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  • Canada’s path forward in international education

    Canada’s path forward in international education

    In my recent article for The PIE, I reflected on how Canada’s international education system has been moving through a period of turbulence and uncertainty, highlighting the compounding effects of the past several years, abrupt policy shifts, uneven communication, and ongoing immigration challenges that have created instability and eroded trust among students, families and global partners. 

    This second piece builds on that discussion. Canada’s international education sector continues to navigate a turbulent period, one that is reshaping how institutions, students, and communities make decisions today and plan for tomorrow.

    Yet within this turbulence lies an opportunity: to chart a clearer, more deliberate path forward that restores confidence and strengthens Canada’s global role. There is no simple fix, but by examining how other countries and Canadian provinces have approached similar challenges, we can begin identifying the building blocks of a more stable, coordinated and sustainable strategy.

    If Canada is to navigate this moment and rebuild stability and credibility, it must move beyond reactive decision-making. What is needed is a clear, long-term framework, one grounded in evidence, predictable investment, and collaboration across governments, institutions, employers and communities. Lessons from Germany, New Zealand and British Columbia demonstrate that more deliberate and sustainable approaches are not only possible, but necessary.

    Lessons from Germany’s model

    Germany provides a compelling example of how international education can be integrated into a broader national economic and demographic strategy. While the contexts differ, Germany’s constitutional division of responsibility for education between the federal government and the Länder is in many ways similar to Canada’s federal–provincial structure, making its approach worth examining. One important distinction is tuition: in most regions, international students pay minimal or no fees, reflecting a long-term view that the real return on investment comes from decades of workforce participation and tax revenue rather than short-term tuition income.

    A 2025 study by the German Economic Institute, commissioned by the German Academic Exchange Service, found that the 79,000 international students who began degree programs in 2022 could generate between €7.36 billion and €26 billion in lifetime net fiscal gains for the public sector coffers. Even under conservative projections, public investment in international students pays for itself within two to five years after graduation. International graduates could offset up to 20% of Germany’s projected GDP slowdown due to demographic change over the next decade.

    While Canada’s policy environment, tuition structures, and labour market integration differ, this illustrates what can be achieved with a coordinated national framework that aligns higher education with workforce needs.

    A key part of this approach is the Campus Initiative for International Talents and the FIT program. These initiatives fund universities to prepare students for academic life, support their integration, and connect them with employers before and after graduation. They also invest in expanded career services, targeted retention programs and partnerships with industry to ensure smoother transitions into the labour market. Critically, this is made possible by predictable, multi-year federal funding, allowing institutions to sustain, refine and scale initiatives over time while sharing lessons across the sector.

    New Zealand’s managed growth approach

    New Zealand offers another instructive model, one that is still in its early stages but marks a shift from previous approaches. Following a period of post-pandemic recovery, the government launched the International Education Going for Growth strategy in 2025, setting a ten-year target to nearly double the sector’s economic contribution by 2034. Rather than relying on abrupt changes, the plan outlines growth from 83,700 in 2024 to 119,000 by 2034 and double the sector’s value from NZ$3.6 billion to NZ$7.2 billion. The plan takes a phased approach, tying growth to quality, sustainability and alignment with workforce needs.

    Recent reforms include increasing in-study work limits from 20 to 25 hours per week, extending work rights to all tertiary exchange and study abroad students, and introducing a six-month post-study work visa for vocational graduates who do not qualify for longer-term rights. The government is also exploring easier access to multi-year visas. These measures aim to strengthen links between study, work experience, and skilled migration, while maintaining education quality and managing community impacts.

    The path forward is about tackling root causes through careful, well-designed policy that extends beyond surface-level fixes

    The strategy recognises the sector’s wider economic, social, cultural, and innovation-related value, and calls for closer coordination between education providers, employers, and industry. It also seeks market diversification beyond China and India, with targets to raise New Zealand’s profile globally and move more prospective students to rank it among their top three choices.

