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  • Smart strategies to help students find the perfect college

    Smart strategies to help students find the perfect college

    Key points:

    You’ll often hear two words come up in advising sessions as students look ahead to college: match and fit. They sound interchangeable, but they’re not.

    Match refers to what colleges are looking for from students. It’s mostly determined by admissions requirements such as GPA and test scores, and in some cases, other criteria like auditions, portfolios, or athletic ability. Fit is more of an art than a science; it refers to what the student is looking for in a college, including personal preferences, social and cultural environment, financial factors, and academic offerings. When we talk to students about college fit, it’s an opportunity for them to ask themselves whether they like what a certain institution offers beyond being admitted.

    In the college admissions process, both terms matter. A strong match without a good fit can leave a student disengaged and negatively affect their chances of graduating from college. Nearly a quarter of undergraduate freshmen drop out before their second year, and it seems likely to me that a lot of these cases boil down to bad fits. On the other hand, a great fit that isn’t a match could be difficult for admission in the first place, and if a student is admitted anyway, the rigorous coursework they encounter might be more than they’re ready for. To maximize postsecondary success, advisors, families, and students alike should fully understand the difference between match and fit and know how to approach conversations about each of them.

    Match: Reach, target, and solid

    As I’ve worked with advisors over the years, one of the best ways we’ve found to guide students on match is using the categories of “Reach,” “Target,” and “Solid” schools. We can determine which schools belong to what category using the data that colleges share about the average incoming GPAs and test scores of admitted classes. Typically, they report weighted GPAs and composite test scores from the middle 50 percent of accepted applicants, i.e., from the students who fall anywhere from the 25th to 75th percentile of those admitted.

    • Reach: These are schools where admission is less likely, either because a student’s test scores and GPA are below the middle 50 percent or because the school traditionally admits only a small percentage of eligible applicants.
    • Target: These are schools where either GPA or test scores fall in the middle 50 percent of admitted students.
    • Solid: These are schools where students are well within the middle 50 percent for both GPA and test scores.

    Building a balanced college list across these categories is essential in the college planning process. Often, I see high-achieving students over-index on too many Reach schools, which may make it hard for them to get accepted anywhere on their list, simply because their preferred schools are ultra-selective. Meanwhile, parents and guardians may focus heavily on fit and overlook whether the student actually meets the college’s admission criteria. Advisors play a key role in keeping these data-informed conversations grounded with the goal of a balanced list of college options for students to pursue.

    The importance of early planning

    Timing matters. In general, if you meet with students early enough, conversations about fit are productive, but if you’re meeting with students for the first time in their senior year, the utmost priority should be helping them build a balanced list. Ideally, we want to avoid a situation where a student thinks they’re going to get into the most competitive colleges in the country on the strength of their GPA and test scores, only to find out that it’s not that easy. If advisors wait until senior year to address match, students and families may already have unrealistic expectations, leading to difficult conversations when options are limited.

    On the other hand, we would stress that although GPA is the factor given the most weight by admissions offices, there are ways to overcome match deficits with other elements of a college application. For instance, if a student worked part-time to support their family or participated in co-curricular activities, colleges using holistic review may see this as part of the student’s story, helping to balance a GPA that falls outside the typical range. These experiences highlight a student’s passions and potential contributions to their chosen major and campus community. We don’t want students to have unrealistic expectations, but we also shouldn’t limit them based on numbers alone.

    In any case, advisors should introduce both match and fit concepts as early as 9th grade. If students have a specific college in mind, they need to be aware of the match requirements from the first day of freshman year of high school. This allows students to plan and track academic progress against requirements and lets families begin exploring what kind of environment, resources, and financial realities would make for the right fit.

    Fit: A personal process

    Once match is established, the next step is making sure students ask: “What do I want in my college experience?” The answers will involve a wide range of factors:

    • Institutional type: Public or private? Small liberal arts college or large research university?
    • Academic considerations: What majors are offered? Are there study abroad programs? Internship opportunities?
    • Student life: What is the student body like? What kind of extracurriculars, sports, and support services are offered? Are there fraternities and sororities? What is the campus culture?
    • Affordability: What financial aid or scholarships can I expect? What is the true net cost of attendance?
    • Outcomes: What a student hopes to gain from their postsecondary experience, including specific degrees or credentials, career preparation, financial benefits, personal growth, and skill development.

