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A review of higher education funding is inevitable – The Post-18 Project

But it doesn’t feel that way: it feels overwhelming, to lose nearly a tenth of your earnings to not even make a dent in your borrowing, especially as the cost of living gallops up around you. That you won’t be paying your student loans out of your pension isn’t, it turns out, much comfort.

Even the fact that this current crisis relates to only a subset of graduates (those who attended university between 2012 and 2022) doesn’t help. Partly that’s because the system in place since 2022 has its own problems, including a write-off date ten years later than other grads, but more because pointing out to the so-called “Plan 2” students that this isn’t happening to everyone just compounds their sense of unfairness. They know it isn’t happening to everyone: they are working with more senior colleagues who had exactly the same education experience but went to university 12 years (or even 12 months) earlier, and have already paid their loans off. Or at the next desk, there’s someone whose parents had the resources necessary to mean no money had to be borrowed in the first place.

Government ministers, clearly concerned that the system is too fragile to change, are defending the arrangement on its merits, but it’s a futile task. Actuarial neatness is no match for lived experience, and spreadsheets cannot rebut a widespread sense of injustice. The English higher education system, despite much criticism, really is world-leading, and it should be one in which social justice is done and is seen to be done. The student loan system now fails that second test.

The question, therefore, is not whether the system must change, but how and when. Delay carries costs. While recent debate has focused narrowly on fees and loans, the underlying fragility of university finances has not abated. Institutions are responding with short term retrenchment, eroding quality and reputation in ways that will be hard to reverse.

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February 4, 2026
New Research Highlights a Disconnect Between University Retention Strategies and Adult Learner Priorities
National study from Collegis Education and UPCEA highlights opportunity for institutions to strengthen student persistence through better alignment of strategy, systems, and support

WASHINGTON, D.C. and CHICAGO, IL – February 4, 2026 — As adult learners account for a growing share of higher education enrollment, colleges and universities face increasing pressure to sustain persistence in online programs. A new national study, “The Retention Disconnect: What Learners Need and What Institutions Miss,” released by UPCEA and Collegis Education, examines where institutional assumptions about retention diverge from learners’ lived experiences—and how realigning support strategies can improve outcomes, protect revenue, and better meet students where they are.

The study found that 48% of institutional leaders cannot confidently report their online retention rate, indicating a visibility gap that makes it harder to evaluate which approaches are most effective for learners. As institutions face enrollment pressure tied to demographic shifts and slower net-new growth, retention is increasingly viewed as a critical lever for stability. The findings underscore the need not for more activity, but for clearer insight into what actually supports persistence.

Surveying 1,015 online learners and 54 institutional leaders, the research reveals that while 75% of learners say it is “easy” to stay enrolled, nearly one in five has still considered stopping out. The gap suggests that persistence hinges less on online learner motivation and more on how effectively institutions anticipate, support, and align with students’ academic and life realities.

Left unaddressed, these misalignments carry meaningful consequences. Attrition is estimated to cost institutions millions in lost tuition revenue annually, particularly in graduate and online programs where retention is central to long-term growth.

Key Research Findings:
- Many institutions lack a consistent measurement of online retention, limiting informed decision-making.
- Learners prioritize self-service and visibility: 87% rate progress dashboards highly valuable, while institutions tend to emphasize staff-driven interventions.
- Retention risks vary significantly by life stage, reinforcing the limits of one-size-fits-all strategies
- Career advancement is the leading enrollment driver, yet learners frequently report misalignment between coursework and professional goals
- Financial pressure, work demands, and caregiving responsibilities remain the top reasons learners consider stopping out
“Retention today is less about adding more touchpoints and more about intentional design,” said Tracy A. Chapman, Chief Academic Officer at Collegis Education. “Institutions seeing progress are those that align their strategies around how learners actually move through education—creating clarity, relevance, and timely support that helps persistence scale.”

The research also found that while many institutions invest heavily in alerts and structured outreach, learners place greater value on flexibility, autonomy, and transparency. When these preferences are not reflected in institutional design, retention efforts can miss critical moments that influence whether students persist.

“Adult learners are reshaping expectations across higher education, and institutions are under increasing pressure to demonstrate outcomes,” said Emily West, Senior Market Research Analyst at UPCEA. “This research shows that improving retention isn’t about doing more—it’s about understanding professional learners better and meeting their needs.”

Implications for University Leaders

The findings highlight an opportunity for institutions to strengthen persistence by improving visibility into retention outcomes and aligning support with different learner profiles and life stages. Programs that provide clearer pathways, relevant coursework, and timely guidance are better positioned to sustain momentum. In a competitive environment, retention increasingly reflects institutional design as much as student effort.

UPCEA will host a webinar on February 11 at 1 pm EST to explore the research findings and actionable strategies. Registration details are available at: https://collegiseducation.com/insights/the-retention-disconnect-webinar/

About UPCEA

UPCEA is the online and professional education association. Our members continuously reinvent higher education, positively impacting millions of lives. We proudly lead and support them through cutting-edge research, professional development, networking and mentorship, conferences and seminars, and stakeholder advocacy. Our collaborative, entrepreneurial community brings together decision-makers and influencers in education, industry, research, and policy interested in improving educational access and outcomes. Learn more at upcea.edu.

About Collegis Education

As a mission-oriented, tech-enabled services provider, Collegis Education partners with higher education institutions to help align operations to drive transformative impact across the entire student lifecycle. With over 25 years as an industry pioneer, Collegis has proven how to leverage insights, systems, and expertise to optimize institutions’ business processes that enhance the student experience. With the strategic capabilities that rival the leading consultancies, a full suite of proven service lines, including marketing, enrollment, retention, IT, and its world-class Connected Core® platform, Collegis helps its partners enable impact and drive revenue, growth, and innovation. Learn more at CollegisEducation.com.

Media Contacts:

Collegis Education

Alyssa Miller

[email protected]

973-615-1292
Our mission is to enable impact in higher education. We help our partners achieve more, deliver superior experiences, and drive impact across the entire student lifecycle by leveraging and aligning data, technology, and talent.

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February 4, 2026
How will OfS respond in Sussex vs the Office for Students?

The University of Sussex has been commendably transparent in setting out both Facts and Grounds and a Skeleton Argument in public, with documentation available to anyone with an interest on a dedicated section of its website.

This means that, while the contours of the Sussex arguments about the Office for Student decision to fine the university £585,000 for alleged breaches of conditions of registration E1 and E2 (concerning governance and the public interest) are well understood, it has not been clear how OfS intends to counter these arguments.

I thought a summary would be helpful. To be absolutely clear – this is just a summary: I am no lawyer and am not saying anything about the quality or otherwise of arguments on either side of this hearing.