    It’s interesting to see New Zealand’s sector leaders pairing an ambitious growth target with a deliberate, measured pace. Their emphasis on balancing enrolment growth with infrastructure, regional distribution and public support offers important lessons for other countries including Canada as we rethink our own approach to rebuilding and re-imagining international education in a way that is both sustainable and socially supported. While too early to measure outcomes, Going for Growth shows how long-term targets, coordinated reforms and predictable policy can build stability, avoiding the uncertainty that comes with abrupt changes.

    British Columbia’s Approach 

    Closer to home, British Columbia has begun moving toward a more managed approach to international education one that offers useful reference points for other provinces to consider as they navigate similar pressures. The framework is designed to address key challenges: aligning enrolment with institutional and community capacity, encouraging more diversified student markets, connecting recruitment more closely to housing and student supports, and strengthening quality assurance to protect students and institutional reputation. More information on the province’s approach can be found in its Public Post-Secondary International Student Enrolment Guidelines, Education Quality Assurance framework, and requirements for multi-year institutional international education strategies.

    This approach is still evolving, but it signals a shift away from reactive measures toward more deliberate, longer-term planning. The broader takeaway across all three cases – Germany’s coordinated national investment, New Zealand’s managed growth plan, and British Columbia’s emerging provincial framework – is not that any has found the perfect solution, but that more thoughtful, workable approaches are possible even within a federal system like Canada’s. The path forward is less about adding new barriers and complexity, and more about tackling root causes through careful, well-designed policy that extends beyond surface-level fixes.

    A path forward for Canada

    Canada requires a deliberate course correction, one that is precise in its objectives, strategic in its design and anchored in robust evidence. This entails moving beyond reactive decision-making toward a coherent framework that establishes clear long-term goals, calibrates enrolment to institutional and community capacity, and embeds international education as a core pillar of national economic, demographic and innovation strategies.

    Achieving this demands sustained, structured coordination between federal, provincial and institutional partners, underpinned by transparency, reliable data and clearly defined performance metrics.

    As Canada looks ahead, several key aspects should guide the development of a stronger, more sustainable international education strategy:

    1. Transparency & accountability

    • Prioritise transparency by publishing timely, detailed data on study permit allocations, approval rates and processing times to enable evidence-based planning.
    • Streamline compliance processes by redesigning the Provincial Attestation Letter process to remove unnecessary steps while maintaining accountability and integrity.
    • Recognise sector diversity by applying policies that reflect institutional differences in size, mission, and track record, using a risk-based approach to oversight.

    2. Integration & coordination

    • Integrate policy planning across education, immigration and labour market needs so that international students are viewed as future members of Canada’s workforce and communities.
    • Establish a national roundtable that brings together governments, institutions, employers and communities to coordinate talent, skills and immigration strategies (as recommended by many groups across Canada CBIE, UniCan, CICan).

    3. Student success & retention

    • Invest in student success by funding housing, mental health services, and academic supports that benefit both domestic and international learners, while creating clear residency pathways to encourage long-term retention.
    • Adopt multi-year funding models for programs that link education with workforce integration, ensuring stability and continuity, similar to Germany’s FIT program.

    4. Narrative & public confidence

    • Reset the narrative by communicating the shared benefits of international education: sustaining academic programs, expanding opportunities, strengthening research capacity and contributing to Canada’s innovation ecosystem.
    • Build public trust by showing that investments in international education are not a zero-sum trade-off with domestic priorities, but a shared investment in Canada’s prosperity, global competitiveness and community vitality.

    Canada at a crossroads

    Canada is at a crossroads. The past 20 months have exposed the cost of reactive, fragmented policy: instability for students, institutions and communities. The “building the plane while flying it” approach cannot continue. This is also a moment of opportunity. Canada can create a transparent, predictable and collaborative international education system, one that recognises students not as temporary visitors, but as future citizens if they choose to stay, or as global ambassadors for Canada: skilled professionals, community builders and partners in strengthening our place in the world. 

    Germany’s integration of higher education into its national skilled labour strategy and New Zealand’s long-term managed growth plan both demonstrate that it is possible to balance integrity, economic benefit and student success. British Columbia’s recent steps show that proactive, well-planned policy is possible within Canada’s governance structure, and that each province can develop its own approach tailored to its specific context, priorities and capacity

    In a rapidly changing geopolitical environment, how Canada engages globally, attracts and retains talent, and integrates education with long-term national goals will shape its economic and social future. Canada can choose to lead with vision and strategy or watch as others secure the global talent, partnerships and influence that we have allowed to slip away.