    Fit also requires conversations within families. I’ve found that open communication can reveal misunderstandings that would otherwise falsely limit students’ options. Sometimes students assume their parents want them close to home, when in fact, parents just want them to find the right environment. Other times, families discover affordability looks very different once they use tools like free cost calculators. Ongoing dialogue about these topics between advisors, students, and families during the high school years helps prepare for better decisions in the end.

    Bringing it all together

    With more than 4,000 colleges and universities in the U.S. alone, every student can find a college or university that aligns with their goals and abilities. Doing so, however, is both an art and a science. Advisors who help families focus on both dimensions, and start the conversation early, set students up to receive those treasured acceptance letters and to thrive once they arrive on campus.

    For school districts developing their proficiency in postsecondary readiness factors, like advising, there is an increasing amount of support available. For one, TexasCCMR.org, has free guidance resources to strengthen advising programs and other aspects of college and career readiness. While Texas-focused, many of the insights and tools on the site can be helpful for districts across the country in building their teams’ capabilities.

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  • St. Norbert College to add 5 new programs after March cuts

    St. Norbert College to add 5 new programs after March cuts

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    Dive Brief:

    • St. Norbert College, in Wisconsin, unveiled a handful of new academic offerings on Thursday, just months after it cut almost two dozen programs and laid off 21 faculty members amid budget-balancing efforts.
    • The Catholic nonprofit will launch four undergraduate degrees and one bachelor’s-master’s combination program in fall 2026, pending approval from its accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission. 
    • The academic expansion comes after St. Norbert President Laurie Joyner reported at the end of July that the college anticipated a balanced fiscal 2026 budget. In March, she said St. Norbert would need to cut $7 million to achieve that goal.

    Dive Insight:

    Shortly after joining St. Norbert in July 2023, Joyner identified “a significant miscalculation” with the fiscal 2024 budget, resulting in a much bigger deficit than previously anticipated. 

    The shortfall had ripple effects on the college’s finances, and it has since made multiple rounds of reductions to its workforce and suite of academic offerings. Eliminated programs covered fields such as studio art, theology and applied mathematics. At least one cut program, engineering physics, had been introduced less than a year earlier.

    Thanks to the cut, St. Norbert closed fiscal 2025 “with positive operating results” and a stronger financial position, Joyner said in a July community message.

    “With significant cost-saving efforts, program streamlining, and an institution-wide focus on efficiencies, we anticipate breaking even this fiscal year (FY26) as well — despite predicted enrollment declines,” she wrote.

    St. Norbert’s has struggled with enrollment in recent years. In fall 2022, it had 1,882 students, down 17.7% from a decade prior, according to federal data. Like many other small liberal arts institutions, much of the college’s funds comes from tuition. In fiscal 2023, it received 50% of its core revenue from tuition and fees.

    But the college saw a reversal of the trend in fall 2023 — the most recent semester for which federal data is available — when it enrolled 2,165 students. 

    In August, Anindo Choudhury, the college’s interim vice president and chief academic officer, signaled the institution’s interest in reinvesting in its remaining programs.

    “We have had to make some difficult decisions involving both programs and personnel,” he said in an August email. “While some majors no longer exist, we are redirecting existing and new resources to current and recently developed programs.”

    On Thursday, St. Norbert’s leaders touted the newly announced programs as a demonstration of the college’s ability to adapt to changing workforce demands and student needs.

    The forthcoming undergraduate programs include bachelor’s degrees in cybersecurity management, exercise science, digital marketing and sacred music.

    Pending accreditor approval, the college will also launch a 4+1 business administration program that will allow students to earn both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in five years.

    Students in its media studies and communications programs will be able to enroll in new concentrations in sports media, business and professional communication, journalism or public image and promotion.

