In this changing landscape, with constant shifts in student demographics, and enrollment behaviors due to globalization, can a rigid administrative process or a legacy student information system foster student success? As higher education decision-makers, provosts, and chief information officers, you know much better. With this as a starting point, the blog intends to discuss the several advantages of student information systems and how an expert solution provider adds to the effectiveness of an overall institution.
The Advantages of Student Information System
A Student Information System (SIS) offers numerous advantages for higher education institutions. An SIS manage and store student-related data throughout their academic journey.
Here are some key advantages of implementing a Student Information System in higher education:
1. A focused student performance
The Student Information System offers a comprehensive and integrated platform with features that today’s students must look for.
With smooth, efficient, and friendly student self-service options, the system rules out the challenges encountered by students while navigating complex administrative processes. Rather, the students have the advantage of focusing on their academics without running around for frustrating services related to their records, accounts, personal information, access to academic policies, registration and degree planning, dates and deadlines, financial aid and scholarships, grades, transcripts, etc.
This online service mode lets students efficiently manage their tasks proactively, positively impacts their institution, and allows them to claim it publicly.
2. Newer insights into student data
To institutions that struggle to collate meaningful and actionable data to make smart decisions, the SIS can be a boon.
Student Information System gives the decision-makers the advantage of key reporting features so institutions gain deeper insights into students’ data related to academics, attendance, assessments, credits, finances, library, grade book, etc. With instant data in hand, the institutional heads can compare, identify trends, report, and work towards continuous improvement towards improvement.
3. A time saver with simplified and streamlined tasks
With role-based dashboard configuration, the entire team of faculty, student, and staff know their priorities that need to be performed, along with the tasks already done and accomplished.
The dashboard helps in reminding which activities an individual needs to perform and which of them are already done. For any action undone, the system keeps sending automated reminders and alerts so the stakeholders stay on track.
With every bit of data highlighted in a single view, users can channel their time and effort for better productivity and growth with minimum effort.
4. A connecting point between faculty, students, and management
Another advantage of the Student Information System lies in its capacity to easily connect Administrators, Teachers, and Parents under a single platform. Often integrated with the parent’s portal, the system sends push notifications and updates regularly about students’ marks, grades, attendance, and overall performance.
On the other hand, the staff, faculty, and parents can interact at different levels using the user-friendly web interface that discusses and improves student performance. Every role in the campus can have roles defined to them, which allows them to access the information they need, securely.
5. Offers unlimited flexibility
Most of the student information systems come with a flexible architecture with room for the greatest level of personalization. This gives institutions a boost to use tools that facilitate system alignment with the way they do things at their institution.
This way whenever the institution faces change, the SISs can change with it through configuration capabilities and a continuous delivery model. Curriculum planning, scheduling, academic policies, grading schemes, finance, billing, and more come with configuration options.
6. Helps institutions envision student success
Student Information System has tools to envision student success throughout the student journey. With successful LMS integration, it can have native engagement tools, enabling students to actively engage in the events that matter the most. Even for students who refrain from openly communicating inside a classroom, these tools instill the confidence to coordinate, raise a query, and get clarified.
Conclusion
Designed solely for higher education campuses, Creatrix Campus Student Information System offers comprehensive tools to make it easier for users to access the records they need to achieve their goals—from admission to alumni and beyond.
We have powerful tools to connect multiple departments on multiple campuses and automate academic processes so your institution can help students succeed. With a lower cost of ownership, easy customization and implementation, straightforward pricing, and customer support options for your institution’s evolving needs, Creatrix SIS helps you manage your campus community easily. Some of our unique features are:
Intuitive user experience throughout the student lifecycle
Student data management with reports and dashboards
Self-service and mobile application capabilities
Seamless academic planning with student advising
Agility to change requirements as per institutional needs
To unite your whole campus under an efficient, configurable, easy-to-use application that is delivered in the cloud, contact our team or request a demo.
Avian influenza has scared doctors and scientists for a generation. But its arrival in the United States might finally give the H5N1 bird flu virus the combination of factors it needs to cause a global pandemic.
Those factors include a new carrier; dairy cattle; a regulatory system that protects farmers at the expense of human health; and a government bent on taking down an already weak public health infrastructure.
The H5N1 avian influenza virus making headlines around the world — and driving up the price of eggs — in the United States is no youngster. It’s been around since at least 1996, when it was first spotted in a flock of geese in Guangdong in southern China.
Since then it has spread around the entire world, tearing through flocks of poultry in Asia, Europe and the Americas and wiping out birds and mammals on every continent, including Antarctica. H5N1 bird flu only rarely infects people but as of the end of January 2025, the World Health Organization reported 964 human cases globally and 466 deaths, although many milder cases are likely to have been missed.
Vets and virus experts have had their eyes on H5N1, in particular, for decades. It didn’t look like a serious threat when it killed geese in 1996. But the next year the virus caused an outbreak in people just over the border from Guangdong in Hong Kong.
It infected 18 people and killed six of them before it was stopped. That got people’s attention. A 30% fatality rate is exceptionally high for a virus — something approaching the mortality of smallpox.
Mutations and swap meets
The virus gets its name from two prominent structures: the hemagglutinin, or H designation, and the neuraminidase, or N. All influenza A viruses get an HxNx name. The current circulating viruses causing human flu misery right now are H1N1 and H3N2, for example, as well as influenza B, which doesn’t get any fancy name.
But influenza viruses are exceptionally mutation-prone, and even the extra designation doesn’t tell the whole story about the changes the virus has undergone. Every time a flu virus replicates itself, it can make a mistake and change a little. This is called antigenic shift. As if this wasn’t enough, flu viruses can also meet up inside an animal and swap large chunks of genetic material.
The result? The H5N1 viruses now circulating are very different from those that were seen back in 1996 and 1997, even though they have the same name.
This is what’s been going on over the past 30 years. H5N1 has been cooking along merrily in birds around the world. So, after the 1997 outbreak, not much was seen of H5N1 until 2003, when it caused widespread outbreaks in poultry in China. Researchers discovered it could infect wild waterfowl without making them sick, but it made chickens very sick, very fast. And those sick chickens could infect people.
The best way to control its spread among poultry was to cull entire flocks, but if people doing the culling didn’t take the right precautions, they could get infected, and the virus caused serious, often fatal infections. Doctors began to worry that the virus would infect pigs. Pigs are often farmed alongside chickens and ducks, and they’re a traditional “mixing vessel” for flu viruses. If a pig catches an avian flu virus, it can evolve inside the animal to adapt more easily to mammals such as humans. Pigs have been the source of more than one influenza pandemic.
