Author: admin

  • No more civic washing – most universities now pay their staff a living wage

    No more civic washing – most universities now pay their staff a living wage

    Today 88 per cent of UK universities pay a living wage, marking a significant increase from 2022 when I first published an article on Wonkhe that suggested that several universities were engaged in “civic washing” – claiming civic credentials without the concrete action to back up their claims.

    My argument then was that a significant proportion of universities had made public commitments to be “civic” but were not paying the living wage. How, I often asked myself, can you claim to be civic and not treat your lowest paid, and often local, staff with the dignity of a living wage?

    The Living Wage Foundation calculates the living wage to be £12.60 (£13.85 in London) according to the cost of living, based on a basket of household goods and services. This is above the statutory minimum wage, which the government brands as the “national living wage.” Employers – including universities – have used the language of the “voluntary living wage” (VLW) where they claim to pay the level determined by the Living Wage Foundation but are not accredited in doing so. This contrasts with the “real living wage” (RLW) which is when an employer is accredited by the Living Wage Foundation as paying the living wage.

    To be accredited with the Living Wage Foundation an employer must pay all directly employed staff the living wage and have an agreed plan in place for third party contracted staff such as for outsourced catering, cleaning and security. The requirement placed on subcontracted staff is one of the reasons that universities and other employers pay the VLW as opposed to the RLW.

    Real progress

    As reported in a series of Wonkhe articles (here and here), over the past four years there has been an increase in the number of universities paying the real and voluntary living wage. In the context of the acute financial crisis impacting many universities this is a massive achievement that should be celebrated. Indeed, I am aware of only one university that has de-credited from the Living Wage Foundation over the past few years.

    In 2019 (when I first looked into the living wage issue) only 38 of Universities UK members were accredited with the LWF. Today that has increased to 80 with four accrediting in 2024. However, this does not take into account the universities that pay the VLW. The only way to determine this is to check institutional websites and where no information is available to follow up with a freedom of information request. In 2024, we contacted 61 universities and determined that 39 were paying a voluntary living wage.

    This year I decided to update this analysis by focusing on the 22 universities that confirmed they did not pay the RLW or VLW. Two of these were private providers that did not respond to a FOI last year, so I excluded them. The remaining 20 did respond, of which 12 unambiguously acknowledged that they did not pay the living wage, three said they were considering it but currently do not pay the VLW, 2 said no, but added that their pay scales are above the living wage and thus were included in the analysis and three said that they now pay the VLW.

    This means that out of 140 universities in my sample, 123 now pay the real or voluntary living wage (88 per cent), up from 82 per cent last year. Whilst this is undoubtedly cause for celebration, it is important to note that the VLW does not require a commitment for subcontractors to be paid a living wage.

    As some of you know, I am off to pastures new and thus this will be the last time I update the analysis. However, I am delighted that Citizens UK’s community of practice on higher education has agreed to take on the exercise and I have shared with them all the data from previous years. Perhaps when I return to the UK the university sector will have set a precedent by being wholly accredited with the Living Wage Foundation.

    Find out more about the Living Wage Foundation and the process of accreditation as a Living Wage employer here. 

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  • Exploring the explosion in franchise and partnership activity

    Exploring the explosion in franchise and partnership activity

    There’s a clear need for more regulatory oversight of franchise and partnership teaching arrangements, but – as regulators are finding – there’s no easy way to track which students are being registered, taught, or physically located at which provider.

    Knowing where students study feels like a straightforward matter – indeed “where do HE students study” is one of the top level questions posed in HESA’s Student open data collection. If you click on that, it takes you to an up-to-date (2022-23 academic year) summary of student numbers by registering provider.

    But as we’ve learned from concerns raised by the Office for Students, the Student Loans Company, the National Audit Office, and (frankly) Wonkhe there is a bit more to it than that. And it is not currently possible to unpick this to show the number of students at each provider – for any given value of “at” other than registering – using public data. But we can do it for the number of courses.

    The forgotten open data set

    Yes – I’ve started the year abusing the Unistats open data release (it’s the only open data release that lets you find details of courses was the clue). And you sort of, kind of, can unpick some of these relationships using it. After a fashion.

    It is worth unpacking our terms a bit:

    • A student’s registration provider is the provider that returns that student as a part of their official data returns. If the registration provider has degree awarding powers, this is generally the provider that awards the qualification the student is working towards
    • A student’s teaching provider is the provider where a student is actually taught – in the instances where this is different to the registering provider this usually happens via a partnership arrangement of some sort.
    • A student’s location provider is the actual place a student is taught – usually, this is the same as a teaching provider, but not always – for example a “university centre” based at an FE college counts as the university in question doing the teaching, but the location would be the FE provider that hosts the centre.
    • We’ve also got to deal with the idea of an awarding provider, the place that actually awards the degree the student is working towards. In the main this is the same as the registering provider, but where the registering provider can’t award the degree in question it will be someone else by arrangement.

    How does this appear in Unistats? You are probably familiar with the notion of the UK Provider Reference Number (UKPRN): a unique identifier for educational settings. In the unistats data we get something called PUBUKPRN, which identifies where a course is primarily taught. We get something called UKPRN, which identifies where students on a given course are registered. And we get LOCUKPRN, which identifies the location a student is taught at – where this a location with its own UKPRN that is not the same as the PUBUKPRN.

