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The Immigration White Paper — an Indian student’s perspective
Last week, I arrived back in London on a high. I’d spent five weeks in India with British colleagues promoting the benefits of U.K. higher education in seven cities. My audience was some of the most talented and entrepreneurial young people in the world, and they have plenty of choices about where to follow their dreams. But I know from my decade as Chair of the U.K. National Indian Students and Alumni Union (NISAU) that British education is an extraordinary opportunity for Indian students and their host country. It’s a win-win if ever there was one in talent, skills, investment and friendship. And all this was topped off with the announcement of the long-awaited India-UK trade deal. We were filled with possibility.

Yet as soon as I stepped off the plane, I was faced with a barrage of news stories about the UK Immigration White Paper. Would all our hard work be put at risk? Surely we would not jeopardise the Graduate Route Visa so vital to Indian graduates and hard-won by many, including Indian students and alumni.

So now the White Paper is published, what is our take on it?

The Graduate Route

First, let’s be clear. Our worst fears were averted. NISAU genuinely welcomes the Government’s decision to retain the Graduate Route and acknowledges the significant engagement that has taken place with stakeholders across the sector. NISAU has worked extensively over the past decade — and particularly intensively in the last year — with policymakers across all major political parties, including many now in government, to advocate for the continuation of this essential route.

Of course, there are still worries. Any change is worrying when witnessed from thousands of miles away. So while we are relieved that the Graduate Route has been preserved — albeit with a modestly reduced duration — we urge that its implementation, and that of the wider reforms, be approached with care, clarity, and collaboration. Getting this right will shape the UK’s standing as a top destination for global talent in the years ahead.

Why should we worry about a white paper on immigration?

But here’s the rub. Many of us feel the UK’s worries about immigration are being applied inappropriately. International students are a distinct, high-contribution, temporary category of migration. They fund their own education, power innovation in universities, sustain local economies and build enduring bilateral ties between the UK and countries around the world.

They (we) should be celebrated, not treated through the same policy lens as other forms of migration. Doing so risks undermining one of the UK’s most globally admired assets: its higher education sector.

Universities, too, are one of Britain’s most powerful strategic assets. They drive regional growth, advance global research, and help produce the high-skilled workforce the country urgently needs. Supporting them — and the students who choose them — must remain a national priority.

It’s an old argument, but worth repeating because it’s true. International students bring enormous benefits to the UK — to our high streets, workplaces, and campuses. They contribute billions to the UK economy each year, and the fees they pay help sustain vital subjects like Engineering and Medicine — courses which are essential to Britain’s long-term prosperity and global competitiveness.

International students also create employment and support domestic skills through their impact on the wider economy and the cross-subsidy they provide for UK teaching and research.

The White Paper talks about impact. But any local impact assessment or review of the domestic skills landscape should begin here — with a recognition that the presence of international students uplifts opportunities for UK nationals, not competes with them. And so we reiterate, no matter how often this request is dismissed, international students must be taken out of the net migration targets for purposes of robust policymaking and to ensure future efforts to reduce regular forms of migration don’t endanger this huge benefit.

Home thoughts from abroad

The White Paper was aimed, naturally, at a domestic political audience, but the world was listening. International communication must be extensively managed and properly executed — proactively and urgently — especially during this peak recruitment period. Panic must not be allowed to set in among current and prospective students. Immediate clarity is needed on who is affected and how.

It’s easy to forget what this takes, and GREAT campaign funding, which promotes campaigns like Study London, has already been cut by 41%. How will the great stories we should be telling about global education reach the right students in an appropriate way?

Think of the impact of our recent debates on Indian students, the largest users of the Graduate Route. For 70% of Indian students, a strong post-study work offer is the single most important factor in deciding where to study abroad. The ability to gain significant international work experience is critical. As we told the Migration Advisory Committee, work is not the same as work experience.

What we need now are proactive, student-focused communications, delivered by those who understand how to engage students effectively. NISAU has already started evidence-based communications. We stand ready to scale our role in partnership with UK stakeholders, but we must be quick. Rumours and bad actors must not be allowed to shape the UK’s story and, as Mark Twain said, a lie will fly around the whole world while the truth is getting its boots on. So we encourage a joined-up national communications effort, led by government and supported by trusted sector voices like NISAU, to ensure international students receive accurate, timely and reassuring guidance.

Skills and Immigration Alignment

Here we see real opportunity. We strongly support the Government’s move to align immigration policy with domestic skills development. This is not new to us. NISAU has long championed this principle. Our advocacy has enabled productive sectoral dialogue, including at our 2024 and 2025 national conferences, where we specifically advanced the case for better integration of immigration, training pipelines and national workforce planning. Now we look forward to working with stakeholders to ensure these reforms drive opportunity, not exclusion. International students and graduates should be part of this thinking, not passive recipients.

Tighter Regulation of Agents

We should be afraid, though, of naming and fixing problems. NISAU has spent nearly a decade calling for tighter regulation of education agents, so we are pleased to see this now reflected in government policy. We, of all people, see the cost of this being done badly.

However, implementation is everything. We urge clarity and accountability in the system, and ask for specific answers to:
- What is the penalisation mechanism for misconduct by agents?
- How can universities transparently share information on agent breaches?
- What channels will be created for students to report agent wrongdoing safely and easily?
So we recommend the following actions to ensure transparency and integrity:
1. A sector-wide cap on agent commission to ensure that student interests are prioritised over volume incentives.
2. Mandatory publication by universities of agent appointment processes and the fees paid to each agent, after every intake.
3. Immediate monitoring of potential oligopolistic aggregators in the agent market, whose dominance may compromise student choice, competition, and accountability.
Agent reform must centre student welfare, market integrity, and institutional accountability.

Talent Route Enhancements

And finally, we welcome the strengthening of the Global Talent, Innovator Founder, and High Potential Individual routes. These are important to the UK’s economic ambitions, especially in strategic sectors such as AI, deep tech, and life sciences. But talent does not always arrive ready-made. It is nurtured — often from within our international student community.