Pandemic planning
In the early 2000s, scientists and public health officials took H5N1 so seriously that they held pandemic exercises based on the premise that H5N1 would cause a full-blown pandemic. (Journalists were included in some of these exercises, and I took part in a few.)
But it didn’t cause a pandemic. Vaccines were developed and stockpiled. Pandemic plans were eventually discarded, ironically just ahead of the Covid pandemic.
However, flu viruses are best known for their confounding behavior, and H5N1 has always been full of surprises. It has evolved as it has spread, sometimes popping up and sometimes disappearing, but never causing the feared human pandemic. It has not spread widely among pigs although it has occasionally infected people around the world, as well as pet cats, zoo animals, wild seals, polar bears, many different species of birds and, most lately, dairy cattle.
It’s this development that might finally be a turning point for H5N1.
For a virus to start a human pandemic, it must acquire the ability to infect people easily; it must then pass easily from person to person; and it must cause significant illness.
Competing interests
So far, this hasn’t happened with H5N1. It has infected 68 people in the United States, mostly poultry or dairy workers. Mostly, it causes an eye infection called conjunctivitis, although it killed one Louisiana man. But it is spreading in a never-before-seen way — on milking equipment and in the raw milk of the infected cattle.
“The more it spreads within mammals, that gives it more chances to mutate,” said Nita Madhav, a former U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researcher who is now senior director of epidemiology and modeling at Ginkgo Biosecurity. I interviewed her for a podcast for One World One Health Trust. “As it mutates, as it changes, there is a greater chance it can infect humans. If it gains the ability to spread efficiently from person to person, then it would be hard to stop,” Madhav said.
And while some states are working to detect and control its spread, the federal government is not doing as much as public health experts say it should. Two agencies are involved: the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
Dr. John Swartzberg, a health sciences clinical professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley said in an interview with the UC Berkeley School of Public Health that the USDA is charged with two responsibilities that only sometimes work in concert.
“One of the responsibilities they have is to assure a healthy agricultural industry for the United States,” Swartzberg said. “The second responsibility is to assure safety of the human beings who consume agricultural products in the United States.”
More information, not less, is needed.
Dairy farmers feared they’d lose money if their farms were identified as sources of infection. And it’s a lot more expensive to cull cattle than it is to cull chickens.
“And I think what we’ve seen with this bird flu problem is that the USDA is tilted in favor of protecting the industry, as opposed to protecting the health of humans,” Swartzberg said. “CDC is also involved, but the CDC has no authority to go into states and tell them what to do. It has to be done state by state.”
On top of that, U.S. President Donald Trump has ordered the CDC to take down websites reporting on avian flu and other issues. He is withdrawing U.S. membership from WHO, crippling the ability to coordinate with other countries on controlling outbreaks of disease.
His newly confirmed Health and Human Services Secretary, who will oversee CDC and other agencies charged with human health, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, is a vaccine denier, proponent of raw milk and has no public health qualifications.
The stubbornness of people in the United States doesn’t help. When public health officials warned against drinking raw milk last year, raw milk sales actually went up.
“Food safety experts like me are just simply left shaking their heads,” Donald Schaffner, a Rutgers University food science professor, told PBS News.
The big fear? That in flu season, someone will catch both seasonal flu and H5N1, giving the viruses a chance to make friends in the body, swap genetic material and make a deadly new virus that can infect people easily.
Three questions to consider:
1. How can politics affect public health risk? 2. How does public understanding and trust affect the risk of disease? 3. Countries often blame one another for the spread of disease, but should they?
As cyber threats against educational institutions continue to rise, the need to protect sensitive data and maintain secure, accessible learning environments is more crucial than ever. Authentication has always been a cornerstone of cybersecurity, but traditional methods are proving insufficient. For educational institutions facing unique challenges, deviceless authentication (which doesn’t require a cell phone) is emerging as an innovative solution, allowing schools to secure their networks without requiring users to have access to physical devices. Identity Automation’s RapidIdentity platform offers versatile deviceless options, including WebAuthn and Pictograph, which deliver robust, device-free authentication tailored to the needs of schools.
Why Authentication Matters in Education Today
With sensitive student data, health records, and other critical information at stake, cybersecurity in schools is a priority. Federal agencies like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Department of Education (ED) have increasingly emphasized the need for multi-factor authentication (MFA) as an essential security measure. They urge schools to strengthen their defenses with MFA, advocating for security standards that go beyond passwords. Guidance from federal government’s K-12 Cybersecurity Act and the Department of Education’s resources on protecting student privacy provide best practices guidelines, but implementing MFA in education brings its own challenges.
Access to physical devices isn’t universal in education, and institutions are increasingly adopting device restrictions. Many students do not own personal devices, while others may be prohibited from using them on campus. Teacher unions often object to districts requiring teachers to use their personal phones for school activities. This is where deviceless authentication becomes critical: it enables every user to securely access school systems without needing an additional device, creating a seamless, secure experience for students and staff alike.
Trends in Deviceless Authentication
Across sectors, authentication methods are evolving to increase security while minimizing reliance on devices, passwords, and other traditional methods. Here are a few key trends:
WebAuthn for Passwordless Security: WebAuthn is a leading technology enabling secure, passwordless authentication across platforms. By using biometric sensors or hardware keys, WebAuthn eliminates the need for passwords entirely. For schools, WebAuthn provides a versatile deviceless solution by allowing users to authenticate through built-in or connected hardware options on any device available in the school setting, such as a laptop or desktop computer.
Pictograph Authentication for Visual Simplicity: Pictograph offers a unique, highly accessible way to authenticate by allowing users to choose and memorize a series of images rather than passwords or device-based codes. This method is ideal for students of all ages, as it does not require any device ownership and is easy for younger users to remember. Pictograph aligns well with educational environments, where students can log in quickly without needing a phone or other hardware.
Adaptive and Contextual MFA: Adaptive authentication adjusts security requirements based on factors like user location or behavior, providing extra layers of security without requiring a device. Schools benefit from these dynamic adjustments, allowing students and teachers to access resources with minimal friction while ensuring that the security adapts to higher-risk scenarios.
Zero-Trust Frameworks: Educational institutions increasingly adopt Zero Trust models, which prioritize strict identity verification at every access point. Deviceless options like WebAuthn and Pictograph fit seamlessly into this framework, making it possible for schools to implement Zero-Trust principles even in challenging environments where users may not have access to dedicated devices.