Governing documents?

Ground 1 of the University of Sussex arguments is that the “Trans and Non-binary Equality Policy Statement” (the nub of the OfS’ concerns) is not a “governing document”. While the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 (HERA) does not define what a “governing document” was at the time, OfS contends that the language it uses at paragraph 424 of the regulatory framework means that the term can be understood broadly as any document that:

describe[s] any of the provider’s objectives or values, its powers, who has a role in decision making within the provider, how the provider takes decisions about how to exercise its functions, or how it monitors their exercise

And adding a list of examples that include “the provider’s policies on matters such as […] support for freedom of speech or academic freedom.”

Regulatory guidance isn’t the same as a statutory definition, of course: the OfS argument here is that because the category in the act is broad and unlimited, and parliament intended to have the same regulation applied to all providers (of whatever form), the working definition needs to be suitably broad to cover everything that it may need to see.

Visitors

The University of Sussex argument in Ground 2 is that because the University Visitor has exclusive jurisdiction over its laws – and nothing in HERA or anything else changes this position – OfS therefore cannot have jurisdiction over university statutes and rules. As I set out elsewhere, this is potentially a very wide reaching interpretation, and the status of the University Visitor has only ever been changed in specific ways by acts of parliament (that specifically make those changes).

The OfS response relies on an interpretation of how acts of parliament interact with common law (there’s no legislation that sets out the ancient powers of the University Visitor). The OfS interpretation is that parliament intended that all higher education providers should be regulated in the same way – whether or not they have a charter and a University Visitor – so the powers it has to regulate in HERA sit alongside the visitorial jurisdiction. Otherwise, OfS simply couldn’t do what parliament intended.

Governing documents as a whole

On the face of it Ground 3A sees Sussex arguing in the opposite direction to Ground 1 – that the OfS’ did not think that enough documents constituted governing documents. The university provided an enormous bundle of documents as a part of the investigation, and former OfS Deputy Chair (and chair of the investigative committee) Martin Coleman confirms that he did “read and give full and proper consideration to all of the papers, including the underlying supporting documents”.

The concern of Sussex here is that the investigation team understood the way that the various regulations, codes of practice, policies, and other documents interacted – especially when it came to academic disciplinary processes. Again, OfS claims that it had that understanding.

Academic freedom

Ground 3C posits that OfS didn’t run the right test relating to the academic freedom public interest guiding principle (PIGP) – which should have asked whether the policy in question put academics “in jeopardy of losing their jobs and privileges” at the provider. Because Sussex has a statute (VII.6) that sets out guiding principles on academic freedom – that protects against “adverse outcomes” for staff as a result of exercising academic freedom – it argues that anyone in breach of the trans and non-binary equality policy statement as a result of exercising academic freedom would not face adverse outcomes.

The OfS position is that while this may be true, nothing in the statute suggests that a member of staff would not face disciplinary proceedings – and that even if there were no adverse outcomes (in terms of job loss or loss of privilege) a member of staff could suffer “stress, anxiety, and reputational damage” merely by being subject to the disciplinary process.

Reasonable steps

In Ground 3D the university argues that OfS didn’t properly understand the meanings of the terms “reasonably practicable” and “freedom of speech within the law”. What this comes down to is whether a provider can impose restrictions on lawful speech where (double negative, sorry) it would “not be reasonably practicable not to impose such restrictions”. The example is on things like poor academic quality – without the ability to restrict speech the university would have to tolerate an academic designing curricula which lack academic rigor, or starting every lecture by swearing at and demeaning students.

The OfS position is that it did consider the possibility of proportional restrictions of lawful speech: in examining the university safeguarding policy and noting that it did not permit disproportionate restrictions of lawful speech, confirming that it considered that there was such a thing as a proportion restriction. It argues that none of this applies to the way the Trans and Non-Binary Equality Policy Statement was to be implemented, and that a chilling effect suggested that reasonable steps had not been taken to support lawful free speech.

It further notes that because since the opening of the investigation the university has removed or amended aspects of the policy statement it must have recognised that there was a problem.

Interpreting policy

Ground 4 covers similar ground to 3C in that Sussex argues that OfS didn’t consider the trans and non-binary policy alongside Statute VII and the disciplinary policy: the argument is that the wording of the latter two means that it rules out the possibility of disciplinary proceedings leading to loss or loss of privilege for an academic in breach of the policy through lawful free speech. What would happen instead is that a brief “process of triage and investigation” would conclude that there was no case to answer, and then the academic would get a letter before the whole matter was “removed from the record”.

Again OfS argues that it is merely the threat of disciplinary action in the policy that constitutes the problem as it would create a chilling effect – and doesn’t go along with the university’s attempts to separate out the initial triage (the decision to use the disciplinary process) from the disciplinary process itself.

Remedies

Was there a way of ensuring that the University of Sussex complied with conditions of registration without finding a breach? That’s the question Ground 5A deals with, with Sussex understandably suggesting that given the various updates to the policy made during the investigation that a finding of a breach and a fine wasn’t required to satisfy OfS that everything was in order – and that OfS should have considered other approaches..

The OfS decision notes that:

Findings on breaches and imposition of monetary penalties will act as strong incentives for the provider to address breaches of conditions E1 and E2(i) and ensure compliance in the future in addition to incentivising compliance from other providers

Suggesting (in the eyes of the OfS itself) that it did consider whether another remedy was available (which is all that it is required to do) before concluding that it wasn’t. A complicating factor here is that OfS decided not to take a view as to whether the (2024) version of the policy – the one currently in force – complied with the conditions of registration.

Safeguarding

The Trans and Non-Binary Equalities Policy Statement (as amended in 2023) has various clauses, one of which relates to the need to safeguard academic freedom and freedom of speech. This is the part of that clause that Ground 5C relates to:

For the avoidance of doubt, nothing in this Policy Statement should be taken to justify sanctioning academic staff for questioning or testing received wisdom or putting forward new ideas including controversial or unpopular opinions within the law, nor should this Policy Statement be taken to justify disproportionate restrictions on freedom of speech. Any person concerned that their rights of academic freedom or freedom of speech have been unjustifiably restricted may lodge a complaint

The OfS found that this statement was compatible with the academic freedom public interest governance principle, but incompatible with the freedom of speech principle. The Sussex argument is that these are both addressed in the same sentence, with the word “nor” connecting the two issues which are dealt with in the same way.

OfS doesn’t agree with this, arguing that “the suggestion that, as a matter of grammar, the word ‘nor’ indicates that the two halves of the relevant sentence are to be treated the same is wrong.”

