Author: admin

  • Dear President-elect Trump: Higher Education Builds America

    Dear President-elect Trump: Higher Education Builds America

    As you prepare to take office for a second time, we know you have ambitious plans to address the nation’s challenges and build a more secure and prosperous America. Achieving those goals will require contributions from many areas of society, and we urge you to see the value in partnering with our nation’s colleges and universities.

    Campuses across the country are deeply embedded in local communities and work every day to build their communities while meeting national needs. Let me share just three of many examples:

    Many, including you, have criticized higher education in recent years. We know that we always have room to innovate and improve. But we also know a basic truth: higher education builds America. This has been understood by American presidents since the nation’s founding. That conviction inspired landmark legislation such as the land-grant acts of the 19th century and the GI Bills of the 20th and 21st centuries—measures that contributed to unprecedented economic and technological growth.

    Study after study has documented the benefits colleges and universities provide to the workforce and the economy. For example, Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce found that less than a decade from now 72 percent of jobs in the American economy will require some level of postsecondary education or workforce training. Simply put, every pathway to expanding our economy and filling employers’ needs runs through colleges and universities.

    The American Council on Education (ACE), which I lead, is the major coordinating body for the nation’s colleges and universities. Our members include community colleges, liberal arts colleges, regional universities, and research universities. They are public and private, large and small, urban and rural. Many have religious affiliations.

    We have common-sense recommendations to help your administration and the new Congress deliver on the goals of all Americans: a safe and secure country, a prosperous economy with good jobs, and uncontested global leadership in developing new technologies. You can do that by extending Pell Grant eligibility to those who enroll in high-quality, short-term programs. You can do that by helping military service members and veterans further their careers through higher education. And you can do that by advancing research that saves lives and bolsters national security.

    Our colleges and universities work on behalf of all Americans, from every walk of life and every political perspective. While you may not always agree with us on every issue, ACE and our members are committed to fighting for the policies, principles, and values that ensure our students, their families, and our nation will flourish. So while we may differ in some areas, we also know there is much common ground.

    We are deeply concerned about the impact of proposed immigration changes on students, staff, and families, and appreciate your concern for those known as “Dreamers,” who came to the United States as children. As you stressed in a recent interview, these outstanding young people have made numerous contributions to America, and we must safeguard their futures in the only country they have ever known as home. Likewise, we fully agree that America benefits immensely by continuing to attract the brightest and most talented students from around the world to study, work, and innovate here.

    We pledge to be accountable to your administration, Congress, and the public. If you, Secretary of Education-designate Linda McMahon, and others in your administration see areas where we can do better, we are eager to sit down and discuss them. We hope, in turn, to have the opportunity to demonstrate how the know-how and creativity that runs deep through our campuses can help you accomplish your most important objectives.

    Our overriding goal is to provide more opportunity for all Americans. Like you, we are ready to get to work to deliver results. Together, we can build a better America.


    If you have any questions or comments about this blog post, please contact us.

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  • AI Literacy Resource for All – Sovorel

    AI Literacy Resource for All – Sovorel

    There is no longer any way to deny that AI Literacy is a must for all people. Regardless of whether you are a student, faculty, young, or old, all of us must continually develop our AI Literacy to effectively function and excel in our AI-infused world. The importance of everyone developing their AI Literacy has been expressed by virtually all nations and international organizations (UN, 2024; UN, 2024b). Additionally, many business organizations have expressed that in order to be competitive in the workforce, AI Literacy is now an imperative employment skill (Marr, 2024).

    The following Sovorel video and infographic (in addition to the above infographic) provide key components of AI Literacy and specifics regarding prompt engineering and using an advanced prompt formula:

    AI Literacy: Prompt Engineering, Advanced Prompt Formula Infographic (this infographic, the main AI Literacy infographic, and many more are also available within the infographics section: https://sovorelpublishing.com/index.php/infographics)

     

    References

    Cisco. (2024, July 31). AI and the workforce: Industry report calls for reskilling and upskilling as 92 percent of technology roles evolve. Cisco. https://investor.cisco.com/news/news-details/2024/AI-and-the-Workforce-Industry-Report-Calls-for-Reskilling-and-Upskilling-as-92-Percent-of-Technology-Roles-Evolve/default.aspx

    Marr, B. (2024, October 24). The 5 most in-demand skills in 2025. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2024/10/14/the-5-most-in-demand-skills-in-2025/

    UN. (2024). Addendum on AI and Digital Government. United Nations. https://desapublications.un.org/sites/default/files/publications/2024-10/Addendum%20on%20AI%20and%20Digital%20Government%20%20E-Government%20Survey%202024.pdf

    UN. (2024b). Governing AI for humanity. United Nations. https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/governing_ai_for_humanity_final_report_en.pdf

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  • More Eating the Future | HESA

    More Eating the Future | HESA

    Morning everyone. Welcome back. Some statistical wonkery today, with respect to the analysis of government expenditures on postsecondary education.

    Many of you will recognize Figures 1 and 2 from earlier blogs or the State of Postsecondary Education 2024. They represent the two most-common ways to look at commitments to postsecondary education: the first in per-student terms, and the second in per-GDP terms.

    Figure 1: Provincial Expenditures per FTE Student by Sector, 2022-23

    Figure 2: Provincial PSE Expenditures, by Sector, as a Percentage of Provincial GDP, 2022-23

    These two approaches have their respective strengths and weaknesses, and not surprisingly they generate slightly different conclusions about how strong each jurisdiction’s efforts are writ to postsecondary education, one focused on the “recipients” of funding (students) and the other focused on the source of the funding (the local economy). Neither is definitive, both are useful.

    But there is another way to look at this funding, and that is not to look at how much institutions receive as a proportion of local jurisdictional output, but to look at what percentage of government spending is devoted to educational institutions. Examined over time, this figure tells you the changing status of postsecondary education compared to other policy priorities; examined across provinces, it can tell you which provinces put more emphasis on postsecondary education. Of course, no one tracks this in Canada, because it involves a lot of tedious mucking around in government documents, but what is this blog for if not precisely that? I wasn’t doing anything on my holidays anyways.

    So I decided to pair my long-term data series on provincial budgets (the most recent one posted back in April), with a new data series on total provincial spending which I derived simply by looking at consolidated expenditures in each province since 2006 and expressed in these same budgets. Usual disclaimers apply: provincial spending definitions aren’t entirely parallel (or at least they use different words to describe what they are doing) particularly with respect to capital, so inter-provincial comparisons are probably a tiny bit apples-to-oranges even if each province’s data is consistent over time. Take the exact numbers with a grain of salt but I think they will mostly stand up to scrutiny.

    Figure 3 shows provincial transfers on postsecondary institutions across all ten provinces as a percentage of total provincial spending. And it’s…well, it’s not good. As recently as 2011-12, provinces spent five percent of their budgets on postsecondary education. Now it’s three and a half percent. Or to put it another way, as a proportion of total spending, it’s down by about thirty percent.

    Figure 3: Provincial Spending on PSE as a Percentage of Total Provincial Spending, Canada, 2006-07 to 2024-25

    Is this due to particular events in particular provinces? Not really. Let’s just take a look at the four big provinces (which make up 85% of the postsecondary system. The provinces all started in different places (Alberta, famously, spent a heck of a lot more than other provinces back in the day) and the slope of decline is gentler in Quebec than elsewhere, but the basic path of decline and the eventual destination is similar everywhere. Notable by its absence in any of the four provinces are any clear break-lines which coincide with a change in administration—these declines are pretty consistent regardless of whether governments are left, right, or centre. It’s not a partisan thing.