At Identity Automation, we understand the unique security needs in education and the critical importance of balancing secure access with usability. Our RapidIdentity platform is designed to provide flexible, deviceless authentication options, including WebAuthn and Pictograph, that address the specific challenges of school districts.
WebAuthn Integration: WebAuthn allows users to authenticate with cryptographic keys generated by their devices, such as biometric sensors or security keys. RapidIdentity’s support for WebAuthn enables schools to offer passwordless, device-independent security that fits naturally within classroom settings. Whether a student is using a computer lab or a shared school device, WebAuthn provides a frictionless and secure way to log in without needing to rely on personal devices.
Pictograph for Visual Authentication: Designed with younger students and device-limited environments in mind, RapidIdentity’s Pictograph feature offers a user-friendly alternative to traditional authentication methods. Instead of entering a password or using an SMS code, students can select a personalized sequence of images. This solution is particularly useful for younger students who may struggle with text-based passwords or who lack access to personal devices, providing an easy-to-remember and device-free way to log in securely.
Role-Based Access and Adaptability: With thousands of students, teachers, and staff accessing systems daily, RapidIdentity’s platform provides adaptable, role-based access specifically designed for educational institutions. Users are only prompted for higher levels of authentication when necessary, reducing friction while enhancing security. Deviceless options like WebAuthn and Pictograph make this process even smoother by offering flexible solutions that require no additional hardware for authentication.
Compliance and Federal Mandates: RapidIdentity’s solutions are built to help schools align with federal guidelines, offering a secure yet flexible way to implement MFA without compromising accessibility. With deviceless options, schools can protect student data and meet cybersecurity mandates without requiring users to carry devices, making compliance achievable for districts of all sizes and means.
Scalability and Cost-Effectiveness: Schools can avoid the high costs of purchasing, deploying, and managing hardware tokens or mobile-based authentication solutions by using RapidIdentity’s deviceless authentication. For cash-strapped districts, the ability to secure their environments without extensive device investments is a game-changer, offering schools a highly scalable and economically feasible solution.
Partnering with Identity Automation for a Safer Future
In a landscape where cyber threats are increasingly sophisticated, RapidIdentity’s deviceless authentication options, including WebAuthn and Pictograph, stand as versatile and powerful tools in an educational institution’s security arsenal. With Identity Automation, school districts can confidently adopt robust, compliant, and user-friendly authentication solutions designed specifically for the education sector.
To explore how RapidIdentity can strengthen your school’s cybersecurity posture, reach out to Identity Automation today. Our team is ready to help you navigate these challenges and implement solutions that keep your data secure while making authentication easy for every user. Contact us to learn more about deviceless authentication and other ways RapidIdentity can empower your school with comprehensive, modern security.
Anabel’s Grocery at Cornell University addresses basic needs insecurity for students.
Jason Koski, Cornell University
College students are more likely to experience food insecurity, compared to the general population, but funding and support for programs that address basic needs in higher education remains limited.
A 2024 survey by Swipe Out Hunger, a nonprofit group that addresses hunger among college students, found while a majority of colleges have a pantry for student supports, most are supported by philanthropy and not the institution.
The campus leader survey, released last month, included responses from 347 of Swipe’s 850 partner campuses, representing over 766,600 students who engaged with basic needs resources, whether through the food pantry, SNAP enrollment program or a basic needs hub.
The most popular campus support program was a food pantry, with almost all respondents (95 percent) indicating their college offers one for students. In 2024, campus pantries distributed over eight million meals and 687,000 additional items, such as toiletries, diapers or appliance lending.
Campus leaders shared their primary win in the past year was expanding their program (56 percent) and supporting students (20 percent), but only 1 percent of respondents said they had administrative support, and 8 percent indicated they earned additional funding to aid expansion.
In a similar vein, when asked what their primary challenges were, the greatest share identified funding (47 percent), followed by staffing (16 percent), space (11 percent) and support (10 percent).
Two in five campuses identified donations as their primary funding source, which included staff payroll deductions and crowdsourcing. Only 5 percent of campus leaders said they had a dedicated budget from campus as their primary source of funding for programming.
“This severe lack of sustainable funding for antihunger programs is preventing students from accessing the food they need to survive, which in turn affects their ability to stay enrolled,” says Jaime Hansen, executive director of Swipe Out Hunger. “With rising food costs and the lack of government support, campus food pantries and similar resources are becoming the only lifeline for students. If these programs continue to be overburdened and underfunded, we can expect to see less students being able to afford to stay in college.”
A corresponding student experience survey found 40 percent of program users engaged with on-campus services weekly, and an additional 8 percent used resources every day.
The top barriers to accessing nutritious food, students reported, were time constraints due to multiple responsibilities; the cost of meal plans, including on-campus food costs; anxiety about resource scarcity (taking away from peers who need it more); elevated costs of diet-specific foods; and living far away from affordable foods.
Tackling basic needs insecurity: Some of the ways other organizations and institutions are addressing college student hunger include these efforts:
Believe in Students created an online curriculum to empower faculty to engage in basic needs support, providing relevant data and insights as well as how-to advice and encouragement.
Community colleges utilize FAFSA data to notify learners of their eligibility for SNAP or other state-level food assistance programs.
A group of students at Anne Arundel Community College contributed to a faculty-led cookbook featuring students’ nostalgic recipes adapted to utilize campus pantry ingredients.
New Jersey built a centralized website to help college students identify basic needs resources across the state.
Virginia Commonwealth University built miniature food pantries, modeled off little lending libraries, to increase access to shelf-safe food items across campus.
How is your campus addressing food insecurity among students? Tell us more.
The reason that I wanted to do this Q&A with Joe Diamond, CEO of AllCampus, is that I don’t know too much about AllCampus. I’m frequently asked to speak about the status of the online program management industry, and my lack of knowledge about AllCampus is a blind spot.
Q: Where does AllCampus fit in the OPM ecosystem? How many universities and online programs do you partner with? How is AllCampus differentiated from 2U, Noodle and other companies in this space?
A: “OPM” has come to mean something negative to many because of the high revenue share and highly public shortcomings of the most prominent players in the space. We never felt the term fit us because we are so different from what people associate with OPM—high revenue shares, a one-size-fits-all model and the high up-front costs associated with fee-for-service (FFS) agencies. Yet, it’s fair to say we help schools with a similar range of services and sometimes compete for deals, but we are just so different, which I’ll explain below.
