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  • Unlicensed Teachers Want To Work In Hawai‘i Schools For Longer – The 74

    Unlicensed Teachers Want To Work In Hawai‘i Schools For Longer – The 74


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    Anton Avanozian loves teaching at Baldwin High School on Maui, taking pride in his efforts to grow the science department and support activities like the student science fair. But despite his satisfactory job evaluations and the state’s teacher shortage, he’s worried about losing his position after next year. 

    Avanozian has an emergency hire permit, which allows people with a bachelor’s degree but no teacher’s license to work in classrooms for up to three years while they take the courses and tests needed to earn a credential. While he expects to complete his program before the deadline next summer, it’s still challenging to balance a full-time job and a few hours of coursework every day, he said. 

    “I’m applying a lot of pressure on myself to get it done,” Avanozian said. “I’m really pushing towards it, but I do have that worry in the back of my mind, what if it doesn’t work out?”

    Hawaiʻi public schools are undergoing a dramatic transformation in who’s filling classroom positions and teaching students. This year, the Department of Education employed roughly 1,000 emergency hires — around 8% of the overall teacher workforce and more than double the number from four years ago. In some parts of the state, emergency hires make up more than 15% of the teaching staff. 

    As reliance on emergency hires has grown, so too has concern over losing workers who can’t earn a license in three years.

    Anton Avanozian is a second-year emergency hire at Baldwin High School on Maui who is working to obtain a teacher’s license. (Anton Avanozian)

    A package of bills that would allow emergency hires to work in schools for five years is now sparking debate around the role unlicensed teachers should play in Hawaiʻi classrooms. Emergency hires are becoming too entrenched in the school system, some lawmakers and the teacher licensing board argue, reducing the quality of education and disadvantaging students in rural and neighbor island schools, which have a greater reliance on unlicensed teachers.  

    The education department’s stance is that giving emergency hires more time to earn their licenses is a better option than losing educators after a few years and relying on long-term substitutes, though the department has failed to provide lawmakers with any data on how many teachers need this assistance. Unlike emergency hires, substitute teachers aren’t required to have a college degree or work toward licensure. 

    The proposal also moves Hawaiʻi in the opposite direction of states like Texas that are trying to phase out emergency hires and put more constraints on what subjects unlicensed educators can teach in schools.   

    “My concern is that we’re accepting them as an integral part of the workforce for teachers,” said Rep. Andrew Garrett, who introduced one of the bills at DOE’s request. “I just want to make sure that we don’t get too reliant on this.” 

    How Long Is Too Long?

    Extending emergency hire permits from three to five years could impact hundreds of teachers who are working toward their licenses and may need to leave public schools in the near future if they aren’t successful, DOE Deputy Superintendent Tammi Oyadomari-Chun said in the hearing last week. Roughly 150 to 200 teachers are currently in their third year as emergency hires, she said, meaning they need to earn their license by the end of this school year in order to remain with the DOE. 

    When lawmakers pushed school officials for more details, the department was unable to provide data on how many emergency hires receive their licenses in three years or how long employees would ideally need to finish a licensing program. The teacher standards board also doesn’t have easily accessible data on how many licenses are awarded to emergency hires in their third year, since licenses are granted on a case-by-case basis, board chair Kristi Miyamae said. 

    “Moving beyond the three years is important,” Oyadomari-Chun said. “But whether it’s five or 10 is the magic number, there’s no data to back up that choice.”

    Department of Education deputy superintendent Tammi Oyadomari-Chun testifies in front of the House of Representatives education committee Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2024, in Honolulu. (Kevin Fujii/Civil Beat/2024)
    Deputy Superintendent Tammi Oyadomari-Chun said the department is currently pulling data on how many emergency hires are able to earn their licenses in three years but could not provide the numbers in a hearing last week. (Kevin Fujii/Civil Beat)

    Studies from other states that loosened their teaching requirements during the pandemic show that emergency hires tend to be less effective than licensed educators. In Texas, students who were taught high school math by an unlicensed educator received the equivalent of nearly five months of instruction compared to a full nine months from a licensed teacher, according to a 2024 report from the University of Texas at Austin. 

    Emergency hires tend to face the greatest challenges in their early years in the classroom and experience greater turnover than licensed teachers, said Michael Marder, who authored the UT Austin report. In turn, he said, schools relying on emergency hires may struggle even more with teacher retention if they’re forced to hire long-term subs and more unlicensed teachers to fill positions. 

    Some lawmakers are concerned that schools in rural or low-income communities are more likely to rely on emergency hires, exacerbating educational inequalities. In the 2023-24 academic year, Lānaʻi employed the greatest number of unlicensed teachers, followed by the Kūlanihākoʻi and Waiʻanae complexes. 

    But giving emergency hires more time to earn their licenses is a better alternative than losing teachers after their third year in schools, Chun said. To ensure the quality of emergency hires, she said, the department regularly checks that teachers are making progress toward their licenses and pairs them with more experienced teachers to receive mentorship. 

    While teacher preparation programs typically last from 18 months to two years, it’s not a guarantee that emergency hires will complete their coursework in that time frame, said Diane Gibson, an instruction and professional development specialist with the Hawaiʻi State Teachers Association. Not all licensing programs are designed to accommodate teachers with full-time jobs, she said, and emergency hires also have families and other responsibilities taking up their time outside of the school day. 

    The state standards board has paused work on vetting and approving additional mainland programs that offer teacher licenses to ensure the quality of the 14 programs currently authorized — most of which are offered through Hawaiʻi universities. But some outside programs currently excluded from Hawaiʻi’s approved licensing pathways offer more online or affordable options that could fit the needs of emergency hires, Gibson said.  

    At Ke’elikōlani Middle School in Honolulu, teacher Nathan Sellner said he saw an improvement in his students’ learning last fall when he took over a science position that was previously filled by substitutes. Last year, nearly a third of eighth graders at the school scored proficient in science, up from 21% the previous two years. 

    “I think it really is important that students have a qualified teacher as soon as possible,” said Sellner, who started as an emergency hire and earned his teacher license halfway through last year.  

    Sourcing Internationally 

    At Lānaʻi High and Elementary School, emergency hires make up nearly a third of teaching staff, Principal Douglas Boyer said. Many of the school’s emergency hires are international teachers who have classroom experience and licenses — just not a Hawaiʻi-specific license.

    DOE has increasingly relied on international teachers to fill positions in such hard-to-staff, rural schools. This year, the department employed more than 300 international teachers, who work as emergency hires until they can receive a Hawaiʻi license. 

    The influx of international teachers has allowed Lānaʻi High and Elementary to offer more classes such as choir and physical education, Boyer said, and has prevented the school from relying on vice principals or long-term substitutes to fill vacant positions.

    “It’s really allowed us to create that consistency for our students and to give our students a lot of offerings,” Boyer said. 

    Most international teachers are brought here on a visa that is valid for up to five years, though they can’t stay for the full term if they don’t earn a local teaching license in the first three years. 

    It can be costly for teachers to pass their licensing exams, said Sen. Troy Hashimoto, and not all international hires want to invest the time and money into these tests if they’re not able to work long-term in schools. 

    Hashimoto has introduced a bill that would require the teacher standards board to develop a teaching permit to allow international hires to work in Hawaiʻi schools for the full five years of their visa. While the standards board could determine the specific requirements for the permit, Hashimoto said he would like to see alternative ways to evaluate international teachers’ qualifications to work in schools, rather than relying on costly licensing programs and exams. 

    Even still, he said, an extended permit — for international teachers or local emergency hires — isn’t a permanent solution for the state’s teacher shortage. Moving forward, he said, he would like to see the standards board and Hawaiʻi universities find more ways to attract local candidates and retain teachers in public schools. 

    “It’s trying to help us to bridge the gap,” Hashimoto said. “I think we cannot believe that this is a permanent fix.” 

    This story was originally published on Honolulu Civil Beat.


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  • Small Rural Colleges Are Knowledge Infrastructure – Edu Alliance Journal

    Small Rural Colleges Are Knowledge Infrastructure – Edu Alliance Journal

    February 15, 2026, By Dean Hoke – Through my ongoing work with Small College America and Edu Alliance Group, I’ve researched dozens of rural and small-town campuses and interviewed presidents, faculty, and community leaders across the country. I keep encountering a pattern that rarely makes the national conversation about higher education’s future.

    The economic case for small rural colleges is straightforward and substantial. Across 276 small-town and rural private colleges in America, institutional operations generate an estimated $21.5 billion in annual economic impact. Add student spending, and the total reaches roughly $26.2 billion. These institutions directly employ nearly 119,000 people, with total employment impact exceeding 333,000 jobs when accounting for indirect and induced effects. These institutions serve the 66.3 million Americans—roughly 20 percent of the U.S. population—who live in Census-defined rural areas.