    Figure 4: Provincial Spending on PSE as a Percentage of Total Provincial Spending, Selected Provinces, 2006-07 to 2024-25

    Figure 5 shows each province’s performance both in 2006-07 and 2024-25. As can clearly be seen, every province saw a decline over the 18-year period. This was not especially driven by one or two provinces: all provinces seem to have come to an identical conclusion that postsecondary institutions are not worth investing in. The size of whatever drop was in most cases inversely proportionate to how high spending was back in the initial period. The biggest drops were in Alberta and Newfoundland, which back in the day were the two highest spenders, riding high as they were on oil revenues. The smallest drop was New Brunswick, which was the weakest performer back in 2006-07. Ontario…is Ontario. But basically, the entire country is converging on the idea that investments in postsecondary need to be in the 2.5%-4.5% range rather than in the 4-7.5% range as they did 20 years ago.

    Figure 5: Provincial Spending on PSE as a Percentage of Total Provincial Spending, by Province, 2006-07 vs 2024-25

    Now, the obvious conclusion you might draw from this is “hey! Huge declines in public support for public postsecondary education!” But this is not quite correct. Remember: these are ratios we are looking at. Some of the delta will be due to changes in the numerator, some will be due to changes in the denominator. Figure 6 shows changes in both postsecondary spending and total provincial spending. And what’s clear is that the changes we have been examining in Figures 3 and 6 have more to do with the expansion of total spending rather than a decline in PSE spending.

    Figure 6: Real Change Provincial Spending on PSE Institutions vs Real Change Total Provincial Spending, Canada, 2006-07 to 2024-25 (2006-07 = 100)

    That increase in provincial spending in the last decade—30% over and above inflation—is wild. And deeply inconvenient for anyone who wants to build a narrative around generalized “austerity.” But what is clear here is:

    1. transfers to universities and colleges have trailed provincial spending everywhere and without reference to ideology of the governments in question, and
    2. ii) if transfers had not trailed general spending, they would be roughly $9.5 billion better off than they are today.

    And by a simply *amazing* coincidence, $9.5 billion–in real dollars—is almost identical to the increase in income  postsecondary institutions have seen in revenue from international students over the same period (it’s about a $9.2 increase from 2007-08 to 2022-23, the last year for which we have useful data—the 2024-25 is likely somewhat higher but we don’t know by how much).

    There a number of conclusions one could draw from this, but the ones I draw are:

    • Governments are spending more. A lot more. They just aren’t spending on PSE. Instead, they are spending it on an ageing population and other things that juice consumption. Eating the future, basically.
    • The drop in government support for PSE relative to overall spending increases is universal. No government provides any evidence of contrarian thinking. None of them think PSE is worth greater investment.
    • Changes of government are also almost irrelevant. They may change the “vibe” around postsecondary education, but they don’t change financial facts on the ground.
    • There is a really basic argument about the value of postsecondary education which somehow, postsecondary institutions are losing with governments and, I think by implication, the public. That, and nothing else, needs to be the focus of institutional efforts on external relations.

    Provincial governments are eating the future. But the data above, showing that the trend transcends geography and political ideology suggests that at base, the problem is that the Canadian public does not think postsecondary education is worth investing in. Working out how to reverse this view really needs to be job one for the whole sector.

    (Or, to be a bit cuter: the sector needs to do a lot less Government Relations and a lot more Community Relations.)

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  • Higher Education Inquirer : HEI Resources 2025

    Higher Education Inquirer : HEI Resources 2025

    [Editor’s Note: Please let us know of any additions or corrections.]

    Books

    • Alexander, Bryan (2020). Academia Next: The Futures of Higher Education. Johns Hopkins Press.  
    • Alexander, Bryan (2023).  Universities on Fire. Johns Hopkins Press.  
    • Angulo,
      A. (2016). Diploma Mills: How For-profit Colleges Stiffed Students,
      Taxpayers, and the American Dream. Johns Hopkins University Press.
    • Archibald, R. and Feldman, D. (2017). The Road Ahead for America’s Colleges & Universities. Oxford University Press.
    • Armstrong, E. and Hamilton, L. (2015). Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality. Harvard University Press.
    • Arum, R. and Roksa, J. (2011). Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. University of Chicago Press. 
    • Baldwin, Davarian (2021). In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities. Bold Type Books.  
    • Bennett, W. and Wilezol, D. (2013). Is
      College Worth It?: A Former United States Secretary of Education and a
      Liberal Arts Graduate Expose the Broken Promise of Higher Education.
      Thomas Nelson.
    • Berg, I. (1970). “The Great Training Robbery: Education and Jobs.” Praeger.
    • Berman, Elizabeth P. (2012). Creating the Market University.  Princeton University Press. 
    • Berry, J. (2005). Reclaiming the Ivory Tower: Organizing Adjuncts to Change Higher Education. Monthly Review Press.
    • Best, J. and Best, E. (2014) The Student Loan Mess: How Good
      Intentions Created a Trillion-Dollar Problem. Atkinson Family
      Foundation.
    • Bledstein, Burton J. (1976). The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America. Norton.

    • Bogue, E. Grady and Aper, Jeffrey.  (2000). Exploring the Heritage
      of American Higher Education: The Evolution of Philosophy and Policy. 
    • Bok, D. (2003). Universities in the Marketplace : The Commercialization of Higher Education.  Princeton University Press. 
    • Bousquet, M. (2008). How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low Wage Nation. NYU Press.
    • Brennan, J & Magness, P. (2019). Cracks in the Ivory Tower. Oxford University Press. 
    • Brint, S., & Karabel, J. The Diverted Dream: Community colleges
      and the promise of educational opportunity in America, 1900–1985. Oxford
      University Press. (1989).
    • Cabrera, Nolan L. (2024) Whiteness in the Ivory Tower: Why Don’t We Notice the White Students Sitting Together in the Quad? Teachers College Press.
    • Cabrera, Nolan L. (2018). White Guys on Campus: Racism, White Immunity, and the Myth of “Post-Racial” Higher Education. Rutgers University Press.
    • Caplan, B. (2018). The Case Against Education: Why the Education
      System Is a Waste of Time and Money. Princeton University Press.
    • Cappelli, P. (2015). Will College Pay Off?: A Guide to the Most Important Financial Decision You’ll Ever Make. Public Affairs.
    • Carney, Cary Michael (1999). Native American Higher Education in the United States. Transaction.
    • Childress, H. (2019). The Adjunct Underclass: How America’s Colleges
      Betrayed Their Faculty, Their Students, and Their Mission University of
      Chicago Press.
    • Cohen, Arthur M. (1998). The Shaping of American Higher Education:
      Emergence and Growth of the Contemporary System. San Francisco:
      Jossey-Bass.
    • Collins, Randall. (1979/2019) The Credential Society. Academic Press. Columbia University Press. 
    • Cottom, T. (2016). Lower Ed: How For-profit Colleges Deepen Inequality in America
    • Domhoff, G. William (2021). Who Rules America? 8th Edition. Routledge.
    • Donoghue, F. (2008). The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities.
    • Dorn, Charles. (2017) For the Common Good: A New History of Higher Education in America Cornell University Press.
    • Eaton,
      Charlie.  (2022) Bankers in the Ivory Tower: The Troubling Rise of
      Financiers in US Higher Education. University of Chicago Press.
    • Eisenmann, Linda. (2006) Higher Education for Women in Postwar America, 1945–1965. Johns Hopkins U. Press.
    • Espenshade, T., Walton Radford, A.(2009). No Longer Separate, Not
      Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College Admission and Campus Life.
      Princeton University Press.
    • Faragher, John Mack and Howe, Florence, ed. (1988). Women and Higher Education in American History. Norton.
    • Farber, Jerry (1972).  The University of Tomorrowland.  Pocket Books. 
    • Freeman, Richard B. (1976). The Overeducated American. Academic Press.
    • Gaston, P. (2014). Higher Education Accreditation. Stylus.
    • Ginsberg, B. (2013). The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All Administrative University and Why It Matters
    • Gleason, Philip. Contending with Modernity: Catholic Higher Education in the Twentieth Century. Oxford U. Press, 1995.
    • Golden, D. (2006). The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling
      Class Buys its Way into Elite Colleges — and Who Gets Left Outside the
      Gates.
    • Goldrick-Rab, S. (2016). Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream.
    • Graeber, David (2018) Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. Simon and Schuster. 
    • Groeger, Cristina Viviana (2021). The Education Trap: Schools and the Remaking of Inequality in Boston. Harvard Press.