International graduates are a strategic talent pool that can help meet the UK’s workforce gaps, drive innovation in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and build globally competitive businesses. Retaining them through structured graduate-to-founder pathways is not just in students’ interests — it is in Britain’s. We therefore urge:
- A seamless pipeline between student, graduate, and entrepreneurship routes.
- The right for students to start businesses while studying.
- A bespoke international graduate start-up pathway, enabling the UK to tap into a future generation of founders, many of whom could otherwise take their innovation elsewhere.
Supporting graduate outcomes must also become a central focus across the UK higher education sector. A recent survey revealed that only 3% of international graduates found employment through their university careers service, highlighting a clear opportunity for improvement in how students are supported beyond the classroom.

This is not only a challenge for international students; domestic students, too, require more tailored and effective career support to meet the evolving demands of today’s job market.

NISAU has long championed the need for improved careers provision, including through regular engagement with universities and stakeholders, and as a central theme at both our 2024 and 2025 national conferences. At a plenary session during our 2025 conference in February, we demonstrated how the absence of structured university-led careers support has given rise to an unregulated ecosystem of social media ‘careers coaches’ — many of whom charge students significant fees, often without delivering meaningful outcomes. We recognise that many universities are already taking meaningful steps to enhance the student experience and graduate outcomes. From employability hubs to expanded industry partnerships, we welcome and encourage these efforts — and believe they can be further amplified through shared best practice, consistent investment, and greater collaboration with student-led organisations such as NISAU.

The White Paper on Immigration is challenging on skills. We call for a sector-wide paradigm shift — one that places measurable, inclusive, and industry-informed employability support at the heart of the student experience and ensures that students are not left to navigate their futures unsupported or exploited.

There is much more to say. We are concerned about a lack of clarity on graduate-level jobs and the financial impacts of all these changes on the universities that attract global students in the first place. Nor do we want to be seen only as investors. The ‘best and the brightest’ are not necessarily the ‘rich and the richest’.

We urge that any levies or associated costs placed on universities be ring-fenced for reinvestment into student support, careers, and compliance infrastructure, rather than passed on to students. Global education is changing. International students are discerning, strategic, and have options. If the UK offer weakens, the best talent will go elsewhere. The UK at the moment has a competitive advantage — that advantage must be protected through consistency, clarity, and commitment to the student experience. Let’s secure a UK that remains open, ambitious and globally competitive in higher education and in so many other ways.
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May 15, 2025
The Contest Over Fairness in Higher Ed (opinion)

My 5-year-old recently told me it was unfair that her teacher makes her write from left to right “like everyone else.” She’s left-handed, and for her, it smudges the ink and feels awkward—while her right-handed friends have no problem. I affirmed her frustration. It is harder. But I also knew that was discomfort, not injustice.

If she told me her school never included stories with Black or Indian characters—her own identities—or skipped over Black history and Diwali while celebrating Halloween and Christmas, I’d respond differently. That’s not just about feelings. That’s curricular erasure—structural invisibility embedded in education.

Higher education is now facing a similar test of discernment. In recent weeks, the American Bar Association, under pressure from the Trump administration, suspended its DEI accreditation requirement for law schools. The University of Michigan shuttered its DEI programs. And Harvard University received a sweeping federal demand to dismantle its DEI programs, reorient admissions and hiring, and submit to ideological audits.

Harvard’s decision to reject the federal ultimatum—even at the cost of more than $2 billion in research funding—offers a rare but vital example of institutional clarity. Harvard said no to the false equivalence now dominating our public discourse: the notion that discomfort is the same as discrimination.

Critics claim that DEI efforts create an exclusionary climate and reflect a lack of “viewpoint diversity,” framing a commitment to racial equity as an ideological litmus test. But that framing ignores history, context and the actual purpose of DEI work, which at its best corrects for the unfairness of cumulative white advantages built into college admissions, curriculum and culture in higher education. It treats the discomfort that arises when racism is named as equivalent to structural exclusion. And then, under that pretense, the federal government now imposes its own litmus test—seeking to dismantle the very practices aimed at addressing structural harm.

Now that federal litmus test is extending into faculty hiring. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, under the Trump administration, has launched an investigation into whether Harvard’s hiring practices discriminate against white men and other traditionally overrepresented groups. Cloaked in the language of civil rights enforcement, the inquiry reflects a disturbing reversal: Efforts to address long-standing exclusion are being reframed as exclusion themselves. Rather than confronting the structural realities that have kept academia disproportionately white and male, this investigation uses claims of “reverse discrimination” to undermine the very mechanisms created to correct inequity. It’s a strategic misreading of fairness—one that turns tools of justice into instruments of suppression.

Similar to my daughter calling left-handed writing “unfair” because it invokes feelings of discomfort and victimization—despite the absence of structural exclusion—DEI’s powerful opponents manipulate the language of fairness to justify conformity and suppress interventions that respond to actual harm. “Race neutrality” is the legal fiction of our time, much like “separate but equal” was in another era. Both erase history in favor of surface-level parity and use the language of justice to obscure harm. We saw this logic in the Students for Fair Admissions ruling, which restricted race-conscious admissions. But as Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in her dissent, the deep racial disparities we see today were “created in the distant past, but have indisputably been passed down to the present day.” The issue isn’t too much talk about race—it’s our refusal to hear it.

Now, under the guise of neutrality, institutions are being pressured to abandon DEI work, censor curricula and silence student voices. And many institutions are acting as if this call is guided by law. But the SFFA decision didn’t ban DEI programming or prohibit race-based affinity spaces, racial climate assessments or the consideration of lived racial experiences in admissions essays.

This is interpretive overreach: stretching legal decisions out of fear. In doing so, institutions compromise not only their policies, but their principles. But there’s another path—what I call interpretive reimagination. It’s the ethical clarity to meet ambiguity with purpose, not retreat. To respond not only as a matter of compliance, but of mission. And this discernment—the ability to differentiate between discomfort and structural harm—is at the heart of racial literacy. It means recognizing that not every claim of unfairness is equal and that treating them as such can perpetuate injustice. That discernment is essential for educators and institutions.

What we’re witnessing is not just a policy shift. It’s a redefinition of fairness—one that casts efforts to name inequality as divisive, while branding ideological control as “viewpoint diversity.” That redefinition is being enforced not just through rhetoric, but through decrees, audits and intimidation. Harvard’s refusal matters—not because the institution is perfect, but because it disrupted the pattern. It reminded us that higher education still has choices. The contrast with Michigan and the ABA is instructive. When institutions comply pre-emptively, they legitimize coercion. They don’t just narrow the space for justice—they help close it.