We’re a mission-driven company that has quietly been making an impact for our university partners for 14 years. Our mission is to make education more affordable and accessible for all. We’ve been growing slowly and steadily all along. We didn’t raise hundreds of millions of capital and then go and spend it all on Google ads. We invested in our technology, our people, and prioritized servicing our clients really well. We’ve been highly disciplined and careful with our expansion.
AllCampus offers a flexible and partnership-driven approach rather than a one-size-fits-all model. We help the partner select the best fit for them—from revenue share, fee-for-service and hybrid/co-investment options—and tailor the services to each institution’s unique needs. Our approach prioritizes affordability and accessibility for students and collaboration with our university partners to meet their mission and goals. Beyond supporting online programs, we also help drive campus enrollment through a wide range of media expertise, brand building, consultation and technology solutions that make us more efficient than if the university were to do this on its own. We know that if we aren’t more efficient than a school can be, we are out of business. So, our mission is also at the heart of our business case for our partners.
We have built top-tier programs with schools like UCLA, Northeastern University, George Washington University, the University of Florida and dozens more. Our regional offerings include Indiana Wesleyan University; Middle Tennessee State University; University of Missouri, St. Louis; West Texas A&M and many others. In all, we have about 50 partners, with 25 universities and 140 programs in the bundle of services people think of as OPM.
We service another 25 universities in our Workplace Network, which has over 1,200 programs. On this network, the aim is for low-cost or even no-cost degrees that their employer pays for. The platform gives employees access to programs that help them develop or expand their skill sets, reach career goals, and, for many, return to school to finish their degree. Employees and their employers gain access to a tool that simplifies the complex process of selecting the right program and navigating tuition reimbursement through hands-on guidance. Fourteen million people have student debt and no degree, so we’re certain our Workplace offering can help address that personal crisis for millions and help reduce the education divide in our country.
In short, we’re content with who and where we are, and we don’t mind that we remained under the radar and even an insider like you doesn’t know much about us. It’s probably because we’re just different and less provocative than others that are classified as OPMs. I’m most proud that we have an impeccable reputation for integrity.
Q: How much of the partnerships with universities for online programs are based on revenue share versus fee for service? One of the criticisms of the OPM industry is that the companies take a high percentage of tuition and require long contract lock-ins. How is AllCampus different?
A: Just like OPMs, not all revenue-share agreements are created equal. AllCampus has the lowest tuition-sharing fees in the industry—typically between 25 and 35 percent compared to our competitors at 40 to 50 percent—which enables us to offer universities a cost-effective way to deliver online education.
We are neutral to our partners’ preference between revenue share, FFS, co-investment, hybrid, etc. In fact, we share very detailed pro formas with our partners to transparently understand the trade-offs. Among those trade-offs are contract length and required up-front investment. Those are all levers that the university controls in setting up the agreement with us so that we arrive at a partnership that fits their needs and has their buy-in. As to which model is most popular, most universities opt for revenue share, and to be candid, it would be better for us if it were more balanced, because it would make managing cash easier.
I believe the reason universities usually opt for revenue share is that fee-for-service models place the up-front financial burden on the university. FFS also carries the criticism that it’s a risk-free structure for the vendor (the OPM)—they get their money no matter what and have historically behaved accordingly. We’ve won many frustrated former FFS clients whose prior agencies overpromised and underdelivered. Revenue share has the benefit of pure alignment with student and program success. I will say that our hybrid and co-investment models have been gaining traction, as they seem to strike the right balance for some new partners.
Counter to the narrative for OPMs, at AllCampus, we always advocate for affordable and accessible education for all students. We routinely provide data to help schools evaluate their pricing against the market, ensuring their programs remain accessible, affordable and attractive to students. We often recommend that our partner institutions lower the cost of tuition and have refused to sign partnerships with universities unless they agree to drop the price of their programs. In the end, it’s the ultimate win-win because the university gains in overall revenue, and more students get access to these fantastic programs at a more affordable price.
Q: Where do you see the online degree market going in the next five years? What do you tell university leaders how they need to position their institutions to be competitive?
A: I anticipate the online degree market growing significantly in the next five years. Pre-pandemic projections estimated the market would reach $74 billion by 2025, doubling from $36 billion in 2019. The pandemic accelerated this trajectory and will cause the market to grow well beyond this estimate.
University leaders need to consider a variety of strategies to remain competitive:
Embracing flexibility and accessibility: With a plateau of traditional undergraduate students, universities should consider attracting adult learners through flexible, affordable and career-focused online programs. Students are demanding more offerings that accommodate a variety of schedules and learning styles. Offering a blend of synchronous and asynchronous courses can help cater to the needs of diverse learners.
Expanding nondegree and accelerated degree programs: Accelerated degree programs are on the rise due to their lower cost, increased flexibility and changing employer demands. There is also a growing demand for short-term, more skill-specific courses to help students in fields like AI and cybersecurity. Developing these types of programs can help universities attract professionals seeking targeted skill development.
Aligning education offerings with workplace needs: By carefully analyzing employee market trends and skill gaps, universities can design programs that directly address employer skill demands. Partnering with employers—either independently or through organizations like ours—ensures their new and existing programs attract a broader student base and their outcomes are relevant for the evolving workplace.
Professor Beverley Gibbs, Director of the Dyson Institute for Engineering & Technology, and Chair or the Engineering Professors’ Council’s Education, Employability & Skills Committee; and Johnny Rich, Chief Executive of the Engineering Professors’ Council
Engineering is a UK powerhouse sector, growing in all UK regions and impacting all economic sectors. Engineers design, build and maintain the infrastructure, products and services that our economy and society depend on, provide life-saving medical devices, and are the drivers in our transition to a more sustainable world.
It might be reasonable then to suppose that the school curriculum would be designed to prepare pupils for a sector that accounts for a fifth of UK jobs and a quarter of vacancies.[i] On the contrary, engineering is almost entirely absent from the school curriculum. To the age of 16, a pupil can pass through education blithely unaware that engineering exists, let alone what it entails. Its closest correspondent is the Design & Technology GCSE. But due to costs, equipment needs and teacher shortages, even that declined by two-thirds between 2011 and 2023.
Post-16, the BTEC pathways are also under threat. In the past they have provided a critical entry route into engineering for a diversity of students, particularly those from lower socioeconomic groups or who were keen to give engineering a try.
They are being displaced by the Engineering T-level route – courses which, because they cannot be combined in the same way as BTECs, require a full-time commitment to a single subject and subsequent career. That’s quite an ask to make of a 15-year-old with no prior educational experience in engineering.