    • Hamilton, Laura T. and Kelly Nielson (2021) Broke: The Racial Consequences of Underfunding Public Universities
    • Hampel, Robert L. (2017). Fast and Curious: A History of Shortcuts in American Education. Rowman & Littlefield.

    • Johnson, B. et al. (2003). Steal This University: The Rise of the Corporate University and the Academic Labor Movement
    • Keats, John (1965) The Sheepskin Psychosis. Lippincott.
    • Kelchen, R. (2018). Higher Education Accountability. Johns Hopkins University Press.
    • Kezar, A., DePaola, T, and Scott, D. The Gig Academy: Mapping Labor in the Neoliberal University. Johns Hopkins Press. 
    • Kinser, K. (2006). From Main Street to Wall Street: The Transformation of For-profit Higher Education
    • Kozol, Jonathan (2006). The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. Crown. 
    • Kozol, Jonathan (1992). Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools. Harper Perennial.
    • Labaree,
      David F. (2017). A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher
      Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
    • Labaree,
      David (1997) How to Succeed in School without Really Learning: The
      Credentials Race in American Education, Yale University Press.
    • Lafer, Gordon (2004). The Job Training Charade. Cornell University Press.  
    • Loehen, James (1995). Lies My Teacher Told Me. The New Press. 
    • Lohse, Andrew (2014).  Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy: A Memoir.  Thomas Dunne Books. 
    • Lucas, C.J. American higher education: A history. (1994).
    • Lukianoff,
      Greg and Jonathan Haidt (2018). The Coddling of the American Mind: How
      Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure.
      Penguin Press.
    • Maire, Quentin (2021). Credential Market. Springer.
    • Mandery, Evan (2022) . Poison Ivy: How Elite Colleges Divide Us. New Press. 
    • Marti, Eduardo (2016). America’s Broken Promise: Bridging the Community College Achievement Gap. Excelsior College Press. 
    • Mettler, Suzanne ‘Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream. Basic Books. (2014)
    • Newfeld, C. (2011). Unmaking the Public University.
    • Newfeld, C. (2016). The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them.
    • Paulsen, M. and J.C. Smart (2001). The Finance of Higher Education: Theory, Research, Policy & Practice.  Agathon Press. 
    • Rosen, A.S. (2011). Change.edu. Kaplan Publishing. 
    • Reynolds, G. (2012). The Higher Education Bubble. Encounter Books.
    • Roth, G. (2019) The Educated Underclass: Students and the Promise of Social Mobility. Pluto Press
    • Ruben,
      Julie. The Making of the Modern University: Intellectual Transformation
      and the Marginalization of Morality. University Of Chicago Press.
      (1996).
    • Rudolph, F. (1991) The American College and University: A History.
    • Rushdoony, R. (1972). The Messianic Character of American Education. The Craig Press.
    • Selingo, J. (2013). College Unbound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students.
    • Shelton, Jon (2023). The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy. Cornell University Press.
    • Sinclair, U. (1923). The Goose-Step: A Study of American Education.
    • Stevens, Mitchell L. (2009). Creating a Class: College Admissions and the Education of Elites. Harvard University Press. 
    • Stodghill, R. (2015). Where Everybody Looks Like Me: At the Crossroads of America’s Black Colleges and Culture. 
    • Tamanaha, B. (2012). Failing Law Schools. The University of Chicago Press. 
    • Tatum, Beverly (1997). Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria. Basic Books
    • Taylor,
      Barret J. and Brendan Cantwell (2019). Unequal Higher Education:
      Wealth, Status and Student Opportunity. Rutgers University Press.
    • Thelin, John R. (2019) A History of American Higher Education. Johns Hopkins U. Press.
    • Tolley, K. (2018). Professors in the Gig Economy: Unionizing Adjunct Faculty in America. Johns Hopkins University Press.
    • Twitchell, James B. (2005). Branded Nation: The Marketing of Megachurch, College Inc., and Museumworld. Simon and Schuster.
    • Vedder, R. (2004). Going Broke By Degree: Why College Costs Too Much.
    • Veysey Lawrence R. (1965).The emergence of the American university.
    • Washburn, J. (2006). University Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education
    • Washington,
      Harriet A. (2008). Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical
      Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present.
      Anchor. 
    • Whitman, David (2021). The Profits of Failure: For-Profit Colleges and the Closing of the Conservative Mind. Cypress House.
    • Wilder, C.D. (2013). Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities. 
    • Woodson, Carter D. (1933). The Mis-Education of the Negro.  
    • Zemsky,
      Robert, Susan Shaman, and Susan Campbell Baldridge (2020). The College
      Stress Test:Tracking Institutional Futures across a Crowded Market.
      Johns Hopkins University Press. 

     

    Activists, Coalitions, Innovators, and Alternative Voices

     College Choice and Career Planning Tools

    Innovation and Reform

    Higher Education Policy

    Data Sources

    Trade publications

     

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  • New book envisions colleges dedicated to Earth’s well-being

    New book envisions colleges dedicated to Earth’s well-being

    What is a climate justice university, and how can our universities transform into institutions that truly promote the well-being of the earth and humanity? Jennie C. Stephens’s new book, Climate Justice and the University: Shaping a Hopeful Future for All (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024), sets out to answer that question. It outlines where today’s universities fall short in their handling not only of the climate crisis but also a wealth of other modern social issues.

    The book lays out broad ideas for transforming how universities function in society, such as shifting research practices to collaborate with people and communities affected by the issues, like the climate crisis, at the center of that research. Stephens, who is a professor at both the National University of Ireland Maynoonth and Northeastern University, acknowledges in the introduction that such a transformation would be a major undertaking, and one that many universities would be disinclined to tackle. “Because of the internal pressure within higher education to maintain institutional norms, this book and its proposal for climate justice universities are, in some ways, radical acts of resistance,” she writes.

    In a phone interview, Stephens spoke with Inside Higher Ed about her vision for climate justice universities—and how modern institutions fail to meet it. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

    Q: It was interesting reading that your perspective on these issues comes both from your scholarly work and from a time that you worked on the administrative side of academia. Could you describe how those experiences came together to inspire this book?

    A: I’ve been working in academia my whole career—more than 30 years—and during that time, I’ve been focused on climate and energy issues and sustainability from a very social justice perspective. What has happened through my experiences over time is that I see part of society’s inadequate response to the climate crisis mirrored in academia.

    I think higher education has a really big role in society—in what we are doing and what we’re not doing, in how we’re teaching and learning, in what we’re doing research on and what we’re not doing research on—and I think that our collective insufficient response to the climate crisis is related to what’s been happening in our higher education institutions, which are increasingly very financialized. They’re driven by profit-seeking priorities and new tech and start-ups and focused on job training. We’ve drifted away from a public-good mission of higher education: What does society need in this very disruptive time, and how can our higher education institutions better respond to the needs of society, particularly of vulnerable and marginalized communities and people and households who are increasingly struggling with all kinds of precarity and vulnerabilities?

    Q: How would you define the term “climate justice university”?