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  • How ‘anti-woke’ laws and cancel culture combine to chill classroom speech

    How ‘anti-woke’ laws and cancel culture combine to chill classroom speech

    Over the past several years, some politicians have tried to ban or limit discussion of controversial ideas in higher education, particularly those related to critical race theory, gender identity, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. 

    FIRE has been on the front lines of this fight, opposing bills that target classroom speech and challenging those that become law. We’ve warned legislators that attempts to ban ideas from the college classroom are unconstitutional. As the Supreme Court explained, the First Amendment “does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom.”

    Many legislatures now write their bills to avoid crossing this constitutional line. When they do not, courts often step in. Florida’s “Stop WOKE Act,” for example — part of which FIRE has challenged in court — currently faces a preliminary injunction blocking the enforcement of its classroom provisions.

    LAWSUIT: FIRE challenges Stop WOKE Act’s limits on how Florida professors can teach about race, sex

    First Amendment doesn’t allow Florida law to declare which concepts are too challenging for students and faculty to discuss in a college classroom.


    Read More

    Perhaps in part because of this roadblock, some actors have taken a more indirect approach to removing disfavored ideas from the classroom: a mix of “anti-woke” laws and cancel culture designed to intimidate schools into doing what the state cannot do directly.

    This process involves some or all of the following steps: a politician passes an “anti-woke” law, someone misinterprets the law and claims a professor violated it, outrage erupts and people demand the school take action, school administrators cave to the pressure and punish the teacher, the school announces reviews of curricula, and then other schools follow suit.

    Here’s how that cycle works in detail — and why it’s chilling classroom speech.

    Step 1: “Anti-woke” laws set the stage

    Texas A&M senior lecturer Melissa McCoul began the summer semester teaching ENGL 360: Literature for Children, a course she had taught 12 times that focused on “representative writers, genres, texts and movements.” During the third week of class, they were reading Jude Saves the World, a novel about a 12-year-old who identifies as nonbinary. As part of their discussion, McCoul displayed an image of the “gender unicorn,” a graphic device used to educate children about gender identity, expression, and sexuality. 

    Whatever one’s personal views, it should not be a surprise that a children’s literature course would focus on how contemporary children’s authors approach the major social issues of the day, such as gender ideology. Faculty at public colleges also have a First Amendment right to share their views, and to invite students who disagree to challenge them. In fact, McCoul acknowledged in the course syllabus that some of the class materials would spark “differing opinions” and that students were “not required to agree.”

    This was a chance for open dialogue, until it wasn’t.

    A student in McCoul’s class raised her hand and asserted that President Trump’s executive order on gender identity somehow made the discussion illegal. The student subsequently reached out to school President Mark Welsh, who defended the inclusion of LGBT content in professional-track courses. He explained to her that students “want to understand the issues” that affect the people they will work with.

    Nevertheless, the school canceled the class for the summer, citing “the emotions” generated by this controversy. That’s no reason to cancel a class, but the school did not punish McCoul or cancel her class for the fall semester. Instead, they agreed that her course would be taken out of the core curriculum and more clearly marked as a special topics class.

    But then, on Sept. 8, Texas State Representative Brian Harrison posted video of the student’s exchange with McCoul on X and wrote a letter to the Trump administration calling for an “investigation into discriminatory DEI practices.” The assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, Harmeet K. Dhillon, called the incident “deeply concerning” and said her division would “look into this.” Gov. Greg Abbott said McCoul acted “contrary to Texas law” without actually citing any specific laws (though Abbott directed state agencies earlier this year to align their practices and policies to recognize only two sexes).

    Crucially, neither Abbott’s directive nor Trump’s order bans discussion of gender identity in college classrooms. Doing so, after all, would be unconstitutional. Instead, they largely instruct Texas and federal agencies to recognize only two sexes in official government work, not to police classroom speech.