Moreover, as a recent study by the Engineering Professors Council found, many universities feel that the mathematical content of T levels fails to meet the entry requirement for undergraduate Engineering courses.[ii]
But Professor Francis’s review of the curriculum and assessment is not about engineering. No doubt every discipline and sector would want to make its own special pleading, and while few would have as good a case as engineering might, we want to focus on wider benefits to the education system (that would also happen to serve engineering better).
Engineers are creative, but practical; analytical, but hands-on; dreamers, but problem-solvers. They often work in teams, crossing disciplines, especially with business and design. And often, their driving passion is to make the world a better place. Are these not traits we’d want to instil in every school-leaver?
One of the reasons engineering is neglected in the school curriculum is perhaps because it is (wrongly) considered analogous to applied sciences and mathematics. That’s a deeply reductive view. The approaches adopted by contemporary engineering have much to offer the school curriculum, with implications far broader than engineering’s own interests.
Creativity
Ours will not be the only voice calling for more creativity in schools. This would, of course, support the UK’s creative arts economy, but engineers also use their creativity to imagine, design, solve problems and challenge the status quo. Creativity in the school curriculum nurtures resilience and a healthy ability to be comfortable with subjectivity.
A skills-based curriculum
The tide towards a ‘knowledge-rich curriculum’ in recent years has set up a false dichotomy with the development of skills. What is lost is the conscious focus on that development, and so the acquisition of skills becomes an accidental and devalued by‑product rather than a deliberate outcome.
For example, no one doubts the cardinal importance of mathematics and the sciences, but in learning about them, engineers synthesise these concepts to create reality. In an information-rich age it is critical that future generations can turn knowledge into know-how, discriminate between good and bad sources, and develop subject-specific and transversal skills along the way. This is not about becoming engineers, but twenty‑first‑century citizens.
One of the most effective ways to develop and assess skills-based approaches is through problem- (or project-) based learning (PBL) strategies. PBL comprises a spectrum of active learning techniques that ground (ideally, cross-subject) knowledge in relevant, real-world situations with students working in teams, learning to collaborate, reflect and accommodate one another’s strengths and weaknesses. Long‑standing critiques of the ‘work-readiness’ of engineering graduates have stimulated a growing implementation of PBL approaches in engineering courses, championed by professional bodies, employers and faculties alike.
We would encourage schools to consider what it would look like to adopt a similar approach: active learning focused on a project, acquiring the interdisciplinary knowledge to address the challenge. Could we replace pupils pleading, “Why do I have to learn this?” with stimulating their curiosity?
Assessment
Examinations are, generally, a poor imitation of the way in which knowledge is put to use in modern life and they rarely even attempt to assess skills or behaviours – except, of course, one: the ability to perform recall under high-stakes pressure. This shouldn’t be regarded as life’s pre-eminent performance metric, especially given the inherent sexism it involves.[iii]
In engineering education, we take inspiration from a raft of professional artefacts to create interesting and diverse assessment formats. Alongside tutorial sheets and examinations, we use designs, proposals, plans, specifications, portfolios, presentations, debates, and creative media. Students are assessed individually but also in teams, because teamwork in itself is a valuable attribute. This approach is not merely fairer and less anomalous, but we are also discovering how much more inclusive it is to draw on a varied assessment regime. Different intelligences are given the opportunity to shine, and diversity becomes an asset, not an incongruity.
It is not coincidental that these approaches that are common in engineering – creativity, skills-based orientation, learning through application, and diverse ‘authentic’ assessment – are also approaches that are inclusive of neurodiverse minds. Engineers are more likely to suffer from the symptoms of autism-related disorders than any other profession, and dyslexia is thought to be three times more prevalent amongst engineers than in the general population (30% compared to 10%). We know the great contributions neurodiverse minds make to engineering and recognise this diversity of thinking as the strength it is.
A school curriculum and assessment strategy that is overly compartmentalised and rigid is in danger of disenfranchising large groups of young people, kettling them into narrow career paths, when, given the right opportunities, they would become leading thinkers, doers, makers and entrepreneurs.
[ii] Makramalla, M., Atkins, C., and Rich, J., Engineering Professors Council, 2024: Maths for Engineering: Do T levels add up? https://epc.ac.uk/article/maths-for-engineering-do-t-levels-add-up/
[iii] During an exam period of around a month, half the students are likely to have to sit between a fifth and a quarter of their exams while menstruating. Two-thirds of girls report feeling less able to perform in time-limited assessments during their period (Plan International 2021, https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2024/01/22/period-poverty-in-uk-higher-education-addressing-stigma-and-empowering-students/) and accommodations are challenging to secure for an eventuality that – despite its ubiquity – carries much stigma.
HOUSTON — Jefferson Early Learning Center bears little resemblance to elementary schools many adults recall attending in their earliest years. The classrooms have child-sized boats and construction vehicles children can play on, and ceilings painted to resemble outer space. There are no desks — all space is devoted to learning through play. Windows are low to the ground so children can easily look outside. The gym floor is made of “pre-K friendly” layered vinyl, rather than hardwood, to cushion inevitable trips and falls. Hallways are lined with a corrugated plastic for wiggly fingers to touch as children transition to other locations.
Children love coming to the building, said teacher Cathy Delamore. “They feel like they own it.”
Alief Independent School District, which serves about 40,000 children in west Houston, is one of a growing number of districts across the country to pump money into creating a building that is tailor-made for pre-kindergarteners. Its new facility cost about $21 million and enrolls nearly 400 4- and 5-year-olds. By making the investment, school leaders are trying to avoid some of the pitfalls of placing young children in buildings designed for older students, including lost learning time when tiny feet have to meander down long hallways to bathrooms and cafeterias. Research suggests that when designed well, buildings can contribute to better outcomes for children. Creators of the Reggio Emilia approach to early learning, an educational philosophy that emphasizes child-led learning, even refer to the environment as the “third teacher” in a classroom.
A Gulf Coast themed classroom at Jefferson Early Learning Center. The themed classrooms reflect local careers and locations to help children connect what they learn with their local environment. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger ReportThe “Space City” classroom at Jefferson Early Learning Center is an homage to the local NASA space center. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report
Over the past few years, educators have grown aware of the benefits of a personalized pre-K environment, said Melissa Turnbaugh, a senior principal at the architecture firm PBK, which has designed more than 240 elementary schools nationwide, including Jefferson and several others in Texas. “There’s an openness and willingness to rethink these sites,” Turnbaugh said.
Related: Young children have unique needs and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks the issues.