    A: The idea of a climate justice university is a university with a mission and a purpose to create more healthy, equitable, sustainable futures for everyone. So, that is a very public-good mission. The idea is to connect the climate crisis with all the other injustices and the … multiple different crises that are happening right now; the climate crisis is just one among many. We also have a cost of living crisis; we have a mental health crisis, we have financial crises; we have a plastic pollution crisis and a biodiversity crisis; we have a crisis in international law and a militarization crisis. We have all of these crises, and yet what we’re doing in our universities tends to continue to be quite siloed and trying to address parts of specific problems, rather than acknowledging that these crises are symptoms of larger systemic challenges.

    For me, climate justice is a paradigm shift toward a transformative lens, acknowledging that things are getting worse and worse in so many dimensions, and that if we want a better future for humanity and for societies around the world, we actually need big, transformative change. A lot of things we do in our universities are reinforcing the status quo and not promoting or endorsing transformative change. So, climate justice is a paradigm shift with a transformative lens that focuses less on individual behavior, more on collective action, less on technological change, more on social change, and less on profit-seeking priorities, more on well-being priorities. What do human beings need to live meaningful, healthy lives, and how can society be more oriented toward that?

    Q: Can you talk a bit more about how the current structure of the university maintains the status quo with regard to climate?

    A: One of the ways that I think universities kind of perpetuate the status quo is by not acknowledging what a disruptive time we’re in with regard to climate crisis, but other crises as well. There’s an encouragement on many campuses for kind of being complacent, like, “Oh, this is the way the world is.” Not necessarily encouraging students and researchers to imagine alternative futures.

    There’s also a focus on doing research that billionaires or corporate interests want us to do, and—in particular, in the climate space—what this has led to is a lot of climate and energy research that is funded by big companies and other wealthy donors who actually don’t want change. We have more and more research to show who has been obstructing climate action and transformative change for a more stable climate future. We know many of those same companies and same fossil fuel interests have also been very strategically investing in our universities. What that does is constrain the research and also the public discourse about climate and energy futures toward very fossil fuel–friendly futures.

    Early on in my own career, I worked on projects that were funded by the fossil fuel industry on carbon capture and storage, and a lot of the climate and energy research in our universities is focused on carbon capture and storage, carbon dioxide removal technology, geoengineering—all these technical fixes that assume we’re just going to keep using fossil fuels. What we really need, if we had more climate justice universities that were focused on the public good and what the climate science has been telling us for decades, is to phase out fossil fuels. We need a global initiative to phase out fossil fuels. But we don’t have in our universities much research on how to phase out fossil fuels.

    Q: In your book, you discuss the concept of exnovation—the process of phasing out inefficient or harmful technologies. Why is research into exnovation not already more common in higher education, and what are the main barriers for researchers who want to take this approach?

    A: I do think funding has a lot to do with it. There’s a whole chapter in the book about the financialization of higher education institutions, which has resulted from kind of a decline in public support toward more private sector support, which means that universities are beholden to private sector interests, increasingly, and they’re encouraged and incentivized to cater to and partner with … private sector interests. I think that has really changed the kinds of impact that higher education institutions and research has had.

    Of course, there are a lot of people within universities who are interested in the public good and doing research on exnovation. But the incentive structure, even among those of us who would want to contribute in those ways, is such that we are increasingly incentivized and promoted based on how much money we can bring in, how many papers can we get published and the scale of resources available to do research. So, there’s a larger, long-term strategy to orient research toward the technical fixes, particularly when it comes to climate and energy, and a lot less funding available for social change or governance research on how to bring back the public-good priorities in our policies, our funding, in our universities. It’s really a longer-term trend that has led to this financialization.

    Q: You lay out a lot of alternative ideas for financing universities, which is important given that anxiety over funding is at an all-time high at some institutions. Walk me through some of your ideas and talk about the feasibility of restructuring how universities are funded.

    A: One idea in the chapter on new ways of engaging and being more relevant is what if we imagine higher education institutions more like public libraries? Public libraries, we all kind of recognize as valuable resources for everyone; every community should have some access to a public library. What if higher education could be [better] invested in that sense of being a resource and not being an ivory tower that is really hard to get into and only some privileged people get access to? What if our higher education institutions were designed and funded to provide more accessible and relevant resources, co-created with communities? That’s kind of one of the big ideas of imagining what this really valuable resource could be more relevant and more connected to the needs of society and of communities.

    You also asked about feasibility, and one of the things that I want to point out is that this book is not a how-to; every context and region and different place in the world has different things going on with their higher education institutions. The idea with this book is to invite us all to kind of think about, what is the purpose of higher education institutions? And how can we better leverage all the public investment that is already spent on higher education institutions? How can that be oriented toward better futures for everyone?

    At higher education institutions that are feeling very vulnerable, having a lot of anxiety about funding levels—the ideas in this book don’t provide a prescription on how to fix that in the near term. But the ideas in the book are really to encourage us all—and especially those involved in higher education policy and higher education funding—to re-evaluate and reclaim the public-good mission of higher education and reconsider how to restructure higher education so that the value and the resources are more accessible, more relevant and more transformative, in terms of fitting the needs of a very disruptive time for humanity and for societies and communities around the country and around the world.

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  • Universities and the Teachers Pension Scheme: the time for change is now

    Universities and the Teachers Pension Scheme: the time for change is now

    Welcome back. The HEPI blog is now up and running again on a daily basis, landing in your inbox at 6:30am. (The pieces we ran over the break are available here.) If you are not already subscribed, you can sign up at the bottom of this page.

    Spaces are still open for our in-person Symposium with CBDU on Thursday 16th January: you can register here.

    Today’s piece is by Jane Embley, Chief People Officer, Northumbria University and Professor Tom Lawson, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost, Northumbria University.

    The end of the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) pensions dispute in the summer of 2023 was the source of much relief in the sector. University employees in the scheme saw both their pension benefits restored to the levels they had been before the USS valuation of 2017 and a reduction in their contributions (from January 2024) from 9.8% to 6.1%. Employers could reverse the significant liabilities that had previously been skewing their financial statements and their contributions to USS were reduced from 21.6% to 14.5%. The Financial Times declared that ‘the cost to UK universities of providing pensions for employees is poised to fall by hundreds of millions of pounds after the sector’s main retirement plan swung into surplus after more than a decade of being in deficit’.

    But for many institutions the great pensions crisis was not over: indeed it had only just begun. For at least 80 universities, USS is not their main pension scheme, because those that gained university status through the 1992 Higher Education Act are required to offer Teachers Pension Scheme (TPS) to their academic staff. This includes institutions like Northumbria University, which has significantly developed its research intensity over the last decade and seeks to compete with other research intensives. The disparity in the costs of TPS and USS means that competition is no longer on a level playing field.

    Northumbria has more than 200 staff who are members of USS, but all of those have joined the university as existing members of that scheme. All other academic colleagues must be enrolled in TPS and cannot, at present, voluntarily become members of USS. Indeed those who join as members of USS also retain a right to be enrolled in TPS if they wish. Around 50 modern institutions employ some members of USS however the underlying requirement to make TPS available to university-employed academic staff is the same.

    Since 2023 the cost of TPS to both employees and employers has significantly diverged from USS. While employers’ contributions to the two schemes tracked one another closely until October 2019, they then began to diverge radically when TPS employer contributions rose to 23.68% while USS was at 21.1%. But in April 2024 the gulf between the two schemes became a chasm – TPS contributions rose by 5% to 28.68% as USS employer contributions went down to 14.5%.