    Those numbers matter. But the multiplier, as compelling as it is, tells only part of the story.

    In communities where local journalism has collapsed, where city governments lack planners or grant writers, and where technical expertise is scarce, small colleges increasingly function as something more fundamental than economic anchors.

    They serve as a distributed knowledge infrastructure.

    In many rural regions, they are the only institutions capable of conducting research, convening stakeholders, analyzing complex problems, and producing evidence-based recommendations. When difficult questions arise, who can evaluate this policy? Who has access to data? Who can design a solution? Rural communities often turn to their local college. Not because it is the best option among many. But because it is the only option.

    “When Hendrix thrives, Conway thrives, and when Conway thrives, Hendrix thrives,” Dr. Karen K. Petersen, President of Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas, told me. “There’s just no way for one of us separately to thrive and the other not.” Beyond shared prosperity, she sees an ecosystem at risk. If these colleges hollow out across the middle of the country, she warns, it is not simply a loss for higher education; it is a loss for the republic.

    The question facing rural and small-town America is not just what happens when a college closes. It is who fills the knowledge vacuum left behind.

    The Capacity Gap in Rural Communities

    At the Education Writers Association’s 2025 Higher Education Seminar on rural education, panelists emphasized a critical distinction that deserves broader attention. Rural communities do not lack ambition; they lack capacity.

    Many counties simply do not employ research analysts, planners, or grant writers capable of navigating federal infrastructure funding or complex policy design. Colleges frequently step into that space—convening stakeholders, hosting workshops, applying for grants, coordinating broadband expansion, and facilitating healthcare initiatives.

    This capacity gap extends beyond federal funding. According to a 2024 Trust for Civic Life survey of over 500 rural residents, rural Americans trust local institutions, such as schools, churches, and community businesses, far more than national organizations. When complex problems arise, rural communities turn to the institutions they know. Increasingly, that means turning to their local colleges, even if those institutions weren’t originally designed for such roles.

    In many counties, the college is the only entity with:

    • Research infrastructure
    • Analytical capacity
    • Convening power
    • Multi-disciplinary expertise

    Remove the college and you do not simply lose tuition revenue or student housing demand. You lose the region’s primary source of knowledge production.

    Four Domains of Knowledge Work

    What does this knowledge infrastructure look like in practice? Across the country, small rural colleges operate in four distinct but overlapping domains.

    1. Technical and Scientific Knowledge

    In 2023, students at Hendrix College conducted a telephone survey of 901 older Arkansans as part of an Advanced Policy Analysis course. The project, developed in partnership with the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and AARP Arkansas, aimed to evaluate how communities could better serve aging populations.

    The findings were striking: Conway—despite relative prosperity—ranked lowest among surveyed communities as a place to retire. Students analyzed transportation barriers, housing access, and social isolation, then presented policy recommendations at a public symposium attended by civic leaders and national AARP representatives.

    Here is the question worth asking: Who would have conducted that survey if Hendrix did not exist?

    Conway, a city of 59,000, does not employ research analysts. Contracting a private consulting firm would cost tens of thousands of dollars. The study likely would not have happened.

    Across the country, similar patterns emerge. Environmental science students test regional water quality. Computer science students build nonprofit websites. Engineering students troubleshoot manufacturing systems. These projects may not always produce journal publications. But they produce something equally valuable to rural communities: locally actionable knowledge that would otherwise go uncreated.

    2. Workforce Development Knowledge

    When Arkansas officials documented a shortage of approximately 9,000 nurses, Lyon College in Batesville did more than launch a nursing major. It orchestrated a regional pipeline.

    Lyon developed formal partnerships with White River Health, Arkansas State University-Newport, Ozarka College, and the University of Arkansas Community College at Batesville. Students begin liberal arts coursework at Lyon, transfer for RN licensure, then return to complete a BSN. Working nurses can finish degrees online at deliberately affordable tuition rates, with significant transfer credits applied.

    This was not simply program development. It was system design.

    The college identified a regional workforce shortage, convened institutions that historically operated independently, negotiated articulation agreements, aligned curricula, and built an infrastructure that retains healthcare workers locally.

    In many rural communities, no other institution has the legitimacy, convening authority, and organizational stability to accomplish this kind of coordination. The college becomes a knowledge broker—connecting employers, students, technical programs, and policymakers.

    3. Civic and Democratic Knowledge

    In rural Kentucky, Berea College operates Partners for Education, serving five Appalachian counties through a network of full-time specialists providing academic intervention, college counseling, and wraparound services.

    The program places staff directly in rural schools, offers Advanced Placement preparation, assists with college applications, and runs volunteer income tax preparation programs serving low-income families. It employs over 100 AmeriCorps volunteers annually and coordinates services across multiple counties.

    This is not incidental service. It is institutionalized civic infrastructure.

    When a student in Clay County aspires to attend college, Berea’s specialists navigate financial aid, admissions testing, and bureaucratic systems that under-resourced schools cannot manage alone. When families need help accessing earned income tax credits, Berea-trained volunteers assist. Remove the college, and the network dissolves.

    The knowledge infrastructure here is not abstract research—it is the expertise required to translate policy into opportunity.

    4. Social and Cultural Knowledge

    In Swannanoa, North Carolina, Warren Wilson College coordinates the Verner Experiential Gardens—a multi-organization partnership with early childhood educators and nonprofit partners.

    College students work alongside young children, developing food systems education, outdoor curriculum, and intergenerational learning environments. The partnership requires sustained coordination, curriculum integration, infrastructure management, and evaluation.

    Individual volunteers can serve a meal, and Institutions build systems.

    This quieter work—relationship-building, curriculum alignment, multi-year coordination—rarely appears in rankings or federal datasets. But it shapes long-term community resilience.

    The Counterfactual: What Happens When Colleges Close?

    Economic impact studies estimate that a small college closure can eliminate roughly $32 million in annual output and hundreds of jobs. Property values decline. Businesses shutter. Young professionals leave.

    But the knowledge loss is harder to quantify—and more damaging over time.

    Who conducts the next community survey? Who negotiates the next workforce pipeline? Who coordinates regional college access initiatives? Who convenes hospitals, schools, and nonprofits around emerging challenges?

    In major metropolitan areas, other universities, think tanks, and consulting firms can step in. In rural regions, there often is no alternative provider. When a college closes, the community loses:

    • Research capacity
    • Stakeholder convening power
    • Multi-disciplinary expertise
    • Alumni networks and institutional memory
    • Grant relationships with state and federal agencies

    Infrastructure like this takes decades to build. It can vanish in months.

    The Measurement Problem

    Part of the challenge lies in how we measure higher education value.

    Federal data systems such as IPEDS focus heavily on first-time, full-time, degree-seeking students. Adult learners, part-time enrollees, noncredit workforce trainees, and transfer preparation work are often undercounted or invisible.

    The four domains described above—community surveys, workforce pipelines, civic partnerships, regional coordination—generate almost no federal metrics. We reward enrollment and graduation numbers. We ignore regional knowledge production.

    The result is a mismatch between what rural colleges do for their communities and what public policy measures. When you measure the wrong outputs, you misjudge what is worth preserving.

    Policy Implications: Recognizing Knowledge Infrastructure

    If small rural colleges function as distributed knowledge infrastructure, policy must reflect that reality.

    First, states should create Rural Knowledge Partnership Grants—competitive funding streams that reward documented college-community problem-solving initiatives.

    Second, federal agencies should expand community-engaged research funding targeted specifically at small and mid-sized institutions serving rural regions.

    Third, state economic development strategies should formally integrate colleges as implementation partners in broadband, healthcare, workforce, and infrastructure initiatives.

    Fourth, foundations concerned about rural resilience should treat colleges not merely as grantees, but as anchor intermediaries capable of coordinating multi-sector coalitions.

    These changes do not require new institutions. They require recognizing what already exists.

    What We Stand to Lose

    President Petersen describes Hendrix as ‘scrappy,’ an institution that ‘punches above its weight.’ But she worries about the broader ecosystem of small colleges across the middle of the country.

    The demographic headwinds are real. The financial pressures are mounting. Elite institutions attract disproportionate philanthropic attention. Meanwhile, rural-serving colleges operate in relative obscurity. Yet as rural America faces aging populations, workforce shortages, infrastructure deficits, and civic fragmentation, the institutions most capable of addressing these challenges are themselves under strain.