    The additional academic offerings aren’t the only recent tactics the college has undertaken in the pursuit of financial longevity.

    St. Norbert struck a partnership with nearby Northeast Wisconsin Technical College to allow the public community college’s students to transfer into its data analytics bachelor’s degree program more easily.

    And earlier this month, the college announced a $15 million donation from the religious organization with which it is affiliated, the Norbertine Order.

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  • Students Share Feelings of Belonging on Campuses

    Students Share Feelings of Belonging on Campuses

    Seven in 10 college students say most or nearly all students on their college campus feel welcomed, valued and supported, according to a July 2025 survey by Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab.

    The data, collected from over 260 two- and four-year colleges across the country, paints a relatively rosy picture of students’ sentiments on campus this fall against the backdrop of free speech restrictions, tense protests and cutbacks to programs that serve students from racial minorities.

    While respondents indicated the average student is welcome at their institution, they were less confident about whether they themselves fit in academically or socially.

    Fewer than one-third of respondents said they have an “excellent” or “above average” sense of social belonging on campus; 42 percent reported “average” feelings of belonging. Additionally, 38 percent of students said they had an “excellent” or “above average” sense of academic fit at their institution, while just under half said they had an average sense of academic fit.

    Survey data also pointed to positive sentiments about personal and academic inquiry. When asked how encouraged and supported they felt to explore different perspectives and challenge their beliefs, a majority of students indicated they feel “somewhat” (45 percent) or “very” supported (35 percent) on campus.

    A Warm Welcome

    Campus climate, or the perception of how much respect and inclusion students feel on campus, is tied to learning; research shows that students who face discrimination are less likely to succeed academically. Research has also found that students of color are less likely than their white peers to report feeling at home at college.

    Inside Higher Ed’s Student Voice survey found minor variance among racial groups in reporting a generally positive campus climate. White students (75 percent) and Asian American or Pacific Islander students (73 percent) were most likely to indicate “most” or “nearly all” students are welcome on campus, compared to Hispanic (71 percent) or Black (68 percent) respondents. Seventy percent of “other” students, which Generation Lab classifies as students of two or more races or who come from outside the U.S., had positive reviews on campus climate.

    Adult and two-year students were more likely to say nearly all students are welcome on campus (24 percent) than the average respondent (20 percent), which could reflect the diverse student bodies at two-year institutions and the preferences of adult learners to enroll in two-year or online institutions.

    By comparison, students who had considered leaving college were less likely to say “most” or “nearly all” students are welcomed (64 percent) compared to all respondents (73 percent) or students who had never considered dropping out (77 percent).

    Three percent of survey respondents wrote in other responses, indicating they completed their classes online and therefore could not speak to the campus climate.

    Academic Success and Belonging

    The survey also asked students to rank their own sense of social belonging and academic fit on a scale of poor to excellent.

    Across racial demographics, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) students were most likely to rate their social belonging as high (33 percent), followed by white and international students (30 percent each), Black students (25 percent), and Latinos (22 percent).

    On academic fit, white students had the highest ratings; 43 percent of respondents said their fit was “excellent” or “above average,” followed by AAPI (42 percent), Black students (33 percent) and Latino students (30 percent).

    Students who had considered leaving college were much more likely than their peers to report they had a “poor” sense of belonging (15 percent versus 6 percent).

    First-generation students were more likely to rate their sense of academic fit and social belonging as “below average” or “poor” (17 percent and 37 percent, respectively) compared to their continuing-generation peers (13 percent and 28 percent).

    DEI Cutbacks

    Inside Higher Ed’s survey also asked students whether federal actions to limit diversity, equity and inclusion have impacted their experiences. The most popular response was “no real impact on my experience” (37 percent), and a handful of students wrote in that they anticipated greater impact after returning to campus this fall. This view held across racial groups, with the greatest share of respondents saying it hasn’t impacted their experience.

    About 20 percent of students said the changes to DEI on campus have “somewhat negatively impacted my experience” and 16 percent indicated “I don’t feel impacted, but my peers have been negatively impacted.”

