Author: admin

An assessor’s perspective on the Office for Students’ TEF shake-up

Across the higher education sector in England some have been waiting with bated breath for details of the proposed new Teaching Excellence Framework. Even amidst the multilayered preparations for a new academic year – the planning to induct new students, to teach well and assess effectively, to create a welcoming environment for all – those responsible for education quality have had one eye firmly on the new TEF.

The OfS has now published its proposals along with an invitation to the whole sector to provide feedback on them by 11 December 2025. As an external adviser for some very different types of provider, I’m already hearing a kaleidoscope of changing questions from colleagues. When will our institution or organisation next be assessed if the new TEF is to run on a rolling programme rather than in the same year for everyone? How will the approach to assessing us change now that basic quality requirements are included alongside the assessment of educational ‘excellence’? What should we be doing right now to prepare?

Smaller providers, including further education colleges that offer some higher education programmes, have not previously been required to participate in the TEF assessment. They will now all need to take part, so have a still wider range of questions about the whole process. How onerous will it be? How will data about our educational provision, both quantitative and qualitative, be gathered and assessed? What form will our written submission to the OfS need to take? How will judgements be made?

As a member of TEF assessment panels through TEF’s entire lifecycle to date, I’ve read the proposals with great interest. From an assessor’s point of view, I’ve pondered on how the assessment process will change. Will the new shape of TEF complicate or help streamline the assessment process so that ratings can be fairly awarded for providers of every mission, shape and size?

Panel focus

TEF panels have always comprised experts from the whole sector, including academics, professional staff and student representatives. We have looked at the evidence of “teaching excellence” (I think of it as good education) from each provider very carefully. It makes sense that the two main areas of assessment, or “aspects” – student experience and student outcomes – will continue to be discrete areas of focus, leading to two separate ratings of either Gold, Silver, Bronze or Requires Improvement. That’s because the data for each of these can differ quite markedly within a single provider, so it can mislead students to conflate the two judgements.

Another positive continuity is the retention of both quantitative and qualitative evidence. Quantitative data include the detailed datasets provided by OfS, benchmarked against the sector. These are extremely helpful to assessors who can compare the experiences and outcomes of students from different demographics across the full range of providers.

Qualitative data have previously come from 25-page written submissions from each provider, and from written student submissions. There are planned changes afoot for both of these forms of evidence, but they will still remain crucial.

The written provider submissions may be shorter next time. Arguably there is a risk here, as submissions have always enabled assessors to contextualise the larger datasets. Each provider has its own story of setting out to make strategic improvements to their educational provision, and the submissions include both qualitative narrative and internally produced quantitative datasets related to the assessment criteria, or indicators.

However, it’s reasonable for future submissions to be shorter as the student outcomes aspect will rely upon a more nuanced range of data relating to study outcomes as well as progression post-study (proposal 7). While it’s not yet clear what the full range of data will be, this approach is potentially helpful to assessors and to the sector, as students’ backgrounds, subject fields, locations and career plans vary greatly and these data take account of those differences.

The greater focus on improved datasets suggests that there will be less reliance on additional information, previously provided at some length, on how students’ outcomes are being supported. The proof of the pudding for how well students continue with, complete and progress from their studies is in the eating, or rather in the outcomes themselves, rather than the recipes. Outcomes criteria should be clearer in the next TEF in this sense, and more easily applied with consistency.

Another proposed change focuses on how evidence might be more helpfully elicited from students and their representatives (proposal 10). In the last TEF students were invited to submit written evidence, and some student submissions were extremely useful to assessors, focusing on the key criteria and giving a rounded picture of local improvements and areas for development. For understandable reasons, though, students of some providers did not, or could not, make a submission; the huge variations in provider size means that in some contexts students do not have the capacity or opportunity to write up their collective experiences. This variation was challenging for assessors, and anything that can be done to level the playing field for students’ voices next time will be welcomed.

Towards the data limits

Perhaps the greatest challenge for TEF assessors in previous rounds arose when we were faced with a provider with very limited data. OfS’s proposal 9 sets out to address this by varying the assessment approach accordingly. Where these is no statistical confidence in a provider’s NSS data (or no NSS data at all), direct evidence of students’ experiences with that provider will be sought, and where there is insufficient statistical confidence in a provider’s student outcomes, no rating will be awarded for that aspect.