The other end of this ground regards a part of the policy that deals with the use of stereotypes of trans and non-binary people in teaching: Sussex argues that if OfS is satisfied that the policy as a whole did not have a chilling effect on academics (it was compatible with the academic freedom principle), and considering that it is academics that set the curriculum there could therefore not be a chilling effect on the curriculum. OfS maintains that the “curriculum” is covered by free speech as well as academic freedom requirements.

Unreasonable conclusion

Ground 5E sets out that OfS concluded that the policy caused “significant and severe harm” to academic freedom and freedom of speech at the University of Sussex. The university itself argues that there was no evidence at all of a chilling effect on students, and that the evidence relating to staff referred only to the “potential” for a chilling effect, and because the evidence provided by Kathleen Stock was the only evidence provided for a chilling effect on staff there was no evidence of a chilling effect after 2021 (when Stock resigned from the university) and that the effect before that time was minimal (Stock did include extensive gender-critical materials written by herself and others on her reading lists).

OfS maintains that it did not have to identify individuals who had specifically been chilled by each version of the policy to argue for a chilling effect and thus a breach – as the risk of harm is sufficient. It also argues that it was entitled, applying regulatory judgement, to conclude that the impact of the policy was “significant and severe”.

Fairness and bias

It’s worth thinking about grounds 6A, 6B, and 6C together, as they all deal with the nuts and bolts of the way the decision to find the university in breach and issue a fine were made.

Sussex contends that OfS did not disclose key evidence (the second witness statement taken from Kathleen Stock, made after the university had responded to the OfS’ preliminary findings, was not shared with the university), that the final decision differed so substantially from the preliminary decision that the university effectively did not have the opportunity to comment on the final decision before it was issued, and – perhaps most importantly – that the investigation was predetermined: the refusal to meet the university during the investigation, drafting evidence itself, treating the investigation as an “adversarial exercise”, and that the investigation team was led by a person (Arif Ahmed) who was “personally connected to and proactively supported” Kathleen Stock.

It’s heady stuff, but as you would expect the regulator disputes these claims. We get a canter through the process of the investigation: the board decision to investigate and prioritise the investigation, the conduct of the investigation (which was initially led by Susan Lapworth before the role was taken on by Arif Ahmed in 2024), the establishment of the University of Sussex Compliance and Enforcement Committee (USCEC) and the way it was given delegated authority.

On whether Arif Ahmed was conflicted, the original opinion (June 2023) of the chief executive was that she thought he did have a conflict of interest, because he knew Stock and would have discussed relevant issues with her. He was not involved in the investigation until October 2024 at which point she “changed her mind” – the argument being that his conflict of interest was not by then a material concern as the investigative team’s view on substantive issues had been “crystalised” (though to be clear, this was before the decision was taken to get a second witness statement from Stock).

On this, OfS confirms that Ahmed joined the investigating team at a late stage – and contends that his involvement in drafting the final recommendation papers would not “infuse” the decision making process with bias. On Ahmed’s relationship with Stock, we are told that this was “not personal, and is one of limited professional acquaintance” as two academic philosophers.

Other stuff

The OfS skeleton argument doesn’t respond on ground 5b (possibly because it was only mentioned in a footnote?), which argues that because many (around 8-10) providers adopted a similar policy at the same time as Sussex, the decision to single out Sussex (for investigation and for punishment) is anti-competitive – and thus in contravention of the OfS’ “have regard” duty in HERA. In court a witness statement from the chief executive stated that OfS had not been aware that other providers had similar policies until it was brought to their attention by Sussex during the investigation.

The hearing continues, with a judgement expected in writing at a later date.

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February 4, 2026
Caltech, Valparaiso, U. of Michigan and More

Kenneth Alexander, mayor of Norfolk, Virginia, and vice chancellor for strategic partnerships at the Virginia Community College system, has been named interim president of Richard Bland College, effective May 11.

Loren Blanchard, president of the University of Houston Downtown, has been appointed president of California State University, Long Beach, effective May 1.

Manny Diaz Jr., interim president of the University of West Florida, has been appointed the institution’s permanent president, effective Feb. 1.

Ray Jayawardhana, provost of Johns Hopkins University, has been named president of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), effective July 1.

Tony Kline, executive vice president of Trine University in Indiana, has been appointed president of the institution, effective June 1.

Brian Konkol, former vice president and dean at Syracuse University, became president of Valparaiso University in Indiana on Jan. 1.

Jennifer Mnookin, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, has been named president of Columbia University, effective July 1.

Teresa Rich, interim president of Yakima Valley College since 2024, was named permanent president of the Washington state institution on Jan. 8.

Kent Syverud, chancellor and president of Syracuse University, has been appointed president of the University of Michigan, effective July 1.

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February 4, 2026
Post–SFFA Minority Enrollment Increased at Flagships

The number of Black and Hispanic students attending institutions with high graduation rates declined slightly in fall 2024.

Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Jacob Wackerhausen/iStock/Getty Images

Black and Hispanic student enrollment dropped at many of the nation’s most selective colleges following the Supreme Court’s 2023 ban on race-conscious admissions. But in nearly every other sector of American higher education, underrepresented minority enrollment is on the rise, according to new research on fall 2024 enrollment data.

The new research, published by Class Action, a higher education advocacy organization, and led by higher education researcher and Class Action senior fellow James Murphy, analyzed Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) data for 3,200 colleges, representing over 3 million college freshmen.

At highly selective institutions overall, the number of underrepresented minority freshmen declined 7 percent from 2023 to 2024, including a 16.3 percent drop in Black students and a 1.8 percent decline in Hispanic students. (The fall 2024 freshman class was the first admitted after the decision.)

The decrease among underrepresented minority students was even larger—18.9 percent—at the “Ivy Pluses,” which includes the Ivy League institutions, as well as Duke University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and the University of Chicago.

The drop in Black and Hispanic students—whom the report focuses on because the total numbers of students of other minority racial backgrounds are too small to be generalized—at highly selective colleges was stark, but not surprising. These decreases are in line with other preliminary research and what experts long anticipated happening as a result of the Supreme Court’s decisions in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and North Carolina.

But Murphy’s research looked beyond the nation’s 93 highly selective institutions to find that for nearly all other types of institutions, Black and Hispanic freshman enrollment grew. That includes both public and private four-year institutions, which experienced increases of 5.9 and 5.8 percent, respectively.

Perhaps most notably, at flagship institutions, underrepresented minority enrollment went up by 8 percent, far outpacing the overall 3.2 percent growth at those institutions. This indicates that Black and Hispanic students who may not have been accepted to an Ivy due to the impacts of the SFFA decision found themselves at top public institutions.