    Nonbinary students were most likely to say it’s severely negatively impacting their experience (39 percent).

    Ten percent of respondents said they are somewhat or significantly impacted in a positive manner by the changes.

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  • 3 Arrests Made at University of Michigan Protest

    3 Arrests Made at University of Michigan Protest

    The arrests were made on the campus in Ann Arbor on Wednesday evening.

    Courtesy of the University of Michigan.

    Three pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested on the University of Michigan campus Wednesday, MLive Media Group, a local news organization, reported.

    The TAHRIR Coalition, a campus student group, led the protest in response to an event held by the university’s Students Supporting Israel chapter, which featured several Israel Defense Forces soldiers.

    Melissa Overton, the university’s deputy chief of public safety and security, told MLive that the individuals arrested were not affiliated with the university. She said the protesters blocked the exit to an underground parking garage and refused to move when ordered to. 

    They were charged with resisting and obstructing police, attempting to disarm an officer, disorderly conduct, and outstanding warrants, Overton said. The case has been forwarded to a prosecutor, she noted.

    Erek Mirque, a member of TAHRIR, told MLive that the arrests came as a surprise and that he was unaware of any confrontation with officers before the arrests.

    “We did not expect the situation to escalate the way that it did,” he said.

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  • National Institute on Transfer Prepares to Close

    National Institute on Transfer Prepares to Close

    For over two decades, the National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students has bridged two worlds—the researchers who study transfer students and the campus staff who work with them. Located at the University of North Georgia, NISTS has gathered these groups for annual conferences, disseminated resources and research, and doled out awards for groundbreaking work.

    Now, university leaders say they can no longer afford to fund NISTS. At the end of October, NISTS, at least in its current form, will shutter.

    The institute “has made a lasting impact in improving transfer policy and practice nationwide,” and “its research has informed how colleges and universities support transfer student success,” university officials said in a statement.

    But “unfortunately, due to ongoing budget constraints and a realignment of institutional priorities, the university is no longer able to financially support the Institute,” the statement read. “We are proud of the Institute’s legacy and the many partnerships it has built, and we remain committed to serving transfer students through our academic programs and student success initiatives.”

    Janet Marling, NISTS’s executive director, said that over the past year, institute staff tried but ultimately couldn’t find a new permanent home for their work—at least for now. She hopes that other organizations will carry on parts of the institute’s work, including its conferences and programs, and house its research and resources so transfer professionals can continue to benefit from them.

    “We have heard, time and time again, there just isn’t anyone else providing the resources, the community, the networking, the translation of research to practice in the transfer sphere in the way that NISTS is doing it,” Marling said.

    ‘A Terrible Loss’

    NISTS prides itself on taking a unique approach, connecting staff who span the transfer student experience—from admissions professionals to advisers to faculty members—in an effort to holistically improve transfer student success. Transfer practitioners and researchers worry NISTS’s closure will have ripple effects across the field.

    Alexandra Logue, professor emerita at the CUNY Graduate Center, said the transfer process inherently involves multiple institutions working together, including, in some cases, across state lines; about a quarter of transfer students choose to go to a four-year college or university in another state.

    Logue appreciated that NISTS conferences offered a rare “chance for people from all the different states in the country to come together” to coordinate and swap best practices. Such programs also allowed transfer researchers like her to share their findings with staff working directly with transfer students on campuses.

    “The research that we do is pointless if it isn’t put into practice,” Logue said.

    While other organizations are doing powerful work to improve transfer student outcomes, NISTS played a major role in bringing new visibility to transfer students’ needs by making them a singular focus, said Stephen Handel, a NISTS advisory board member.

    The institute “added a legitimacy to a constituency of students that often got forgotten,” Handel said. “NISTS was completely focused on that constituency alone, and that’s what made it unique.”

    Eileen Strempel, also on the advisory board, said she got involved with NISTS when she served as an administrator at Syracuse University and sought to create a strategic plan to improve transfer outcomes—an area she hadn’t done much work in before.