    We often talk about colleges as if they are simply educational providers. In rural America, they are something more. They are the institutional capacity to ask complex questions. They are the convening power that aligns fragmented stakeholders. They are the research engines capable of producing evidence-based solutions.

    When a rural college closes, we count the lost jobs and shuttered dormitories. We rarely measure the knowledge vacuum. We do not count the surveys never conducted, the partnerships never negotiated, the civic programs dissolved, the problem-solving capacity eroded.

    Infrastructure is not only roads, water systems, and broadband. It is the ability to solve problems. In many rural counties, that capacity resides primarily inside one institution: the local college. The question is not whether America can afford to sustain these institutions. The question is whether rural communities can function without them.

    If we are honest about existing capacity gaps—if we recognize that knowledge infrastructure takes decades to build and weeks to dismantle—the answer becomes clear. Small rural colleges are not luxuries we can no longer afford. They are necessities we cannot afford to lose. Not because they are historic or charming. But because they perform work that no one else is doing, in places that desperately need it done.

    Dean Hoke is Managing Partner of Edu Alliance Group, a higher education consultancy, and a Senior Fellow for The Sagamore Institute. He formerly served as President/CEO of the American Association of University Administrators (AAUA).

    Dean has worked with higher education institutions worldwide. With decades of experience in higher education leadership, consulting, and institutional strategy, he brings a wealth of knowledge on small colleges’ challenges and opportunities. Dean is the Executive Producer and co-host for the podcast series Small College America.

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  • ‘It’s Not the Magic Pill, But it Will Help’ – The 74

    ‘It’s Not the Magic Pill, But it Will Help’ – The 74


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    The parents of slain Fishers junior Hailey Buzbee called on Indiana lawmakers to limit minors’ access to social media after their daughter’s death was linked to a 39-year-old man she spoke to online.

    The original version of SB 199 would have banned social media operators from allowing Hoosier children to make accounts on their platforms and limited access for older teenagers. But this language was stripped in the Senate.

    Now, House lawmakers are considering adding a version of the restriction back with an amendment.

    Speaking at the House Education Committee Wednesday in support of the amendment, Beau Buzbee said 17-year-old Hailey had been lured away from their home by an online predator last month. Law enforcement announced Feb. 1 that she is believed to be deceased and that an Ohio man was arrested in connection with her disappearance.

    Buzbee said their experience showed glaring gaps in Indiana law that needed to be addressed.

    “We are losing the fight to protect our children. The internet and social media are the devils’ and predators’ playgrounds, and it’s on this front that we must fight,” Buzbee told lawmakers. “Please do not let this opportunity slip away.”

    Supporters of Hailey’s Law have also called for schools to provide mandatory updated predator education and for updates to the state’s missing person alert system. Lawmakers said on Monday they would add an expansion to the alert system as an amendment to HB 1303, a bill that increases the penalties for child exploitation, and that they would discuss adding more education to the existing health standards.

    Indiana legislators previously considered — but ultimately failed to advance — a social media ban for minors under 14 and restrictions for those under 17 this year.

    The most recent iteration of the ban is the amendment to SB 199, which requires social media providers to estimate the age of an account user and seek permission from the parents of users under 16. For minor accounts, the amendment forbids social media providers from using an algorithmic feed or selling data for advertising purposes, restricts who can contact the user, and gives parents monitoring tools.

    Critics have raised First Amendment concerns as well as the possibility that the state will be drawn into an extended legal challenge over the law.

    But supporters of a restriction on social media, including Secretary of Education Katie Jenner, say the state must act to address the risks of social media to children and teens the way it does for other dangerous activities, like tobacco use. Social media use is linked to depression, irregular sleep, and a lack of physical activity and social emotional support, said State Health Commissioner Lindsay Weaver. And these issues spill over to classrooms and affect learning, school leaders said.

    House lawmakers heard hours of testimony overwhelmingly in support of the language on Monday, but did not take action to add it to the bill.

    Supporters of the amendment included South Bend student Rima Bahradine-Bell, who said social media use promises community and affirmation but actually leads to comparison and dependency.

    “I’m coming to you as a teenager and a high schooler, and I’m telling you that I would have liked to not have any social media at that age,” she said. “My friends are telling me to tell you that we did not want this.”

    Amy Klink, a school counselor at Guerin Catholic High School, said she frequently speaks to students experiencing mental health crises as a result of social media and to their parents, who struggle to restrict social media access.

    “Even when parents are aware of a social media account, they can’t be aware of every account with a new name. Parental verification could help with this,” Klink said. “It’s not the magic pill, but it will help.”

    SB 199 will return to the House Education Committee on Wednesday for lawmakers to amend and vote.

    Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at [email protected].

    Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.


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  • WEEKEND READING: Reconfiguring UK research collaborations in the post-Brexit era

    WEEKEND READING: Reconfiguring UK research collaborations in the post-Brexit era

    This blog was kindly authored by Yusuf Oldac (X: @YusufOldac), Assistant Professor at the Education University of Hong Kong, and Francisco Olivos (X: @fjolivos), Assistant Professor at Lingnan University.

    The United Kingdom has long been a global leader in research, with its universities and scholars at the heart of international collaborations. However, the landscape of UK research collaborations has undergone a marked shift since the Brexit referendum 10 years ago. Our recent study, based on large-scale bibliometric data from over 85,000 publications from 2010 to 2022, provides empirical evidence of how Brexit has reconfigured the UK’s position in global research networks. These changes carry substantial implications for policymakers, universities, and researchers seeking to maintain the UK’s competitive edge in research and innovation.

    Before Brexit, UK researchers were deeply integrated into European scientific networks, benefiting from shared infrastructure, generous funding schemes such as Horizon Europe, and mobility opportunities that facilitated knowledge exchange. This integration was not merely symbolic; it translated into tangible outcomes such as high-impact publications and leadership in collaborative projects. However, coinciding with the period following the 2016 Brexit referendum, collaboration volumes with EU partners have declined noticeably in proportional terms within total collaborations. This reduction is particularly concerning because European collaborations historically accounted for more than half of the UK’s international research output. While partnerships with North America and Australia remain important, they have not compensated for the loss of EU ties.

    Conversely, collaborations with East Asia have grown significantly, rising from 12 per cent of UK co-authored papers in our dataset before the referendum to 17 per cent in 2022. Within collaborations with East Asia, the volume of publications with China-based researchers is significant. Our data also show a sixfold increase in internationally collaborative publications by UK-based researchers supported by Chinese funding sources, comparing the six years before and after the 2016 referendum. While this trend may indicate UK researchers’ resilience in obtaining research funding amidst uncertainty with the future of research collaboration within Europe,  and offers opportunities for new research agendas, it also raises strategic questions about increased reliance on Chinese research funders and the geopolitical implications of shifting alliances.

    Leadership patterns in collaborative research have also shifted. UK scholars are less likely to occupy first-authorship positions in joint publications, particularly those involving EU partners. First authorship often signals intellectual leadership and initiative, so this decline suggests a weakening of the UK’s influence in shaping collaborative projects. Conversely, East Asian partners are increasingly taking on leadership roles, especially in funded research. This shift underscores the importance of stable funding structures for maintaining leadership as it is usually the authors who secured the research funding that hold the leading authorship roles in collaborative publications. The UK’s recent re-entry into Horizon Europe as an associate member is a positive development, but the terms are less favourable than before and do not restore freedom of movement for researchers. Without robust mobility and funding mechanisms, the UK risks further erosion of its leadership position in collaborative papers.

    Citation impact provides another lens to assess the UK’s research standing. Although UK research remains highly cited globally, our analysis reveals a downward trend in Category Normalised Citation Impact (CNCI) since the Brexit vote. This decline is evident across domestic, EU, and global collaborations, suggesting that reduced connectivity with European networks may have broader consequences. Citation impact is not merely an academic metric; it influences global rankings, funding decisions, and the attractiveness of UK institutions to international talent.

    Policy Implications

    First, diversification should not be treated as a zero-sum game. Expanding collaborations with Asia, Africa, and Latin America is valuable, but it should complement, not replace, strong ties with Europe. Given the scale of existing EU partnerships, even a small decline represents a significant loss in productivity and influence.

    Second, funding structures matter. The uncertainty surrounding EU research funding post-Brexit has had relatively quick and visible effects on collaboration patterns. Policymakers must prioritise stable, accessible funding schemes and mobility opportunities to maintain the UK’s competitiveness.

    Third, continuous monitoring is essential. The patterns observed in our study may evolve, and timely evidence can help mitigate negative impacts while leveraging new opportunities.