    The difference in percentage terms is stark. But when you start to think about the financial cost for institutions it is all the more so. The pension cost (to employers) for a typical academic salary of £57,500 is £8,300 per annum for USS. For a TPS employee, it is £16,500. At an institutional level that means that for every 1000 staff earning this salary in TPS, the annual cost is £8.2 million greater than if those same employees were members of USS. For a professor earning £85,000 the difference is as much as £12,000 per full-time colleague. As Northumbria’s experience shows, these are additional costs being carried in one part of the sector for essentially the same staff.

    The situation is compounded by the nature of TPS as a scheme. Unlike USS, employers have no say in how the TPS is run and have no levers to keep employer (and indeed employee) contributions down. This is simply a cost handed down to universities by the Treasury. But unlike schools, to which the Treasury through the Department for Education provides additional funding to cover TPS cost increases, universities receive no relief and simply have to absorb these costs into their already stretched budgets. And unlike schools in the independent sector, which were permitted to stop offering TPS to new staff, universities are obliged to continue to offer TPS – whatever alternatives they can develop for their staff.

    The impact of this is extraordinary. It essentially means that in one part of the sector, it costs employers the same amount in on-costs to employ 503 staff as it costs to employ 1000 staff elsewhere. Quite apart from the burden this places on institutions, it is deeply anti-competitive.

    What then is to be done? The path forward is beset by problems. Unless there is legislative change, modern universities will be required to continue to make TPS available to all academic colleagues and, it bears repeating, will continue to have no say at all in the running of the scheme.  

    Of course, one option is to do nothing, but the finances of the sector mean the status quo is extraordinarily difficult to justify. Doing nothing embeds an unfairness that makes the government’s stated priorities for university reform more difficult to achieve. To put it crudely, it costs more for some institutions than others to employ academic staff, and as that resource is derived (at least in part) from student fee income then those institutions will require more students to fund the salaries of staff. For every 1000 staff earning £57,500 it would require all of the fees from 859 additional UK undergraduate students just to fund the difference in employer pension contributions.

    Institutions can employ new colleagues via subsidiary companies in order to give themselves the freedom to offer more affordable pensions to new employees. But this approach has many potential pitfalls. It would not help to reduce the costs in relation to existing staff, so would be slow to have any impact, and in any case it remains unclear what the status of such employees is according to HESA – which could among other things impact the ability of individuals to make a contribution to future REF exercises with the attendant implications for future funding. Employment through a subsidiary, even with all terms and conditions being the same but being out of scope for recognition within the REF, is also likely to be a less attractive prospect for employees.

    It seems likely that until solutions are found, many institutions might find themselves having to rethink their ability to participate in national collective pay bargaining. With higher pension costs and higher National Insurance contributions, it may be necessary, for now at least, for institutions to take control of salary increases to contain the total costs of employment. This is not an attractive option, but it is hard to think of any others that would be as swift and effective in containing cost increases, although of course it would come with its own industrial relations challenges.  

    Ultimately all institutions value their academic staff immensely and we want to provide access to attractive pension schemes. However, the lack of institutional control over which pension scheme can be offered, and the high, fixed nature of the employer contribution to TPS (which is not directly linked to any improvement in benefits for the individual) cannot be sustained. The timing of the current challenge could also not be worse. Institutions are grappling with a whole range of financial pressures, and as a consequence dealing with TPS remains in the ‘too hard’ box for many, not least because we genuinely cannot find the solutions without some form of intervention. But as the sustainability of institutions becomes all the more scrutinised, and as the sector needs to find financial efficiencies to address the concerns expressed by the Secretary of State for Education earlier in 2024, we do urgently need to find a way forward.

    Obliging institutions to continue to offer TPS places greater financial constraints on precisely those universities that might do the most to widen access and give greater opportunity to those from disadvantaged backgrounds as per the government’s priorities. It is an obvious unfairness that some of students will go to institutions where it is substantially more expensive to employ staff than in other institutions that are more traditionally regarded as elite. The time is now to remove this inbuilt, and presumably unintended, unfairness and end the obligation upon modern universities to offer TPS. If that happens individual institutions and the sector as a whole can begin to chart a path to a more sustainable position in the future.

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  • Unveiling the gatekeepers in PGR admissions

    Unveiling the gatekeepers in PGR admissions

    The journey to postgraduate research (PGR) remains cloaked in ambiguity.

    For many students, gaining access to PGR programmes is less about merit and more about chance encounters and privilege. The perceived casual tap on the shoulder culture — an informal recommendation by a supervisor or academic insider — can often play a significant role in greasing the wheels for a fortunate few but risks perpetuating systemic inequities that disproportionately affect those from a non-research-intensive (NRI) institution, where there is a greater focus on teaching and vocational practice rather than research.

    While Wellcome and UKRI have done significant work in mandating equitable admissions practices into their programmes over the past five years with reasonable success, there remain significant barriers and structural biases that prevent talented students from progressing. The reality is that the landscape is murky at best and for those students who are trying to navigate the space without the right support network and background, postgraduate study remains inaccessible and opaque.

    Our recent report, delivered as a partnership between the Martingale Foundation and Public First, shines a stark light on these challenges, revealing how admissions to research-intensive (RI) universities frequently sidestep fairness in favour of tradition and unconscious bias. While undergraduate admissions strive toward equity – for example the recent removal of the UCAS personal statement – PGR selections often rest on unspoken networks, opaque criteria, and subjective judgment, exacerbating inequalities in the academic pipeline.

    Funding remains one of the most significant barriers to supporting more talented PhD students, with the situation getting increasingly competitive. However, this only exacerbates the importance of ensuring that the funded places available are awarded fairly through a transparent process, not just to those privileged people with the right networks and ‘know how’.

    The power of privilege in the pipeline

    In PGR admissions, luck and proximity can outweigh potential and merit. Informal processes, such as a direct supervisor’s recommendation, can act as a decisive factor, leaving out candidates unfamiliar with academic norms or lacking the cultural capital to navigate these unspoken rules. This is especially evident for students who attend NRI universities, where exposure to PGR pathways is limited, and interactions with research-focused mentors are less frequent.

    Students from NRI institutions are not only underrepresented in RI postgraduate programmes but face significant barriers even when they are academically qualified. These barriers are not associated with a candidate’s potential but more to do with their prior training that will enable them to thrive in RI postgraduate research. However, it should be noted that the impact of these barriers varies by subject with some subjects like mathematics relying heavily on the building blocks of the knowledge gained in prior years, while other disciplines are more flexible to learning and upskilling during PGR study.

    Transparency: The missing link

    The Equity in Doctoral Education through Partnership and Innovation (EDEPI) project underscores the opaque nature of the admissions process with only 47 per cent of admissions tutors believing current selection criteria are effective indicators of a candidate’s potential as an independent researcher. This lack of consensus results in admissions practices that reward familiarity over talent, further marginalising students without access to insider knowledge.

    The opacity of these systems reinforces privilege, creating a hidden curriculum that rewards those who already know how to play the game. Without explicit guidelines, students from underrepresented backgrounds are left guessing what is expected. On the other hand, their more advantaged peers often benefit from UG degrees in a RI institution, and family knowledge of the HE sector and professional networks to help navigate the process into PGR.

    Undermatching and the domino effect

    For many students from NRI backgrounds, their educational trajectory is shaped long before postgraduate study becomes a consideration. The report identifies undermatching as a critical barrier — a phenomenon where students, often due to financial or geographical constraints, attend institutions below their academic attainment. These decisions, made as early as age 17 or 18, have far-reaching consequences. NRI universities, while excelling in teaching and certain research areas, typically lack the resources and networks that RI institutions possess to guide students into PGR pathways.

    This mismatch compounds inequities. When these students attempt to transition to RI universities for postgraduate study, they are not only underprepared for the research culture but also more likely to face feelings of isolation and imposter syndrome. According to a survey understanding the mental health of doctoral researchers by McPhearson et al, these challenges significantly impact mental health for those who feel like outsiders in elite academic spaces.