    “I felt like, oh, wow, there’s a brain trust already for me, the neophyte, the learner who doesn’t know very much about transfer at all,” she said. She called the closure “a terrible loss.”

    She said NISTS leaders often asked conference participants how many of them had never attended a convention focused on transfer students before; Each year, most hands went up.

    “To me, what that moment always crystallized was the important role that NISTS had” in helping practitioners figure out “how they could learn from other colleagues, that they didn’t need to recreate the wheel,” Strempel said.

    Those lessons have had downstream effects on students.

    Each practitioner came out better equipped “to help hundreds, if not thousands of students,” Strempel said.

    Marling said one of the most exciting parts of the work was seeing its impact on students across the country. For example, she watched graduates of NISTS’s post-master’s certificate program in transfer leadership and practice go on to make meaningful changes on their campuses, such as establishing new transfer partnerships with other institutions or revamping training for advisers to improve transfer students’ experiences.

    She said she feels “profoundly sad” about NISTS shuttering at University of North Georgia, but she also believes NISTS will live on in some form because of the “tremendous outpouring of support and concern” that followed the announcement of its closure.

    “I’m very hopeful that the spirit of NISTS will continue,” whether that’s as an institute elsewhere or “within the many, many transfer champions that are working in higher education across the country. I’m really excited to see how individuals and institutions take what they’ve learned from NISTS and continue to grow their focus on transfer students and continue to provide equitable opportunities for these students.”

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  • Creating a campus where all accents are welcome

    Creating a campus where all accents are welcome

    This blog was kindly authored by Dr Gisela Tomé Lourido (@gisetomelourido.bsky.social), Associate Professor in Sociophonetics at the University of Leeds and Niamh Mullen, Associate Professor in English for Academic Purposes at the University of Leeds.

    ‘All Accents Welcome’ campaign launch

    Everyone has an accent – a way of speaking that reflects different aspects of our identities

    Accent variation is a natural feature of spoken language, shaped by our social, geographical, and cultural backgrounds. This diversity enriches our academic and professional environments by bringing a wider range of perspectives and ways of thinking.

    Despite this, the linguistic diversity of staff and students is typically overlooked in higher education strategies, discourse and practices. Additionally, accent bias – the automatic associations we make based on how someone speaks – is rarely discussed in academic settings.

     Yet, in the UK, 30% of university students report having their accent mocked or criticised in academic contexts. Similarly, 25% of professionals report experiencing accent-related bias in workplace settings. Recent research conducted by the first author and Professor Julia Snell, and reported in an earlier HEPI blog, has shown that these forms of microaggressions can damage university students’ confidence, reduce participation, and affect their sense of belonging and wellbeing.

    At the University of Leeds, we have launched the “All Accents Welcome” campaign: an initiative designed to raise awareness of the importance of accents to individuals’ identities. It highlights how accent bias can affect students’ and colleagues’ experiences and opportunities at university, while promoting the value of the diverse voices that strengthen our community, from all corners of the UK and the world.  

    As one contributor to the campaign put it:

    My accent is an integral part of who I am. It’s like my cultural identity, my roots.

    A campaign amplifying the voices of our community

    At the heart of the campaign is a video featuring staff and students sharing what their accents mean to them, and reflecting on the biases they have encountered. 

    Through the campaign, we present the University’s new Accent Equality Statement, a policy commitment to welcoming and respecting all accents, the statement aligns with broader institutional efforts to address class, race, gender, and other forms of inequality.

    Why accent bias should be on every higher education institutions’s agenda

    In the UK, self-consciousness and anxiety about accent bias are highest during university, more than at any other life stage. Judgements about accents are rarely about how someone speaks; they’re about who is speaking. Accent bias is deeply entangled with perceptions of class, race, nationality, gender, sexuality, and disability. It disproportionately affects students who are already navigating structural barriers, particularly those from working-class, racially minoritised, or multilingual backgrounds.

    Another contributor to the “All Accents Welcome” campaign said: “I thought twice before speaking in class because I thought I would be mocked at just because the way I spoke.” 