    Limits to sector growth visualisation

    What’s missing – we don’t get a UKPRN for the awarding body. Not in public data. It is collected (OTHERINST) and used on the Discover Uni website but it is not published for me to mess with. Not yet, anyway.

    So what I can show you is the number of courses at each combination of registering, teaching, and location provider. This shows instances where students may be registered at one provider but taught at another (your classic partnership arrangement), and the evolving practice of declaring unilateral branch campuses (where students are registered and taught at one provider, but located at a different one).

    That latter one explains the explosion of London “campuses” that area really an independent provider (that may cater to multiple institutions in a similar way). The whole thing gives some indication of where a given provider is involved in franchise/partnership activity – but only where this is shown on unistats.

    What I found

    First up – sorted by registering provider. You can filter by registering provider if you don’t want the whole list (whyever not?), and I’ve included a wildcard filter for course titles. This is instead of a subject filter – each course in unistats is meant to have a subject associated with it, but this tends not to happen for the kinds of courses we are interested in here:

    [Full screen]

    And the same thing, sorted (and searchable) by teaching provider:

    [Full screen]

    Many limitations, but a space to keep asking

    The limitations here are huge. What we really want is the number of students registered on each course – we can get this at various levels of aggregation but not reliably at a single course, single cohort level. HESA’s policy of rounding and aggregating to avoid identifying individual students (and of course the historic nature of much of the data presented on unistats) means that most of the information in the data set (entry qualification), NSS, graduate destinations is combined across multiple years and numerous related subjects.

    In the usual unistats fashion “courses” are a unique combination of qualification aim, title, and mode for each location. So the handful of remaining providers that do defined “joint” degrees (two or more subjects) look like they are spectacularly busy. And, as always, the overall quality of data isn’t brilliant so there will be stuff that doesn’t look right (pro tip: yes tell me, but also tell HESA).

    Here then, is a partial explanation as to why regulators and others have been slow to respond to the growth in franchise, partnership, and other joint provisions: almost by definition the novel things providers are up to don’t show up in data collection. That’s kind of the point.

    But is a simple list of available courses, where they are taught, what (and whose) awards they lead to, what subjects they cover, and how many students are on each too much to ask? It appears so.

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  • Resolving the tensions in campus culture requires leadership from within

    Resolving the tensions in campus culture requires leadership from within

    You’ve heard a version of this story before.

    The 16 days against gender-based violence campaign has been running around the world for over 30 years now, and manifestations on campus can include everything from assertiveness and self-defense workshops to panels on violence, discrimination and harassment in student life.

    Back in 2021, students at the oldest university in Poland had put together a programme of activity for the campaign that included a lecture on the criminological aspects of the murders of women from a lecturer in the Department of Criminology.

    But days before she was due to give the talk, the Forensic Psychology Section of the Scientific Association of Psychology Students at Jagiellonian University in Krakow (one of the co-organisers alongside the LGBTQ+ society and the SU) announced that the lecture had been cancelled:

    When inviting Dr. Magdalena Grzyb to give a lecture, we were not aware of the views she represents. We would also like to point out that we absolutely do not agree with the opinions she expresses, and we do not consent to any manifestations of transphobia in the university space.

    The previous year, Grzyb had penned a piece in Kultura Liberalna – a weekly Polish magazine focusing on liberal values, intellectual debate, and cultural analysis – critiquing the acceptance of non-binary and queer identities in liberal and progressive circles, suggesting that prioritising individual self-identification over systemic efforts to deconstruct stereotypes and achieve real gender equality was a problem:

    Does every man, even a serial rapist or a domestic torturer, if he says he feels like a woman, have the right to demand to be placed in a cell with women, often victims of such men? (…) A woman who repairs a dishwasher at home is also non-binary. Heck, a woman who earns more than her husband is also non-binary. A man who irons his clothes and washes the floor with a mop is also non-binary. (…) Do they deserve special treatment and a place in a cell with women because of this?

    A few days later Jerzy Pisuliński, Dean of the Faculty of Law and Administration at Jagiellonian, issued a statement making clear that the lecture would take place after all, on the basis that the university should be a place for “debate on important social problems” and that it “cannot avoid controversial topics”.

    Setting an example

    That was an announcement welcomed by HE minister Przemysław Czarnek, whose conservative and nationalist Law and Justice Party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS) had only months previously, egged on by the Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture, proposed an amendment to the Law on Higher Education that sought to tackle wokery and cancel culture:

    I welcome with satisfaction the decision of the Rector of the Jagiellonian University to restore the lecture of Ms. Dr. Magdalena Grzyb. The Jagiellonian University is setting an example.

    A year previous a sociology lecturer at the University of Silesia in Katowice resigned in protest after students accused her of promoting intolerant anti-choice and homophobic views in her classes. The university’s disciplinary official found evidence of intolerance – prompting Czarnek’s predecessor Jarosław Gowin to condemn what he termed “ideological censorship”:

    The Bill will be intended to help the university community and the rector to ensure that these freedoms are not violated, that the university is a temple of freedom of speech, freedom of exchange of views and discussion.