    Conclusion

    The UK’s global research collaborations have undergone a reconfiguration in the period following Brexit. While diversification offers new possibilities, maintaining strong European networks remains critical for sustaining the UK’s research excellence. Policymakers should act decisively to secure funding, support mobility, and foster inclusive collaboration strategies. Diversification in research collaborations with other regions and countries should not be done at the expense of previous strong ties with Europe-based researchers. These are important to ensure that UK research continues to thrive in an increasingly interconnected and competitive global landscape.

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  • Students learn new skills they’ll need as climate change advances

    Students learn new skills they’ll need as climate change advances

    by Ariel Gilreath, The Hechinger Report
    February 15, 2026

    GREENVILLE, S.C. — On one end of the classroom, high school juniors examined little green sprouts — future baby carrots, sprigs of romaine lettuce — poking out of the soil of a drip irrigation system they built a few weeks prior. 

    On the opposite end of the room, a model of a hydropower plant showed students how the movement of water can stimulate electrical currents. In this class in South Carolina’s Greenville County school district, students primarily learn about one topic: renewable energy.

    “It’s an extremely important thing to study, especially now with all the new technology coming,” said 11th grader Beckett Morrison. In 2023, the school district built this facility, called the Innovation Center, to cycle in different career training programs every few years, based on local business needs.

    Even as President Donald Trump declares climate change a “hoax” and cuts funding to fight it, school systems in both blue and red states are adding classes in fields like clean energy and infusing environmental sustainability lessons in construction, culinary and other career pathways, as part of an effort to prepare students for a workplace altered by climate change. 

    The trend comes as industries embrace emerging technology in an effort to remain globally competitive, adjust to environmental changes and reduce costs, state and school leaders said. Even jobs that historically have not been considered environmental careers are adapting to changing industry demands. 

    There’s another reason schools are adding sustainability focused courses, too: A growing number of young people, many of whom have lived through severe hurricanes, heat waves and other extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change, are worried about the warming planet and seek ways to alleviate it.

    “They want to make sure the world is safe and clean for foreseeable generations,” said Dan Hinderliter, associate director of state policy at Advance CTE, an organization that represents state and school leaders of career and technical education.

    Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education. 

    On the forefront of this movement is Delaware, a state with plans for all of its middle and high school CTE courses to include environmental lessons in the coming years.

    The idea is for students in every industry — from carpentry to teacher training — to have some knowledge about sustainability and environmental impact, said Jon Wickert, the state’s director of career and technical education and STEM initiatives. 

    The goal is to help students understand how to reduce not only carbon emissions, but also other environmental and health harms, across professions, he said. Business accountants and building managers should consider ways to reduce energy output, which will also lead to reduced costs. Students in carpentry should know the health and environmental impact of dust from wood, plastic and fiberglass, and what happens when those materials pollute waterways, Wickert said. 

    “As a company, if our employees are healthy, that’s going to help our bottom line in terms of health insurance costs. We want our students to think in that manner coming out of our high school programs,” Wickert said. “So when they go to the workforce, they’re able to think bigger and think in ways that are connected.”

    Instead of creating career pathways specifically for environmental jobs, the agency decided to add these lessons to existing middle and high school career education courses. For example, the state is integrating lessons on solar panel installation and energy reduction into coursework for electrical career pathways, rather than starting classes specifically on solar panel installation. 

    The impact of climate change is particularly acute for Delaware, which is the flattest state in the country and sits just above sea level. The state is projected to lose about 10 percent of its land to the ocean by the turn of the century. 

    “Every job is a green job,” said Denise Purnell-Cuff, a contractor who worked on the statewide plan with the Delaware Department of Education. “There is no disconnecting how we move forward in any area — there is no separating it from the environment.”

    Related: Fires, floods and other disasters are multiplying. Schools are adding training for workers to combat them

    In recent years, clean energy jobs have grown faster than the rest of the U.S. economy. By 2030, two-thirds of all cars sold globally are expected to be electric, and more countries will rely on renewable energy as their main source of energy. 

    Under the Biden administration, schools were able to access some federal funding their states received from the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to launch climate-friendly and clean energy workforce initiatives. That law spurred progress in states where funding for climate programs is scant, Hinderliter said, but much of that funding was canceled last year by the Trump administration. 

    Without federal money for these programs, schools now are looking for other sources of funding to create greener CTE programs because of their community’s environmental, or economic, needs.

    Last year, the Chicago Teachers Union successfully bargained for several green initiatives in their contract with the school district, including clean energy career pathways for students. In D.C. Public Schools, leaders are adding sustainability lessons like hydroponic gardening to the district’s agriculture program.

    In Cook County, teachers at Buffalo Grove High School northwest of Chicago were looking for ways to add more science courses to the school’s catalog, which led in 2023 to the creation of the school’s sustainability pathway. Since then, enrollment in the academy has grown more than fivefold, to about 80 students, who take classes such as Introduction to Sustainability, Applications of Sustainability and Advanced Placement Environmental Science.

    “We felt like it was important to engage in these conversations with the students and to get them to think about policy,” said Michael McPartlin, a science teacher in the academy. “They’re going to be the generation that’s shaping what the next steps look like.”

    The high school sits in the Buffalo Creek watershed in Illinois. During their second year of classes in the academy, students take a course on Sustainable Aquatics Systems where they get the chance to test the water’s chemistry and learn about their community’s impact on the ecosystem. 

    Having local jobs that require these kinds of classes bolstered the idea to create the Sustainability Academy, said Angel Johnson, division head of math and science at Buffalo Grove High. 

    “It’s a growing field and has great opportunities with the job market,” Johnson said. “We noticed there were a lot of different jobs available in our community immediately after graduation.”

    Related: Colleges partnered with an EV battery factory to train students and ignite the economy. Trump’s war on clean energy complicates their plans

    Advance CTE doesn’t keep a database of “green” CTE pathways, specifically, but the organization is working with more communities in recent years that want to add sustainability to their programs, Hinderliter said. “We noticed this trend continuing, particularly, with the last administration’s investments in infrastructure,” he said.

    In conservative states where climate change is not a statewide priority, especially amid Trump’s attacks on it, communities are realizing these types of sustainable CTE programs have an economic and workforce benefit that goes beyond helping the environment. 

    “Ohio is a good example of this,” Hinderliter said. “A very red state now has three major metropolitan areas that all have climate literacy plans, climate action plans and are all focusing programs on environmental outcomes both in CTE and in non-CTE programs.”

    In Greenville, where automotive and energy plants like BMW and GE Vernova are among the largest industries, students are learning about electric and hybrid vehicles and renewable energy sources. As beneficial as these lessons are for the environment, students are learning about the technology to boost their career options.

    “All manufacturing has a sustainability component,” said Katie Porter, director of the CTE Innovation Center. Officials from those Greenville County industries helped decide which courses the Innovation Center would offer students when it opened three years ago.

    Students like Morrison travel from high schools across the county to attend the center and enroll in one of five programs: clean and renewable energy, aerospace technology, automation and robotics, emerging automotive research or networks and cybersecurity.

    Students in the clean energy classes can take what they’ve learned to study engineering in college, or they can pursue careers as electricians and energy auditors — jobs that do not necessarily require college degrees. In the center’s automotive classes, students are learning about electric and hybrid vehicles in addition to traditional gas engines. 

    Related: Apprenticeships for high schoolers are touted as the next big thing. One state leads the way

    About 25 high school students are enrolled in this clean energy technology program at the Innovation Center. The three-year program culminates in a project from each senior that reflects what they learned throughout the courses. Last year, a student built a piezoelectric plate — a tile that looks like a body weight scale, but lights up and generates electricity when stepped on. His proposal was to install them in pedestrian areas downtown to generate small amounts of electricity for the city of Greenville. Throughout the class, students present their work to industry leaders in the community.

    “The kids are so impressive about all of the stuff they’ve learned,” said Ethan Cox, who teaches the clean energy classes. Students can graduate the program with Occupational Safety and Health Administration certification, introductory certification on solar panels and 3D modeling, among other skills.

    Students who take this class have different career goals — some of them are considering engineering or environmental jobs, others may go into electrician programs at the local community college.

    The class has taught Morrison, the high school junior in the program, about energy sources he had never imagined. For his next project, he’s learning about a type of algae that, when exposed to ultrasonic frequencies, releases lipids that can be converted into biofuel. 

    He’s always cared about protecting the environment, but the energy courses at this school have helped crystallize that issue for him. In learning about clean energy, he’s also learning about solutions, no matter what industry he decides to pursue after he graduates. For Morrison, reducing society’s impact on the environment is as much a part of his career calculations as finding a good job.

    “It’s one of the most important things,” Morrison said. “There’s no way to completely reverse our effects, but renewable energy is something that can help, will help and has helped.”