The proposed new approach to the outcomes rating makes great sense – it is so important to avoid reaching for a rating which is not supported by clear evidence. The plan to fill any NSS gap with more direct evidence from students is also logical, although it could run into practical challenges. It will be useful to see suggestions from the sector about how this might be achieved within differing local contexts.

Finally, how might assessment panels be affected by changes to what we are assessing, and the criteria for awarding ratings? First, both aspects will incorporate the requirements of OfS’s B conditions – general ongoing, fundamental conditions of registration. The student experience aspect will now be aligned with B1 (course content and delivery), B2 (resources, academic support and student engagement) and part of B4 (effective assessment). Similarly, the student outcomes B condition will be embedded into the outcomes aspect of the new TEF. This should make even clearer to assessors what is being assessed, where the baseline is and what sits above that line as excellent or outstanding.

And this in turn should make agreeing upon ratings more straightforward. It was not always clear in the previous TEF round where the lines between Requires Improvement and even meeting basic requirements for the sector should be drawn. This applied only to the very small number of providers whose provision did not appear, to put it plainly, to be good enough.

But more clarity in the next round about the connection between baseline requirements should aid assessment processes. Clarification that in the future a Bronze award signifies “meeting the minimum quality requirements” is also welcome. Although the sector will need time to adjust to this change, it is in line with the risk-based approach OfS wants to take to the quality system overall.

The £25,000 question

Underlying all of the questions being asked by providers now is a fundamental one: How we will do next time?

Looking at the proposals with my assessor’s hat on, I can’t predict what will happen for individual providers, but it does seem that the evolved approach to awarding ratings should be more transparent and more consistent. Providers need to continue to understand their education-related own data, both quantitative and qualitative, and commit to a whole institutional approach to embedding improvements, working in close partnership with students.

Assessment panels will continue to take their roles very seriously, to engage fully with agreed criteria, and do everything we can to make a positive contribution to encouraging, recognising and rewarding teaching excellence in higher education.

Source link

September 21, 2025
Mindfulness is Gaining Traction in American Schools, But It Isn’t Clear What Students Are Learning – The 74

In the past 20 years in the U.S., mindfulness transitioned from being a new-age curiosity to becoming a more mainstream part of American culture, as people learned more about how mindfulness can reduce their stress and improve their well-being.

Researchers estimate that over 1 million children in the U.S. have been exposed to mindfulness in their schools, mostly at the elementary level, often taught by classroom teachers or school counselors.

I have been researching mindfulness in K-12 American schools for 15 years. I have investigated the impact of mindfulness on students, explored the experiences of teachers who teach mindfulness in K-12 schools, and examined the challenges and benefits of implementing mindfulness in these settings.

I have noticed that mindfulness programs vary in what particular mindfulness skills are taught and what lesson objectives are. This makes it difficult to compare across studies and draw conclusions about how mindfulness helps students in schools.

What is mindfulness?

Different definitions of mindfulness exist.

Some people might think mindfulness means simply practicing breathing, for example.

A common definition from Jon Kabat-Zinn, a mindfulness expert who helped popularize mindfulness in Western countries, says mindfulness is about “paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, nonjudgmentally, in the present moment.”

Essentially, mindfulness is a way of being. It is a person’s approach to each moment and their orientation to both inner and outer experience, the pleasant and the unpleasant. Fundamental to mindfulness is how a person chooses to direct their attention.

In practice, mindfulness can involve different practices, including guided meditations, mindful movement and breathing. Mindfulness programs can also help people develop a variety of skills, including openness to experiences and more focused attention.

Practicing mindfulness at schools

A few years ago, I decided to investigate school mindfulness programs themselves and consider what it means for children to learn mindfulness at schools. What do the programs actually teach?

I believe that understanding this information can help educators, parents and policymakers make more informed decisions about whether mindfulness belongs in their schools.

In 2023, my colleagues and I conducted a deep dive into 12 readily available mindfulness curricula for K-12 students to investigate what the programs contained. Across programs, we found no consistency of content, teaching practices or time commitment.