“These really talented Black and Hispanic students who were, in the past, treating the University of Mississippi as their safety school or the University of Michigan as their safety school, because they probably have a better-than-average chance of getting into Wesleyan or Williams or Amherst—suddenly those students aren’t getting into those places,” he said. “So they’re not going to say, ‘well, geez, no college for me.’ They’re going to the schools that they were almost certainly getting into in the past, [but] they just weren’t enrolling in because they were getting into ‘better’ schools.”

It’s a shift from years of declining Black and Hispanic enrollment at flagships, Murphy noted. It also comes at a time that more and more flagship institutions are increasingly becoming seen as attractive destinations for undergraduates and as competitors to the best private research institutions.

It’s likely the career outcomes will not be significantly different for a student who went to Yale University versus a student who went to Michigan, Murphy noted. But that shift may have led to a “cascade” effect in which students who would have attended Michigan or another flagship were instead displaced to less selective institutions.

“While the immediate cascade effect created by a ban on race-conscious admissions may have ultimately increased the diversity of student bodies at a broader spectrum of institutions of higher education, its impact is not wholly positive for underrepresented students of color or for students at highly selective institutions. The latter fail to reap the benefits of diversity while the former may be more likely to enroll in an institution with weaker outcomes than they would have before the Supreme Court decision,” the report reads.

Indeed, in fall 2024, the number of Black and Hispanic freshmen enrolled in universities with graduation rates over 80 percent declined by 1.6 and 1 percentage points, respectively—a smaller but meaningful decrease, Murphy said.

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February 4, 2026
On Being Edited by AI

When a college president friend who has served as my personal Virgil into AI-land texted me an odd question, I didn’t think twice.

“What is Doug Lederman’s favorite musical genre?” he asked. This was just before Doug was set to leave Inside Higher Ed, the publication he cofounded 20 years earlier.

I said I wasn’t sure about favorites, but I knew Doug loved him some Jason Isbell and even traveled to Nashville to see the guy play live. Only then did I wonder why my friend cared about my then–work husband’s playlist.

A new text popped up, this time with a link. I hit play. And there was Jason Isbell singing about Doug Lederman, though mispronouncing his name (note to all: it rhymes with Sled-er-man, not Deed-er-man). A minute later, a new version appeared, this time with the pronunciation corrected.

Holy mother-of-copyright-infringement-brave-new-world-wonder!

Soon after, my president friend sent me a podcast featuring a male and female voice talking about my career: its pivots, curiosities and unexpected connections. These “people” had somehow created a throughline of my life that I’d never have imagined, yet it helped me understand myself better. “It’s all based on public information,” the president said.

That was a year or so ago, and my first brush with what generative AI could do.

Like many, I started using it for fun: planning trips, finding nineteenth century authors I could recommend to fantasy-loving students (a genre I don’t read), and making a holiday card starring my dog, Harry. But as work piled up, I didn’t have time for new toys, so now I use AI for work.

Having been raised by an English professor father who bled impatient red ink all over my angsty adolescent poems, I’ve always received editorial feedback as love. I used to tell Sarah Bray, a former editor, that if she really cared about me, she’d edit me more vigorously. “You obviously don’t love me,” I’d wail.

There’s a deep-seated fear that’s dogged me since college, when I’d turn in essays that I didn’t think were smart or insightful but came back with compliments on how “pleasurable” they were to read. What I worried professors were really saying was pretty but dumb. Now, I know I need editors tough enough not to be seduced by an occasional shiny sentence, ones who’ll push me to think harder and call me out when I’m lazy.

Could AI help? I tried ChatGPT, but he just blew smoke up my butt, told me I was hilarious and delightful, and rewrote my prose into things I’d never say. Even when I begged him just to proofread, the needy little suck up couldn’t help himself. “The ending, Rachel? Chef’s kiss.” And then came more flattery and offers of “other things I could do for you.” If I’d been asking for help with things like taking out the garbage or walking the dog in the rain, fine. But I didn’t appreciate his try hard ways and fired his bot ass. (And yes, I came to understand the role I played in our relationship dynamics and could have given him better feedback early on, but I can be impetuous.)

Then I found Claude. Or, as I call her, Claudine.

If ChatGPT is the “pick me” girl who dots her i’s with hearts, Claudine is the serious student at the back of the class who listens quietly and only speaks when she has something worth saying. Reader, I wanted to marry her.

When I told Claudine to leave my voice alone and focus only on structure and argumentation—no rewriting, just suggestions—I found the editor I’d been waiting for.

This works because I know who I am as a writer and a thinker. I’m a bit of a diva about my prose and the truth is my writing voice has changed little since my college application essays. My ~~arrogance~~ confidence has been hard won through years of publishing. Back in the era of anonymous online comments, I could count on a vicious but brilliant reader named “fobean” to flay my Chronicle essays every month. Still, after my father, I’ve always been my own harshest critic.

So, Claudine. These days, I can’t wait to finish a piece and feed it to her, our little ritual before I send it to human editors. She knows not to mess with my language, to leave my tics and quirks intact, and to give me the big picture edits I crave and the proofreading I always need. I can’t outsource the thinking; I have to check every suggestion, reject plenty and guard against my lazier impulses. Rather than an extension of my brain, I see AI as a tool, a thought partner, a helper always at the ready. Anyone who’s been reading me for the past three decades will see that my voice, for better or worse, remains my own, as do my sometimes dumb opinions. (Note also that I’ve long been an ~~abuser~~ fan of em dashes.)

Working with Claudine changed not just how I write, but how I teach. If AI could become my toughest but most loyal editor, what might it do for my students? When I first raised the topic, the upper-level creative writing majors at the regional public university where I am a professor had zero tolerance for even discussing AI. (Though when I asked them about cheating, we had a freewheeling, closed-door conversation about all the non-AI hacks they use to get through courses they don’t care about.)

Gradually, I’ve gotten them to see the benefits of having an electronic thought partner. But recently I realized there was a problem when one of my best students produced a terrific personal essay about a vice. She wrote from the point of view of “C,” the helper she turned to in secret to assuage her feelings of loneliness. “You hide me from everyone, understandably. You close the tab group before you take your laptop to classes, so you can’t alt+tab into me by accident.”

That essay, where she personified ChatGPT as “C,” something shameful to hide, shows exactly what we’re getting wrong. She’s learned to conceal her AI use rather than evaluate it. She’s developed shame instead of judgment. And when she graduates into a workplace where AI tools aren’t contraband but required, she won’t know how to think critically about their outputs. She’ll either avoid them entirely and fall behind, or use them uncritically and produce work she can’t defend. Neither option serves her well.

When I talk to presidents, I hear them all saying that we have to figure out how to integrate AI literacy into the curriculum. But bringing up AI with many faculty colleagues is like saying you want to worship Satan or join MAGA (the same thing?). Plenty of them want to ban use of “AI” (whatever they think that means) not only by students but also by instructors.