Nationally, districts of all sizes have embraced the trend over the past few years, including the Troy School District in Michigan and New York City Public Schools. In some cases, building a specialized facility helps a district with limited resources get “the biggest bang for their buck,” while meeting enrollment needs, said Turnbaugh. Some states and cities are also dedicating money to the efforts, including Illinois, Detroit and San Mateo, California.
That embrace is in part because of a growing recognition nationwide of the importance of play for young children, as well as reports that play time has been increasingly squeezed out of the early grades. States are also seeing record high enrollment in state-funded preschool programs. During the 2022-23 school year, investment in state-funded preschool reached an all-time high. Spending on the programs increased in 29 states, buoyed in part by Covid relief funds. Between 2022 and 2023, for example, Texas saw more than 21,000 additional 3- and 4-year-olds enroll. The state also slightly increased pre-K funding and, beginning in 2019, started requiring districts to offer full-day pre-K programs. The full-day programs have been rolling out in districts since 2020.
Scores of districts are “adding this new grade of 4-year-olds,” said Shelly Masur, vice president of advisory and state policy for the Low Income Investment Fund, which runs an initiative focused on creating and improving high-quality facilities for early learning programs. “They have to figure out where those kids are going to go.”
A facility built for their needs, like Jefferson, is exactly where young children should go, some experts say. The children seem to agree.
On a sunny fall morning, joyful screams could be heard as children chased each other up and down gentle hills on a large playground with natural-looking features meant to replicate the highlands and lowlands of Texas. Pre-K students in elementary schools don’t always have age-appropriate playgrounds, and structures are often designed for children who are older. But Jefferson has multiple large playgrounds and play courtyards, all designed for pre kindergarteners, featuring natural structures and textures, like logs and grass.
A playground at Jefferson Early Learning Center. Credit: Jackie Mader/ The Hechinger Report
In Alief, where more than 83 percent of children qualify as economically disadvantaged, more than 20 percentage points higher than the state average, residents voted in 2015 to approve a property tax increase to help pay for full-day pre-K programs in the district. After touring the Mansfield Independent School District’s early learning facility, Alief’s district leaders decided they wanted to invest in an early learning building with immersive, themed classrooms, instead of simply adding on or repurposing classrooms in elementary schools around the district. Jefferson opened in 2022 as one of two new early learning facilities in the district. About 6 miles away, the second, Maria Del Carmen Martinez Early Learning Center, which has a similar design, serves around 400 students.
A growing body of research shows that not all pre-K classrooms, or the facilities they’re housed in, are appropriate for young kids. Early learning settings in particular should have a warm, homelike environment with ample natural light, research shows. There should be spacious classrooms that allow children to move their bodies and play in a variety of spaces around the room. Facilities should have playgrounds that are appropriate for the littlest learners, and provide ample opportunities to experience and explore nature.
There are also practical details to keep in mind for preschoolers, like having bathrooms adjacent to classrooms, child-sized furniture, tiny toilets, and sinks low to the ground so children can practice routines like hand washing independently. “When we make things more accessible to them, they start to learn the independence that we need them to develop over time,” said Masur. This type of setting isn’t always present in elementary schools, which are built to accommodate a much wider age range of children and are typically designed for instruction rather than play.
Facilities can have a surprisingly large impact on the experiences of teachers and young children. A study of a preschool program in West Hartford, Connecticut, for example, found the amount of children’s time spent interacting with an adult caregiver increased from 3 percent to 22 percent after the program moved from a crowded basement room to a larger classroom with bathrooms, sinks, storage space and phones inside the classroom. Although all other factors remained the same, the teachers reported their students had fewer tantrums, something they attributed to having a larger, brighter and more organized space.
A facility can even affect how satisfied early educators are with their jobs. Delamore, the Jefferson teacher, who has worked in the district for 18 years, said the bright, spacious rooms and hallways help keep her from feeling “confined” during the day. While aimed at 4-year-olds, the building’s “calming atmosphere” helps her enjoy being at work, she said.
A student builds with blocks in a classroom at Jefferson Early Learning Center. The facility was built with 4- and 5-year-olds in mind and unlike elementary schools, revolves mostly around play.
Certain aspects make more sense for children at this age, she added, like the spiral shape of the building, which makes it easier to keep students together as they transition. Students eat family-style meals around circular tables, creating a sense of community, Delamore said, a contrast to the long, rectangular tables often seen in elementary school cafeterias.
Buildings that are not designed to meet childrens’ needs, or that are cramped and outdated, can impede development and learning, experts say.
One of the most recent examples of this comes from a 2016 study of Tennessee’s public preschool classrooms, which are mostly housed in existing elementary schools. That study, conducted by researchers at Vanderbilt University, found 25 percent of each school day was lost transitioning children to another activity, including walking to bathrooms and lining up to go to lunch.
When designing Jefferson, Turnbaugh and her team tried to “think of the campus through the eyes of a 4-year-old.” Delamore, at Jefferson, said the intricately-designed classrooms motivate students to go deeper in their play. On a recent morning in the “veterinary” classroom, a dozen 4- and 5-year-olds busied themselves around the room, immersed in play or small group work with a teacher. Children drew pictures of animals, read books and played animal-themed card games beneath large, colorful pictures of dogs and cats painted on the walls.
On one side of the room, 4-year-old Jaycyon had donned a white lab coat and was inspecting a fluffy gray and white toy cat lying on the counter in front of him. The cat was hurt, Jaycyon announced, likely from a sharp corner of the cage he was kept in.
“I have to give him a shot,” he said bravely. Jaycyon dipped a clear, plastic syringe into an orange medication bottle and confidently injected invisible medication into the cat.
At the end of three weeks, Jaycyon and his classmates will transition to a new classroom, such as “Tinker Town,” where they will learn about construction, or “Space City,” an homage to the nearby NASA space center.
On a daily basis, students have access to one of several outdoor spaces called a “back porch,” where families can also come and eat lunch together. These spaces also act as surrogate back yards for students, many of whom don’t have yards at home or access to parks. Students also have access to a sensory room with toys and soft mats, where they can take a break when they are overstimulated and practice skills to calm down.
Jefferson sits on nearly 20 acres of land, accessible via trails for students to explore with their teachers. (Alief returned the surrounding land back to its natural prairie state to help with climate-change related flooding.)
The educators at Alief say the district’s investment in a facility that encourages play-based learning has paid off. “What I see as a major difference is the children’s self-regulation, but also their confidence,” said the school’s principal, Kim Hammer, now in her 16th year leading an early childhood center. “A traditional pre-K setting is more teacher led and teacher directed,” she said. “Here it’s more teacher facilitated, so you see more of the children taking more initiative,” she added. “Children have autonomy, and children have much more choice.”