    Step 2: An outrage campaign demands punishment

    Harrison’s Sept. 8 post kicked off a cascade of calls to discipline McCoul. It was also only the first in a long thread of posts that set off a social media firestorm. Before long, other high profile government figures like Abbott and Dhillon were chiming in. Others with large social media followings picked up the story. A routine classroom discussion had been reframed to the public as a legal violation requiring immediate sanction.

    Step 3: The school caves to pressure

    Soon after, Texas A&M fired McCoul. The school also demoted College of Arts and Sciences’ Dean Mark Zoran and the English Department head Emily Johansen. 

    President Welsh justified these moves by alleging McCoul taught “content that was inconsistent with the published course description.” The apparent basis for this assertion was that McCoul’s course was renumbered as ENGL 394, rather than a 400-level number that would supposedly mark it as a special-topics class. But McCoul and Johansen dispute this, noting that 394 places the course outside the core curriculum and qualifies it as a special-topic class. Other faculty agreed that there is little difference between these designations. 

    Whatever the case, the public pressure only continued to build. Harrison demanded that Texas A&M terminate Welsh. Texas’s lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, echoed the call, saying that Welsh’s “ambivalence on the issue and his dismissal of the student’s concerns by immediately taking the side of the professor is unacceptable.” Barely a week later, Welsh announced his resignation, following McCoul out the door.

    Step 4: Administrators announce curricular reviews

    If this story ended only with a professor being fired for her protected speech, that would be bad enough. And driving out a university president is even more alarming, because it shows how these campaigns scare people into silence or submission. But Texas A&M System Chancellor Glenn Hegar then announced that he and the board of regents would audit all courses across all 12 schools in the A&M System. 

    Neither Hegar nor the board explained how it would carry out the course review, leaving faculty members guessing as to what materials would be under their microscope. But in a campaign like this one, a chilling vagueness is part of the point. In the aftermath of seeing a fellow professor fired for her classroom speech, one has to imagine that many will choose to avoid addressing sensitive topics in the future. And this will only serve to rob Texas A&M students of the opportunity to engage with challenging and topical issues.

    Step 5: Other schools get the message

    Although this controversy started with one class taught by one professor at one Texas A&M campus, the ripple effects rapidly reached campuses across the state. According to reporting at the time, multiple school systems launched reviews:

    • Texas Tech told faculty that teaching must comply with “current state and federal law recogniz[ing] only two human sexes.”
    • The University of North Texas system ordered an expedited review of courses and programs, including syllabi, for compliance with “all current applicable state and federal laws, executive orders, and court orders.”
    • A University of Texas system spokesperson said they were reviewing “gender identity” courses for legal compliance.
    • The Texas State University System told each campus to review academic programming “in light of recent inquiries.”
    • Texas Woman’s University System said it was reviewing academic courses and programs for compliance.

    And that, in a nutshell, is how vague laws and online outrage came together in a toxic cocktail that resulted in a fired professor, a removed dean and department head, and a university president’s resignation, not to mention several systemwide university audits of entire course catalogues — all starting with a single student’s complaint that discussing a children’s book was “illegal.”

    A growing problem

    This practice of overreading laws and executive orders in order to target protected speech is, unfortunately, not just limited to Texas. In July, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Oversight Project reportedly filed a records request for syllabi and materials from roughly 70 courses containing terms such as: “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging,” “gender identity,” “intersectionality,” “white privilege,” “cultural humility,” “racial equity,” “implicit bias,” “microaggressions,” “queer,” and “sexuality.” 

    The stated purpose of this request is to evaluate and publicize “compliance with current Executive Orders issued by the President of the United States.” But again, Trump’s executive orders have no bearing on whether these words can be used in class materials. Suggesting otherwise and going on a fishing expedition for controversial class materials only further chills protected speech.

    Sometimes the pressure is quieter, but no less chilling. At the University of Alabama, Dana Patton, director of the Witt Fellows Program, says she was told by university officials that a “very powerful person” in the state capital believed her program violated state law. This person reportedly asserted, among other things, that “divisive concepts (were) embedded” in the program. Patton responded by removing course content, including three documentaries, from one of her classes because they can prompt a “visceral reaction” and “feelings of guilt and anger” in students. This is self-censorship driven by fear of political blowback, not educational judgment.