    Kavitha Cardoza contributed reporting. 

    Contact staff writer Ariel Gilreath on Signal at arielgilreath.46 or at [email protected].

    This story about green jobs 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 sector has changed size and shape over the last decade

    The sector has changed size and shape over the last decade

    Over in another corner of Wonkhe that Jim Dickinson is building a compelling case for serious problems within the student loan and graduate repayment system.

    The whole article is well worth engaging with, but in essence he is arguing that because the composition of the student body – and thus the pool of graduates making repayments – has changed to the extent that the underlying government assumptions about repayment no longer hold.

    Put it like this. Over the last decade or so students, proportionally, are doing different subjects at different providers. They come, proportionally, from different backgrounds – the mix of entry qualifications and ages has very likely changed too. And all of these aspects, we know from looking at LEO data will have an impact on earnings: and thus repayments, and thus the affordability of the entire loan system.

    Lagging indicators

    Like much in the financial world, our understanding of the contribution of higher education to graduate earning potential is founded on a series of predictions based on past performance. On one level this is problematic: nobody predicted that the (actuarially speaking) long-overdue global pandemic would happen in 2020 rather than any other year, nobody predicted that hype around large language models would build to such an extent that it would have an impact on graduate recruitment this year.

    On another level this is simply the best available data: if we didn’t use past performance the only other option is to guess.

    Whichever we choose, it feels like a worthwhile exercise to take at least some account of the way the sector is changing and has changed. So (with a little bit of HESA statutory data collection magic), that is what I am trying to do here.

    The places they’ll go

    Exhibit A, here, shows the proportional difference in student numbers by provider over a decade (2014-15 to 2024-25). You can filter by subject area at CAH3 level, allowing you to really get into the weeds of the growth and decline of quite small areas of provision – though by default I am looking at totals. And as you might expect, you can also filter by level and mode of study. While the dots show proportional changes over the decade – and that’s what we are sorting by – the bars underneath and the lines below show numerical changes.

    [Full screen]

    The proportional indicators are notable in that the bits of the sector that have really expanded (looking at full time undergraduates here) are either what we loosely term “alternative” providers (largely for profit, have joined the state-funded part of the sector since 2017) or more traditional universities that have greatly expanded their franchise and academic partnership programmes in recent years.

    In England and Wales the only constraints on the growth and decline of providers is the demand among prospective students. There is no strategic design behind changes to the shape of the sector beyond about 2012, and what we see now is the result of the absence of that strategy. Nobody in any centralised position of power decided in 2014-15 that things would be better if we increased the number of business and management students at Ravensbourne University (formerly a specialist arts provider) by 8,290 per cent over the course of a decade; or that King’s College London needed to spin up around 1,000 extra undergraduate psychology places in that time, from a starting point of just 25.

    In both cases there may be a reason, but the reason was not linked to any assessment of societal need by the government on behalf of the taxpayer. The providers in question are responding to what the market will sustain – and they know if (eventually) there are concerns about graduate outcomes the Office for Students will be on them like a ton of bricks (one could argue that a cyclical process of inspections would get there a bit quicker, and on stuff like teaching quality too).

    Disciplinary process

    As is fairly well understood, business and related courses have seen sizable expansion in recent times. In 2014-15 just 15 per cent of undergraduate full time students took business courses – that had risen to 20 per cent by 2024-25. Again, it is worth labouring the point that this is purely the action of the invisible hand of the market: nobody has ever decided that what the UK needs is about 150,000 more business students but that is what we have been given.

    [Full screen]

    The size of the student body overall has grown too, so for a subject area to grow as a proportion of the whole requires some substantial increases in student numbers. Going from computing subjects representing 4.5 per cent of all undergraduate provision to 6.8 per cent represents a doubling in student numbers.

    That’s just at a top level – we can also drill into subjects at a much finer level of granularity (for ease of viewing you need to select a subject group of interest here). You might have spotted, for instance, a growth in social science subjects on the main chart, but may be surprised to learn that the fastest growing full time undergraduate subject within that grouping is health studies – a discipline that covers health and social care in public policy.

    [Full screen]

    What is not clear is whether that subject has grown as a result of demand from the NHS, the Department of Health, or local government – or whether it has increased in popularity due to public interest.

    Over in business and management you will be surprised to learn the growth has been focused in more general business provision – with the proportion taking courses linked to specific disciplines like management, tourism, accounting, and marketing falling over time. It appears that we are educating large numbers of business generalists – and it is not clear why this would be so.

    Group work

    You might have spotted that I have included a filter for “mission group” within most of the dashboards above. Loyal Wonkhe readers will recall that I am not a fan of the use of self-selecting membership bodies as a proxy for provider strategy or teaching quality, but the names are a well-known shorthand in the sector for both.

    In coverage of undergraduate recruitment you will be familiar with the idea that the Russell group is growing at the expense of other providers, and indeed we can see that we are looking at an increase of just under 30 per cent over ten years. I tend to split the grouping into the big seven (Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, KCL, Imperial, Manchester, Edinburgh – very much a distinct subgrouping based on sheer scale and financial power) and the mainstream Russell group: the latter has an extra 72,000 full time undergraduates compared to 2014-15.

    [Full screen]

    But in terms of proportional growth (which bits of the sector have gotten larger) these achievements are dwarfed by those of specialist providers: alternative providers are twice the size that they were, with those who happen to be members of IHE growing even faster. Mainstream specialist providers – arts universities and conservatoires, for example – may be small individually but have grown by 75 per cent over ten years.

    So that’s one version of student choice: niche providers have grown to meet specific applicant interests, and the diversity of the sector has improved much as the politicians behind recent reforms had hoped.

    Another version of that story could be told via the growth of franchise and partnership provision. It is fair to say that recent years have seen this part of the sector: originally a way to support niche provision (hello Doreen Bird!) and outreach, it has become increasingly associated with low quality, high volume provision at unregistered providers. Some growth at smaller modern universities is going to be due to that kind of provision, and we may be able to use charts like these to watch it unwind as larger delivery providers register with OfS and begin submitting their own HESA data.

    In neither of those cases do we have a meaningful track record of salary benefits for graduates: something that the government would use to track loan repayments and thus the overall affordability of the sector. There is simply no data available given these patterns of rapid growth.

    Into uncertainty

    How little we really know about likely future graduate repayments means that there is always going to be an inherent risk in loan-backed student finance. Recent changes to the two major schemes (the threshold freeze for Plan 2, the longer repayment period and lower threshold for plan 5) can be seen as the government shifting large parts of this risk onto graduates themselves.

    Comparing the affordability of various systems of higher education across countries is – whatever OECD says – a fool’s errand: the underlying differences in everything from underlying education systems to cultural norms and the state of the job market make a like-for-like approach nearly impossible. But it is fair to note that the UK spends less public funding (as a proportion of total sector income) than nearly any other comparable nation: while retaining what is widely regarded as a world-class system.

    If a world-class system of mass higher education is what we need to flourish as a nation in an increasingly unstable world – to be clear, I am arguing that this remains the case – there needs to be a serious reckoning around the way we fund it. And if we are hoping that this results in a larger government contribution it is perhaps fair to assume that the government needs to be a lot clearer about what it is paying for.

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  • When It Comes to Developing Policies on AI in K-12, Schools Are Largely On Their Own – The 74

    When It Comes to Developing Policies on AI in K-12, Schools Are Largely On Their Own – The 74

    Generative artificial intelligence technology is rapidly reshaping education in unprecedented ways. With its potential benefits and risks, K-12 schools are actively trying to adapt teaching and learning.

    But as schools seek to navigate into the age of generative AI, there’s a challenge: Schools are operating in a policy vacuum. While a number of states offer guidance on AI, only a couple of states require local schools to form specific policies, even as teachers, students and school leaders continue to use generative AI in countless new ways. As a policymaker noted in a survey, “You have policy and what’s actually happening in the classrooms – those are two very different things.”

    As part of my lab’s research on AI and education policy, I conducted a survey in late 2025 with members of the National Association of State Boards of Education, the only nonprofit dedicated solely to helping state boards advance equity and excellence in public education. The survey of the association’s members reflects how education policy is typically formed through dynamic interactions across national, state and local levels, rather than being dictated by a single source.

    But even in the absence of hard-and-fast rules and guardrails on how AI can be used in schools, education policymakers identified a number of ethical concerns raised by the technology’s spread, including student safety, data privacy and negative impacts on student learning.

    They also expressed concerns over industry influence and that schools will later be charged by technology providers for large language model-based tools that are currently free. Others report that administrators in their state are very concerned about deepfakes: “What happens when a student deepfakes my voice and sends it out to cancel school or bomb threat?”