    Supervisor bias: A double-edged sword

    The role of the supervisor is another critical factor in perpetuating inequities. Supervisors often act as gatekeepers to PGR opportunities, and their personal biases—whether conscious or unconscious—can shape admissions outcomes. The report highlights that some disciplines depend heavily on supervisors for admissions decisions, creating a single point of failure in the system. This affinity bias can exacerbate inequities, as supervisors may prefer candidates who resemble their own academic profiles or fit traditional moulds of excellence.

    Moreover, supervisors may hesitate to take on students perceived as requiring additional support, especially in resource-constrained environments where time and funding are limited – something that is increasingly a factor with further demands on academic time. This disproportionately affects candidates from NRI backgrounds, who may need additional guidance to bridge gaps in their academic preparation.

    Pathways to change

    Addressing entrenched inequities in PGR admissions requires decisive action across multiple fronts. Developing a standardised admissions framework, akin to UCAS but tailored for the diverse needs of PGR programmes, could enhance transparency and accountability while reducing reliance on subjective criteria. Though creating a universal system for all disciplines may not be feasible, unifying processes within institutions would be a significant step forward.

    Bridging knowledge gaps through initiatives like summer research internships and pre-doctoral courses can equip students from NRI institutions with vital skills and cultural capital. Established programmes like UNIQ+ and In2research highlight the effectiveness of such interventions, which require sustained support from both institutions and funders to expand their reach.

    Collaborative models, exemplified by partnerships like the London Interdisciplinary Doctoral Programme (LIDo), foster inclusivity by sharing resources and expertise between research-intensive and NRI institutions. Similarly, enhancing supervisor training on inclusive practices and unconscious bias, along with encouraging co-supervision models, ensures a broader support network for students and reduces over-reliance on individual supervisors.

    Regulatory oversight is crucial in setting standards and incentivising equitable practices in PGR admissions. Bodies such as the Office for Students and UKRI must actively enforce diversity and transparency measures. Furthermore, funders, including smaller charitable organisations, should adopt structural initiatives to support equitable access to postgraduate study, building on the progress made by UKRI and Wellcome. These combined efforts can create a more inclusive and equitable PGR landscape.

    Toward a more equitable future

    The hidden hierarchies in PGR admissions are not insurmountable. By acknowledging the biases embedded in current practices and committing to systemic reforms, the sector can unlock the potential of a more diverse pool of talent. As the Martingale Foundation and Public First report makes clear, this is not just a moral imperative but a practical necessity. The challenges of the 21st century demand innovative, inclusive research cultures capable of harnessing the full spectrum of human potential.

    The lingering “tap on the shoulder” recruitment pathways need to be replaced with a fair and transparent system, where every student, regardless of their background, has an equal opportunity to thrive. Only then can we build a truly meritocratic academic landscape—one that recognises talent over tradition and potential over privilege.

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  • The rubbish bin theory of the student experience

    The rubbish bin theory of the student experience

    Students have two kinds of problems.

    There are the big, systemic, institutional policy failures that make their lives miserable. These might be social ills of discrimination and prejudice rendered into the classroom experience. These might be reasonable adjustment policies that turn out to be entirely unreasonable. Or it might be the pecuniary architecture that collapses the student experience into unending part-time work and just about squeezing study in.

    In general students’ unions and universities are set up to address these kinds of challenges. There are committees, policies, liaison groups, central budgets, and a power and decision making architecture which faces these problems. This doesn’t mean they can always solve these issues, if they ever can be solved, but it does mean they are at least positioned to have a go at doing so.

    Power

    In the realm of the fundamentally bad and wrong a senior executive often can make things better. After all, they set institutional budgets, strategies, policies, contracts, and rules that impact every student. However, there is another kind of problem that impacts students where they just have less proximity to the issue.

    Imagine the student where things are basically ok. Life is tough, as it is for many students, but as far as they can tell they do not believe they are being treated unfairly, they seem to be broadly getting the big things they were promised when they turned up, and all available evidence suggests their lecturers are working within a set of policies that seem to be pretty fair. In other words, things aren’t too bad.

    However, as time goes on things don’t go badly wrong but they do go a little awry. The common room they went to before lectures doesn’t open until 09:30 in the winter. Their feedback has gone from arriving in six weeks to seven which adds a little bit more pressure on their exams. The library is suddenly much busier as the cold nights have set it. The buses are now much less frequent after a timetable change. The kit they need for their programmes is now more booked up as a new term has brought a new set of modules. And onward and onwards on the ever more bits of bad experience ephemera that clog up students’ lives.

    This is the rubbish bin theory of the student experience. Nobody is doing anything terribly wrong, in fact many people will be doing the right thing in some context and doing the best with the time they have, but the little bit of bad experience builds up and up until the whole student experience stinks. Some of these bits of rubbish are bigger than others, some might even amount to breaches of OfS’s ongoing conditions, but nobody is doing anything which is intentionally malicious.

    The rubbish bin theory of the student experience posits that everyone within a students’ ecosystem can make perfectly reasonable decisions within their own domains, turning down the heating to save on budgets, reconfiguring communal meeting space for staff offices, and changing opening hours of the reception desks might make sense in the context of the university more generally and even for some students some of the time. It is that the university is too big, too bureaucratic, and does not always operate on a small enough level to always take the rubbish out.

    The rubbish bin

    The problem with the smelly rubbish bin is that it’s often only noticed when it’s full. For example, the classic students’ union response is to bring together lots of information from course reps, school reps, committees, and other sources, to then feedback for subsequent years about a different bin, different ways to take out the rubbish, new bin liners (you get it I have tortured the metaphor now). The challenge is that even if you really push down the rubbish in one place it will only pop out in another (ok I am really done this time).

    This is because the issues are often too small-scale to warrant institutional intervention, which the union is well set up to advocate for, and often too local, emerging in programmes or departments, to be wholly made visible to the union or to be wholly made to work with university policy. The bin is able to get more and more full because everyone just flings their bit of rubbish in and it’s not anybody’s job to take it out from time to time (ok, sorry).

    The university incentive is to deal with the regulatory challenges in front of them. And while these are ongoing conditions the information the university can rely on, publish, and collate, is often a retrospective indicator. To take only two examples. NSS reporting encourages universities to deal with the issues of students no longer at the insitution. Graduate Outcomes measure student performance at a point in time in an ever changing labour market.

    This isn’t to say students’ unions don’t do lots of things for individuals, it’s not to say that universities only care about the big issues, that isn’t true, it’s a question of how these two institutions keep an eye on both the structural problems and the emerging challenges.

    Public administration

    There are three interesting public administration and organising theories that might help conceptualise this challenge. Henry Mintzberg, one of the most important public administration theorists of the 20th century, imagines organisation strategy like a potter at a wheel. The raw ingredients exist (staff, committees, students’ unions, money, representatives, and so on), but the shape of the pot only comes into focus when hands are applied to it. This is strategy by doing says that strategic intent only becomes apparent through patterns in retrospect.

    This would mean that students’ unions would have much looser resource allocations and move across departments, programmes, central university structures, representative groups, and ways of working, where the challenges and insight led them. It would mean that universities find the means to have more hands at the wheel. Giving school, departmental, and faculty committees more power, allocating budgets for taking out the rubbish bin, and challenging central structures so they spend more time focussing on emerging problems, not the retrospective ones encouraged by the regulatory reporting cycle.