    How not to reform higher ed

    As government officials increasingly look for ways to reform higher education, they must remember that efforts to ban controversial ideas from academia are not merely unconstitutional, they’re harmful regardless of their legal legitimacy. Such efforts frustrate an essential purpose of university life: young Americans should be able to explore and grapple with a wide variety of ideas, even those that many find offensive.

    Amy Wax is academic freedom’s canary in the coal mine

    Penn’s chilling decision to punish the controversial professor calls tenure protections at private universities into question


    Read More

    The debates in this country around gender and sexuality will not subside because of censorship in Texas. Indeed, classroom debates on this topic have the potential to leave both conservative and liberal students with a richer understanding of the issue. But some young Texans will now be robbed of this opportunity. Many others will be left with impoverished versions of those conversations, stripped of anything controversial that would draw the ire of government officials.

    We should expect college students to be fearless when faced with ideas they dislike, regardless of the partisan valence of those ideas. As FIRE said when critics on the left came after conservative University of Pennsylvania professor Amy Wax, “Any university that would attempt to shield its community from offense would soon see the death of intellectual vitality, and the waning of its influence in society.”

    If lawmakers want to reform higher education or bolster viewpoint diversity, they should do so by passing laws that protect the speech rights of all students and faculty — like FIRE’s model legislation — and they should focus on bringing more ideas onto public campuses, not removing those they dislike through vague assertions of illegality and targeted pressure campaigns.

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  • Canada’s study permits plunge by 60% in immigration reset

    Canada’s study permits plunge by 60% in immigration reset

    New IRCC data has revealed plummeting international student arrivals from January to August this year, with stakeholders bracing for further declines as the government pushes forward with efforts to reduce temporary residents in Canada.  

    “The international education sector is rightly concerned that study permit approvals are far below the caps, but the news release makes clear that those concerns are not shared by the Carney government,” Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultant (RCIC) Matthew McDonald told The PIE News. 

    The figures showed less than 90,000 new international students entered Canada from January to August 2025, making it highly unlikely that Canada will meet its goal of issuing 437,000 study permits this year, as announced in January 2025.  

    While international student arrivals have fallen by 60%, the government has painted the figures as a “story of success” in reducing Canada’s temporary resident population, said McDonald.  

    Taken together, the number of work permit holders and study permit holders decreased by 22% from August 2024 to 2025 – a trend that the IRCC said was “a clear sign the measures we’ve put in place are working”.  

    The drop has brought the total number of study permit holders (including those who hold a work and study permit at the same time) down to 802,425 – 21% less than in 2024 and the lowest level since 2021 during the pandemic. 

    It sets Canada on track to drastically miss the government’s target of issuing a total of 437,000 study permits this year, which was a 10% reduction of the original 2024 cap. 

    Given the expected shortfall, stakeholders are calling for greater transparency about IRCC’s objectives, highlighting the detrimental impact of the decline on institutions whose budgets were largely guided by the 10% cap.  

    The TR data release is a weather balloon … to see if the Canadian public accepts the message that immigration is now under control in Canada

    Matthew McDonald, RCIC

    The timing of the release less than two weeks ahead of the 2025-2027 Immigration Levels plan has not gone unnoticed by commentators, who are expecting an update to align with the incoming 2025 budget and the shifting vision of Canada’s long-standing openness to immigration. 

    “The temporary resident (TR) data release is a weather balloon, alongside updated processing times, to see if the Canadian public accepts the message that immigration is now under control in Canada,” said McDonald. 

    “The Carney government is concerned about the floor, not the ceiling—i.e., about wrestling down the TR population below 5%,” he added.  

    Currently, the government aims to reach the 5% goal by the end of 2027, with Carney acknowledging it will take several years to reduce TR levels by restricting those coming in and transitioning more temporary residents to permanent residency.  

    Notwithstanding any surprises in the upcoming budget and Immigration Levels Plan, McDonald said he expected the government to “hold their foot” on new study and work permit approvals for several years to come.  