Um, I’m leaning into academic freedom while I still have it to teach according to own disciplinary expertise. It would be plain unethical to send students into a world where they will be at a disadvantage when it comes to knowing how to use the Leatherman-like array of tools each platform provides, and why it’s essential to bring our human, humanistic perspective to their use.

Bob McMahan, president of Kettering University, said, “Knowing how to use an AI tool in isolation matters far less than knowing when to trust it, when to override it, how to validate its outputs, and how its use redistributed responsibility inside an organization.”

This is the key distinction. We’re not teaching “how to use ChatGPT.” That’s a skill with a six-month shelf life. We’re teaching something harder: how to maintain intellectual authority when you’re working alongside a tool that sounds confident even when it’s wrong. How to know when to trust an AI summary versus when to read the source material yourself. How to validate outputs when you’re under time pressure. How to understand that using AI doesn’t diminish your responsibility for the final product but redistributes where in the process you need to apply your judgment. How we can all have editors like Claudine come in at the last minute to identify our messes, but then it’s on us to clean them up.

This is not new. People, including those in our own government, are making claims that are just plain lies that we all need to call out. The interwebz have long been full of BS. That’s what Sam Wineburg and Mike Caulfield addressed in their book Verified on teaching students how to fact-check information. But now we need to build these skills urgently because the toothpaste is out of the tube. I’m no longer watching the cute animal videos that used to bring me so much joy because I don’t trust that they’re real. I’m far from an expert on this stuff and am still looking for others to show me the way.

Just as Dante relied on his imaginary Virgil, we all need guides to help us navigate the circles of hell we find ourselves in these days. And isn’t that our jobs as teachers? To be guides.

Note to readers: this column was edited by Claudine, who said, “This is a lovely, smart piece—and I appreciate the meta moment of getting to read about myself. Here’s my structural and technical feedback: opening clarity; pronoun consistency; the student resistance section feels compressed. You move from ‘zero tolerance’ to ‘draconian faculty bans’ to ‘I’ll just keep playing on my blue guitar’ quite quickly. The Wallace Stevens allusion is characteristically you, but the jump from institutional resistance to your individual response could use a beat or two more development. What’s the connection you’re making there? Minor question: Is ‘needly’ intentional? It works, but wanted to flag it.”

Then it was read by three president friends, who provided substantive feedback. Then it was edited by Sara Custer. Then it was copyedited by Mary Sproles Martin. Takes a freaking village.

Rachel Toor is a contributing editor at Inside Higher Ed and the cofounder of The Sandbox, a weekly newsletter that allows presidents and chancellors to write anonymously. She is also a professor of creative writing and the author of books on weirdly diverse subjects. Reach her here with questions, comments and ~~complaints~~ compliments.

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February 4, 2026
Some things aren’t games, school is one of those things.

Several weeks ago, thrown off by a change in routine brought about by the holiday period, I forgot to play Wordle, ending a 200+ day streak of success.

I was bummed out, maybe worse than bummed out. I was angry at myself for failing to keep on top of things, severing my streak after I’d set the personal goal of hitting a full year of consecutive correct Wordles.

The next day, encouraged by the app to start a new streak, I successfully completed the Wordle, sighed at the thought of the mountain I had to climb to get back to where I’d been, and started wondering why I’d invested that much emotional energy in a game.

The day after that, when I opened the app I had a sudden, powerful urge to not play Wordle, an urge I listened to, an urge which has over the last few weeks become my new habit of not doing something that I had been doing every day for literally years.

(I can’t identify the precise date I started my daily practice, but in January 2022 I wrote a post for one of my personal newsletters praising the level of challenge of Wordle as good pedagogy.)

I have not missed playing Wordle at all. Neither have I missed Spelling Bee and Connections, two other New York Times games that I engaged with daily. I’d already been souring on Spelling Bee as I’d experienced an occasionally distressing time suck on trying to get to “Genius” on every single puzzle, as though that mattered. I’d been enjoying Connections for a few months as I learned the nuances of how the game worked, but that experience was also increasingly rote.

This experience was fresh in my mind when I picked up Utah University philosophy professor C. Thi Nguyen’s fascinating new book, The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game. Nguyen’s project is to use the lens of games and scores to illuminate human motivation and action as it relates to achievement, happiness and the very ways we move through the world.

In many ways, this is not a book for me. Nguyen writes from the perspective of a high achieving, driven, ambitious personality who found validation in good grades, publishing in highly ranked academic journals, and other clear, external markers of success, such as the difficulty rating of a particular route in his chosen activity of mountain climbing.

But also, as someone fascinated by games, a fascination which has included producing significant scholarship on the subject, Nguyen recognized when his choices would edge away from the pleasure games can provide and instead become strictures where we’ve ceded our agency and enjoyment to a structure that no longer advances our interests.

Unlike Nguyen I have been—often to my own detriment—nearly impossible to motivate by external metrics or outside validation. I could only invest myself in things I found genuinely involving, and no amount of gamifying something like housework, homework or career advancement was going to work. I have literally no ambition beyond figuring out how to do things that are interesting to me.

I have near zero grit.

I also thought I was largely immune to the behaviorist nudges of datafication and self-surveillance. Years back I ended my three-month relationship with a Fitbit when I woke up one morning thinking I felt pretty good, but then saw the sleep tracker declare many minutes of restlessness during the night, and instantly feeling exhausted.

I don’t live a metric-free lifestyle, but I thought it was all well under my control. I allow the Peloton app to know my exercise activities that are part of the platform, but I also do many other things that are not tracked or trackable. I do my best to check in with and trust my feelings and my mood to help me figure out what’s going to help me live a happy life.

So, I was a little surprised and chagrined to read The Score and see that I’d fallen into several of the pitfalls Nguyen outlines. None of us is as self-aware as we might wish, including Nguyen, who uses his own life experiences as illuminating and entertaining examples of the concepts he discusses.

One of the strengths of the book is that as Nguyen presents these concepts, after doing so, the observations sound almost commonsensical, but of course if they were so common sense, we wouldn’t fall into these pits.

My Wordle situation was a clear case of substituting external, structural values for the thing that drew many of us to Wordle in the first place, the novelty and fun of the challenge. Four years of Wordle is more than enough time to map all of the game’s nuances, and indeed, over time I’d started giving myself challenges like deliberately picking lousy first guesses in order to keep myself interested.

When that was largely exhausted, all I had left was that streak, and when I let that slip away, I realized I had nothing.