Fairness, equity and justice are not settled ideas. They are contested. And higher education is not outside that contest—it is a primary site of it. To meet this moment with integrity, we must refuse the fantasy of neutrality, name systems of advantage and commit to teaching truth, even when that truth is inconvenient. The difference—between choosing caution or courage—will depend on whether we, as educators, can practice the kind of discernment that parents are called to every day. Because, ultimately, this isn’t just about legal compliance or institutional risk. It’s about whether the stories we tell about fairness will include all of us—or only those already at the center.

Uma Mazyck Jayakumar is an associate professor of higher education and policy at the University of California, Riverside. She served as an expert witness in SFFA v. UNC, and her research was cited in Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion to the Supreme Court’s landmark affirmative action case.

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May 15, 2025
Faculty Survey Shows Need for Digital Accessibility Support
The U.S. Department of Justice introduced the Americans With Disabilities Act final rule for digital accessibility in 2024, requiring public colleges and universities to follow Web Content Accessibility Guidelines for ensuring that online programs, services and activities are accessible. These laws require institutions to update inaccessible documents and ensure new content follows accessibility requirements.

A recent survey by Anthology found that faculty members feel they lack sufficient support and access to resources to create an accessible online classroom environment, and they have a general lack of awareness of new ADA requirements.

Anthology’s survey—which included responses from 2,058 instructors at two- and four-year colleges and universities across the U.S.—highlights a need for professional development and institutional resources to help faculty meet students’ needs.

Supporting student success: Expanding accessibility isn’t just mandated by law; it has powerful implications for student retention and graduation outcomes.

Approximately one in five college students has a disability, up 10 percentage points from the previous decade, according to 2024 data from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. A majority of those students have a behavioral or emotional disability, such as attention deficit disorder, or a mental, emotional or psychiatric condition.

While a growing number of students with disabilities are enrolling in higher education, they are less likely than their peers without a disability to earn a degree or credential, due in part to the lack of accessibility or accommodations on campus.

Survey says: Only 10 percent of faculty believe their institution provides “absolutely adequate” tools to support students with disabilities, and 22 percent say they consider accessibility when designing course materials.

Instructors are largely unaware of the ADA’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines; one-third of survey respondents said they are “not at all” aware of the requirements, and 45 percent said they were aware but “unclear on the details.”

When asked about the barriers to making course content accessible, faculty members pointed to a lack of training (29 percent), lack of time (28 percent) and limited knowledge of available tools (27 percent) as the primary obstacles.

A lack of awareness among faculty members can hinder student use of supports as well. A 2023 survey found that only about half of college students are aware of accessibility and disability services, though 96 percent of college staff members said the resources are available.

In Anthology’s survey, 17 percent of instructors said they were unaware of what tools their institution provides to help students access coursework in different formats, and 30 percent said they were aware but didn’t share information with students.

Less experienced faculty members were more likely to say they haven’t considered accessibility or were unaware of ADA requirements; one-third of respondents with fewer than two years of teaching experience indicated they rarely or never consider accessibility when creating materials.

One in four faculty members indicated more training on best practices would help them make their digital content more accessible, as would having the time to update and review course materials.

Improving accessibility: Some colleges and universities are taking action to empower faculty members to increase accessibility in the classroom and beyond.
- The University of North Dakota in spring 2023 created an assistive technology lab, which trains faculty and staff members to make course resources accessible. The lab, led by the university’s Teaching Transformation and Development Academy, offers access to tech tools such as Adobe Acrobat Pro and the screen-reader software Job Access with Speech, for course content development. Lab staff also teach universal design principles and conduct course reviews, as needed.
- The State University of New York system created the SUNY Accessibility Advocates and Allies Faculty Fellowship program in January, designating 11 fellows from across the system to expand digital accessibility and universal design for learning practices at system colleges. Fellows will explore strategies to build a culture of access, share expertise and experience, connect with communities of practice, and design a plan to engage their campus community, among other responsibilities.
- The University of Iowa built a new digital hub for accessibility-related resources and information, providing a one-stop shop for campus members looking for support. The university is also soliciting questions from users to build out a regularly updated FAQ section of the website. Iowa has a designated Accessibility Task Force with 10 subcommittees that address various applications of accessibility needs, including within athletics, communication, health care, student life and teaching.
- Colorado State University has taken several steps to improve community compliance for accessibility, including offering free access to Siteimprove, a web-accessibility assessment tool that helps website developers and content managers meet accessibility standards and improve digital user experience. Siteimprove offers training resources to keep users engaged in best practices, as well as templates for creating content, according to CSU’s website. The university also has an accessibility framework to help faculty members bring electronic materials into compliance.
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May 15, 2025
Why Faculty Buy-In Is the Key to Scale
Developmental edu ca tion reform has made significant strides in the past two decades, however, if the goal is equity, completion and lasting change in gateway courses, the work to reform developmental education isn’t done—not even close. Nationally, states have passed laws and higher education systems have issued mandates requiring the use of specific high-impact practices and restricting the offering of standalone remedial courses.

Institutions have redesigned placement systems to incorporate multiple measures and, with growing popularity, have begun using self-directed placement. Corequisite models, where students receive concurrent support for a gateway math or English course, have received increased attention and expansion. Using just-in-time content support and devoting time to student success techniques, corequisite courses have proven to support students’ retention rates.

While we know which practices are impactful, it is still common for them to be used alongside traditional approaches, such as stand-alone developmental courses and high-stakes placement tests. That is, these practices are not the default means of how students interact with gateway courses; they are an option. There are many reasons for this lack of scale, with skepticism from faculty being a common refrain from those in academic leadership.

Recent research reinforces what many of us in the trenches already know: Corequisite support is a powerful tool, but it is not the only solution to gateway course reform; it was never going to be. Without scaled and nuanced implementations, corequisite models are not enough on their own. Too often, states and institutions have pursued top-down solutions without sufficient attention to the people who impact scaled implementation the most: faculty.

In fact, reformers and leaders in higher education spaces may have overlooked the hardest and arguably most important part: the classroom. If gateway course reform is the goal, we have to shift from a mainly structural reform emphasis (e.g., pathways, corequisites and placement) to incorporating classroom reforms that impact curriculum, instruction and assessment. These changes are some of the most difficult ones to make but are also the ones that have shown to matter the most. Structural reform is essential, but so is reform in the space where learning occurs.