    When it eventually appeared a few months later, it proposed to guarantee academic teachers’ freedoms in teaching, speech, research, and publication; protect the expression of religious, philosophical, or worldview beliefs, ensuring they would not constitute disciplinary offenses; and oblige university rectors to uphold respect for these freedoms, all aimed at guaranteeing an environment of “ideological pluralism” within academic institutions.

    Campaign groups weren’t happy – arguing that student organisations should be able to invite or not invite lecturers to their events:

    …that is their sacred right, just as it is not a restriction of freedom of speech that I or any other person was not invited. Other people may not like it and may criticise this decision.

    Just as in the UK, some argued that the reforms could undermine the independence of academic institutions – allowing government influence over academic discourse and research priorities, and discouraging open discussion and critical analysis on topics that might conflict with the government’s conservative stance.

    Others puzzled over the practical differences between not refusing a speaker and forcing a voluntary student group to go ahead with one even if it didn’t want to – the sort of detail lost in the noise in cases like this.

    But back at Jagiellonian, there was the thorny issue of Ernest Figiel to resolve.

    Enemies of the people

    Figiel, a trans activist student at Jagiellonian had accused Grzyb of being a Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist, and in the process had called for TERFs to be “thrown into a sack and into a lake”, disposed of “in lime pits” and had praised Stalin’s methods of dealing with “enemies of the people” – which he thought should apply to Grzyb and her ilk.

    And as disciplinary proceedings against Figiel ensued and a counter campaign kicked off, it was down to Beata Kowalska, who in 2020 became the university’s first Advocate [Ombusperson] for Academic Rights and Values, to chart a way through:

    It does not matter who the hate speech comes from. Allegations of hate speech are carefully investigated in the case of any member of the university community. As is well known, hate speech can have disastrous consequences when used publicly, sometimes contrary to the original intentions of the sender… Figiel publicly used polemical statements of a dehumanizing nature against his opponents, using extermination and genocidal metaphors…

    Such statements are unacceptable in the academic community. Trivializing the extermination or using in an allegedly humorous way images of genocide, which Mr. Figiel publicly wished for his opponents, constitute a flagrant transgression of the boundaries of freedom of speech.

    The full statement is excellent – carefully integrating concerns that discrimination against non-heteronormative people had intensified with the need to uphold freedom of speech as a “pillar of democratic debate”. And while that was not a universally popular intervention, it pretty much doused the flames and helped the university community move on. The question is how and why.

    What goes on tour

    Jagiellonian in Krakow and Silesia in Katowice were two of the universities we visited on this year’s Wonkhe SUs January bus tour of students’ unions – which took in the Visegrad countries of Hungary, Slovakia, Czechia and Poland.

    Over the past few years, we’ve been assembling groups of SU officers (and the staff that support them) to meet with students’ unions, guilds, associations across countries in Europe – and we’ve seen any number of fascinating projects, initiatives, buildings, services and schemes that students deliver in the student interest.

    But on the long (and often winding) roads between university towns and cities across Europe, we’ve also been trying to work out what it is that underpins all of the impressive stuff that we’ve seen.

    Much like the other three countries’ systems, Polish higher education’s governance is effectively a communitarian power-sharing arrangement that “combines the preferences of policymakers towards the market model” with the legacy of the “institutionalized, deeply-entrenched, and change-resistant academic self-governance model” that was reintroduced in 1990 after communist rule.

    The Law on Higher Education has an extensive section on student rights – setting out a positive role for students’ unions to deliver training on those rights to students, as well as recognising their role in giving voice to student concerns, and organising activities aimed at the social integration and cultural development of students.

    Built almost entirely on pyramids of faculty-based student involvement that start with summer student integration camps and talks for new students on rights and obligations, we met any number of impressive, unpaid student leaders who were keen to support other students because they themselves had experienced being supported by others.

    The law also provides for state universities to be partially democratically run both at faculty and institutional level – with students given at least 20 per cent of seats and veto power over key decisions like who gets to be Dean or Rector, and what goes into study programmes.

    At Silesia, the SU President – who started his talk with a slide quoting from the law – concluded by turning to the Vice-Rector for Student Affairs to say that “we often argue, but we couldn’t wish for anyone better for the job”. That’s partly because to get elected, she had to command the confidence of those electing her. And it’s partly because him and his colleagues obviously thought they had real power in the process.

    He, like all the other SUs we had met in Poland, had mentioned the Ombudsperson at the university as a key figure that students had the right to access – and as we burned through SIM data between visits, we set about trying to understand why.

    Law 2.0

    In 2018, ruling party PiS had enacted a new Law on Higher Education and Science, commonly known as Law 2.0, to modernize higher education. University councils (as opposed to Senates) were given external stakeholders, funding mechanisms were modernised to promote research excellence, universities were given more flexibility in financial management, and toughened duties were placed on universities to uphold ethical standards, including those related to freedom of speech and debate.