    At the same time, policymakers said teaching students to use AI technology to their benefit remains a priority.

    Local actions dominate

    Although chatbots have been widely available for more than three years, the survey revealed that states are in the early stages of addressing generative AI, with most yet to implement official policies. While many states are providing guidance or tool kits, or are starting to write state-level policies, local decisions dominate the landscape, with each school district primarily responsible for shaping its own plans.

    When asked whether their state has implemented any generative AI policies, respondents said there was a high degree of local influence regardless of whether a state issued guidance or not. “We are a ‘local control’ state, so some school districts have banned (generative AI),” wrote one respondent. “Our (state) department of education has an AI tool kit, but policies are all local,” wrote another. One shared that their state has a “basic requirement that districts adopt a local policy about AI.”

    Like other education policies, generative AI adoption occurs within the existing state education governance structures, with authority and accountability balanced between state and local levels. As with previous waves of technology in K-12 schools, local decision-making plays a critical role.

    Yet there is generally a lack of evidence related to how AI will affect learners and teachers, which will take years to become more clear. That lag adds to the challenges in formulating policies.

    States as a lighthouse

    However, state policy can provide vital guidance by prioritizing ethics, equity and safety, and by being adaptable to changing needs. A coherent state policy can also answer key questions, such as acceptable student use of AI, and ensure more consistent standards of practice. Without such direction, districts are left to their own devices to identify appropriate, effective uses and construct guardrails.

    As it stands, AI usage and policy development are uneven, depending on how well resourced a school is. Data from a RAND-led panel of educators showed that teachers and principals in higher-poverty schools are about half as likely to AI guidance provided. The poorest schools are also less likely to use AI tools.

    When asked about foundational generative AI policies in education, policymakers focused on privacy, safety and equity. One respondent, for example, said school districts should have the same access to funding and training, including for administrators.

    And rather than having the technology imposed on schools and families, many argued for grounding the discussion in human values and broad participation. As one policymaker noted, “What is the role that families play in all this? This is something that is constantly missing from the conversation and something to uplift. As we know, parents are our kids’ first teachers.”

    Introducing new technology

    According to a Feb. 24, 2025, Gallup Poll, 60% of teachers report using some AI for their work in a range of ways. Our survey also found there is “shadow use of AI,” as one policymaker put it, where employees implement generative AI without explicit school or district IT or security approval.

    Some states, such as Indiana, offer schools the opportunity to apply for a one-time competitive grant to fund a pilot of an AI-powered platform of their choosing as long as the product vendors are approved by the state. Grant proposals that focus on supporting students or professional development for educators receive priority.

    In other states, schools opt in to pilot tests that are funded by nonprofits. For example, an eighth grade language arts teacher in California participated in a pilot where she used AI-powered tools to generate feedback on her students’ writing. “Teaching 150 kids a day and providing meaningful feedback for every student is not possible; I would try anything to lessen grading and give me back my time to spend with kids. This is why I became a teacher: to spend time with the kids.” This teacher also noted the tools showed bias when analyzing the work of her students learning English, which gave her the opportunity to discuss algorithmic bias in these tools.

    One initiative from the Netherlands offers a different approach than finding ways to implement products developed by technology companies. Instead, schools take the lead with questions or challenges they are facing and turn to industry to develop solutions informed by research.

    Core principles

    One theme that emerged from survey respondents is the need to emphasize ethical principles in providing guidance on how to use AI technology in teaching and learning. This could begin with ensuring that students and teachers learn about the limitations and opportunities of generative AI, when and how to leverage these tools effectively, critically evaluate its output and ethically disclose its use.

    Often, policymakers struggle to know where to begin in formulating policies. Analyzing tensions and decision-making in organizational context – or what my colleagues and I called dilemma analysis in a recent report – is an approach schools, districts and states can take to navigate the myriad of ethical and societal impacts of generative AI.

    Despite the confusion around AI and a fragmented policy landscape, policymakers said they recognize it is incumbent upon each school, district and state to engage their communities and families to co-create a path forward.

    As one policymaker put it: “Knowing the horse has already left the barn (and that AI use) is already prevalent among students and faculty … (on) AI-human collaboration vs. outright ban, where on the spectrum do you want to be?”

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • If everyone hates today’s student loans, where are the big alternative ideas?

    If everyone hates today’s student loans, where are the big alternative ideas?

    Author:
    Nick Hillman

    Published:

    HEPI Director, Nick Hillman OBE, considers the paucity of big alternative ideas from those behind the campaigns against student loans.

    The student loan row rumbles on for another weekend … It is an odd one because everyone is unhappy but there is no consensus on what the problem is. Is it the 9% repayment rate, as the Rethink Repayment campaign say? Is it the variable interest rate that means debts can grow even as you make repayments? Is it the latest freeze to the repayment threshold? Is it that some people have borrowed for courses that lead to modest earnings? Is that we send too many people to university? Or is it that the very idea of student debt is immoral? When you can’t agree what the problem is, it is perhaps unreasonable to can’t expect policymakers to coalesce around a solution.

    In the media interviews I have done on the issue, it sometimes feels as if I am the only person left flagging some of the advantages of the system we have. This has made me something of a lightening rod – a friend WhatsApped me this morning to say I would soon join the ‘top ten of Britain’s most hated’ …

    One reason we have reached this odd spot is, I think, that Ministers who complained about student loans in Opposition still seem lukewarm in their support now. But if they are not going to rip the system up for either graduates or students, then the system we have is their policy by default and it is part of their role to explain its merits. Lukewarm support for the status quo may end up resembling the apologetic stance of the Remain campaign, which of course led to defeat.

    It is important to remember the student and university funding system we have exists for a reason: it reflects important trade-offs.

    We could make different decisions instead, such as expecting the generality of taxpayers to cover all of the current costs or sending fewer people to higher education. But let’s not pretend these routes have no challenges of their own. The latest IFS Zooms In podcast ‘Are Plan 2 student loans “unfair”’, which I was delighted to take part in, provides a summary.

    I think the current conversation reveals something important: people know they don’t like the system we have but seemingly have no real idea of what a big reform to it would look like. HEPI is actually among one of the very few organisations to have published a range of big alternative ideas, from Johnny Rich’s employer contribution model to Alan Roff’s graduate contribution scheme. We have floated other changes too, such as harmonising the five different student loan repayment models, having a review of the parameters of student loans once every five years or establishing a long-overdue official independent assessment of students’ true living costs.

    Personally, and it is not a HEPI corporate view, I share some of the qualms people have with the current arrangements – since the Plan 2 system was designed in 2012, the repayment threshold has been mucked around with and held down when it was meant to be uprated annually, inflation has gone way above national targets (thereby increasing the interest on student loans*) and maintenance grants have been abolished (meaning the poorest students graduate with the biggest debts). All three of these changes have made the system worse in my view and some recalibration could therefore make sense. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, recent changes have effectively wiped out the contribution from taxpayers for the 2022 cohort, yet it was meant to be a co-payment model.

    But fixing such things are tweaks; they would not rip up the system or deliver something entirely new. Bigger changes could be made if workable models could be devised to take the place of current arrangements. Remember, however, that no country in the world has a graduate tax and for good reasons. Perhaps the widespread anger among younger graduates really stems from a wider sense of intergenerational inequity. In a sense, student loans are easier to tackle than the regulations limiting housebuilding or the flatlining of productivity or the costs of childcare, yet changing them won’t solve these other challenges.

    The failure of those complaining about the current system to devise a much better system may also explain why all the big national parties in power in recent years – Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats – have ended up backing loan-based student finance while in office. It also explains why international bodies, such as the OECD, have tended to regard our student loan model as superior to other funding systems: they noted in 2015 (before some of the recent changes) that ‘among all available approaches, the UK offers still the most scalable and sustainable approach to university finance.’ One important consequence has been that we have been able to support more people in higher education than many competitor countries (to the chagrin of some people).

    Notably, the SNP are the only UK political party that has held power over higher education policy in recent times and been properly consistent in their opposition to student fees. This approach has arguably been underwritten by the Barnett formula and Scottish students do still take on student debt (for maintenance), plus the SNP’s policies come at the cost of having to ration the number of places for Scottish students in Scottish universities. But SNP leaders still deserve some credit for this consistency, even if there are increasingly loud arguments for changing their approach too – it is that tricky old issue of trade-offs again.

    * There was a recent period when inflation was significantly over 10%. The student loan interest should therefore theoretically have been much higher too. But a cap was put on it. As a result, people’s loan balances fell in real terms, which seems to have been completely forgotten about during the current debates.