Why Early Reforms Didn’t Get Higher Education to a New Normal of Scale

Early corequisite reform efforts found initial momentum by engaging supportive policymakers and system leaders and by using clear levers for change such as legislation or funding changes. However, even where reforms have been adopted, outcomes have been mixed. Completion rates have increased in some states but remain below expectations set in goal initiatives, such as Illinois’s 60 by 25 and Tennessee’s Drive to 55. Despite a broad commitment to increasing equity in higher education, equity gaps by race, income and age persist. In states with strong shared governance structures or influential faculty unions, the pace of reform has been slower and more complex.

The common thread I’ve come to realize is this: Significant faculty cooperation and intentional faculty involvement are key to successful reforms at scale. I’ve seen this firsthand during my career in Illinois as a tenured math professor for many years who was also a union member and went on strike in 2015. Faculty have an incredible impact on students’ learning experience and outcomes; as such, faculty should be involved in the decision making that impacts them directly. However, in faculty-driven systems, the reality is that change is harder and takes longer. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

My company, Almy Education, has worked with dozens of institutions across governance models and states. We have learned that scaled reform comes from meaningfully working with faculty. While that work may be more challenging than going around faculty, it will allow an institution to get the roots of what can hold back a scaled implementation. We’ve found when we intentionally integrate faculty as part of the institutional conversation, we can achieve the following:
- Decide what courses and materials to remove or shift away from, not only add new ones.
- Choose how many courses and sections of stand-alone developmental courses will be retained, even if that may mean someone’s position at the institution changes.
- Determine how the class schedule needs to evolve to better support student needs and outcomes.
- Adjust student intake practices to the institution that have the greatest impact on outcomes, even if it means a shift in human and financial resources.
- Prioritize use and maintenance of data tools so that ongoing decision making is well informed.
- Set the expectation that academic and student affairs will continually work together to improve gateway course success, not in silos or temporarily during an initiative.
To reach scale, administrators, staff and faculty have to work together in an ongoing fashion as well as compromise for the greater good of student outcomes. We all have to own our roles in contributing to the aforementioned bulleted barriers when it comes to higher education reform. While usually unintended, they are barriers nonetheless. Reducing and removing these barriers to change often requires having hard conversations. The conversations are not always comfortable, but the results for students are worth it.

More students complete gateway math and English courses and establish course momentum when developmental education reform is implemented at scale and improved upon over time. Scaled reform allows for more students to complete two-year degrees and certificates and/or transfer to complete a four-year degree. Increased student completion results in well-prepared adults in the workforce, the outcome nearly everyone in higher education is working toward.

How to Effectively Integrate Faculty Into Your Reform Initiatives to Achieve Success at Scale

So how do administrators, staff and faculty work together on scaling gateway course reform, especially when resistance occurs? Many faculty are not resistant to reform; they are resistant to being handed a one-size-fits-all solution from someone who doesn’t understand their students, classrooms or institutional realities. Research has shown that there isn’t one particular way to implement reforms like corequisites that work the best; finding the best solution is a process that must include faculty in deliberate ways.

Faculty are also exhausted. The post-pandemic classroom is more demanding than ever, with student engagement seeming to be at an all-time low. Asking faculty to make massive changes without the support to do so can bring a reaction of resistance. Similarly, student affairs staff are also stretched thin with insufficient staffing and higher demands from students. They, too, need resources to make adjustments at scale that impact gateway course outcomes.

To minimize resistance and thoughtfully add support where it can have the most impact, there are tangible ways to assist faculty and staff with scaling implementation of gateway course reform at the institutional and classroom levels. In our work across two-year and four-year institutions, we’ve observed what works:
- Custom strategies tailored to each institution’s context, culture and capacity based on best practice and its own data.
- Embedded professional learning that supports both pedagogy and content that’s ongoing, not one-and-done.
- Support for using backward design strategies with gateway curriculum and instruction from the perspective of student needs, career pathways and transfer goals.
- Staffing and funding so that corequisites are paired with intentional support, providing not just more time, but better use of time.
- Deliberate use of corequisites where they make sense, alongside better-designed stand-alone options for a small number of students who may need them.
- Pathways that provide clarity to connect math courses to students’ actual goals and are implemented purposefully, not as an option.
- Focus on throughput, not just pass rates, and disaggregated outcomes that can support equity work.
This next phase of gateway course reform requires the higher education industry to go deeper. We will have to face the structural barriers and the pedagogical ones. We must be willing to say the quiet parts out loud and have difficult conversations. We must be brave enough to make decisions and ultimately changes that work for the good of the students. Those changes should have broad support, but they may not make each individual at an institution content 100 percent of the time. Doing this work is not simple or easy. But it is necessary if we want real reform at scale that lasts.

Kathleen Almy is the CEO and founder of Almy Education, specializing in gateway course reform at scale.
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May 15, 2025
Bastyr University Plans to Sell Campus

Cash-strapped Bastyr University is selling its campus in Washington State in an effort to stabilize its shaky finances, which landed the institution on show cause status with its accreditor earlier this year.

Bastyr’s Board of Trustees approved a plan last week to list the campus for sale.

The Washington campus is located on 50-plus acres outside Seattle; the university also maintains a site in San Diego. Officials wrote on a frequently asked questions webpage that the “sale of the [Washington] campus will restore financial health to our university, allow continued movement forward with our strategic plan and is intended to positively impact our accreditation status.”

The FAQ page emphasized that selling the campus does not mean Bastyr is closing.

Rather, “Financial infusion makes the university more stable and allows us to better weather the fluctuations of the academic environment should a crisis occur,” officials wrote. They also noted Bastyr “cannot afford to maintain and modernize the main campus building” and that “the university occupies less than 50% of its space, but must fund 100% of campus upkeep.”

The FAQ indicated that either a full or partial sale of the campus is possible.

Despite the sale, a move will likely be years away; officials wrote on the FAQ page that Bastyr plans to lease the campus for “up to a few years to allow for a thoughtful and phased transition.”

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May 15, 2025
Lessons from innovating in our student support model

Over the last ten years – and particularly since the pandemic – the complexity of student wellbeing issues in higher education has increased significantly. It became clear to us at the University of Exeter that the traditional model of academic tutoring alone was no longer sufficient to meet the needs of our students.