    For many students, accent bias adds another layer of complexity to their university experience. It influences how they are heard, how they participate, and how they succeed, not just at university, but in their future careers. While this is fundamentally an equity issue, it also affects key institutional metrics, including student satisfaction, outcomes, continuation, and employability. Yet, it remains under-recognised in most institutional equity and inclusion strategies.

    We believe that tackling accent bias must become a sector-wide priority. That means taking a collaborative, interdisciplinary, and holistic approach to create a cultural change where linguistic diversity is recognised as an asset and mocking, and questioning someone’s accent is de-normalised. In our earlier HEPI blog, we outlined four actionable recommendations for higher education institutions:  

    1. Raise awareness of the value of linguistic diversity and the impact of accent bias in Higher Education. Deliver campaigns, workshops, and talks using real stories, data, and interactive activities.
    2. Embed action to tackle accent bias into policy and practice. Revise institutional policies to include linguistic diversity and accent bias explicitly; incorporate training on accent bias into students and staff induction, and teaching, tutoring, and leadership development; and ensure assessment criteria and feedback are inclusive.
    1. Create report and support routes for students and staff who are the target of linguistic discrimination. Complement these with training staff providing support to students.
    2. Evaluate impact and identify areas for further change to ensure that efforts to tackle accent bias are effective, sustainable, and responsive to their specific contexts.

    From statement to action

    At the University of Leeds there is a growing community of staff and students committed to addressing accent bias and embedding this work into institutional practice. The campaign was co-designed with students, academic and professional services staff, and representatives from Leeds University Union, ensuring it reflects a wide range of lived experiences. It forms part of the work of the University’s institutional working group “Tackling Accent Bias”, which is focused on translating the statement into policy and practice, guided by the recommendations outlined above.

    Join the conversation

    We invite colleagues across the sector to watch our “All Accents Welcome” video and join us in reflecting on how accent bias may be operating in their own institutions. What assumptions do we make based on how someone speaks? How do those assumptions shape our interactions, decisions, and environments?

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  • Student-parents belong on college campuses. So do their children

    Student-parents belong on college campuses. So do their children

    Too many student-parents never make it to graduation, in no small part because their campuses don’t adequately help them fit college into their lives — or even just fit in.

    Yet over 3 million student-parents across the nation, myself included, are pursuing higher education, seeking the intergenerational benefits that come with earning a degree. To reap them, we must overcome many obstacles, as colleges aren’t designed for students like us.

    For me, the last hurdle I had to clear was graduation itself. After years of sacrifice — not just my own, but my whole family’s — walking the stage with my four children at my graduation from the University of California, Santa Cruz was deeply important.

    The university, however, didn’t understand that or account for us. When I asked to accept my diploma with my kids, I was met with resistance, a particularly tough reminder of the work institutions have left to do to meet the needs and priorities of student-parents.

    Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter.

    Earning my college degree in my late 30s was undoubtedly a major achievement, but so was going back for my bachelor’s in the first place — I didn’t even finish high school the first time around.

    After I became a mom at 20, I earned my GED, hoping it would help me support my family. Continuing my education only got harder. I started and stopped community college more times than I can count, juggling bills, jobs, custody battles and parenting.

    Finally, I transferred to UCSC, proud that I was taking this step two decades in the making and changing the trajectory of my and my family’s lives.

    However, I didn’t fully realize what my education would cost my children. Used to our tight-knit Tongan community, they felt like cultural outsiders when we moved to Santa Cruz, no longer surrounded by family, our native language or familiar foods and music.

    My children sacrificed their home and sense of belonging so that I could pursue this dream. As graduation approached, I knew I wanted to walk the stage with them. They had earned it just as much as I had.

    Yet the administration denied my request, citing the added logistical difficulties. They suggested I bring my kids to a separate, informal celebration for those of us living in family student housing instead. The offer sounded like “be invisible or settle for less.”

    I immediately started mobilizing UCSC’s Student Parent Organization, where I was president. Working with the student government, I drafted a resolution permitting student-parents to walk with their children. I reached out to alumni, administrators, fellow parents and friends for support.