    Ahead of the federal budget announcement, the Canadian Bureau for International Education (CBIE) is urging the government to launch a renewed International Education Strategy to “restore Canada’s global brand to bolster its foreign policy and trade relationships”. 

    The body highlighted the economic contributions of international students who contributed nearly CA$40bn to the country in 2022, boosting local communities and filing labour shortages. 

    What’s more, CBIE emphasised the cultural perspectives international students bring to Canada’s campuses and their importance to the country’s soft power, with students who leave becoming ambassadors for Canada in their home countries.  

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  • Bell English to close after 70 years

    Bell English to close after 70 years

    In a statement, Bell Educational Services Ltd confirmed that the group has served notice to put its three schools in Cambridge, London and St Albans into administration due to financial difficulties, with the schools set to close on October 31.

    “It is with deep regret that we announce Bell Educational Services Ltd has made the difficult decision to wind down its operations and will cease to trade shortly,” the group said in a statement.

    “Regrettably, the closure of the schools will also mean that staff members will face redundancy in the coming weeks,” it said, adding: “This is a deeply sad outcome for all involved”.

    English UK is finding replacement courses for some 125 students affected by the news under the student Emergency Support Scheme (SES), which obliges British Council-accredited centres to offer places to those whose schools have closed suddenly. The affected students are currently studying at Bell’s Cambridge and London locations, while the St Albans site will have no students by the closure date at the end of this month.

    English UK’s acting joint chief executive, Huan Japes, said he was “very sorry” for all those caught up in the closure. “[We] wish to pay our respects to the contribution that Bell has made to shaping the English language teaching industry over the last 70 years,” he added.

    “The English UK team is working with Bell management and nearby centres to ensure the students can continue their courses as quickly as possible. We have visited the school to answer the students’ questions in person, and we hope staff who have lost jobs find new employment quickly. We are very grateful to Bell staff and the administrators for managing the closure responsibly and with sensitivity.”

    Bell highlighted its “proud heritage spanning over 70 years” that has been “widely recognised as a pioneer in the teaching of English as a foreign language”.

    But it said it faced “significant cashflow challenges” and was unable to recover financially from the prolonged impact of the pandemic. Nor could it secure a buyer for the business.

    This is a very sad closure, but we don’t see it as part of a wider trend

    Huan Japes, English UK

    Bell school was founded by Frank Bell in 1955, having been inspired to start a language school after teaching languages in a prisoner of war camp.

    English UK noted that many bastions of the ELT sector had worked for Bell at some point in their careers. “We extend our sympathies to all of Bell’s staff, students and partners affected by this closure,” it said.

    Despite the news, Japes asserted that English UK data monitoring showed the UK remained a resilient market for the ELT sector. In spite of “tough trading conditions”, English UK student numbers dipped just 0.6% between 2023 and 2024, he said.

    “Unexpected closures do happen, but they are rare. Bell English’s financial set up was very unusual for our industry as it was run by a charitable foundation. This is a very sad closure, but we don’t see it as part of a wider trend,” he continued.

    “We understand how shocking closures are to affected staff and students, and our student emergency scheme is here to help anyone affected complete their studies as planned. We encourage students and agents to continue booking English courses in the UK with confidence.”

    The company noted that Bell Switzerland SA – of which Bell is the sole shareholder – would be unaffected by the closure and would continue operating as usual.

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  • Focus Friday: October 24 | HESA

    Focus Friday: October 24 | HESA

    Hi everyone,

    Tiffany here.

    A quick reminder that there is a Focus Friday session today (October 24) from 12:30-1:30pm Eastern on International Student Enrolment.

    I’ll be joined by Victor Tomiczek (Director of International Recruitment and Global Partnerships at Cape Breton University) and Eric Simard (Director of Fanshawe International and former Director of International Recruitment and Market Development at Fanshawe College). We’ll be discussing past, current, and expected future trends in international student recruitment, enrolment, and engagement.

    If you haven’t registered yet, it’s not too late. Register here.

    Looking Back

    Two weeks ago, we gathered for a conversation that hit close to home: What does the student experience look and feel like today?