For example, some mindfulness programs in K-12 schools incorporate a lot of movement, with some specifically teaching yoga poses. Others emphasize interpersonal skills such as practicing acts of kindness, while others focus mostly on self-oriented skills such as focused attention, which may occur by focusing on one’s breath.

We also found that some programs have students do a lot of mindfulness practices, such as mindful movement or mindful listening, while others teach about mindfulness, such as learning how the brain functions.

Finally, the number of lessons in a curriculum ranged from five to 44, meaning some programs occurred over just a few weeks and some required an entire school year.

Despite indications that mindfulness has some positive impacts for school-age children, the evidence is also not consistent, as shown by other research.

One of the largest recent studies of mindfulness in schools found in 2022 no change in students who received mindfulness instruction.

Some experts believe, though, that the lack of results in this 2022 study on mindfulness was partially due to a curriculum that might have been too advanced for middle school-age children.

The connection between mindfulness and education

Since attention is critical for students’ success in school, it is not surprising that mindfulness appeals to many educators.

Research on student engagement and executive functioning supports the claim that any student’s ability to filter out distractions and prioritize the objects of their thoughts improves their academic success.

Mindfulness programs have been shown to improve students’ mental health and decrease students’ and teachers’ stress levels.

Mindfulness has also been shown to help children emotionally regulate.

Even before social media, teachers perennially struggled to get students to pay attention. Reviews of multiple studies have shown some positive effects of mindfulness on outcomes, including improvements in academic achievement and school adjustment.

A 2023 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cites mindfulness as one of six evidence-based strategies K-12 schools should use to promote students’ mental health and well-being.

A relatively new trend

Knowing what is in the mindfulness curriculum, how it is taught and how long the student spends on mindfulness matters. Students may be learning very different skills with significantly different amounts of time to reinforce those skills.

Researchers suggest, for example, that mindfulness programs most likely to improve academic or mental health outcomes of children offer activities geared toward their developmental level, such as shorter mindfulness practices and more repetition.

In other words, mindfulness programs for children cannot just be watered down versions of adult programs.

Mindfulness research in school settings is still relatively new, though there is encouraging data that mindfulness can sharpen skills necessary for students’ academic success and promote their mental health.

In addition to the need for more research on the outcomes of mindfulness, it is important for educators, parents, policymakers and researchers to look closely at the curriculum to understand what the students are actually doing.

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

Source link

September 21, 2025
SLJ Founder Alan Collinge talks about Charlie Kirk & his connection to the Student Loan Debt Crisis

Higher Education Inquirer : SLJ Founder Alan Collinge talks about Charlie Kirk & his connection to the Student Loan Debt Crisis

SLJ Founder Alan Collinge talks about Charlie Kirk & his connection to the Student Loan Debt Crisis

Source link

September 21, 2025
Feds Press CPS to End Black Student Initiative, Transgender Student Guidelines – The 74

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

The Trump administration says it will withhold some federal funding from Chicago Public Schools over an initiative to improve outcomes for Black students and guidelines allowing transgender students to play sports and use facilities based on the gender with which they identify.

Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary of civil rights in the U.S. Department of Education, wrote the district Tuesday saying his office has found CPS violated anti-discrimination laws and will lose grant dollars through the Magnet School Assistance Program. The district, with a budget of roughly $10.2 billion, has a five-year, $15 million Magnet Schools Assistance Program grant it received last year.

The feds are demanding that the district abolish the Black Student Success Plan it unveiled in February and issue a statement saying it will require students to compete in sports or use locker rooms and bathroom facilities based on their biological sex at birth, among other demands.

However, Illinois law conflicts on both fronts, putting CPS in a difficult position. The state issued guidance in March that outlines compliance with the Illinois Human Rights Law, including that schools must allow transgender students access to facilities that correspond to their gender identity. Separately, an Illinois law passed in 2024 requires the Chicago school board to have a Black Student Achievement Committee and plan for serving Black students.