Like many other higher education institutions, we had long utilised an academic support model where most academic staff were allocated groups of tutees to provide both academic and pastoral support alongside a range of professional services in areas such as welfare, wellbeing, accessibility and financial support. Our review and research into higher education institutions best practice – both in the UK and internationally, and drawing on approaches from schools and further education providers, identified a clear need for dedicated expertise to provide pastoral support at Exeter.

This led to the development of our Pastoral Mentor model, which we began piloting in autumn 2023. By 1 August 2025, we will have rolled out Pastoral Mentors to every department. Our model was described briefly in Wonkhe last year but you can also read more about it in the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. In summary, Pastoral Mentors are dedicated, non-teaching student support staff embedded in departments, serving as a friendly first point of contact for students facing challenges affecting their studies. They proactively reach out to students based on engagement and attainment data, offer a non-judgmental space for conversations, and connect students with specialist support services as needed. Our pastoral mentors work closely with discipline based staff and wider support services to identify the best way to assist students and ensure that the help they need is connected and timely.

Lessons from transformation

While institutions will adopt different approaches to student support, in this piece we reflect on what we’ve learned from implementing institutional change at Exeter, and share the key principles which underpin our model – offering insights we hope will be useful for others working in this space.

Early identification is key. The earlier students identify they are struggling the easier it is to provide support and put remedies in place. Often, the causes of student failure and drop out begin as relatively low-level challenges, but these can escalate over time – non-attendance leads to missed submissions, which in turn result in failed modules, referrals and potentially withdrawal. If we can identify students whose attendance pattern drops early and support them to get back into the classroom, we can mitigate against many of these larger issues.

Data is key to this. All institutions now hold large amounts of data on our students; attendance, engagement with the VLE, submissions, grades. We need to use this to support students and at Exeter we developed a bespoke engagement dashboard to enable us to identify students who might be struggling.

Clear lines of responsibility are vital. It’s no good having access to data if it’s not clear who is going to act on it. Our Pastoral Mentors are responsible for using the engagement dashboard to identify students of concern and do the initial reach out. They then are responsible for linking students who require more specialist support with the correct service, not just telling the student who to contact but in some cases making that contact for them or following up with the student later to ensure they have accessed the support they need. It’s vital that students don’t slip through the net – whether because no one acts on the data or because they fall unnoticed between services.

Clear escalation processes need to be established. It’s critical to have a clear understanding of where one person’s responsibility ends and when a student should be confidently referred to a specialist. We’ve developed well-defined escalation processes so that our Pastoral Mentors don’t feel pressured to take on issues beyond their expertise and remit, and to ensure we make full use of the specialist staff elsewhere in the institution – helping to maintain the integrity of the overall support ecosystem.

Presence is a must. Early feedback from our students’ union and students’ guild highlighted the importance of face-to-face, named support, with students finding it easier to seek help from someone they already know. Our Pastoral Mentors are present in departments, they attend welcome and transition events, informal department gatherings and department social events for students. Students should know who the Pastoral Mentor is before they need help to facilitate that first conversation. As a core part of the education team, Pastoral Mentors also become specialists in the rhythm and challenges of the discipline and can thus provide contextualised support and advice relevant to the students’ programme.

Clarity of message for students is essential. Students are often put off seeking support because they fear disciplinary or fitness to study processes, in particular international students sometimes do not seek support from traditional academic tutors because they do not want to disclose problems to those teaching them or marking their work. Our Pastoral Mentors aim to decouple support from formalised processes around unsatisfactory progress or visa compliance and rather focus on reaching out compassionately, emphasising the importance of a students’ wellbeing and success. Students have reported that this enhanced their sense of belonging and mattering, making it easier to seek support early.

Supporting colleagues through change

Institutional change is never easy and while many staff recognise the need to enhance our student support offer to students, it remains an emotive issue. Some departments embraced the new model from the outset, while others found the transition more difficult. There’s never “enough” evidence, particularly when the change you are implementing is both transformative and innovative.

As academics we often spend a lot of time seeking and compiling evidence to support a theory, but sometimes we have to be brave enough to enact change because it’s the right thing to do and have confidence that we can bring people along over time. If everyone waits for the evidence from others, innovation will never happen. We have found that co-creation is powerful; in order to address the “evidence” challenge, we had to deploy compassion and communication rather than additional data.

We have to meet colleagues where their concerns lie, not t diminish those concerns but to listen to and recognise both the opportunities and risks associated with change. At Exeter, we adopted a phased co-creation model for our Pastoral Mentor approach, being open with departments that we didn’t have all the answers upfront and that we needed to work together to meet students’ needs. Through this iterative approach we were able to take all our departments with us at a pace that suited them and subsequent feedback on the roll out has been overwhelmingly positive.

Student support is an emotive area, and it’s important to recognise existing best practice alongside the benefits of change. While we should acknowledge the great work many have done and continue to do, it is also important to recognise the pressure providing pastoral support can put on colleagues. We were keen to ensure that specialising support wasn’t seen as a criticism but a way to relieve pressure on colleagues and ensure more sustainable support for our whole community.

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May 15, 2025
How commuter students show up in new access and participation plans

When the Office for Students included commuter students in the Equality of Opportunity Risk Register (EORR), it recognised the risk that commuter students may not always get the same experience as their “traditional” residential peers.

The second wave of access and participation plans (APPs) for 2025–26 to 2028–29 have slowly been published and in the wake of the EORR’s inclusion of commuter students, we’ve got a better sense of the steps providers are taking to make the experience more equitable.

Taking Universities UK’s member list as the sample and searching variations of the phrase “commuting student” in the currently available wave two APPs, 44 out of 81 APPs (at the time of writing) referred to commuter students in some form.

Sometimes this was a simple statement of demographics, for example, “over 86 per cent are commuters,” or a statement of intention – “increase… work with commuting and mature students.” Other plans detailed comprehensive work to reduce inequities with various interventions, projects and additional research to undertake.

Some plans referred to commuters broadly in a literature review but did not link this to their local contexts, and as such were not included in our analysis.

Definitions

As part of our ongoing series about commuter students, convened with Susan Kenyon at Canterbury Christ Church University, one challenge when discussing support for commuters is working out if everyone is talking about the same thing.

The EORR sets out that commuter students referred to students “based on the distance or time [students] take to travel from their accommodation to their place of study” – but it then goes on to note there are many definitions, referencing both time and distance and the fact of not having re-located for university.

In the absence of a sector-wide definition, providers have had to work this out themselves.