    A handful of academic ombudspeople were already in place at the University of Warsaw, the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, the Catholic University in Lublin and the Medical University of Warsaw – but Law 2.0 gave a group of universities the opportunity to integrate democratic governance and student rights and obligations into an optional model charter for universities, Section V of which provided for the appointment of an ombudsman for academic rights and values.

    Jagiellonian’s students and staff were among those who’d spotted a need to be seen to be both integrating and providing leadership on EDI and freedom of speech – and the job spec for their first ombuds oozes a need to command confidence.

    They have to be an academic teacher who has been employed at the university for at least ten years and holds a professor or university professor position. They can’t hold any managerial or governing roles and should be widely respected within the university community, demonstrating strong social sensitivity.

    Candidates can be nominated by various groups, including the Senate, university employees, both the UG and doctoral SUs, and the trade unions. Their job is to monitor and address violations of academic rights and values, provide support to affected parties, mediate disputes, and collaborate with university entities to create a respectful academic environment.

    They investigate reported violations, recommend corrective measures to university bodies, and advocate for affected individuals during proceedings. They also have the authority to advise on initiating disciplinary or mediation processes and can request information or documentation from university bodies as needed. And every year, they submit a comprehensive report to the Senate detailing their activities and cases handled – which is subsequently made publicly available.

    No to parameterization

    This interview with the inaugural postholder Beata Kowalska – a feminist sociologist involved in the Scholars at Risk Network – is inspiring:

    A university is not a place where we collect points and are subjected to parameterization, but rather a community of people who work together. They do not work only individually to build their own careers, the mission of the university is much broader.

    Universities are spaces where academic freedom and equality should flourish. This means identifying solutions, sharing good practices, and creating tools that will support these goals. I plan to hold discussions on topics like climate change and academic integrity. Recently, we even used sociological “teams” during the pandemic lockdown to address social isolation among students.

    One challenge is bridging the gap between academic life and society. Universities must be critical spaces where ideas are debated freely and without fear of discrimination or exclusion. This applies not only to faculty and students but to the broader society they serve.

    In year one, Kowalska’s office handled 236 cases involving staff, students, and doctoral candidates, addressing issues like academic ethics, workplace conditions, and conflict resolution, as well as the promotion of academic values, mediation efforts, and educational programmes to support a culture of respect and dialogue within the university.

    And since then her office and team of mediators have gone on to tackle violations of students’ rights by academics, wider academic values, workplace conditions, unwanted behaviours and harassment, complaints about study organisation, anti-discrimination training and cultural events – as well as collaborating internationally.

    Somehow we know more about how the University of Jagiellonian has been handling disputes between students, staff and the university by using Google Translate on a couple of PDFs than pretty much any university in the UK with their bulletproof PR processes and bland press statements when a row ensues.

    And so successful have the institutional ombudspeople been at commanding confidence that PiS backed off on further reforms – and now, along with announcements on encouraging mergers (federalisation first), financial aid for doctoral students, a plan to build more places in dorms and scholarships for students engaged in running activities for others, last September the new government announced that it would strengthen the powers of student and doctoral student ombuds.

    In December HE minister Dariusz Wieczorek ended up embroiled in some kind of whistleblowing scandal, but you get a real sense that the Donald Tusk-led coalition has students’ concerns at heart:

    According to the Central Statistical Office, there are over a million students in Poland. I really want each of you to have the best possible conditions for learning and pursuing your passions, so that your studies are a chance for you to deepen your knowledge, acquire new skills, but also a time for making friends and comprehensive development. That is why at the Ministry of Science and Higher Education we consistently introduce solutions that will ensure high quality of education at Polish universities, we transfer funds for investments related to the teaching activities of universities, and we also co-finance the construction and modernization of dormitories.

    In addition, a student culture support program will be launched in the first quarter of 2025, aimed at clubs, teams and organizations operating in higher education institutions. I am convinced that it will allow for the activation and integration of the environment, and above all, it will contribute to the development of student culture in Poland.

    Commanding confidence

    As ever on our study tours, back on the bus we tended to conclude that there’s lots to be proud of in the UK – in particular, for all of the issues that present, we figure that our sector’s work on mental health and the progress being made on harassment and sexual misconduct and access and participation really is streets ahead of many other countries’ efforts.

    But when it comes to treating students as real stakeholders, it’s not the size of the SU’s block grant that matters – and when it comes to the tensions between academic freedom and EDI, the pausing of the implementation of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act is less a defeat or victory, and more a reflection of the “jury’s out” position that pretty much everyone has on the sector’s ability to reconcile the tensions in a way that will command real confidence.

    Democracy in universities – real democracy, not events where you can scrawl ideas that consultants ignore on sheets of flipchart paper – is in pretty short supply in a UK sector that has largely abolished it in universities and only really turns to it for a popularity contest for leaders in March in SUs. And universities back home are never wrong – at least not in public.

    If nothing else, what we saw in various forms across the Visegrad group this year was real democracy in action – imperfect, messy, bureaucratic and uncomfortably open, but powerfully symbolic of the sort of society that universities hope their graduates will want to build in the future.

    Back on the academic freedom and freedom of speech issue, the truth is that there have always been and always will be tensions and conflicts – between freedom from harm and freedom to speak, between supporters of Israel and Palestine, between protecting the university and protecting students, between the young keen to be on the right side of history and an older generation defensive of it, and between the role that universities play both critiquing society and being a part of it. Conflicts require resolution.