Chicago Public Schools said Wednesday in an emailed statement that it “does not comment on ongoing investigations.” Previously, its leaders have said that the Black Students Success Plan is a priority to address longstanding academic and discipline disparities that Black students face. They have vowed to forge ahead with the five-year plan in defiance of the Trump administration’s crackdown on race-based initiatives.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said earlier this year that he would take the Trump administration to court if it takes federal funding away from CPS because of the district’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. His office also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In response to a complaint from a Virginia-based conservative nonprofit earlier this year, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation into the Black Student Success Plan, which sets goals to double the number of male Black teachers, reduce Black student suspensions, and teach Black history in more classrooms. Trainor said in his department’s interpretation, the initiative runs afoul of a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year banning the consideration of race in college admissions by offering added support to Black students and teachers exclusively.

“This is textbook racial discrimination, and no justification proffered by CPS can overcome the patent illegality of its racially exclusionary plan,” he wrote.

The OCR also launched an investigation in March of CPS, the Illinois State Board of Education, and suburban Deerfield Public School District 109 to look into their policies on transgender students using facilities and participating in school sports. Trainor said Chicago’s Guidelines Regarding the Support of Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Students violate Title IX, the federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education.

District officials told Chalkbeat recently that the members of a new school board Black Student Achievement Committee tasked with overseeing the plan’s rollout will be unveiled later this month.

Stacy Davis Gates, the president of the Chicago Teachers Union, issued a statement decrying the federal move to withhold funds from CPS and saying the district will stay the course.

“We will not back down,” she said in the statement. “We will not apologize. Our duty is to our students, and no amount of political bullying will shake our commitment to them.”

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

Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

Source link

September 21, 2025
‘They Are Hunting Us:’ D.C. Child Care Workers Go Underground Amid ICE Crackdown – The 74

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

From her home-based day care in Washington, D.C., Alma peers out the door and down the sidewalks. If they’re clear and there are no ICE agents out, she’ll give her coworker a call letting her know it’s safe to head in for work.

They have to be careful with the kids, too. Typically, she took the five children she cares for to the library on Wednesdays and out to parks throughout the week, but Alma — who, like her coworker, does not have permanent legal status — had to stop doing that in August, when President Donald Trump declared a “crime emergency” in the district. Now, two of the kids she cares for are being pulled out of the day care. The parents said it was because they weren’t going outside.

Trump has deployed the National Guard and a wave of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents into the district. ICE arrests there have increased tenfold. The situation has thrust the Latinas who hold up the nation’s child care sector into a perpetual state of panic. Nationwide, about 1 in 5 child care workers are immigrants, but in D.C. it’s closer to 40 percent; about 7 percent nationally lack permanent legal status. Nearly all are women.

Many are missing work, and others are risking it because they simply can’t afford to lose pay, providers told The 19th. All are afraid they’ll be next.

“What kind of life is this?” said Alma, whose name The 19th has changed to protect her identity. “We are not delinquents, we are not bad people, we are here to work to support our family.”

Alma has been running a home-based day care for the past decade. She’s been in the United States for 22 years, working in child care that entire time. With two kids being pulled, she will have to reduce her staffer’s hours as she tries to find children to fill those spots.

Her four school-age children also depend on her. This month, she had to write out a signed document detailing what should happen to her kids if she were to be detained. Her wish is that they be brought to detention with her.

“I can’t imagine my kids here without me,” she said.

She said she understands the president’s approach of expelling immigrants with criminal convictions from the country, but teachers who are working with kids? Who haven’t committed any crime?

By targeting them, she said, the administration is “destroying entire families.”

The Multicultural Spanish Speaking Providers Association in D.C., which works with Latina child care providers, has seen this panic first hand for the past couple of weeks as more and more Latinas in child care have stopped coming into work. The center also helps workers obtain their associate’s degree in early childhood education, and since the semester started in mid-August, many teachers have asked for classes to be offered virtually so they don’t have to show up to campus at night.

Latinas have flocked to the child care industry for multiple reasons: Families seeking care value access to language education, and Latinas have a lower language barrier to entry, said Blanca Huezo, the program coordinator at the Multicultural Spanish Speaking Providers Association.

“In general, this industry offers them an opportunity for a fresh start professionally in their own language and without leaving behind their culture,” Huezo said.

Though the number of child care workers without permanent legal status has historically been low, recent changes from the Trump administration to revoke or reduce legal protections have likely increased it. This year, the administration has narrowed opportunities for claiming asylum at the border, tried to bar certain groups from obtaining Temporary Protected Status and temporarily paused humanitarian protections for groups of migrants.