The majority of plans that referenced a definition identified commuters as students whose home address matches their term time address, who had been recruited locally or still lived in their family home. Some plans used a distance to identify commuters, for example 15+ miles into their main campus base. When using distance as a criteria it opens up the possibility of a commuting student also being a student who has relocated to university but lives further away due to cost and housing pressures.

As we’ve seen earlier in the series, there are differences in the experience based on those who chose to commute versus those who do so out of necessity.

St Mary’s University in Twickenham explored using the Office of the National Statistics’ Travel to Work Areas maps to define commuters and setting an average travel time of 15 minutes or more (using public transport) from a term time address. They explicitly noted they had investigated the impact of using different definitions of commuter students when analysing student outcomes which led them to identifying commuters as their sixth risk category.

When identifying commuters in APPs, ten plans went into detail about the intersecting characteristics of this demographic of students. One provider noted that “commuter students are more likely to be Asian, black or from IMD Q1+2 than non- commuter students” – this is something Kulvinder Singh looked at earlier in the series. There were several links between the association of being a commuter and being from an underrepresented group such as a mature student, carer or from a geographical area of deprivation.

One provider interrogated whether being a commuting student was a direct factor on student outcome metrics and opted that it, in fact, coincided with other risk factors.

Mind the gap

For plans that had identified a risk to the commuter student experience, a brief thematic analysis suggests continuation, completion and student outcomes metrics were most prevalent in the sample followed by cost (and transport costs) and its subsequent impact on belonging.

A lack of flexible timetabling was highlighted several times as a structural challenge for commuting students and plans honed in on the preciousness of commuters’ time.

Bridging the gap

Many universities plan to implement student centric timetables to tackle barriers to engagement and include plans to inform students as early as possible about scheduled classes. Flexible modes of learning, better communication methods and early timetables then further reduces peak-travel commuting costs, easing financial pressures.

A handful of universities offer pre-arrival events and bursaries, aimed at improving commuter student access. At Manchester Metropolitan University, for example, an introductory module to support students preparing for university was particularly valued by commuting students.

Interventions also emphasised the importance of space, with providers reviewing physical and virtual facilities, creating dedicated spaces to study and relax and improving the visibility of existing commuter spaces. The University of York’s APP suggested a provision of subsidised accommodation on campus to support commuters to engage in evening and social events.

Peer mentoring programmes, social prescribing, and the creation of commuter student networks are examples of belonging-based interventions. York St John University’s plan proposed social opportunities each month and drop-ins for commuters to be held as often as weekly on campus.

Many plans recognised a need to better understand the commuter student population. This often manifested as a commitment to engage or set up working groups and projects. Some providers viewed additional research as a first step toward supporting commuters, while others built on existing work and recognised that ongoing consultation offered the best way to deliver support.

As many of these plans have started to, counting commuters, recognising their experience is geographical and making them visible is the first step to service design with commuter students in mind. Our series has been exploring ways to support their experience through making space, pedagogy, data, shifting institutional thinking and transport agendas that may inspire providers ready to take the next step.

This blog is part of our series on commuter students. Click here to see the other articles in the series.

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May 14, 2025
Euro visions: A playbook to fight the populists in the Netherlands

It looks from here like another Swedish win on Saturday night – but going into Eurovision week, the Netherlands (largely singing in French) was one of the other countries jostling to be top of the odds.

Its entry for Eurovision 2025 is Claude Kiambe, who was born in Congo and fled with his mother and siblings when he was nine years old, first living in an asylum reception center in Alkmaar before moving to Enkhuizen.

He got his HAVO high school diploma in the Netherlands and later started studying hotel management at a university of applied sciences – but dropped out when his career took off, largely because of… inflexible timetabling.

The Netherlands has seen a rise in populist politics in recent years, with some interesting impacts on higher education that it’s worth reviewing as Reform continue to rise in the polls in the UK.

Controversy kicked off in mid-2024 when the newly formed Dutch coalition government – led by Geert Wilders’ far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) – announced its intention to slash education budgets.

That caused nationwide protests – with 25,000 student, staff and rector [ie VC] demonstrators in The Hague, garnering support from business leaders, mayors, and health organisations in the process.

This was fairly new territory for the Universities UK equivalents used to having conversations behind closed doors – but a decision was taken that a new more public and confrontational approach would be needed.

There’s a “Rector’s Conference” for universities and another for universities of applied sciences – and as well as taking part in the demos, the latter collaborated with students on a major “write in and tell them about them about the impacts” bit of mass activism.

At the University of Twente the Executive Board and faculty deans expressed strong support for the national protest in November, encouraging staff and students to attend, arranging free transport, and even joining the demonstration to voice concerns about the impact of the cuts on education and research.

And it worked – to some extent. The planned €2 billion cuts were scaled down to €1.2 billion, and there was a scaling back of international student funding cuts from €293 million to €168 million by December.

But resistance intensified into early 2025 with “relay strikes” across multiple universities and legal challenges led by Tilburg and Radboud University, as tangible impacts emerged as institutions like the Free University of Amsterdam closing entire departments and others like the University of Twente announcing dozens of staff redundancies.

And now, they’re very publicly taking the government to court over the cuts.

It’s like this, it’s like that

There’s quite a lot of politics to unpack. First, there’s the populist government’s explicit ideological positioning against what it sees as progressive academic culture.

PVV (the populist “Party for Freedom”) representative Reinder Blaauw made this clear during a June 2024 parliamentary meeting when he celebrated the cuts as a way to force universities to “reconsider their priorities” and choose between political activism or “actual” education:

For too long, the activist woke culture dominated the lecture halls and education institutions… And all too often, political activism was put above scientific integrity.

He also specifically questioned…

…how curricula on critical race theories, decolonisation, feminism and global justice make our students better analytical thinkers,

Unlike previous cuts from right-wing governments, the rhetoric frames the cuts not as unfortunate fiscal necessity, but as a deliberate political project to reshape Dutch academia. As political scientist Roderik Rekker observes, the PVV has pulled off a remarkable piece of political doublespeak:

It’s possible the budget cuts are indeed populist policymaking, whitewashed by the rest of the cabinet. But it could also be the opposite – that they were implemented for different reasons [to save money], and that the PVV is passing them off as the realization of their own populist agenda.

Then there’s the question of Dutch language and identity. The coalition’s proposal to reduce English-taught programmes and require more Dutch-language instruction speaks to broader anxieties about national identity and sovereignty.