    Having the confidence to take the national widespread credibility of the OIA and establish local versions of it like that exemplified by Beata Kowalska at Jagiellonian – commanding the confidence of students, staff, management, politicians and the wider public by being somewhere independent where folk can raise and resolve disputes – wouldn’t be a defeat for the UK sector, and nor would it represent a risk.

    It would be a reflection of what higher education in the UK often says it is – an open, reflective, capable and self-critical community of students and staff – but all too often is too defensive and too proud to trust its own people to make it a reality.

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  • Higher Education and the American Empire

    Higher Education and the American Empire

    The Higher Education Inquirer has had the good fortune to include scholars like Henry Giroux, Gary Roth, Wendy Lynne Lee, Bryan Alexander and Richard Wolff.  And their work certainly informs us about higher education. With those authors and others from the past and present (like Upton Sinclair, Craig Steven Wilder, Davarian Baldwin, and Sharon Stein), we can better understand puzzling issues that are rarely pieced together.  

    In 2023, we suggested that a People’s History of US Higher Education be written. And to expand its scope, the key word “Empire” is essential in establishing a critical (and honest) analysis. Otherwise, it’s work that only serves to indoctrinate rather than educate its citizens.  And it’s also work that smart and diligent students know is untrue.  

    A volume on Higher Education and the American Empire needs to explain how elite universities have worked for US special interests and the interests of wealthy people across the globe–often at the expense of folks in university cities and places around the world–and at the expense of the planet and its ecosystems. With global climate change in our face (and denied), and with the US in competition with China, India, Russia, in our face (and denied), this story cannot be ignored.

    This necessary work on Higher Education and the US Empire needs to include detailed timelines, and lots of charts, graphs, and statistical analyses–as well as stories. Outstanding books and articles have been written over the decades, but they have not been comprehensive. And in many cases, there is little to be said about how this information can be used for reform and resistance. 

    Information is available for those who are interested enough to dig. 

    Understanding the efforts of the American Empire (and the wealthy and powerful who control it) is more important than ever. And understanding how this information can be used to educate, agitate, and organize the People is even more essential.  We hear there are such projects in the pipeline and look forward to their publication. We hope they don’t pull punches and that the books do not gather dust on shelves, as many important books do. 

    Key links:

    The Best Classroom is the Struggle (Joshua Sooter)

    Higher Education Must Champion Democracy, Not Surrender to Fascism (Henry Giroux)

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  • Denied vote on pro-BDS resolution, MLA members protest

    Denied vote on pro-BDS resolution, MLA members protest

    A “die-in” protest at the MLA annual convention before Saturday’s Delegate Assembly meeting.

    As the Modern Language Association Delegate Assembly was beginning its meeting Saturday in New Orleans, audience members stood inside the hotel ballroom and chanted, “The more they try to silence us the louder we will be!” a video posted online shows. 

    The protesters, who made up a large number of the meeting’s attendees, read out a resolution endorsing the international boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israeli policy—the very resolution that the MLA’s elected Executive Council had blocked from going to the Delegate Assembly and the association’s full membership for a vote. Then the demonstrators walked out of the meeting. 

    It was one of multiple protests at this weekend’s annual MLA conference aimed at the Executive Council’s fall decision to reject the resolution without letting members vote on it.

    That resolution—like one that American Historical Association conference attendees overwhelmingly passed Jan. 5—also would have accused Israel of “scholasticide,” or the intentional eradication of an education system. But the AHA resolution didn’t endorse the BDS movement.  

    The demonstrations at the two conventions are the latest examples of scholarly associations and their members debating whether they should say anything as an organization about the ongoing war in Gaza at a time when politicians and people both inside and outside academe are criticizing scholars and institutions for expressing opinions on current events.  

    Anthony Alessandrini, an English professor at the City University of New York’s Kingsborough Community College, said he led a call and response demonstration. A few shouts of “Shame!” rang out.

    “Sometimes, this is what democracy looks like!” the demonstrators chanted in unison during the call and response. They raised hands or fists in the air, and some held signs that Alessandrini said bore the names of Palestinian academics killed in Gaza since October 2023. Protesters held a large banner that read, “MLA is Complicit in Genocide.”

    As they were walking out of the ballroom, protesters chanted “Free free Palestine!” and “You don’t have quorum!”—the minimum required numbers of attendees to conduct official business at a meeting. However, the MLA said quorum was maintained and the meeting continued.  

    The MLA Executive Council, an elected body, released a lengthy statement last month explaining its October decision to shoot down the resolution. The Council said it was concerned about “substantial” revenue loss if members endorsed the BDS movement, saying legal restrictions in many states on partnering with BDS-supporting organizations would end the MLA’s ability to contract with numerous colleges and universities and their libraries. It added that “some private institutions and major library consortia” also have such prohibitions.

    “Fully two-thirds of the operating budget of the MLA comes from sales of resources to universities and libraries, including the MLA International Bibliography,” the Council said.