    My other pieces on the current student loans row can be found below:

    1. Why the current campaign on student loan interest may be misguided, misunderstood and misdirected
    2. There are three ways to tackle the current student loan crisis: one is unwise, one is unaffordable and one is unpalatable. All are unfair.
    3. What did the three wise men, Ron DEARING, John BROWNE & Philip AUGAR, say about student loan interest?

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  • Prison Program Puts Moms and Babies Together Shows Promise, Officials Say – The 74

    Prison Program Puts Moms and Babies Together Shows Promise, Officials Say – The 74


    Join our zero2eight Substack community for more discussion about the latest news in early care and education. Sign up now.

    PIERRE — For the past five years, conversations about prisons and how to manage them have played out as one tumultuous bout of realignment and soul-searching after another for South Dakota’s leaders.

    Wardens were expelled. Structural deficiencies were exposed. New wardens and corrections secretaries came and went. Lawmakers fought bitterly over how to spend money they set aside for prisons.

    Assaults and overdoses spiked. When the dust settled, the state had endorsed a new women’s prison in Rapid City, a new men’s prison in Sioux Falls, and a correctional rehabilitation task force.

    But something else happened along the way: Prison officials quietly stood up a program they now view as a solid win for some inmates and their families.

    Since 2022, qualifying inmate mothers have lived full-time with their children in a house on the campus of the South Dakota Women’s Prison in Pierre that looks nothing like a prison.

    In the three years since its launch, none of the women who’ve left prison after participating in South Dakota’s Mother-Infant Program have returned to state custody.

    It’s too early to calculate any long-term impact, but Corrections Secretary Nick Lamb told the Legislature’s budget-setting committee recently that he likes the odds for success.

    More than 40% of South Dakota parolees return to prison within three years of their release. In states with similar programs, Lamb said, the repeat offense rate for participating moms “is something like 2%.”

    Through fiscal year 2025, which ended on June 30, 17 women had participated, according to the Department of Corrections Annual Statistical Report. Ten had been released at the time the report was issued, and corrections spokesman Michael Winder said none have returned to prison.

    Another mother-infant house is nearing completion at the new women’s prison in Rapid City, which is set to open this year. The program in Pierre will continue.

    “There’s a beautiful new building out there built just for this,” Lamb told lawmakers.

    A new program for an old building

    The program began under former Department of Corrections Secretary Kellie Wasko.

    To be eligible, the mothers must be on minimum custody status, have 30 months or less remaining on their sentence and be serving time for a nonviolent offense.

    The women and their children live in two fused-together Governor’s Houses just outside the main prison complex in Pierre. The homes are prefabricated dwellings, built at Mike Durfee State Prison in Springfield and typically sold to low-income families.

    The structure had been there for years.

    Until around five years ago, it was known as the “PACT” house, a nod to its use for a less-expansive familial bonding program called Parents and Children Together that was launched by former Gov. Bill Janklow to allow female prisoners weekend-long visits with their kids.

    Interest in PACT had waned by the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Warden Aaron Miller told South Dakota Searchlight during a recent tour. The pandemic shuttered it altogether.

    Wasko moved to reopen its doors as a full-time home for inmate moms and their kids shortly after her arrival in March of 2022. Colorado, the state where Wasko had worked in corrections previously, has a mother-baby unit for inmate moms.

    ‘Just learning’

    On a recent Friday, the moms were gathered in the shared living area at lunchtime, sitting in a semicircle of couches as an episode of the children’s program “Bluey” played on a flat-screen television.

    There were seven women living in the house with their kids that day — four boys and three girls, ranging in age from two months to 18 — but the building can hold up to 10. Women typically stay in the program for 30 months.

    One of the moms, Sara Bernie, said it can feel “pretty cramped” with 10 families, but “we make it work.”

    Bernie’s daughter, Spiryt, turns 1 this month. They’ve been there since Spiryt’s birth.

    “We’re just learning to walk,” Bernie said of her daughter, wearing a fresh-looking pair of Minnie Mouse sneakers and a long-sleeved Minnie Mouse shirt.

    Bernie moved from Michigan to Yankton to work at a restaurant. She’d been in South Dakota less than a month when she was charged with drug distribution. She’d been pregnant about a month, too, and spent the start of her sentence in the main women’s prison, transitioning to the mother-infant program when Spiryt was born.

    “Coming over here, it is a totally different world,” said Bernie.

    Having Spiryt right there, she said, has served to motivate her. Bernie has completed a kitchen management program. The program, run by food service provider Aramark, earned her early discharge credits and put her in a position to make federal minimum wage working in the prison kitchen and save money for her future. Most inmate jobs pay around 50 cents an hour.

    With Spiryt at her side as a motivator, Bernie said, “I am 100% focused on going back out.”

    Her other two children, ages 6 and 14, are in Michigan. She wants to go back there when her sentence is up in early 2028.

    Sometimes, prison staff will clear the adults from the prison’s recreation gym so the littles can take over. Aside from those moments, the children don’t see the inside of the prison. When it’s warm, they play outside.

    Sitters fill role for moms, prison system

    A babysitter or correctional officer watches Spiryt when Sarah goes to work, leaves for recreation time or goes to church. The babysitters are the only other women in the house most evenings. Overnight, it’s often just the moms and babies.

    Bernie is CPR certified, as are all the mothers in the house. That’s also a qualification for the babysitters, who are minimum security inmates interviewed first by the staff, then by the moms.

    “We vote on the babysitters,” Bernie said. ” They usually work out pretty well.”

    The daytime correctional officer, Karen Boyer, often relies on the babysitters to help manage the chaos of a seven-family house. On some days, Boyer spends a lot of time away from the building, taking babies to doctor visits outside the prison in a Chevrolet Suburban packed with car seats.

    “It’s kind of like school,” she said. “When one gets sick, they all get sick.”

    The children start to feel like grandkids after a while, she said.

    It’s a feeling the babysitters get, too.

    “When the kids leave, it’s like they’re losing someone in their family,” Boyer said.

    Kay Cain has been a sitter since November. On the outside, Cain was a pediatric nurse, so working with kids came naturally. She typically takes care of Dennis, an 18-month-old with a mop of curly hair who gives fist bumps when asked for “knuckles.”

    “You’ve kind of grown on me, haven’t you?” she said to Dennis when asked about her favorite part of the job.

    Like Bernie, Dennis’ mother came from out of state, and was living in Yankton when she was arrested. Destiny Hogan said she was pregnant and using fentanyl and methamphetamine at the time.

    “If I wouldn’t have gotten arrested, I don’t know if either of us would be here,” Hogan said.

    Now, having lived side-by-side with Dennis his whole life, she’s closer to him than she’s been with any of her five other children.

    “He’s the only one I’ve been there with from day one,” Hogan said.

    Birthdays, holidays

    Cameras in the corners, khaki prison-issued pants and the supervising correctional officer’s uniform are the only outward signs that the house doubles as a prison facility.

    There are two bathrooms, one with a Peter Pan theme and another with a unicorn theme, on either side of the building. Each bedroom has a theme, as well, and there are hand-painted cartoon images on every wall outside the bedrooms. Every painting was done by an inmate.

    Meals are delivered each day for the women and children. Every month or so, everyone will have what Bernie called a “big meal” together.

    The children get birthday parties, and Bernie wrote out a wishlist for Spiryt. A little boy got an electric drum kit at the last birthday party.

    Christmas gifts come by way of an angel tree, where community members buy the toys listed on tags hanging from a tree.

    A lot of the gifts come in a similar fashion, originating with community members or community partners. Others come from prison staff members.

    Wasko, the former corrections secretary, took particular pleasure in playing Santa Claus, Corrections spokesman Michael Winder said.

    By policy, kids are allowed one bag of gifts at gift-giving time, Winder said.

    “You’d never seen a bag so big,” as the ones Wasko would deliver, he said.

    Community support

    That the PACT house was available at the time of the program’s launch was a big help, allowing the state to avoid building space from scratch or retrofitting areas inside the women’s prison to make them function more like living spaces appropriate for infants.

    As with gifts for the kids, a lot of supplies come through community support, said Miller, the warden at the women’s prison.

    Churches pitch in for car seats, collapsible cribs, toys or furniture, he said, as do local supporters like the Pierre office of a Canadian nonprofit called Birthright, founded in 1968 to support women with unplanned pregnancies.

    Birthright has kept the building stocked with diapers and wipes since the program’s launch.

