCCS) has already published an initial list of potentially eligible programs, which is part of the system’s Workforce Pell toolkit. This list includes short-term workforce courses and credentials that meet the time limits required by Workforce Pell — but not all of those programs will necessarily meet the grant’s additional eligibility requirements.

    “Institutions have received individualized data to see, ‘OK, which programs do we offer at our own institutions — not just across the state — that we think could be eligible for Workforce Pell,’ based on the hour requirements, as well as that completion and job placement data, which is going to be really important,” said DeSantis.

    Although all Workforce Pell programs must have existed in their current format for at least one year, DeSantis said this is an opportunity for community colleges to have conversations with employers and consider what new programs or adjustments to current programs may be needed to meet workforce needs in the coming years.

    “This is expected to be a slow start,” DeSantis said of Workforce Pell’s launch. “This is not intended to approve every program, but to really be about intentional design at the state and local level.”

    Cox echoed that sentiment, saying he is “a little bit underwhelmed” by the number of programs that may qualify for Workforce Pell.

    “I’m excited about it, but I also want to inject a little bit of caution around the level of impact we’re going to have right out of the gate,” he said.

    Updates on the council’s work

    In addition to hearing this update on Workforce Pell, the council also reflected on its work in 2025 and discussed other key efforts that will help advance its goals.

    In June 2025, the council released a report outlining the state’s goals for workforce development, which are separated into four objectives: increasing attainment, expanding work-based education, focusing on key sectors, and highlighting workforce programs through a public outreach campaign. In December, the council released a second report that outlines 30 strategies to advance those goals.

    Then, in January, the council’s co-chairs joined Gov. Josh Stein at an event to announce the state’s ranking as first for workforce development by Site Selection Magazine.

    “We now stand at a pivotal moment where strategy development is transitioning into action,” said N.C. Secretary of Commerce Lee Lilley, who is also a council co-chair, at the February meeting. “As we move forward today, our focus shifts toward implementation, accountability, and metrics, translating these strategies into meaningful outcomes for North Carolina’s workforce.”

    The council heard a short presentation on how the NCWorks Commission relates to the work of the council.

    Annie Izod, executive director of the NCWorks Commission, shared that as of February, the council and NCWorks Commission had aligned each entities’ four committees. In December 2026, the council committees will sunset, and the NCWorks Commission will continue to monitor progress toward the state’s workforce development goals.

    Screenshot from the Governor’s Council on Workforce and Apprenticeships showing a timeline for the council’s work.
    Screenshots from the Governor’s Council on Workforce and Apprenticeships showing how the council and the NCWorks Commission committees are aligned.

    New funding for youth apprenticeships

    On Feb. 10, Stein announced that he is directing discretionary funds allotted through the federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) to NC Career Launch to expand youth apprenticeships.

    According to a press release, NC Career Launch “helps businesses develop registered apprenticeship programs for students beginning in grades 11 and 12 in high-demand sectors like child care, health care, skilled trades, and advanced manufacturing.”

    This investment is connected to one of the council’s workforce development goals: to double the number of apprentices in the state, including both registered apprenticeships and apprenticeships. According to ApprenticeshipNC, youth apprenticeships can begin as early as 16 and are available in more than 1,200 occupations.

    During the council’s February meeting, Kindl Detar, policy adviser to Stein, said youth apprenticeships allow employers to grow local talent early before students may drop out of the postsecondary pipeline, and they allow students to earn and learn with pathways to career opportunities in their local communities.

    According to Detar, the first year of the investment will focus on expanding existing youth apprenticeship programs that have wait lists and on expanding youth apprenticeships in the western part of the state as it continues to recover from Hurricane Helene.

    “We know that making these apprenticeships work will require engagement from our employers,” said Detar. “In his announcement yesterday, the governor had a special call-out to employers to think about how these models of youth apprenticeships … can be beneficial to them, to not only provide opportunity, but to create that local workforce that they need.”

    NCCareers.org sees record number of users

    First launched in July 2020, NCCareers.org is the state’s career information system. It aggregates key information on jobs, wages, and pathways, providing career exploration tools to help North Carolinians on their education-to-workforce journey.

    During the council’s meeting, Jamie Vaughn, senior analyst for market intelligence at the North Carolina Department of Commerce, shared that the website had 1 million users in the last 12 months — representing 95% growth from the previous year.

    The website has information on wages and demand across more than 800 occupations that can be sorted by 16 sub-state regions. According to Vaughn, more than half of school districts in the state are using the website’s resources to help meet the state requirement that all middle and high school students complete a career development plan.

    Vaughn also previewed new features that will be added to the website, including business listings of local companies that may hire employees in specific occupations, and information to help high school students better understand what CTE courses are available at their school that will lead to CTE pathways.

    Cecilia Holden, president and CEO of myFutureNC, said that one component of myfutureNC’s proposed Workforce Act of 2026 for the legislative short session is $1.5 million for NCCareers.org, which would equate to $1.50 per user based on 1 million annual users.

    For more information on NCCareers.org, see this EdExplainer.

    The council’s next meeting will be held on May 13 from 10 to 11:30 a.m.

    This article first appeared on EdNC and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.


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