While some academics have long raised concerns about the over-anglicisation of Dutch higher education, the populist government has folded those pedagogical questions into a much more nationalist political project.

Third, there’s the housing crisis – a problem that has been weaponised in service of a broader agenda. As in many European countries, student housing shortages have created real pressures in university towns.

But rather than addressing this through housing policy, the government has used it to justify restrictions on international students.

It goes up, it goes down

Coalition minister Robert Bruins has employed all sorts of rhetorical tactics to evade responsibility for the breach. In a March 2025 analysis, eight distinct evasion strategies were identified – blaming other causes, claiming lack of comprehensive view, shifting responsibility, expressing trust in the system, rerouting problems, calling for patience, leaving no room for alternatives, and letting others navigate the fallout.

Confronted with universities’ deteriorating finances, Bruins typically responds that “how they implement (budget cuts) is up to the institutes themselves,” (that line should sound familiar to anyone in the UK) while simultaneously claiming he “cannot assess what critical factors apply for specific institutes.” The circular reasoning allows him to implement cuts while disowning their consequences.

So if confrontation rather than collaboration became the name of the game at the end of last year, it’s just stepped up – now universities are taking the government to court over the cuts.

At the heart of the legal challenge is an allegation of breach of trust – the unilateral cancellation of a ten-year administrative agreement signed in 2022. That promised €300 million annually for starter and incentive grants through 2030, creating a framework that universities relied on for investing, planning and recruiting staff.

At the insistence of the minister, universities quickly started allocating grants,” the UNL recalled, explaining how institutions adjusted their operations based on this commitment. The challenge centres on whether a new government can simply void binding agreements without consequence.

And around, and around

For students, the political battles translate into highly problematic proposals. Most notable was a proposed “long-study fine” – a €3,000 penalty for students taking more than one extra year to complete their degrees.

The long-study penalty is obviously also a way of encouraging children to complete their studies a bit faster,” said BBB (an agrarian and right-wing populist political party in the coalition) MP Claudia van Zanten.

But former Education Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf countered that, noting that the fine would penalise “ambitious students who like to develop themselves alongside their studies by, for example, doing administrative [ie volunteering] work” as well as “students who unfortunately fall ill during their studies or who have a disability.”

SUs were unequivocal in their opposition – and the withdrawal of the fine represented a major victory for the Netherlands’ two NUSes – it has one that does research, policy and lobbying work, and one that’s more activism focussed. But other threats remain, most notably to student sports and extracurricular activities.

In April, the government announced plans to end subsidies for university sports facilities, with student sports passes potentially rising in cost from €200 to €700 annually. Jon de Ruijter, director of Erasmus Sport, called this a “devastating blow” that threatens student wellbeing:

The trend is that there is increasing attention to student wellbeing, and sport is important for that… It also concerns social functionality, breaking loneliness and mental health.

TU/e University Council student member Jeannique Wagenaar explains the broader educational implications:

Students who engage in extracurricular activities manifest themselves better in society. So there’s a broader interest at stake here.

Housing costs also continue to squeeze students, with rental prices set to rise by up to 7.7 per cent in 2025 – the highest increase in nearly 30 years.

The Landelijke Studentenvakbond (one of those two National SUs) noted that this hits students particularly hard, given many lack access to housing benefits and those under 21 earn only minimum youth wages.

SUs see these various pressures as interconnected. ISO chairwoman Mylou Miché:

They’ve cut the basic grant, are cutting spending on education, and now they want to take away sport… If pensioners can take cheap sports lessons, why not students?

Chanter un, deux, trois

The Netherlands has been at the forefront of European internationalisation in higher education, with approximately half of university programmes taught in English or bilingually. The openness has helped Dutch universities punch above their weight globally, with all research universities now ranking in the top 150 worldwide.

But the populists see this as a problem to be solved rather than an achievement to be celebrated. Bruins’ “Balanced Internationalisation” bill requires at least two-thirds of bachelor’s programmes to be taught in Dutch and gives the government power to approve any English-language offerings.

Universities have hit back, arguing it will devastate their international standing and ability to attract talent. UNL president Caspar van den Berg called it “an austerity exercise” that will:

…impoverish education, deprive us of important scientific talent and also scare away international students, whom we desperately need in our country.”

Some have attempted to play the economics card. University of Amsterdam finance director Erik Boels reckons that “every euro of cutbacks in the short term costs €3.50 in tax revenue in the long term,” as international students who stay in the Netherlands after graduation contribute significantly to the economy.

And former Education Minister Jo Ritzen similarly noted that:

…20 to 30 per cent of economic growth in the Netherlands can be attributed to foreign students who find their way into the Dutch labour market.

Some observers have suggested the Netherlands may eventually follow Denmark’s trajectory – which implemented similar restrictions on international education five years ago only to completely reverse them when the economic impacts became clear.

But others have argued that the economic arguments fall on deaf ears, and are tools that fight old battles when the populists are in charge.

C’est en haut, et en bas

The cuts also expose a geographic dimension – but on that issue there’s argument within the governing coalition. Universities in border and shrinking regions see disproportionate impacts, because they tend to rely more heavily on international students from neighboring countries.

The regional disparity led BBB senator Frans van Knapen to break ranks and demand special consideration for institutions like the Open University in Heerlen, where 100 jobs were at risk.

Every time we absolutely want something, there is enough money,” van Knapen insisted during Senate debates, which has prompted opposition parties to pounce – partly because BBB is both a coalition partner implementing national austerity and a party founded to defend rural and regional interests against centralized policy-making.

As the cuts take effect, the contradictions will almost certainly become more pronounced – and the universities’ strategy is very much to expose them publicly.

Que sera, oui, sera

Research has also been hit particularly hard. Of the €748 million reduction negotiated in December 2024, only a small fraction benefited science and research funding.

It is disappointing and worrying that the largest part of the cuts will remain on research,” said Marcel Levi, chairman of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).

This creates a contradiction in the government’s rhetoric. As UNL president van den Berg pointed out:

Innovation is mentioned 85 times in the government programme; it is the solution for almost everything the Netherlands is faced with. It is unprecedented that such drastic cuts are being made to the source of innovation.

Cuts to starter grants for junior researchers of €217 million pose particular problems for renewing the academic workforce and maintaining the Netherlands’ research competitiveness.