    An organization called Right Turn offers educational programming to the mothers, Head Start offers early childhood educational materials and teaches moms how to bake and cook, CPR training comes from the Sanford Frontier and Rural Medicine (FARM) Project, and the group Disability Rights of South Dakota helps mothers connect with the resources they’ll need on the outside as they prepare for release.

    The program costs the Department of Corrections $15,000 a year, a figure folded into the $8.8 million budget for the women’s prison in Pierre.

    Building bonds

    Spiryt got restless as she sat on her mom’s lap during her conversation with a reporter and prison administrators. The tot’s eye was drawn to the neon cord of the earbuds plugged into Bernie’s inmate-issued tablet. Spiryt flopped to her left and grabbed the cord.

    Reflexively, Bernie stretched a hand to her window sill, grabbed an identical but non-functioning pair of earbuds and swapped them into Spiryt’s tiny hands.

    “I hide these up here and give them to her when she does this,” Bernie said, smiling down at Spiryt. “That way she still thinks she’s getting away with something.”

    That’s precisely the kind of attentive understanding the program wants mothers to develop with their children.

    “The premise of the program is that they will be able to bond with their child,” Miller said. “It’s teaching moms how to be moms.”

    Miller was around in 1997, when the Pierre women’s prison first opened. At that point, former Gov. Janklow’s move to create a weekend visitation house for inmate mothers was viewed with scrutiny.

    The prison houses women at all security levels and has a minimum security unit, but the main building was designed to house maximum-custody inmates.

    “At the time, no one could imagine having kids in a maximum security facility,” Miller said, even if the overnight visits took place in a conventional house designed for families outside prison walls.

    The women who stayed there through the years tended to do better on the outside, Miller noted, but “when they were only there for the weekend, it was totally different.”

    South Dakota is one of at least nine states with prison nursery programs, Stateline reported last month, the oldest of which is in New York. The programs have expanded as the number of women entering prisons has grown, from around 13,000 in 1980 to nearly 86,000 in 2023.

    ‘Not here to punish inmates’

    The program came up as the Legislature’s budget committee got an update last month on construction at the new women’s prison in Rapid City. The mother-infant program building was nearing completion, Lamb told the committee.

    One senator, Piedmont Republican John Carley, asked Lamb how the prison keeps the program from feeling like a prize for the participating moms.

    “What’s the difference between them truly feeling they’re incarcerated and dealing with the crime maybe they committed versus, ‘hey, this is a lot of wonderful free stuff,’” Carley said.

    Lamb told Carley that his job is not to punish inmates. The incarceration is the punishment, he said.

    “The ladies that are back there no longer have their freedom,” Lamb said. “So they’re serving their punishment by being with us.”

    The low rate of repeat offenses from women who’ve gone through similar programs across the U.S. shows its value as a rehabilitation tool, Lamb told Carley as he invited the senator and anyone else on the committee to visit the shared family space on the Pierre prison campus.

    Lamb, a father of seven, also said there’s a moral component at play. Babies, he said, should not be separated from their mothers for a mother’s misdeeds.

    “Harming the mother is one thing,” Lamb said. “But separating the child from the mother is something totally different.”

    South Dakota Searchlight is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: [email protected].


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  • WEEKEND READING: International students deserve the same strategic care as widening participation students

    WEEKEND READING: International students deserve the same strategic care as widening participation students

    This blog was kindly authored by Professor Manuel Barcia, Pro‑Vice‑Chancellor (Global Engagement) at the University of Bath

    When we speak about international students the conversation too often becomes dominated by visa statistics, economic contributions and recruitment trends. While these aspects all matter, they tell only a fraction of the full story. What truly defines the international student experience is the courage it takes to leave home, the determination to succeed in a new academic culture, and the trust placed in universities to honour that journey with meaningful support. After decades of working in global higher education, I have become convinced that our sector must be far more intentional, principled, and ambitious in how we support these students.

    The UK has long recognised the importance of supporting students from underrepresented backgrounds. Widening participation initiatives have transformed our institutions and proven that when universities take equity seriously, student success improves. This work rests on a simple but profound principle, namely that talent is universal, but opportunity is not. Ability is not confined to particular world regions, income brackets, or national borders. What indeed changes from place to place is access to resources, to networks, to information. That, and the confidence that higher education is a space where one belongs, which may be a given for some, but it is far from being a universal experience. The day we understand this, we will stop viewing support to international students as an optional extra and start seeing it as a matter of fairness.

    International students, including the thousands who come from India and China each year, face many of the same structural barriers as widening participation students. Unfamiliar academic conventions take time to sink in, limited social capital bites as students need to find their way into a new culture, financial pressures sometimes derail careers and lives, and the weight of family expectations can lead many to very dark places. In fact, international students often carry the hopes of entire households. That they may feel like outsiders in spaces that were not designed with them in mind should not surprise anyone.

    My own journey into UK higher education has shaped how I understand this. I grew up in a working‑class family in a developing country, and the possibility of studying abroad only became real because of scholarships such as Chevening and the now abolished Overseas Research Students Awards Scheme. I arrived in the UK with ambition, but also with uncertainty and the quiet fear that I might not belong in spite of having followed Liverpool FC since I was a child, knowing the lyrics of virtually every Led Zeppelin song, and having watched every episode of Man About the House and Chocky.

    Those early experiences taught me how powerful it is when a university chooses to invest in a student’s success, and how isolating it can feel when that support is absent. But with hindsight today, I also realised that it was back then when I became aware that the categories we use (e.g. international and widening participation) are not mutually exclusive. Many students, like me, have inhabited both simultaneously.

    The policy implications of widening global participation

    At the University of Bath, we are working to build an international student experience that reflects these realities and responds to them with purpose – and I believe there are wider policy implications for our sector.

    One of the reasons I joined Bath was its willingness to treat internationalisation as a matter of values, not just numbers. Our International Student Experience team engages with students long before they set foot on campus, as is the case with domestic widening participation initiatives. We offer guidance on visas, accommodation, academic expectations, and the practicalities of relocating to the UK. Early interventions like these reduce uncertainty, build confidence, and help students arrive prepared rather than overwhelmed.

    We also recognise that financial barriers remain one of the biggest challenges for international students. That is why Bath has recently launched a new suite of undergraduate and postgraduate scholarships designed specifically to widen access for talented international students. These awards aim to support those who have the ability and ambition to excel but may lack the financial means to pursue a world‑class education abroad. As someone whose own academic journey was made possible by scholarships, I know first-hand how transformative this support can be, and not just financially, but emotionally, signalling that the institution believes in you and your potential.

    Belonging is another essential pillar of our approach. As someone whose academic work has focused on the histories of marginalised and displaced communities, I also understand the difference that it makes when individuals feel seen and valued. Bath’s intercultural events, peer‑to‑peer networks, and community‑building initiatives are designed to create those essential spaces where international students can form meaningful connections. Belonging, to our community, is a prerequisite for academic success, and not just a decorative extra.

    Caring beyond compliance

    Yet across the sector, international students are still too often treated through the lens of compliance rather than care. Domestic widening participation is framed as a moral and regulatory imperative, a good in its own right and a source of pride. By contrast, international student support is too often seen as a market function. This artificial distinction is increasingly untenable. International students are full members of our academic communities, whose success shapes our institutional outcomes. As such, their wellbeing is central to the mission of the university.

    The good news here is that the widening participation ecosystem we have in place already offers a blueprint for a more holistic approach. One of its most important lessons, I would argue, is the value of proactive, data‑driven support. Widening participation initiatives recognise that students benefit from early, structured interventions and that responsibility for student success must be shared across the institution. I do not see why international student data, including progression, attainment and continuation, cannot be monitored with the same granularity and acted upon with the same urgency. And why shouldn’t the four pillars of connection, inclusion, support and student autonomy, identified in recent work on belonging, be applied to all students regardless of their home country?

    At this moment the UK higher education sector is at a crossroads. Just as policy uncertainty, rising costs, and intensifying global competition are reshaping student expectations, universities are facing a new reality where the reliance on historical prestige is not always enough. The best course of action, I would propose, would be to demonstrate, through policy and practical action rather than rhetoric, that international students are valued members of our academic communities.

    While for me this is a strategic priority, it is definitely also a matter of principle. I know what it means to arrive in a new country with hope, determination, and limited means. I know how transformative it is when a university chooses to invest in your success. And I know how much stronger our institutions become when they embrace international students not as revenue streams, but as full participants in the academic community.

    Widening participation has shown what is possible when the sector commits to equity. We recognise that if we support talent, it can thrive and our institutions and the knowledge they create are all the stronger for that. It is time to extend that same understanding and commitment to international students, not just because they are a source of income, but because they are a vital part of who we are and who we aspire to be.

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