    Dana Williams, president of the Executive Council and a professor of African-American literature at Howard University, told Inside Higher Ed Saturday that “the primary reason” for the council’s decision “was fiduciary.” But she also mentioned concerns about dividing the membership over endorsing the BDS movement, noting that “collegiality was one of many things that we were considering.”

    The Council’s statement in December suggested MLA members consider something short of endorsing the BDS movement. “Could not a motion calling for a statement protesting scholasticide in Gaza, while not focusing on BDS, be a powerful expression of solidarity?” it said.

    The fallout from the Executive Council’s decision included the resignation of two of its roughly 15 members, who were nearing the end of their terms. One was Esther Allen, a professor at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center and Baruch College.

    “The really don’t feel comfortable with any kind of member activism, they really don’t want it at all on any subject,” Allen told Inside Higher Ed.

    Williams said she supports members’ right to protest. “The association is the membership, we want to reiterate,” she said. What the members who walked out missed “was the one-hour open discussion [during the meeting] that … was really fruitful, thoughtful engagement with those delegates who were present that will inform the actions of the council going forward,” she added. The MLA didn’t provide a remote option for watching the meeting.

    The Council continues to believe that rejecting the resolution “was the right decision that would allow the association to continue to do its really important work to serve the members,” she said. “We had the benefit of a council that is bold enough and courageous enough to make very hard decisions.”

    MLA Members for Justice in Palestine is circulating a pledge for members to promise not to renew their memberships in protest. Alessandrini noted some other scholarly groups have endorsed the BDS movement.

    “My sort of forecast is a lot of people are going to move from organizations like the MLA and, I would add, the AHA [American Historical Association] if they don’t sort of endorse the will of the members—and towards the many organizations that have in fact taken the right stand,” he said. 

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  • Pro-Palestine Columbia professor departs after investigation

    Pro-Palestine Columbia professor departs after investigation

    A longtime tenured Columbia University law professor who faced public criticism from Columbia’s president and congressional Republicans will no longer teach at the institution, after more than 25 years as a faculty member there.

    Katherine Franke said Friday in a letter that she’s effectively been terminated, following a university investigation into a media interview she gave in which she criticized students who formerly served in the Israel Defense Forces for allegedly harming other students at Columbia. The investigation found that her media comments, and her alleged retaliation against a complainant in subsequent comments, had violated Columbia’s Division of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Policies and Procedures. 

    She’s among multiple U.S. faculty members who’ve been investigated or punished in connection to speech that can broadly be considered pro-Palestinian.

    In a statement, Franke said she reached an agreement with Columbia “that relieves me of my obligations to teach or participate in faculty governance after serving on the Columbia law faculty for 25 years.” She added, “While the university may call this change in my status ‘retirement,’ it should be more accurately understood as a termination dressed up in more palatable terms.”

    She did not share a copy of the departure agreement, nor did the university. Columbia didn’t directly respond to her characterization of her departure.

    In a broadcast last January on Democracy Now!, a left-leaning radio and television newscast, Franke talked about an incident on campus in which pro-Palestinian protesters said they had been sprayed with a harmful chemical. Students were hospitalized, and protest organizers accused other students who had served in the Israeli military. The university said in August that the substance sprayed was “a non-toxic, legal, novelty item.”

    Franke told the host that Columbia has a program that connects it with “older students from other countries, including Israel. And it’s something that many of us were concerned about, because so many of those Israeli students, who then come to the Columbia campus, are coming right out of their military service. And they’ve been known to harass Palestinian and other students on our campus. And it’s something the university has not taken seriously in the past.”

    Most Jewish citizens of Israel must serve in the military for at least 32 months for men and 24 for women.

    “We know who they were,” Franke said on the program of the alleged attackers at Columbia. (Franke wrote in her statement Friday that, “I have long had a concern that the transition from the mindset required of a soldier to that of a student could be a difficult one for some people, and that the university needed to do more to protect the safety of all members of our community.”)

    Franke’s Democracy Now! comments became the subject of a university investigation as well as a broader congressional hearing related to campus antisemitism. Representative Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican, asked then–Columbia president Minouche Shafik what disciplinary action had been taken against Franke. She characterized Franke as saying, “Israeli students who have served in the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] are dangerous and shouldn’t be on campus.”

    Shafik didn’t answer Stefanik straightforwardly, but replied, “I agree with you that those comments are completely unacceptable and discriminatory.” Later during the televised hearing, Shafik confirmed that Franke was under investigation.

    That investigation found that in addition to the interview comments, Franke violated campus policy by retaliating against the complainants.

    A November 2024 Columbia EOAA Investigation Determination letter to one of the complainants, which was provided to Inside Higher Ed, says, “You also alleged retaliation on three separate occasions during the course of this investigation when complainant: (i) provided your name to a reporter who publicized your identity as an individual who initiated the complaint; (ii) reposted a tweet referring to you as a ‘genocide advocate’ and ‘McCarthyite bigot’; and (iii) posted a link to a document on social media indicating that you had made additional complaints against respondent.” (Franke had named the complainants—two of her faculty colleagues—to Inside Higher Ed for a July story.)

    The letter says the university concluded that the interview and the first two retaliation allegations violated the policy.