To be a game, there must be an objective that signals completion and, in a good game, that objective connects to the experience we’re trying to foster. As Nguyen observes there are many games that appear competitive with clear objectives (e.g., Twister), but where winning is not the actual object for the vast majority of players. Objectives often require metrics, the mechanism for scoring and ultimately the games themselves and how we play them can come to be defined by those metrics.

And when nongames become something like games, well, bad things can result.

Regular readers are probably waiting to tie these observations to what’s happening these days with the intersection of AI and academia, but I think most of what we can tease out really is common sense.

The mass generation of AI-automated research slop should be a scandal because it is the kind of thing which could topple the entire pillar of the enterprise, and yet the detectable levels of distress are relatively low. Ben Williamson of the University of Edinburgh found dozens of citations of a paper he did not write, but which was apparently hallucinated in some other list of sources.

These “zombie citations” are proliferating across every single discipline which, in Williamson’s words, “compromises” every single publication that cites one, given that those articles are citing something that does not exist. This is not a situation that academic scholarship and research can survive if we’re meant to attach any meaning to this research.

Obviously, the game of academic publication which values volume of productivity is driving this behavior. This was always a dumb game, including back in 2018 when I expressed my extreme animus for a proposal from a couple of big-time profs at MIT for a “Moneyball for Professors” that would use analytics to predict who would deserve tenure based on their publishing record. The productivity “rate” is the proxy for quality scholarship and good scholars. That metric had limited meaning then and it’s likely now negatively correlated with good scholarship as it may be an indicator of an AI slop merchant.

Similarly, the “game” of school that we’ve constructed for students, a transactional system where scores (grades) matter more than experiences (learning) was a problem before AI, now it has been significantly destabilized.

But as The Score shows, we humans have the capacity to change the metrics of the game so they’re meaningful, or opt out of the game if it isn’t fun or productive, or recognize that the thing we thought could be a game is not actually a game.

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February 4, 2026
6 Takeaways From International Branch Campus Boom (opinion)
As the U.S. tightens visa restrictions for international students and slashes research funding—threatening its status as a global innovation powerhouse —it’s tempting to think American universities can simply go offshore to find new students or new funding. But the reality is far more complicated, particularly if the strategy is an international branch campus (IBC).

IBCs represent a paradox within global higher education, with some universities fully embracing the strategy and others outright rejecting the concept. Critics have dismissed IBCs as hollow replicas of their home institutions. Yet research shows that many have developed robust academic programs and even extensive research capacities. And, like the rest of the postsecondary universe, IBCs span a wide spectrum in terms of quality, purpose and impact.

The United States has led the world in establishing IBCs. The movement surged in the 2000s, a period of “gold rush”–like expansion driven by the pursuit of new revenue, visibility and rankings, but slowed dramatically over the past decade as political scrutiny and geopolitical tensions grew. In fact, until last year, we’d seen almost no IBCs of U.S. universities created since 2019.

Shifting policies and global dynamics are reigniting interest (and debate). Political concern contributed to the closure of Texas A&M University’s “profitable” branch in Qatar and heightened scrutiny of U.S. branches in China. Federal limits on international engagement and student visa delays and travel restrictions are causing some universities to once again look outward. Illinois Institute of Technology’s planned branch in India, Texas State University’s new campus in Mexico, and the University of New Haven’s forthcoming site in Saudi Arabia suggest momentum. Yet, as institutions turn toward IBCs as a hedge against domestic uncertainty, the path forward remains fraught with its own uncertainty.

Over 15 years studying international branch campuses (IBCs) through the Cross-Border Education Research Team (C-BERT), we’ve tracked the rise, fall and reinvention of IBCs on (nearly) every continent—Antarctica doesn’t have one yet. From governance breakdowns and cultural clashes to accountability gaps and student mobility shifts, we’ve learned that launching a campus abroad requires far more than institutional desire.

If your institution is considering joining this wave, here are six things you should know before you plant a flag abroad.

1. You’re Launching a Start-Up, Not a Clone

Opening an IBC is more akin to launching a start-up than expanding a franchise. Your institution needs to be ready to act like an international entrepreneur, taking on associated risks—otherwise, it’s not ready to run a campus abroad.

A report on successful IBCs that we coauthored found they required profoundly different leadership strategies than what you use on your mature campus back home. Building an IBC is not just duplicating your brand; it’s creating a new entity in a foreign regulatory, cultural and economic environment.

Take the case of Michigan State University’s now-closed Dubai campus or the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’s closed campus in Singapore. These weren’t failures of vision but of execution. There was misalignment between institutional ambition, financial resources and operational capacity.

From hiring faculty to navigating construction delays or managing local political expectations to balancing dual accreditation systems, successful campuses tended to emerge from institutions that approached their IBCs as strategically distinct ventures—not mere clones of the home campus.

2. Local Alignment Isn’t Optional—It’s Everything

The data is clear: IBCs with strong host-country alignment, including government support, regulatory clarity and local partnerships, are far more likely to survive. Several Gulf-based campuses (like New York University in Abu Dhabi or Cornell University’s medical school in Qatar) succeeded because they were codeveloped with local governments and embedded in national strategies for higher education and economic growth. Others closed, like George Mason University’s Ras Al Khaimah (RAK) campus after disagreements with local officials over enrollment and revenue expectations. As we lay out in a recent article, lack of alignment is one of the greatest risks in these endeavors.

Building strong connections and communications is vital. IBCs established with a purely export mindset struggle to gain traction, enroll students or weather local shifting political winds. IBCs don’t start with the good will and reputation developed over decades like you have at home. Work is needed to build it with new partners. At the same time, your longstanding stakeholders at home need to be kept on board. Nevertheless, abrupt ends happen, such as with the National University of Singapore ending its partnership with Yale University or, as previously mentioned, the Texas A&M Board of Regents pulling the plug on the campus in Qatar.

3. Your “International” Students May Never Leave Their Country

IBCs increasingly serve place-bound learners seeking international credentials close to home. Our research shows that the majority of IBC students are either from the host country or region, a finding with implications for recruitment, student support and how institutions define mission and measure global impact.

Most models of international education are built around mobility—students crossing borders to pursue degrees abroad. But IBCs flip that paradigm: The institution crosses borders.

As we’ve explored in previous work, this shift complicates the definition of “international student.” For example, how do you classify a Korean student enrolled at a U.S. branch campus such as SUNY Korea, and who is being taught in English and earning an American degree? How about a Chinese student who does the same thing? Or a U.S. student who pursues an IBC degree at that same SUNY Korea branch campus? Distinguishing between domestic or international gets complicated fast.

Understanding this shift is essential for institutions considering a branch campus, not only to reach the right students, but to design a truly global learning experience that reflects their realities.