    Community organising, which is a direction of travel across students’ unions, is slightly different to Mintzberg’s theory of emergent strategy. As imagined by the likes of Saul Alinsky community organising assumes that communities have the solutions but not the positional power to address issues. Emergent strategy places a greater emphasis on cross-organisational actions that can both exist within and between sites of local organising. They are both about allowing ideas to emerge with greater flexibility; it is that ideas of emergent strategy places greater emphasis on the initiation of those ideas and the provision of the materials to affect change within an organisational context. This would hold that rather than having a committee of people to take the rubbish bin out let students do it themselves through helping them organise and giving them budgets and responsibilities.

    The other important theorists here are Denhardt and Denhardt and their idea of New Public Service which sets out organisations to serve rather than steer their stakeholders. In this model universities and students’ unions would spend much less time trying to fix the problems of their students but instead provide the spaces through which students could learn from each other, provide resources through which students could advocate for themselves, and provide insights that would allow students to more effectively make the case for change to the people in power. In this model the emphasis would be on how universities and students’ unions open up bureaucratic spaces to allow a greater plurality of student voices to come forward.

    These are just three models amongst many but they raise the question of the best means of keeping an eye on the accumulation of student issues that lead to generally bad experiences. It comes down to a set of trade-offs which could be brought into sharper relief. The extent to which the universities, students’ unions, and their partners, ultimately develop policy and ways of working to support people to solve their own problems and they extent to which they are better served putting the organisational bureaucracy behind these bigger issues.

    The rubbish bin theory although a metaphor brings into focus the literal problem of how universities value maintenance. The accumulation of student issues are partially addressed by the ongoing commitment to keeping stuff open, working, reliable, and functioning. In general, reward often follows doing a good new thing rather than keeping the good old thing working. The issue of the student experience is intrinsically tied to the recognition and reward of those who take the rubbish out.

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  • Balancing Structure and Emergence in Teaching – Teaching in Higher Ed

    Balancing Structure and Emergence in Teaching – Teaching in Higher Ed

    Throughout my teaching career, I’ve often swung between two extremes when it comes to structure and flow. At times, I’ve been highly structured and organized—a good thing, but one that can become limiting when I miss what’s emerging in the moment. On the other end of the spectrum, if I lose track of the overall goals of a session or workshop, I risk not meeting my commitments or aligning with participants’ expectations. It also creates challenges for the broader structure of the course or event—whether it’s a class within a degree program or a workshop designed to support a university’s teaching and learning goals.

    Mia Zamora discusses this tension on Episode 475 of Teaching in Higher Ed: Making Space for Emergence. In the interview, she describes how we can create “buckets” to hold topics that we can explore together, which is especially helpful for the kind of class content that will be responding to what’s happening in an internal or external context, for example. In my business ethics class, we analyze news stories weekly, and there’s a “bucket” where our reflections and analysis can be placed.

    Alan Levine has co-taught with Mia previously and they both talk about courses having “spines” to keep the needed structure. You can see an example of their #NetNarratives class spine mid-way through Alan’s blog post: My #NetNar Reflection. On Episode 218, Alan discusses the importance of giving people opportunities to explore, as part of their learning. He shares:

    You get better by just practicing. Not rote practicing, but stuff where you’re free to explore.

    Speaking of exploring… I just went to visit Alan’s CogDogBlog – and discovered a recent post with “one more thing about podcasts” where he talks about a cool podcast directory that I wasn’t aware of… and ways of sharing one’s podcast feed with others. Now it is taking every ounce of discipline not to go down the rabbit trail of discovering more. But I leave for Louisiana in three days, the semester starts tomorrow, and I have a 5:30 AM keynote on Tuesday morning. All this to say, I had better behave myself and share a few more things about facilitiation I’ve been thinking about, as I prepare for those adventures.

    Two Additional Approaches for Managing the Tension Between Structure and Flow

    Over time, I’ve discovered two other helpful strategies for balancing structure and in-the-moment flexibility. These tools and insights have transformed how I prepare for and facilitate learning experiences.

    1. SessionLab: Visualizing and Adjusting the Flow

    A while back, I discovered a tool called SessionLab, and it’s become a game-changer, especially when preparing workshops. It helps me create a “run of show” document—something Kevin Kelly has discussed both on Episode 406: How to Create Flexibility for Students and Ourselves, as well as in his book on flexibility in teaching: Making College Courses Flexible Supporting Student Success Across Multiple Learning Modalities. A run of show outlines the timing, activity titles, descriptions, and any additional information for a session, helping me stay on track while leaving space for flexibility.

    SessionLab allows me to break down a workshop or class into blocks of time and activities. Though it includes a library of standard activities, I mostly use it to map out my own. One of my favorite features is the ability to highlight sections in the “additional information” column. This has been a game-changer for virtual facilitation. For example, when sharing resources or instructions during a Zoom session, I pre-highlight key content so I can easily copy and paste it into the chat in real time.

    Beyond that, the tool allows you to color-code blocks to visually assess the balance between different types of learning activities—like how much time you’re spending on lecture versus active learning. It even lets you generate a PDF version for offline reference.

    This morning, I was preparing for Tuesday morning’s keynote and realized (yet again) I’d tried to squeeze too much into my allotted time. SessionLab helped me get realistic about pacing, build in breathing room, and ensure space for those organic moments that make these moments of learning in community so powerful. After all, if everything were going to be rigidly planned, why not just record a video and skip live interaction altogether?

    If you’re looking for a tool to help you balance structure with flexibility, I highly recommend giving SessionLab a try.

    2. Padlet: Unlocking a Hidden Feature for Better Facilitation

    The second resource I want to highlight is in an upcoming book by Tolu Noah on facilitation: Designing and Facilitating Workshops with Intentionality: A Guide to Crafting Engaging Professional Learning Experiences in Higher Education. I had the privilege of reading an advance copy, and it felt like every page introduced me to a new tool or a fresh way of thinking.

    One of many insights that stood out was a feature I hadn’t realized existed in Padlet, a virtual corkboard I already use often for collaborative activities. Tolu explained that you can create breakout links to share just a single column from a Padlet board rather than the entire board.

    This has been incredibly helpful for making my Padlet boards more user-friendly. Before, when I shared an entire board, participants sometimes found it visually overwhelming—unsure where to post their contributions. Now, if I’m running an activity with multiple columns (e.g., ideas related to sustainability in one, corporate social responsibility in another), I can send a direct link to the specific column where I want participants to share. It simplifies the process and improves clarity for everyone.

    When Tolu Noah’s book comes out, I can’t recommend it enough—it’s packed with facilitation wisdom and practical strategies for creating more engaging learning environments.

    Resources

    Here’s a summary of the tools and people mentioned in this post:

    • Episode 475 with Mia Zamora
    • Episode 218 with Alan Levine
    • SessionLab – A tool for creating run-of-show plans, structuring workshops, and balancing structure with flexibility.
    • Kevin Kelly – Educator and author who explores flexibility in teaching and learning; referenced for his insights on “run of show” documents.
    • Making College Courses Flexible Supporting Student Success Across Multiple Learning Modalities – Kevin Kelly’s book: “Addressing students’ increasing demand for flexibility in how they complete college courses, this book prepares practitioners to create equivalent learning experiences for students in the classroom and those learning from home, synchronously or asynchronously.”
    • Padlet – A virtual corkboard tool for collaborative activities, with a feature for sharing breakout links to individual columns.
    • Tolu Noah – Educator and author of a forthcoming book on facilitation, emphasizing practical strategies for inclusive teaching.
    • Designing and Facilitating Workshops with Intentionality: A Guide to Crafting Engaging Professional Learning Experiences in Higher Education – Tolu Noah’s forthcoming book: “Workshops are one of the most frequently used forms of professional learning programming in higher education and beyond. However, in order for them to have a meaningful impact, they must be crafted with intentionality. Designing and Facilitating Workshops with Intentionality_ offers practical guidance, tools, and resources that can help you create more engaging, enriching, and effective workshops for adult learners.”