The changes, coupled with increased enforcement, has fostered fear among Latinx people regardless of immigration status. That fear among workers is deepening a staffing crisis in an industry that already couldn’t afford additional losses, Huezo said.

“There is a shortage — and now even more,” she said. “There are many centers where nearly 99 percent of teachers are of Hispanic origin.”

Washington, D.C., has been a sanctuary city since 2020, where law enforcement cooperation with immigration officials was broadly prohibited. Earlier this year, however, Mayor Muriel Bowser proposed repealing that law and, in mid-August, Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department Police Chief Pamela Smith gave officers leeway to share information with ICE about individuals they arrested or stopped.

“There was some peace that living in D.C. brought more security,” Huezo said. Now, “people don’t feel that freedom to walk through the streets.”

Several child care workers are afraid to go to work in DC, now that President Trump has removed restrictions on ICE conducting enforcement at schools and daycares.
(Getty Images)

Child care centers are also no longer off limits for ICE raids. The centers were previously protected under a “sensitive locations” directive that advised ICE to not conduct enforcement in places like schools and day cares. But Trump removed that protection on his first day in office. While reports have not yet surfaced of raids in day cares, ICE presence near child care care centers, including in D.C., has been reported.

A similar story of fear and surveillance has already played out in Los Angeles, where ICE conducted widespread raids earlier in the summer. Huezo said her organization has been in touch with child care providers in L.A. to learn about how they managed those months.

In the meantime, the best the organization can do, she said, is connect workers with as many resources as possible, including legal clinics, but the ones that help immigrants are at their maximum caseload. The group has put child care workers who are not leaving their homes in touch with an organization called Food Justice DMV that is delivering meals to their doorsteps. Prior to last month, people who needed food could fill out a form and get it that same week. Now, the wait time is two to three weeks, Huezo said. For those in Maryland and Virginia, it’s closer to a month.

Thalia, a teacher at a day care, said her coworkers have stopped coming to work. It’s all the staff talks about during their lunchtime conversations. When she rides the Metro into work, she looks over her shoulder for the ICE agents, their faces covered, who are often at the exits.

“They are hunting us,” she said.

Thalia, whose name has been changed because she does not have permanent legal status, has been living in the United States for nine years and working in child care that entire time. Like her, many of the Latina teachers she works with have earned certifications and degrees in early childhood education.

“We are working, we are cooperating, paying taxes,” she said. “We are there all day so other families can benefit from the child care.”

As a single mother, Thalia has also had to consider what would happen to her three children if she was detained. This past month, she retained a lawyer who could help them with their case in case anything were to happen. Her school-age kids know: Call the lawyer if mom is detained and get tickets to Guatemala to meet her there.

This is what she lives with every day now: “The fear of leaving your family and letting them know, ‘If I don’t return, it’s not because I am abandoning you.’ ”

This story was originally reported by Chabeli Carrazana of The 19th. Meet Chabeli and read more of her reporting on gender, politics and policy.

Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

Source link

September 20, 2025
The Hidden Struggle of Healthcare Support Workers

Higher Education Inquirer : Undervalued, Overworked, Underpaid: The Hidden Struggle of Healthcare Support Workers

Undervalued, Overworked, Underpaid: The Hidden Struggle of Healthcare Support Workers

Source link

September 20, 2025
WEEKEND READING: Money’s Too Tight (to Mention) – Universities and students are on a knife edge as the party conference season and the new academic year kick off in earnest, by Nick Hillman (HEPI Director)
- As policymakers look ahead to the bigger party conferences and students and staff ready themselves for the new academic year*, HEPI Director Nick Hillman takes a look ahead. [* Except in Scotland, where it has already begun.]
- Information on HEPI’s own party conference events is available here.
Money’s Too Tight (to Mention)

When the Coalition Government for which I worked tripled tuition fees for undergraduate study to £9,000 back in 2012, it was a big and unpopular change. But it represented a real increase in support for higher education that led to real increases in the quality of the student experience, with improvements to staffing, facilities and student support services.