    Thanks to our collective voice, the dean of students changed his mind, offered an apology and committed to changing the policy going forward for all graduating student-parents. Though my kids and I were placed at the end of the ceremony, we crossed the stage together as a family.

    That seed of inclusion will grow in them, just like it will for all the children of student-parents who walk that path in the future.

    The next year, my mentee and friend walked with her son at the UCSC commencement, this time without pushback. The university invited them to rehearsal, and on graduation day, they had VIP seats. She was one of the first to walk, not the last.

    That is the power of advocacy. It turns exclusion into inclusion. It rewrites the rules not just for one person, but for those who come after. I am proud to continue my advocacy work as a graduate student at the University of San Francisco and a member of The California Alliance for Student Parent Success.

    I have since seen institutions across California make good progress on their efforts to support student-parents, but colleges and universities nationwide must still do more. At the University at Buffalo, university police chased a graduating student across the stage when he attempted to bring his infant son with him.

    Related: A federal program helped student-parents thrive. Now it’s on life support

    These stories and the momentum building in the wake of September’s National Student Parent Month should serve as a call to higher education leaders across the country to cultivate campus climates that build trust and belonging among student-parents.

    This work should start before we even step foot on campus and continue until we graduate.

    Institutions that truly wish to serve families will ensure that the value we bring to higher education is visible. They will account for student-parents when planning campus events and weave together support networks of faculty, staff and peers who can respond to our needs.

    When we ask institutions for policies and practices to better accommodate our families, they will listen and act. They will hold themselves accountable to all of their students, parents included.

    Walking the stage with my kids was a step in the right direction, albeit an uphill climb. Let’s keep going and do better by student-parents and their families.

    Krystle Pale is a UC Santa Cruz graduate, a mother of five and a recent Advisory Committee member of The California Alliance for Student Parent Success.

    Contact the opinion editor at [email protected].

    This story about student-parents was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

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  • The white paper is wrong – changing research funding won’t change teaching

    The white paper is wrong – changing research funding won’t change teaching

    The Post-16 education and skills white paper might not have a lot of specifics in it but it does mostly make sense.

    The government’s diagnosis is that the homogeneity of sector outputs is a barrier to growth. Their view, emerging from the industrial strategy, is that it is an inefficient use of public resources to have organisations doing the same things in the same places. The ideal is specialisation where universities concentrate on the things they are best at.

    There are different kinds of nudges to achieve this goal. One is the suggestion that the REF could more closely align to the government missions. The detail is not there but it is possible to see how impact could be made to be about economic growth or funding could be shifted more toward applied work. There is a suggestion that research funding should consider the potential of places (maybe that could lead to some regional multipliers who knows). And there are already announced steps around the reform on HEIF and new support for spin-outs.

    Ecosystems

    All of these things might help but they will not be enough to fundamentally change the research ecosystem. If the incentives stay broadly the same researchers and universities will continue to do broadly the same things irrespective of how much the government wants more research aimed at growing the economy.

    The potentially biggest reform has the smallest amount of detail. The paper states

    We will incentivise this specialisation and collaboration through research funding reform. By incentivising a more strategic distribution of research activity across the sector, we can ensure that funding is used effectively and that institutions are empowered to build deep expertise in areas where they can lead. This may mean a more focused volume of research, delivered with higher-quality, better cost recovery, and stronger alignment to short- and long-term national priorities. Given the close link between research and teaching, we expect these changes to support more specialised and high quality teaching provision as well.

    The implication here is that if research funding is allocated differently then providers will choose to specialise their teaching because research and teaching are linked. Before we get to whether there is a link between research funding and teaching (spoiler there is not) it is worth unpacking two other implications here.