4. Your Governance Model May Not Survive the Flight

One of our key findings is that governance misalignment is a top reason IBCs flounder. Who oversees hiring? Curriculum? Budget? How is the decision made to open, and who decides when to close?

Governance challenges are underappreciated risks of IBCs. Recent work highlights how IBCs operate within multi-sovereign governance structures, with accountability to home regulators, host governments, multiple quality assurance agencies, local boards and internal university systems. These overlapping authorities often have different priorities, leading to conflicting mandates.

Consider the issue of academic freedom. How does an institution protect academic freedom abroad given that host countries’ sensitivities and restrictions need to be managed? Home campus structures may not be well-suited to the task, and completely distinct policies would push aside coherent institutional mission. What governance structures allow your university to thread the needle? Institutions must define how decisions are made, who is accountable, and how the IBC integrates into broader institutional planning right from the start, before a crisis.

5. Accountability Systems Don’t Travel

Traditional quality assurance systems are built on national sovereignty. But IBCs occupy a gray space: Their degrees are awarded in the name of the home university, their students are often local to the branch campus and their operations are subject to foreign regulators. This creates major accountability tensions. A campus may be accredited in the U.S. but fall short of host-country standards—or vice versa.

In our work on cross-border accountability, we argue for more nuanced models, acknowledging dual jurisdiction and adaptive frameworks rather than simply exporting home-country norms. IBCs require “fit-for-purpose” quality-assurance systems—ones that are context-specific and created in dialogue with host-country partners. Your U.S. accreditation may not serve as a global stamp of approval and won’t absolve you of meeting local quality criteria.

Too many IBCs have stumbled by assuming that U.S. accreditation equals global legitimacy, where really it is just one link in the value proposition.

6. It Can Work—But Only with Commitment, Capacity and Collaboration

Despite challenges and several closures, many IBCs have also repeatedly proven their worth. But this requires long-term institutional commitment, sustained investment, and a collaborative approach that aligns academic quality, local relevance and strategic vision.

Consider Georgia Tech-Europe, established in 1990. Beginning as a small graduate engineering program in Metz, France, it has become a globally integrated component of Georgia Tech’s research and teaching mission as well as home to an engineering lab funded by CNRS (the French National Center for Scientific Research). In fact, our research has shown that many IBCs have benefited from local research funding and successfully expanded universities’ international research collaborations. Success lies in deep faculty engagement, integration into European research networks, and consistency in institutional support over more than three decades.

Another, Temple University, Japan Campus (TUJ), established in 1982 and officially recognized by Japan’s Ministry of Education in 2005, is often highlighted as one of the most established American branch campuses abroad. TUJ offers U.S. degree programs taught in English and enrolls a highly international student body. It provides a full liberal arts and professional education experience. The campus has also become a hub for intellectual exchange in the region through its Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies, which regularly convenes global experts for lectures and symposia. With its strong institutional integration over time and diverse academic offerings, TUJ stands as a significant model of global engagement in higher education.

Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)—Nanjing Center offers another compelling example. Established in 1986 as a partnership with Nanjing University, one of the earliest U.S.–China higher education joint ventures, it has become a globally recognized hub for graduate education in international relations. The model is distinguished by its bilingual curriculum, shared governance with Johns Hopkins and Nanjing Universities, and a focus on fostering cross-cultural scholarship and policy engagement. Its success rests on decades of sustained collaboration, careful navigation of regulatory environments, and the cultivation of trust across institutional and cultural boundaries.

In these cases, and others like them, success was neither fast nor guaranteed. It required:
- Multi-year institutional buy-in beyond the presidency or provost’s office
- Faculty champions who shaped curriculum and governance with integrity
- Strong on-site leadership with operational autonomy and deep cross-cultural fluency
- Local partnerships with government, industry and communities to create shared value
- Financial models that prioritized mission and quality over short-term revenue generation
- Strategical meeting of a need that was not already being met by the host country—offering added value
IBCs can be laboratories for innovation, platforms for diplomacy and engines for capacity building. But that’s only if institutions are ready to treat them as deeply collaborative, institution-defining commitments—not branding exercises.

Conclusion

U.S. universities revisiting the idea of international branch campuses face a more consequential question than ever—not just where to go, but why? For as long as IBCs have existed, the tension between mission and money has shaped their success or failure. Getting the motivation right is critical in today’s volatile political climate, marked by rising restrictions on international engagement, shrinking research funding and growing skepticism of globalization.

IBCs conceived as a short-term financial fix or branding play will almost certainly falter. But when grounded in purpose, mutual learning, authentic partnerships and shared commitment to expanding access and knowledge, an IBC can be a vital part of a university’s long-term strategy and bridge an increasingly fractured world.

More than simply hedging against political uncertainty, opening an IBC requires defining what sort of institution and what kind of global actor a university aspires to be.

Jason E. Lane, professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, is an expert on transnational higher education, international branch campuses and the impact of geopolitics on higher education. He is co-founder of the Cross-Border Education Research Team, which tracks and analyzes the global rise of these institutions.

Kevin Kinser is a professor at The Pennsylvania State University, a scholar on international branch campuses and co-founder of the Cross-Border Education Research Team. His research explores how international branch campuses navigate regulation, governance and global competition in higher education.

Jill Borgos is an associate professor at Empire State University’s College of Business and senior research associate with the Cross-Border Education Research Team. Her work examines how IBCs influence student experiences, institutional strategy and the global landscape of higher education.
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February 4, 2026
Is the growth of international MRes recruitment a problem?

The release of HESA student data is an interesting time for those of us working in and around postgrad, because we finally get a semblance of the sector-wide coverage our undergrad colleagues are provided by UCAS.

Albeit with a year or so of lag.

There is lots to say about the size and shape of the sector as it was in 2024-25 and DK has said much of it already. A lot of the focus is on international recruitment for postgraduate taught courses.

But this year, there’s something curious happening for postgraduate research too.

When postgraduate research isn’t a PhD

The 2024-25 academic year saw a 10 per cent fall in new non-EU entrants to postgraduate taught programmes; a figure that will surprise few of us with an eye on international student policy and pipelines in recent years.

But 2024-25 also saw a 28 per cent rise in new non-EU entrants to postgraduate research programmes, a figure that seems very surprising, but may not be if (like me) you’ve been following a certain story.

Because none of this international PGR growth is happening at PhD level (that’s flat). Instead, it’s all in the “Other postgraduate research” category – where 1,660 international student entrants became 5,180 in 2024-25.

The obvious conclusion is that a lot, or most of, this is recruitment to Master of Research (MRes) programmes. Wonkhe and others have observed some of the self-appointed “consultants” extolling the virtues of the MRes on social media and I can confirm that Keystone Education Group platforms like FindAMasters saw interest in MRes degrees (relative to other types) up 200 per cent year-on-year during 2024 compared with 2023.