Because the fee rise shifted costs from taxpayers to graduates via progressive student loans, it enabled another fundamental change: the removal of student number caps in England. No longer would universities be forced to turn away ambitious applicants that they wanted to recruit. It was the final realisation of the principle that underlined the Robbins report of 1963: ‘courses of higher education should be available for all those who are qualified by ability and attainment to pursue them and who wish to do so.’ A higher proportion of students enrolled on their first-choice place. (It never ceases to amaze me how many people wish to return to a world in which your children and mine have unwarranted obstacles reimposed between them and attaining the degree they want.)

But back in 2012, no one in their wildest dreams thought the new fee level would be frozen for most of the next decade and more. After all, the fee rise was implemented using the Higher Education Act (2004), which had enabled Tony Blair to introduce the current model of tuition fees, and the Blair / Brown Governments to raise fees each year without any fuss.

Yet the political ructions caused by introducing £9,000 fees in 2012 made policymakers timid. Towards the end of the Conservatives’ time in office, Ministers bizarrely sought to make a virtue of their pusillanimity. Even as inflation was biting, the Minister for Higher Education (Rob Halfon) said raising fees was ‘not going to happen, not in a million years’.

The result has been a crisis in funding for higher education institutions that has changed their priorities. Top-end universities have looked to increase their income via more and higher (uncapped) fees from international students – hardly surprising, when an international student taking a three-year degree is worth £69,000 a year more than a home student! They have also sought to tempt UK students away from slightly less prestigious institutions.

Meanwhile, newer universities have been even more entrepreneurial. Limited in their ability to recruit lots of international students, they have instead shifted towards franchising, whereby other organisations pay them for the privilege of teaching their degrees.

Universities in the middle have had a particularly tough time. Most notably, many universities originally founded in the expansionary post-Robbins environment are struggling today. (It has been suggested that the tie-up between Kent and Greenwich is partly borne of necessity.) Plus with no fees for home students, Scottish universities have been hurting even more than those elsewhere.

Even though recruiting more people from overseas and large-scale franchising have helped some institutions to keep the wolf from the door, Ministers have condemned both. The UK Home Office want fewer international students and England’s Department for Education have promised new legislation to tackle the growth in franchising. (Six months ago, Bridget Phillipson wrote in the Sunday Times, ‘I will also bring forward new legislation at the first available opportunity to ensure the Office for Students has tough new powers to intervene quickly and robustly to protect public money’.)

No British university has ever gone bust but, as financial advisers know, the past can be a sorry guide to the future. When asked, Ministers say they would accept the closure of a university or two. But a university is usually a big local employer, a big supporter of local civic life and a source of local pride – and money. Most have been built up from public funds.

Closing a university would not just risk local upset. It would reduce confidence, including among those who lend to universities, and could even risk a domino effect, as people lose faith in the system as a whole, thereby putting the reputation of UK education at risk. So there are good reasons why, for example, Dundee University is currently being bailed out, even if it comes with a distinct whiff of moral hazard.

Bills, Bills, Bills

Students are hurting just as much as institutions. Contrary to the expectations of years gone by, the proportion of school leavers proceeding to higher education is barely rising. There is likely more than one cause, including negative rhetoric about universities from across the political spectrum and a false sense that degree apprenticeships for school leavers are plentiful.

Perhaps most significantly, maintenance support for students is nothing like enough. There are three big problems.
1. The standard maximum maintenance support in England is now worth a little over £10,000, which is just half the amount students need.
2. Parents are expected to support their student offspring but they are not officially told how much they should contribute.
3. England’s household income threshold at which state-based maintenance support begins to be reduced has not increased for over 15 years. At £25,000, it is lower than the income of a single-earner household on the minimum wage.
As a result, according to the HEPI / Advance HE Student Academic Experience Survey, over two-thirds of students now undertake paid employment during term time, often at a number of hours that negatively affects their studies. These students are limited in their ability to take part in extra-curricular activities, for they are time poor as well as strapped for cash.

An increase in maintenance support is long overdue, just as an increase in tuition fees for home students is long overdue. But we could also perhaps help students help themselves by providing better information in advance about student life. In particular, given the epidemic of loneliness among young people, we should remind them that you are more likely to be lonely if your room is plush but you do not have enough money left over for a social life than if your living arrangements are basic but your social life is lively.