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  • When will the reasonable adjustments merry-go-round get fixed?

    When will the reasonable adjustments merry-go-round get fixed?

    You may have missed it, but just before Christmas some new survey results emerged on the experience of disabled students that ought to be the subject of several sector-wide new year’s resolutions.

    Only 39 per cent of those who had support agreed reported having all of it implemented. 62 per cent said they had gone without some adjustments because the process of chasing them up consumed too much time and energy. And 43 per cent of disabled students reported that a staff member had treated their agreed support as a mere suggestion.

    Almost half – 48 per cent – of disabled students believed they have received lower marks on their course because an assessment was not accessible, 73 per cent had to repeatedly explain the same aspects of their disability or access needs to different staff members, and 59 per cent needed to chase up support that has already been agreed.

    And meanwhile if they’re trying to access Disabled Students Allowance(s), email turnaround times are now down to 37 days – or half a semester, as it’s more commonly known.

    It’s just not worth it

    In theory, Disabled Students UK’s now annual survey – which this year gathered 1,200 self-selecting responses from disabled students across over 80 UK higher education institutions (weighted for gender) – ought to represent a national scandal.

    While there were some small signs of improvement over issues like lecture capture, as well as the reasonable adjustments issues above, only 21 per cent of disabled students felt that their modules had been designed with accessibility in mind – a key “anticipatory” duty.

    Of those who encountered access issues, only a quarter reported having raised all of them – three in four hold back from raising because they don’t want to be seen as difficult, don’t think it will help, fear not being understood or believed by staff, or are concerned about taking resources away from other students.

    Half reported that the adjustments provided were insufficient to put them on an equal footing with peers, 43 per cent experienced staff treating agreed support as optional, and a third felt pushed from one person to the next because it was unclear who was responsible for addressing their access needs. And only 40 per cent agree that the “majority” of staff outside of Disability Services understood their legal responsibility to make reasonable adjustments.

    And over 6 in 10 of those who had adjustments agreed reported having gone without some of those adjustments because it takes too much time and energy to chase them up.

    As well as the teaching and learning experience, just 38 per cent of in-person students with physical or sensory needs found their campus environment accessible, and some 44 per cent reported having been unable to attend a teaching session or supervision in person due to an inaccessible location.

    And nearly half (46 per cent) of disabled students needing accessible student housing reported having had to pay extra to do so.

    That all takes its toll. As well as the 48 per cent that believe they received a lower mark on their course due to an assessment not being accessible, 53 per cent reported their physical health suffering at some point during their degree, and 78 per cent reported their mental health suffering.

    Maximums and minimums

    So what is to be done, and who by? One option is aspirational charter marks of the sort embodied in the Disabled Students’ Commitment – but my guess is that will never catch on as an optional because of the lack of commercial benefit to having the gong.

    Or we default back to the idea that this isn’t an aspiration, it’s a minimum – but in a fiscally tight environment characterised partly by culture wars over equality and partly over shedding already stretched staff, just as local authorities ration Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCP) for children with parents that can take them to court, it has to be at least possible that higher education providers are doing something similar.

    That’s a situation designed for regulators – but in reality, if UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) was on the phone about to put a provider into special measures over immigration compliance, I know the panic and urgency with which previously seemingly intractable problems either in a central service or across academic departments can be fixed.

    But there is no equivalent risk, and so no equivalent urgency. And anyway, in England the Office for Students (OfS) does “minimums” regulation on outcomes – stats on getting in, on and out – and facilitates aspirations on quality experience via the TEF.

    It’s been pretty clear over the past few rounds of announced “boots on the ground” inspections that it’s only red flashing lights on the outcomes dashboard that trigger a look at experience – and even then through the optic of subject and/or partnerships, rather than the obvious differentials in experience between students with different characteristics.

    Notwithstanding some fairly shocking numbers inside some of the disability categories over graduate outcomes, the sector really isn’t too bad on disabled students outcomes.

    And so it does beg the question – what if disabled students aren’t getting the education they deserve (and have paid for), but battle on and get the outcomes anyway?

    Pillar to post

    As DK pointed out on the site back in October, OfS’ 2024 national student survey results split by student characteristics were not even accompanied by a commentary.

    Every year the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIAHE)’s annual report reminds us about the volume of complaints it sees from disabled students – but there’s no evidence at all that there’s a loop back into regulatory action either in England or Wales.

    The courts – including in the Abrahart case – don’t seem to be able to make their mind up about whether a failure to deliver reasonable adjustments represents a consumer protection law issue or an Equality Act 2010 issue.

    If it’s the former, regular readers won’t need a reminder here about how hard it is for students to know their rights and enforce them, in an environment where OfS has been promising improvements since its inception.

    And if it’s the latter, it’s really the Equality and Human Rights Commission that ought to be intervening – or is it?

    When it took the opportunity to clarify its interpretation of the law around reasonable adjustments following the conclusion of the appeal in the Abrahart case, the EHRC said that:

    …regulators like the OIA, and student bodies such as NUS and OfS will benefit from a clear statement of the law.

    But OfS is pretty clear that its key tool is access and participation plans – and that A&P dashboard on its website is all about outcomes, not experience.

    And anyway, the experience data that OfS does have is about disabled students being less satisfied in general – not on specific failures over the legal duties.

    And so the issue feels like it gets passed around without resolution in the same way that disabled students often experience locally, and never with strategic-level resolution or grip, either locally or nationally.

    Yes but sample size

    Of course, a self-selecting sample from a survey explicitly about being a disabled student – and promoted in that way – may not be nationally representative.

    And that’s a potential problem with the local results too. One of the things DSUK attempts to do with the results is to construct league table-able stats by provider – which this year has seen Cambridge University come out as the worst in the country.

    In a statement, a university spokesperson said:

    We take the views of our disabled students seriously. The sample size of 138 people for this survey represents just 2% of Cambridge’s disabled students. We regularly conduct higher-participation surveys and continually review our provision for disabled students.

    I can argue that as it’s a legal duty, one student credibly reporting an issue should be a scandal, but if anything, the Cambridge response highlights the wider problem – of both how much and how little we know about the scale of the issue.

    Over in the Netherlands, NSS results also highlight differentials in disabled student experience in general. But because there’s a set of extra questions that kick in on reasonable adjustments if a student is disabled, there’s also a raft of rich data on that issue too.

    That set of splits and adjustments findings is published by a body that used to just focus on disabled students – but now also works more broadly on inclusivity. With funding from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, ECIO supports universities in a national approach to studying with a disability and support needs and student well-being.

    It also handles what England would still call “premium funding” for disabled students, carries out customised assignments for individual providers, publishes wider research and advice on stuff like Universal Design for Learning, and generally works as an integrated enabler of the accessible education agenda.

    It is still the case that individual disabled students need to know their rights and be able to enforce them. But the emerging question is whether the Office for Students, the OIA and the EHRC are the right bodies to be passing the parcel on reasonable adjustments.

    I don’t know which of sticks, carrots or a mix of the two would be the most effective, and I don’t know whether OfS (and its emerging equivalents in Scotland and Wales) or a separate body is the right one to be driving the agenda.

    Nor do I know enough about why there’s been a sharp increase in disabled students, and the extent to which that is treated as a success inside the culture of HE, or treated with “you wouldn’t get all this in the real world” suspicion. I’ve come across both anecdotally – frequently in the same institution.

    What is clear is that universities are stretched, their staff are stretched and even (in England) OfS is stretched – and is making sure providers survive rather than highlighting the corners being cut to enable that survival.

    What is also clear is that as it stands and without a defendable dataset or a proper plan, it’s not just locally where students are needing to explain the same information about disability over and over again. Disabled students deserve better.

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