    In her statement Friday, Franke said she did appeal. But “upon reflection, it became clear to me that Columbia had become such a hostile environment that I could no longer serve as an active member of the faculty.”

    Over the last year, people have posed as students to secretly videotape her, and clips have ended up on “right-wing social media sites,” she said. Students have enrolled in her classes to provoke discussions they can record and complain about, she said, adding that law school colleagues have also secretly taped her and yelled “at me in front of students that I am a Hamas supporter.”

    “After President Shafik defamed me in Congress, I received several death threats at my home,” Franke said. “I regularly receive emails that express the hope that I am raped, murdered and otherwise assaulted on account of my support of Palestinian rights.”

    Columbia Law dean Daniel Abebe told colleagues Thursday that Franke “is accelerating her planned retirement and now will retire from Columbia on Friday.” Abebe praised her work.

    But Franke contests the word “retirement.” In an email to Inside Higher Ed on Friday, Franke explained that she signed an agreement with Columbia a year ago “to retire in a few years—phased in.” But she said the university “reneged on” providing routine retirement benefits, such as recommending her for emeritus status with the university’s Board of Trustees, providing her an office for five years and still allowing her to teach some classes.

    “Columbia University’s leadership has demonstrated a willingness to collaborate with the very enemies of our academic mission,” Franke wrote in her statement. “In a time when assaults on higher education are the most acute since the McCarthyite assaults of the 1950s, the university’s leadership and trustees have abandoned any duty to protect the university’s most precious resources: its faculty, students and academic mission.”

    The university didn’t provide an interview Friday. In an emailed statement, a Columbia spokesperson wrote, “Columbia is committed to being a community that is welcoming to all and our policies prohibit discrimination and harassment.”

    “As made public by parties in this matter, a complaint was filed alleging discriminatory harassment in violation of our policies,” the statement continued. “An investigation was conducted, and a finding was issued. As we have consistently stated, the university is committed to addressing all forms of discrimination consistent with our policies.”

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  • Key Trends in the Era of the Modern Learner

    Key Trends in the Era of the Modern Learner

    We are at a pivotal point in higher education, the Era of the Modern Learner. This new era, shaped by evolving technology, changing cultural dynamics, and shifting student priorities, is revolutionizing how colleges and universities engage with students.

    Modern Learners are not who they used to be. They are:

    • Discerning, using data and online resources to thoroughly research programs and institutions.
    • Highly Informed and Goal-Oriented, demanding personalized experiences tailored to their specific needs.
    • Focused on ROI, seeking educational options that offer a clear return on investment and equip them with practical skills for future financial viability.

    To succeed in the Era of the Modern Learner, institutions must adapt and embrace a Unified Enrollment Approach that seamlessly integrates marketing and communications across the campus, ensuring a consistent brand message reaches all audiences. This means moving beyond traditional demographic-driven strategies and embracing the commonalities that bind today’s diverse student population as Modern Learners.

    The 2025 Marketing and Enrollment Management Benchmarks Report offers higher education leaders with the knowledge and insights needed to effectively navigate the landscape.

    Key Trends Impacting Higher Education Marketing and Enrollment Management

    The Rise of Stealth Applicants

    A growing number of students prefer to explore college options privately, submitting applications directly without engaging with admissions offices beforehand. This trend, known as stealth applying, presents a challenge for institutions to connect with these elusive prospects, requiring refined media spending strategies to justify investments and adapt to this evolving application behavior.

    Program Demand Shifts

    Analysis of site traffic reveals significant shifts in program demand. Healthcare and vocational training programs are experiencing a surge in interest, reflecting a growing societal focus on healthcare careers and a shift towards practical skills and direct employment pathways. Conversely, traditional arts and humanities fields are facing declines, suggesting students are prioritizing fields perceived as more job ready.

    The Power of Organic Search

    Organic search remains a highly cost-effective way to attract prospective students, with over a third of all education website visits originating from organic search. Institutions need to prioritize website performance and optimize their online presence to capture this valuable traffic source.

    Digital Advertising Dominance

    Institutions are strategically increasing their investment in digital advertising, particularly across platforms like Google, social media, and mobile video. This shift reflects the Modern Learner’s digital-first consumption habits and the effectiveness of these channels in driving awareness and conversions.

    AI-Powered Personalization

    AI-powered tools, such as Google’s Performance Max, are transforming how institutions optimize advertising campaigns and personalize content delivery. These tools leverage machine learning to enhance ad performance across multiple Google channels, leading to more efficient and effective outreach.

    2025 Key Recommendations for Higher Ed Leaders

    • Break Down the Walls:
      Embrace a unified approach to enrollment that integrates marketing and communication strategies across the entire institution.
    • Be Transparent and Demonstrate Value:
      Prioritize transparency and demonstrate value, providing clear information about costs, program details, and career outcomes.
    • Go Digital or Go Home:
      Develop a robust digital marketing strategy, leveraging the power of organic search, paid advertising, and video content.
    • Leverage the Power of AI:
      Harness the power of AI, utilizing tools like Google Performance Max to optimize campaigns and personalize content delivery.
    • Stay Agile and Responsive:
      Continuously adapt to the evolving needs and preferences of the Modern Learner.