The Masterplan

The Government came to office claiming to have a plan for tackling the country’s challenges. But more than a year on, the fog has not cleared on their plans for higher education. Patience is now wearing gossamer thin. As Chris Parr of Research Professional put it on Friday, ‘Still we wait.’ As far as we can discern from what we know, it seems universities will be expected to do more for less – on civic engagement, access and economic growth.

Higher education institutions have made it clear, including through Universities UK’s Blueprint, that they are keen to play their part in national renewal. But it is not only the financial squeeze that limits their room for manoeuvre. Political chaos as well as the geography of Whitehall threaten the institutional autonomy that has been the key ingredient of UK universities’ success.

Unlike in the past, there are different regulators, Ministers and Departments for the teaching and learning functions of universities on the one hand and their research functions on the other, meaning coordinated oversight is missing. The latest machinery of government changes risk another dog’s dinner, as ‘skills’ continue to bounce around Whitehall, newly residing for now (but who knows for how long) in the Department for Work and Pensions. Meanwhile, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology is thought to have less regard for university-based research than for research conducted elsewhere, at least in contrast to the past.

Moreover, each of the two Ministers with oversight of higher education institutions (Baroness Smith and Lord Vallance) are newly split across two Whitehall departments, with one foot in each. This sort of approach tends to be a recipe for chaos. (As I saw close up during my own time in Whitehall, split Ministers usually reside primarily in just one of their two departments, the one where their main Private Office is situated.)

The choice now is clear. If Ministers want to direct universities more than their predecessors, then they need to fund them accordingly. But if Ministers want universities to play to their own self-defined strategies in these fast-changing times, then they should reduce the barriers limiting their capacity to behave more entrepreneurially.
Source link
September 20, 2025
Higher Education Inquirer : Maria Ressa

Higher Education Inquirer : Maria Ressa – Fighting Back Against Trump’s Authoritarian Algorithm With Truth (The Daily Show)

Maria Ressa – Fighting Back Against Trump’s Authoritarian Algorithm With Truth (The Daily Show)

Source link

September 20, 2025
The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk (Mike Malloy)

Source link

September 20, 2025
Advocates Worry About McNair Scholars Program

Delays in the distribution of federal grants for undergraduates involved with TRIO, a series of college-access programs, combined with an ongoing lawsuit have raised concerns among proponents for the McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program—a TRIO grant designed specifically for those pursuing graduate school.

Legally, grants don’t have to be awarded for either the TRIO undergraduate programs or McNair until the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30. But in most years prior, the Department of Education has notified institutions about the status of awards in late August or mid-September.

That has not been the case so far this year.

Award notifications started to trickle out after Sept. 15 for the undergraduate programs that started Sept. 1, but according to a TRIO advocacy group, most of the college staff members who lead McNair are still waiting to hear from the department, though at least one program got approval Friday.

As with the other TRIO programs, the Education Department says it will issue notices by the end of the month. But with a lawsuit filed last year arguing McNair is discriminatory and President Trump calling to slash TRIO altogether in his recent budget proposal, uncertainty remains rampant.

“All of a sudden, we’re in sort of this panic mode,” one assistant program director said on condition of anonymity, fearing that speaking out could harm the students she serves. “That stress and panic has certainly been building since January, but this definitely accelerated it.”

And while the anonymous director said her program has yet to receive a status update, for some the fear of cancellation has already become a reality.

So far, the Council for Opportunity in Education, a TRIO advocacy group, has tallied 18 grant cancellations out of the more than 200 McNair programs. Collectively, McNair serves more than 6,000 first-generation, low-income and underrepresented students each year.

ED deputy press secretary Ellen Keast said in a statement, “The department plans to issue continuation awards for the McNair Scholars program by the end of the fiscal year,” while also continuing to “evaluate the underlying legal issues raised in litigation.” In an email obtained by Inside Higher Ed, a legislative affairs officer at the department reinforced this statement to a staffer on Capitol Hill, saying that any grantees facing a cancellation would have been notified by Sept. 16.

Still, the director said she is scrambling to devise a backup plan.

“We have less than three weeks to figure out what’s going on, talk to our institutions and make a plan,” she said. “Jobs are going to be lost and students aren’t going to have services.”