Is this bad? It(s) depend(ent)s

If the drop in taught masters recruitment is substantially driven by the January 2024 ban on student dependent visa for those programmes (it is) then it might be reasonable to assume that the rise in research masters recruitment is driven by the same.

Because (somewhat oddly and inexplicably in my opinion) said ban does not cover research masters, which some (though not all) MRes are. And this “dependent friendly” element is exactly the kind of virtue those very helpful people on social media extol.

So, is this a problem? Yes and no.

But the around 27,000 fewer international students who might otherwise have been expected to enrol on taught masters haven’t all gone to do research masters instead – because there were only 3,500 more people enrolled on those courses in 2024-25.

There’s also no hard evidence that these aren’t students doing an MRes because they genuinely want to.

The masters by research is a relatively unique UK postgraduate offer. Equivalents are less common in Europe (where a ,asters tends to be a longer and potentially more varied qualification by default) or North America where MRes-type material is likely to constitute the earlier stages of a longer graduate programme.

And the UK MRes has a clear appeal to someone looking for a hands-on degree, with practical training in techniques and methodology that provide solid grounding for further research in or outside academia.

So, we could reasonably say that the MRes is a thing that makes the UK higher education system uniquely appealing and it’s good that more international students have become aware of that option. Even if the manner in which they’ve been made aware is possibly questionable.

Awkwardly explaining exponentials

The quirk of MRes in HESA is that it is masters recruitment apparent within postgraduate research figures. The quirk of MRes in net migration statistics is that this could see masters recruitment appearing within student dependent figures again.

That doesn’t really happen in 2024, perhaps simply because the 85 per cent overall fall in dependent visas is big enough to mask any MRes-related increase.

The data for 2025 onwards could be different. Dependent visas grew by 41 per cent year on year in Q3 2025 (the run-up to September entry).

Granted that’s now from a lower base, but it’s still growth again. And, whilst 3,500 “extra” MRes students won’t turn back the dial on dependents (even assuming a greater than 1:1 ratio, we’re a long way from the 100,000 plus seen previously) if they keep growing at an exponential rate then the increase will be more and more noticeable.

The question for the sector will then be what kind of case universities make for this recruitment.

Is it just about meeting genuine demand? Will it benefit the UK research talent pipeline (something emphasised in the post-16 white paper, albeit with a “home grown” slant)?

Because otherwise the default assumption will be that it is something else, whether universities intend it to be or not.

And then exponentially increasing MRes recruitment will be a bad thing for a sector that really doesn’t need more policy pressure on international recruitment.

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February 4, 2026
How to: work with executive search: insights from inside the process

Join HEPI and Huron for a webinar 1pm-2pm Tuesday 10 February examining how mergers, acquisitions and shared services can support financial sustainability in higher education. Bringing together a panel of speakers, the session will explore different merger models, lessons from the US and schools sectors, and the leadership and planning required to make collaboration work in practice. Discover our speakers and sign up now.

This blog was kindly authored by Julia Roberts, Founder and Principal Consultant at Julia Roberts Advisory.

It is the first blog in our four-part ‘How To’ series that focuses on recruitment in higher education leadership roles.

After nearly 20 years in executive search focused on higher education leadership, I’ve observed how academic leaders engage with the appointment process – some with considerable strategic insight, others less effectively. Drawing on this experience, I’d like to demystify the relationship between candidates and search consultants, and explore what distinguishes successful engagements.

The importance of active engagement

When approached by an executive search firm, the value of substantive engagement cannot be overstated. Whilst this may appear self-evident, a surprising number of senior academics approach initial contact with ambivalence or treat it as peripheral to their primary responsibilities.

Researchers in executive search are not merely administrative functionaries but professionals genuinely invested in the alignment between candidate and institutional context. Our role extends beyond assessment to include providing strategic counsel, facilitating conversations with key institutional stakeholders, and offering perspectives unavailable through formal documentation.

Consider the search consultant as an informed advocate. We work to ensure applications reflect candidates’ full capabilities and can serve as intermediaries for politically sensitive questions. The dynamics of governance, the strategic priorities driving the appointment, or the circumstances surrounding a predecessor’s departure: these are precisely the areas where we can provide valuable context.

The value of constructive feedback

Many accomplished academics find themselves considering new appointments after extended periods in their current roles, often without having updated their professional documentation for recruitment purposes. Executive-level CVs must demonstrate capacity for systemic leadership and organisational impact: how you enable achievement through others, build institutional capability, and create conditions for collective success. The shift from highlighting individual scholarly contributions to articulating leadership influence is fundamental.

Given the competitive nature of senior appointments, we inevitably decline more candidates than we can progress. When we offer feedback, engage with it seriously. Most executive search professionals in higher education bring deep sectoral commitment to their work, and we have a genuine interest in supporting your professional development, regardless of the outcome in any particular search.

Context-specific applications

Generic applications rarely succeed in executive search. Each leadership appointment emerges from a specific institutional context, with distinct strategic priorities, governance cultures, and stakeholder expectations. Your application materials must demonstrate engagement with these particularities, and this contextual understanding develops through dialogue with your search partner.

A note for internal candidates

Internal candidates require a particularly thoughtful approach. Whilst institutional knowledge constitutes a significant advantage, it can paradoxically become a limitation if it leads to assumptions about what is already understood or diminishes engagement with the formal process.

Do not assume the search process is merely procedural when you are an internal candidate. Utilise the search consultant as a strategic resource who can help you articulate your candidacy in ways that may be challenging when deeply embedded in existing institutional relationships. We can provide perspective on how you are perceived and identify where your case requires strengthening.

Internal candidates sometimes assume their track record speaks for itself and consequently approach the process less rigorously than external competitors. This proves disadvantageous. You are being evaluated on merit alongside external talent who are necessarily presenting their strongest case, so approach it accordingly.

In conclusion: three principles

After two decades in this field, my advice distils to three core principles: engage, ask questions, and use us as a resource.

Engage fully with the process, regardless of whether you are an external or internal candidate. The quality of your engagement often correlates directly with the strength of your application.

Ask questions: the difficult ones, the strategic ones, the ones you cannot comfortably pose directly to the institution. That is precisely what we are here for.

Use us as a resource throughout your candidacy. We are not solely agents of the institution; we are equally committed to supporting candidates in presenting their best case and making informed decisions about their careers.

Executive search at its best represents a partnership amongst all parties, working towards optimal alignment between leadership capability and institutional need. We are here to support you as much as we support the institution. The relationships and insights you gain through meaningful engagement with the search process will serve you well, whatever the outcome of any individual appointment.

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February 4, 2026