    By understanding these trends and proactively adapting strategies, higher education institutions can effectively engage Modern Learners, navigate the evolving landscape, and achieve enrollment success in 2025 and beyond.

    For a more in-depth analysis of the current higher education marketing and enrollment landscape, download our comprehensive Marketing and Enrollment Management report. It’s packed with EducationDynamics’ proprietary data, insights and actionable strategies to help you grow enrollment.

    EducationDynamics is dedicated to helping colleges and universities navigate these complex challenges. We offer proven solutions to help you implement these key recommendations and achieve your enrollment goals. Contact us today to learn how we can partner with you to reach the Modern Learner and thrive in the evolving higher education environment.

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  • How Families Make College Work at Any Cost (Caitlin Zaloom)

    How Families Make College Work at Any Cost (Caitlin Zaloom)

    This audiobook narrated by Kate Harper examines how the financial pressures of paying for college affect the lives and well-being of middle-class families The struggle to pay for college is one of the defining features of middle-class life in America today. At kitchen tables all across the country, parents agonize over whether to burden their children with loans or to sacrifice their own financial security by taking out a second mortgage or draining their retirement savings. Indebted takes readers into the homes of middle-class families throughout the nation to reveal the hidden consequences of student debt and the ways that financing college has transformed family life. 

    Caitlin Zaloom gained the confidence of numerous parents and their college-age children, who talked candidly with her about stressful and intensely personal financial matters that are usually kept private. In this remarkable book, Zaloom describes the profound moral conflicts for parents as they try to honor what they see as their highest parental duty—providing their children with opportunity—and shows how parents and students alike are forced to take on enormous debts and gamble on an investment that might not pay off. 

    What emerges is a troubling portrait of an American middle class fettered by the “student finance complex”—the bewildering labyrinth of government-sponsored institutions, profit-seeking firms, and university offices that collect information on household earnings and assets, assess family needs, and decide who is eligible for aid and who is not. Superbly written and unflinchingly honest, Indebted breaks through the culture of silence surrounding the student debt crisis, revealing the unspoken costs of sending our kids to college.

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  • Moving Beyond New Year’s Resolutions to Embrace a Multi-Year Enrollment Strategy 

    Moving Beyond New Year’s Resolutions to Embrace a Multi-Year Enrollment Strategy 

     

    Developing New Year’s resolutions for personal growth is something many of us do. Unfortunately, it is often a set-it and forget-it process that is simply reupped the following year. When done correctly, however, creating a resolution that is developed as a sustained, long-term strategy—and that is regularly returned to and adjusted as needed—seems to be the best way to meet our personal goals.  
     
    As enrollment managers, we all have pursued the first approach in our professional lives by evaluating last year’s successes and failures annually, making a few tweaks, and then seeing how it all works out again the following year. The truth of the matter is that this approach was relatively sustainable for a time. Simply buying more names, adjusting the aid-leveraging model annually, or a developing a wider marketing plan often could drive greater enrollments—mostly because those tactics generally were designed to “add more fuel to the fire.” As long as the applications continued to grow, annual tweaks could help to maintain the core enrollments as well as improve on the margins for many institutions.  

     

    The Need for More Effective Strategic Enrollment Strategies

    Unfortunately, outside of key private and public flagship institutions, headwinds have developed over the past decade that are affecting higher education enrollments in significant ways. Ultimately, they may lead to campus closures for some, and to campus financial distress for many. As outlined in a paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, “Predicting College Closures and Financial Distress,” those pressures include:

    • Post-pandemic enrollment challenges from traditional students (decreasing 15% from 2010-2021).




    • Changes among adult learners (“The number of adult students over the age of 25 has fallen by nearly half since the Great Recession”).




    • Growing competition.




    • A lack of public support for higher education nationally. 

    The combination of all these factors has brought about the need for enrollment managers to develop a wider multi-year strategy that includes tools with the ability to enable deeper, more highly data-informed fine tuning throughout any given cycle. A one-size-fits-all approach to creating a nuanced strategy can no longer work in an environment of shrinking applications and increased competition. 

     

    Liaison’s Partnership Philosophy

    Liaison is uniquely positioned to assist with higher education institutions in a true partnership. With the technology, services, and consultative approach that we provide our partners throughout the nation, we can assist in developing a comprehensive enrollment approach unique to your campus—ranging from single-point to full-enrollment planning solutions that are uniquely tailored to your unique needs. Liaison’s partnership philosophy, technology solutions, and industry knowledge and insights can not only help strengthen your enrollment planning and goals for this year but also set you up for long-term enrollment success.  

     

     

    Craig Cornell is the Vice President for Enrollment Strategy at Liaison. In that capacity, he oversees a team of enrollment strategists and brings best practices, consultation, and data trends to campuses across the country in all things enrollment management. Craig also serves as the dedicated resource to NASH (National Association of Higher Education Systems) and works closely with the higher education system that Liaison supports. Before joining Liaison in 2023, Craig served for over 30 years in multiple higher education executive enrollment management positions. During his tenure, the campuses he served often received national recognition for enrollment growth, effective financial aid leveraging, marketing enhancements, and innovative enrollment strategies.

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