‘Unacceptable Delays’

Worries about McNair have existed for months, but they kicked into a higher gear at a COE conference earlier this month.

The program director and COE president Kimberly Jones, both of whom attended the conference, say that Christopher McCaghren, ED’s deputy assistant secretary for higher education programs, spoke about the future of McNair on Sept. 10. And according to both of their recollections, when the secretary was asked if and when grant awards would be allocated, he said the department needed to wait on further rulings from the court before it could administer this year’s awards. (Jones noted that the session was not recorded, at the request of the department.)

Keast said the account of McCaghren’s comments was “unsubstantiated fake news” and reinforced that the department is committed to issuing McNair awards by Sept. 30. She declined, however, to provide a transcript or recording of his remarks.

The lawsuit McCaghren was likely referring to was filed last year by the Young America’s Foundation, a national conservative student group. It alleged the criteria for McNair eligibility was race-based and argued that in order to be constitutional, the program should be open to all students. The case was dismissed by a federal district court, but the plaintiffs have since appealed.

If the government is delaying grant allocation because of the lawsuit, Jones said, it would be an “absolutely unacceptable” practice.

“If the government couldn’t move on something every time they were sued, then they wouldn’t do anything,” she added. “I believe that this is an opportunity they’re taking advantage of to undermine the program and attempt to eliminate it.”

Amanda Fuchs Miller, the Biden administration appointee who previously filled McCaghren’s role, made similar comments.

“Just because there’s pending litigation doesn’t mean that you don’t fund a program that Congress has authorized and appropriated funds for,” she said. “That’s not the role of the executive branch.”

Both Jones and Fuchs Miller pointed to the department’s recent decision to end funding for grant programs that support minority-serving institutions as another reason they are worried about McNair’s future.

The MSI decision stemmed from a similar lawsuit that argued the criteria for Hispanic-serving institutions was illegal. And while no court ruling had been issued, a Justice Department official agreed with the plaintiffs and so did Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who expanded the determination to include similar grant programs.

‘Tapping Into Talent’

Named after Ronald McNair, a first-generation college student and astrophysicist who died during the launch of NASA’s space shuttle Challenger in 1986, the McNair Scholars program started in 1989 and receives about $60 million per year from Congress.

As with other TRIO programs, at least two-thirds of the students served under McNair must be first-generation and low-income. But what has sparked the legal scrutiny of the graduate program is a provision that allows up to one-third of the participating students to be admitted because they are “a member of a group that is underrepresented.”

Proponents for McNair say that this may include characteristics like race or sexuality, but aspects like gender and field of study often play a role as well. In many instances a student will tick all three boxes—first-gen, low-income and underrepresented—at once.

“There’s a perspective that McNair is only for students of color, which it is not,” said Jones. “It particularly looks for a demographic that is not usually sought after in postgraduate education … We’re tapping into talent that we would not have otherwise.”

For example, a white woman from a low-income household who is pursuing a career in STEM could be a prime candidate under the current regulatory statute.

But advocates worry that because of current political tensions, many eligible students of all races could lose access to this critical service.

The program leader who spoke with Inside Higher Ed said that until grant awards are sent out, her rural institution will lack $278,000. As a result, she will likely have to tell 27 students that the classes they have already signed up for, the workshops they were promised and the conferences they planned to attend will not be possible.

“This is the semester that our seniors’ grad applications are due, so to just yank the rug out from underneath them and say, ‘You’re on your own’ in this critical time is just cruel,” she said. “It’s also, in my opinion, a really shortsighted way of the administration understanding national security and participating in the global economy.”

Tara Ruttley, a McNair alumna who studied neuroscience and now works in the space industry, always knew she wanted a Ph.D. but wasn’t sure how to get there before she saw a poster advertising the grant program at Colorado State University. Through McNair she was able to pursue a paid research internship, present her findings at conferences, receive guidance on application essays and then give back to younger students. If funding were to be cut, Ruttley said, other aspiring graduate students won’t be so lucky.

“I’m kind of a scrapper, so I might have figured it out, but it definitely would have been delayed. The entire package wouldn’t have been as strong and it probably would have taken me a lot longer to get to where I was going,” she explained. “There’s a whole generation of scientists we may never see from varied backgrounds across the country.”

Source link

September 19, 2025