It’s in direct opposition to European goals of investing 3 per cent of GDP in research and innovation – the Dutch investment will amount to just 2.3 per cent.

Rens Bod from the University of Amsterdam described the compromised budget as “disastrous for universities and ultimately for the Netherlands,” adding that the government’s rhetoric against “woke studies” makes this “a direct attack on academic freedom.”

Differences have emerged over the retention of starter grants for early-career researchers. While the December compromise preserved some funding for these grants (though still cutting €217 million), Leiden University’s Professor Remco Breuker called this decision “perverse and obscene” in the context of broader cuts:

The rest of the cuts will force us to lay off many colleagues, while a minority of lecturers who just started working will receive €300,000 in starting funds… This is going to tear apart departments.

How much time do we have together?

The Dutch education cuts don’t exist in isolation. They form part of a broader pattern across Europe, where far-right governments are targeting higher education and research funding.

As Nature reported in October 2024:

…A surge in far-right parties entering governments across Europe is raising concerns for science. The parties, whose focus is typically immigration, care little about research.

Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, and Austria have all seen similar developments. HE is becoming a dividing line in European politics, where higher education – once seen as a crown jewel of national prestige – is increasingly viewed with suspicion by populist governments.

Back in NL, universities are now in damage-limitation mode, with institutions like Erasmus Sport focusing on “increasing revenue creatively” rather than implementing immediate fee hikes. “We are not going to panic by implementing a huge increase in our sports pass price for students and staff in September,” says de Ruijter.

But the long-term outlook remains pretty bleak. Tim van der Hagen, rector of Delft University of Technology, warns that damage to the Netherlands’ international reputation “may be even more damaging than the budget cuts,” and leading academics abroad now “hesitant to consider positions in the Netherlands, while established researchers within the country are beginning to look elsewhere for opportunities.”

The ongoing challenge will be reconciling the Netherlands’ need for knowledge-based economic growth with the current government’s ideological stance. As former university president Jouke de Vries observed, it represents “a U-turn in policy,” demolishing former minister Dijkgraaf’s billion-euro investment “to make up for lost ground.”

For UK universities and students watching the Netherlands experiment unfold, there’s a clear message – preparation for similar confrontations should begin now, not after Reform secures parliamentary power either outright, or in some sort of coalition.

The Netherlands’ experience demonstrates how quickly a new populist government can dismantle long-standing assumptions, agreements and funding structures using rhetoric that frames universities as bastions of “woke activism” rather than engines of national innovation.

What has worked in the Netherlands – moving from behind-closed-doors discussions to public confrontation, legal challenges, and visible protest – may offer a playbook for the playbook.

As Reform UK continues to rise in the polls, the sector would be wise to start building coalitions with business leaders, local governments, and health organisations, while developing a more robust and public defense of higher education’s economic and social value – and a more visible set of stories about the impacts on those attracted to the populists. Even the populists struggle when they look like the enemies of opportunity.

The path from polite policy conversations to pitched battles over institutional survival can be short. Waiting until after an electoral victory to develop a counter-strategy will almost certainly be too late.

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May 14, 2025
Digital Darwinism in Higher Ed: Adapt Your Marketing for AI — or Get Left Behind [Webinar]
Your students are already running to AI for answers. The only question is — what’s it saying about your institution? More importantly, are you in the conversation or being left out? If you’re not actively shaping how your school shows up in AI-driven search and decision-making platforms, you’re not just invisible — you’re irrelevant.

Digital Darwinism in Higher Ed:
Adapt Your Marketing for AI — or Get Left Behind
Date: May 29, 2025
Time: 2:00 p.m. ET / 1:00 p.m. CT

In this webinar, Collegis Education’s Ashley Nicklay, Sr. Director of Marketing, and Jessica Summers, Director of Web Strategy, will unpack what “AI-ready” really means for higher ed marketing and enrollment leaders. We’ll explore how generative AI influences the student journey from search to selection, why most websites and content strategies are falling short, and what forward-thinking institutions are doing to lead the algorithm, rather than get buried by it.

This isn’t just about better SEO or smarter ads. It’s about understanding how AI evaluates your institution — and making sure you’re feeding it the right data, signals, and story to stay in the game.

What You’ll Learn
- How AI impacts the early stages of the enrollment journey: Understand how tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews influence what students see when exploring colleges.
- Why AI prompt bias is real — and how to beat it: Learn how content, structured data and reputation shape AI responses.
- What AI actually sees when it looks at your website (and what it may miss): Explore how site structure, clarity and technical markup shape what AI-based tools can find and summarize – and what they may overlook.
- What it really means to have an AI-optimized website: We’ll show you our checklist of what your .edu needs to show up in AI-generated answers.
- How to future-proof your marketing model in an AI-driven search landscape: Assess your current channels and content strategy for resilience as search becomes more conversational and less click-based.
Future-Ready Starts Here: Secure Your Spot

The institutions that will thrive tomorrow are learning how to market to machines today. Reserve your seat and find out what it takes to survive the AI era of higher ed marketing.

Complete the form on the right to reserve your spot.
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May 14, 2025
Penn State Proposes Seven Campus Closures

Pennsylvania State University is weighing a plan to close seven of its 19 Commonwealth Campuses, which its governing board is expected to vote on in a virtual meeting Thursday.

The campuses proposed for closure are Dubois, Fayette, Mont Alto, New Kensington, Shenango, Wilkes-Barre and York. Altogether, those campuses enroll just under 3,200 students. Penn State York, which had 703 students last fall, has the largest enrollment among the seven.

If approved, the campuses will be shut down by the end of the spring 2027 semester.

Penn State president Neeli Bendapudi announced the plan in an email Tuesday after several media outlets had already identified the seven Commonwealth Campuses targeted for closure.

“I believe the recommendation balances our need to adapt to the changing needs of Pennsylvania with compassion for those these decisions affect, both within Penn State and across the commonwealth, in part because of the two-year period before any campus would close. As we work through the next steps, we will be taking steps to support every student in any needed transition and, we will take every step to provide opportunities to faculty and staff to remain part of Penn State,” Bendapudi wrote in a statement shared with the proposal.

Penn State announced in February that it would consider closing some campuses due to declining enrollment. Officials reviewed 12 campuses for closure before settling on seven.

While some trustees have pushed back on the proposal, they appear to be in the minority.

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May 14, 2025