Two students play in a veterinary-themed classroom at Jefferson Early Learning Center. Each classroom is designed with a specific theme to encourage deeper play. Credit: Jackie Mader/ The Hechinger Report
There is evidence that the new facility may be helping children progress. During the 2023-24 school year, 49 percent of students came in meeting vocabulary benchmarks. By the end of the year, 73 percent were at that level, Hammer said, a higher rate than previous years when the district’s pre-K programs were in traditional elementary schools. School officials say the themed classrooms help enhance children’s language skills, as children learn the vocabulary specific to that room. Attendance rates are high and holding steady, something that is uncommon in pre-K.
Despite the success and benefits of programs like Jefferson’s, educators agree there are challenges. A pre-K only facility adds an extra transition for students who, in traditional programs, might otherwise attend pre-K at their home elementary school.
Without more funding, revamped pre-K facilities are unlikely to spread fast. Many districts lack the money, partly because state and federal funding for pre-K is often less than for other grades. In Texas, for example, although the state now requires districts to offer full day pre-K, it only provides funding for half a day of pre-K. Alief has to cover the rest from local funds.
Although sustaining the building will be financially challenging in the long run, educators are determined to find a way to make it work for the benefit of the kids.
Back at the veterinary center on that fall morning, Jaycyon finally had a breakthrough. He had discovered something alarming about his patient, or “kitty,” as he had been named by the pre-kindergarteners, that would direct his next veterinary tactics.
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Australia’s R&D sector is afflicted by challenges that will be familiar to UK readers.
The proportion of GDP spent on research is too low. Business adoption and innovation in R&D is too shallow. Collaboration between business and academia is poor. Reliance on international student fees to fund research has rendered the entire system fragile. And the immobility of academics is stymieing the cross-pollination of ideas.
However, the Australian government has a plan.
Back in December the Australian government launched its Strategic Examination of Research and Development. At the time I said the review was about
[…]maximising the value of R&D, improving links between research and the real economy, supporting research mobility, advancing national priorities such as growth, growing research intensity, and doing so with due regard to regional distribution, risk, and international competitiveness.
Bits and pieces
In effect, unlike the innumerable reviews we have seen in the UK the Australian government is taking a look at the entire research ecosystem. A sensible approach for a system where improving R&D, in whatever form, relies on funding, funders, researchers, institutes, incentives, governments, the private sector, universities, and many actors besides all working in harmony.
The Australian government has now launched their discussion paper and the potential for a new R&D system is starting to come into view.
It is interesting that Australia believes the UK as a country to learn from
Other countries, such as the UK, USA, China, Israel and Singapore, have successfully adopted new strategies for leveraging R&D and innovation for social and economic gain.
Most impartial observers would not put the UK’s ability to deploy R&D in the same league as the USA and China, the UK’s GDP investment is well behind Israel’s, while Singapore has rapidly grown its financial and manufacturing base in a way the UK has not. However, where there is a shared ambition is the sense Australia hasn’t quite met its potential.
Tough clear choices
This consultation is written in a way that UK consultations are not. The starting premise of this discussion paper is that economic growth is predicated on research, research should benefit all of society, and therefore society as a whole should have a say in how research is funded and organised. This isn’t a document which talks down but it has a clarity that brings the sometimes turgid prose of the UK government’s commissions into share relief.
The below caps off the executive summary and it is hard to imagine this appearing in the UK
Boosting a focus on R&D will prevent Australia’s slide into mediocrity. It will ensure we will be offered a seat at the international table at which big global decisions are made – because we earn it.
The UK has a greater research capacity than Australia in many ways but to frame the need to grow research as central to the entire future of the country is a bold thing to do. It’s exciting, and it encourages participation.
The discussion paper sets out what the Australian government is seeking to achieve through this intervention. It is trying to create a more productive, sustainable, and resilient economy through improving the conditions through which research is created, adopted, and diffused.
Like their UK counterparts the Australian government cannot resist an extremely complex research diagram with a dizzying array of arrows and pie charts to indicate inter-relationships between government and its partners.
However, the underlying message is clear. Put in place the right set of regulations, policies and funds to allow a variety of research approaches to grow, have clear feedback loops in place with appropriate measurement, and a range of cultural, social, economic, and knowledge benefits can be realised.
Trade off
An important departure from the UK is that the trade-offs between policy choices are made clear. Because UK R&D consultations are often single issue it is too easy to advocate for policies without worrying about the consequences. In one consultation I can ask for the Full Economic Cost of research. In another I can ask for a greater variety of research proposals to be funded. And in another I can ask for an increase in PGR places without reducing money in cost recovery or the funding of programmes. Historically, this has meant that the UK has done some things well but has never looked at everything across the ecosystem all at once.
The Australian review by contrast makes the trade-offs pretty clear. If funding is spread too thinly across the entire country, and if the country cannot rapidly mobilise private investment, there is clearly a choice to be made on whether to concentrate funding or live with this thin spread. There is a clear choice on whether to try to leverage R&D to prop up traditional industries like mining or shift focus into new and emerging technologies. There are clear links between the need for a more diverse workforce and diversity as a means of meeting the skills gaps within R&D. And it is stark in the lack of alternatives to crowding in more private investment to grow Australia’s R&D economy.
In all, it feels like a document that aims toward interested observers without patronising the wider R&D community. Its framing is honest with the university sector and makes the challenges the university sector faces clear. For example, it pulls few punches in explaining that while a system of research dependent on student funding allows for great freedom this isn’t an effective way to organise funding and strategy in a coherent way.
The last bit of the discussion paper is that it tells participants what will happen next. This discussion paper is the start of the analyse stage of the strategy. There will be time to test things out, iterate them, and then decide what will happen. Again, it’s clear, the call to take part is grounded in a shared reality, and the language is clear without being patronising.
The latest UCAS data (applications by the January ‘equal consideration’ deadline) suggests a 14 per cent increase in applications to engineering and technology courses.
It’s the second double-digit surge in two years.
Good news, right? Sadly, it’s mostly not.
STEM swing
The upsurge in interest in engineering can be seen as part of a “swing to STEM” (science, technology, engineering, and medicine).
As higher education has shifted to a reliance on student debt for funding, many people suspect applicants have felt greater pressure to search for clear, transactional returns which, it may seem, are offered most explicitly by STEM – and, most particularly, by engineering, which is not just STEM, but vocational too.