    The first is that the “strategic distribution” element will have entirely different impacts depending on what the strategy is and what the distribution mechanism is. The paper states that there could, broadly, be three kinds of providers. Teaching only, teaching with applied research, and research institutions (who presumably also do teaching.) The strategy is to allow providers to focus on their strengths but the problem is it is entirely unclear which strengths or how they will be measured. For example, there are some researchers that are doing research which is economically impactful but perhaps not the most academically ground breaking. Presumably this is not the activity which the government would wish to deprioritise but could be if measured by current metrics. It also doesn’t explain how providers with pockets of research excellence within an overall weaker research profile could maintain their research infrastructure.

    The white paper suggests that the sector should focus on fewer but better funded research projects. This makes sense if the aim is to improve the cost recovery on individual research projects but improving the unit of resource through concentrating the overall allocation won’t necessarily improve financial sustainability of research generally. A strategic decision to align research funding more with the industrial strategy would leave some providers exposed. A strategic decision to invest in research potential not research performance would harm others. A focus on regions, or London, or excellence wherever it may be, would have a different impact. The distribution mechanism is a second order question to the overall strategy which has not yet dealt with some difficult trade offs

    On its own terms it also seems research funding is not a good indicator of teaching specialism.

    Incentives

    When the White Paper suggests that the government can “incentivise specialisation and collaboration through research funding reform”, it is worth asking what – if any – links there currently are between research funding and teaching provision.

    There’s two ways we can look at this. The first version looks at current research income from the UK government to each provider(either directly, or via UKRI) by cost centre – and compares that to the students (FTE) associated with that cost centre within a provider.

     

    [Full screen]

    We’re at a low resolution – this split of students isn’t filterable by level or mode of study, and finances are sometimes corrected after the initial publication (we’ve looked at 2021-22 to remove this issue). You can look at each cost centre to see if there is a relationship between the volume of government research funding and student FTE – and in all honesty there isn’t much of one in most cases.

    If you think about it, that’s kind of a surprise – surely a larger department would have more of both? – but there are some providers who are clearly known for having high quality research as opposed to large numbers of students.

    So to build quality into our thinking we turn to the REF results (we know that there is generally a good correlation between REF outcomes and research income).

    Our problem here is that REF results are presented by unit of assessment – a subject grouping that maps cleanly neither to cost centres or to the CAH hierarchy used more commonly in student data (for more on the wild world of subject classifications, DK has you covered). This is by design of course – an academic with training in biosciences may well live in the biosciences department and the biosciences cost centre, but there is nothing to stop them researching how biosciences is taught (outputs of which might be returned to the Education cost centre).

    What has been done here is a custom mapping at CAH3 level between subjects students are studying and REF2021 submissions – the axis are student headcount (you can filter by mode and level, and choose whichever academic year you fancy looking at) against the FTE of staff submitted to REF2021 – with a darker blue blob showing a greater proportion of the submission rated as 4* in the REF (there’s a filter at the bottom if you want to look at just high performing departments).

    [Full screen]

    Again, correlations are very hard to come by (if you want you can look at a chart for a single provider across all units of assessment). It’s almost as if research doesn’t bring in money that can cross-subsidise teaching, which will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever worked in higher education.

    Specialisation

    The government’s vision for higher education is clear. Universities should specialise and universities that focus on economic growth should be rewarded. The mechanisms to achieve it feel, frankly, like a mix of things that have already been announced and new measures that are divorced from the reality of the financial incentives universities work under.

    The white paper has assiduously ducked laying out some of the trade-offs and losers in the new system. Without this the government cannot set priorities and if it does not move some of the underlying incentives on student funding, regional funding distribution, greater devolution, supply-side spending like Freeports, staff reward and recognition, student number allocations, or the myriad of things that make up the basis of the university funding settlement, it has little hope of achieving its goals in specialisation or growth.

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  • From Task Completion to Cognitive Engagement: Making the Case for the Hourglass Paradigm of Learning – Faculty Focus

    From Task Completion to Cognitive Engagement: Making the Case for the Hourglass Paradigm of Learning – Faculty Focus

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  • From Task Completion to Cognitive Engagement: Making the Case for the Hourglass Paradigm of Learning – Faculty Focus

    From Task Completion to Cognitive Engagement: Making the Case for the Hourglass Paradigm of Learning – Faculty Focus

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