Certainly, there’s a keen labour market for more engineers. Engineering UK has suggested the shortfall is around 29,000 graduates every year. According to the British Chambers of Commerce, it’s pretty much the largest skills gap in the UK economy.
Engineering is also a key driver of the growth that the government is so keen to stimulate, adding £645b to the UK – that’s nearly a whopping third of the entire value of the economy. And – unlike financial services, say – engineering is a powerhouse of regional development as it is spread remarkably evenly throughout the country.
And it drives that other key government mission, opportunity. An engineering degree confers a higher and more equal graduate premium than almost any other discipline.
The downside
So with all these benefits, why is the increase in engineering applications not good news?
The answer is because it reveals the extent of the lost opportunity: most of these extra potential engineers will be denied places to study, dashing their hopes and the hopes of the country.
Last year’s rise in applications did not lead to a rise in the number of UK engineering students. Absolute student numbers have more or less stagnated since 2019.
It used to be that the number of engineering applications broadly aligned with places because it was a highly regarded discipline with great outcomes that universities would expand if they felt they could. The limiting factor was the number of able students applying.
Now that demand outstrips supply, universities cannot afford to expand the places because each additional UK engineering student represents an ever-growing financial loss.
Engineering courses are among the most expensive to teach. There are long contact hours and expensive facilities and materials. The EPC estimates the average cost per undergraduate to be around £18,800 a year. Even allowing for top-up funding that is available to many engineering degrees on top of the basic fee income, that leaves an average loss of £7,591 per year.
It used to be that the way to address such losses was to try to admit more students to spread the fixed costs over greater numbers. That did run the risk of lowering standards, but it made financial sense.
Now, however, for most universities, the marginal cost of each additional student means that the losses don’t get spread more thinly – they just keep piling up.
Cross-subsidy
The only way out is to bring in ever more international students to directly subsidise home undergraduates.
Although the UCAS data shows a glimmer of hope for recovering international demand, at undergraduate level, there are only a few universities that can make this work. Most universities, even if they could attract more international engineering students, would no longer use the extra income to expand engineering for home students, but rather to shore up the existing deficits of maintaining current levels.
The UCAS data also show higher tariff institutions are the main beneficiaries of application increases at the expense of lower tariff institutions which, traditionally have a wider access intake.
What this means is that the increased demand for engineering places will not lead to a rise in engineering student numbers, let alone in skilled engineers, but rather a narrowing of the access to engineering such that it becomes ever harder to get in without the highest grades.
High prior attainment correlates closely with socioeconomic advantage and so, rather than engineering playing to its strength of driving social mobility, it will run the risk of becoming ever more privileged.
That’s small comfort, I’m afraid. The availability of engineering higher apprenticeships suggests competition is even fiercer than it is for degrees and, without the safeguard of fair access regulation, the apprenticeship access track record is poor. (And don’t get me started on drop-outs.)
This is why I haven’t unfurled the bunting at applicants’ rising enthusiasm for engineering.
Of course, it is wonderful that so many young people recognise engineering as a fulfilling and forward-looking discipline. An estimated £150m has been spent the last decade trying to stimulate this growth and there are over 600 third sector organisations working in STEM outreach in schools. It would be nice to think this has not been wasted effort.
But it’s hard to celebrate a young person’s ambition to be an engineer if it’s likely to be thwarted. Similarly, I struggle to summon enthusiasm about kids wanting to get rich as TikTok influencers. Indeed, it’s all the more tragic when the country actually does need more engineers.
This is why the Engineering Professors’ Council has recently called on the government to plug the funding gap in engineering higher education (and HE more widely) in the forthcoming Comprehensive Spending Review.
Asking for nearly a billion pounds may seem ambitious, but the ongoing failure to fill the engineering skills gap may well be costing the country far more – possibly, given the importance of engineering to GDP, more than the entire higher education budget.
Johnny Rich is Chief Executive of the Engineering Professors’ Council, the representative body for UK Engineering academics.
A few years back now, someone who worked for one of Scotland’s sector agencies liked to draw a comparison when talking about student-centredness.
They said that conservation charities passionately place wildlife at the heart of everything they do, but crucially would never put representatives of flora and fauna on committees (imagine the mess).
Therefore, my erstwhile and esteemed colleague would argue, when institutional leaders proudly claim to be “student-centred” it reveals nothing about how they involve students in shaping their experiences.
Of course, you can diligently monitor wildlife and use your data to make good decisions, in a manner not dissimilar to learning analytics in education, but the difference is that students can then go on to be a part of conversations in a way that wildlife never can.
Waterproof papers
My mind was cast back to this parallel when I saw the recent news that the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS), one of our partners here at the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI), has put The Ocean on its governing body.
It’s a move that SAMS’ Director Nick Owens admits “could be seen as trivial or ‘greenwashing’”, and we might imagine other specialist institutions making similar gestures in the disciplines they so richly embody and advance.
For instance a conservatoire could put “Music” on their board, or an agricultural college “The Land”.
Nick explains further, however:
The Ocean is clearly a metaphor in this context and cannot represent itself in human terms.”
That point is vital because, if we go back to our parallel, SAMS has already gone much further with its other main cause – students.
Like all constituent parts of UHI and indeed our university overall, SAMS has student membership on its governing body, not to just sit there and wave like the ocean might, or to flap about disruptively like a bird among a wildlife charity’s trustees.
Instead, we expect of student governors an informed, constructive and active contribution.
As my colleague Aimee Cuthbert wrote on Wonkhe a year ago, we have a major project that is making that student membership truly effective and impactful across UHI’s complex governance arrangements.
In our own unique context we want to make sure UHI’s governing bodies do not merely talk about students as an abstract concept or worthy concern, and instead have them in the room to provide meaningful input about students’ diverse and complex experiences and the implications for students of the difficult decisions that must be made.
That means a lot of work with those involved in our governing bodies, exploration of the key issues on our boards’ desks at a time of change, and helping our local officers impact on their individual partner governing bodies while also working together as a team to impact on decisions that are UHI-wide.
A core part of our project is therefore that very human process of communication – supporting the networking, sharing practice and informal relationship building that makes student governors truly a part of the process in a way that an ocean can’t be.
So, when someone tells you their institution is student-centred, that’s arguably the very least we might expect, and in isolation such a declaration risks viewing students in the same way that others might view wildlife.
The Ocean as governor, therefore, is not only a striking metaphor for SAMS’ important mission, but has added power in benchmarking our perceptions of those we claim to be here for – reminding us that there’s a big difference between caring about students and actively involving them as partners.