    I was joined by three people who live and breathe these questions every day: Wasiimah Joomun (Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, a federal student advocacy organization for college, university and polytechnic students), Brendan Roberts (Students Nova Scotia), a provincial level student advocacy organization for university and college students), and Olamipo Ogunnote (Ontario Student Voices, a provincial advocacy organization for college students). Together, they painted a vivid picture of how students are navigating post-secondary life in 2025. What we heard was both sobering and hopeful.

    Wasiimah reminded us that the purpose of post-secondary has shifted. Students aren’t coming to explore anymore; they’re coming to survive. “We’ve turned education from a space of discovery into a checklist for employability,” she said. Costs are rising, pressures are mounting, and the system is asking students to thrive in conditions it wasn’t built to support. “Students are no longer exploring their interests; they’re trying to match what the labour market needs” she said.

    Brendan spoke about the ripple effects of affordability on mental health and belonging. From housing, food, transportation, all of it weighs heavily. “You can’t build a community for someone,” he said, “but you can give them the tools to foster it themselves.” Students need the chance, and support, to create their own networks, not just attend the ones we design for them.

    Olami brought the conversation to Ontario’s college sector, where students are juggling work, caregiving, and coursework, often all in the same day. He shared the story of one student finishing an eight-hour shift, racing home to her kids, and starting her assignment at midnight. “Resilience,” Olami said, “shouldn’t be about surviving hardship. It should be about thriving with opportunity.” Olami added to the piece on community with a great comment that has stuck with me since our conversation, “real community doesn’t come from infographics, it comes from matching the reality of students’ lives.”

    Across all three perspectives, the thread was clear: affordability touches everything. Forty percent of students skip meals. One in four struggle to pay rent. One in five use food banks. Four percent have experienced homelessness. Students are still choosing education, but they’re not sure if their institutions and their governments through investment are choosing them back.

    And yet, there’s optimism. Students still believe in the value of learning. They want to help shape institutions that see them not only as learners, but as people with families, jobs, and ambitions that stretch far beyond the classroom.

    You can catch the full conversation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywcHrBEwA-M.

    Looking Ahead

    On the next Focus Friday, we will be covering the hottest topic of that week: the Federal Budget. What happens, what it means, and what the early reactions to it are. That conversation happens on November 7th, and registration is already open (see below, in a big green box).

    In the meantime, keep sharing your ideas in the registration form or reach out anytime at [email protected].

    I’m looking forward to seeing many of you this afternoon, and again in two weeks.

    Cheers,

    Tiff

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  • PLAN YOUR ACTION NOW (Todd Wolfson, AAUP/AFT)

    PLAN YOUR ACTION NOW (Todd Wolfson, AAUP/AFT)

    Faculty, students and staff are joining together throughout the country to defend and advance higher education. Plan your action now and register it here: https://docs.google.com/…/1bhu9QLt1…/viewform…

    This event is in collaboration with studentsriseup.org

    Students Rise Up (Project Rise Up) is a plan to organize millions of students to disrupt business as usual and force our schools and our political system to finally work for us.

    Right now, billionaires and fascists are attacking our schools because they know that student protest could bring them down. Our power is that we outnumber them. If working people and students unite to use our power of disruption and non-cooperation, we can crack the foundations of their power.

    It all starts on November 7th, 2025 with walkouts and protests at hundreds of schools around the country. Join us.

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  • Funding technology initiatives in uncertain times

    Funding technology initiatives in uncertain times

    Key points:

    Recent policy shifts have caused significant uncertainty in K-12 education funding, especially for technology initiatives. It’s no longer business as usual. Schools can’t rely on the same federal operating funds they’ve traditionally used to purchase technology or support innovation. This unpredictability has pushed school districts to explore creative, nontraditional ways to fund technology initiatives. To succeed, it’s important to understand how to approach these funding opportunities strategically.

    How to find funding

    Despite the challenges, there are still many grants available to support education initiatives and technology projects. Start with an online search using key terms related to your project–for example, “virtual reality,” “virtual field trips,” or “career and technical education.”

    Explore national organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation or Project Tomorrow and consider potential local funding sources. Local organizations such as Rotary or Kiwanis clubs can be powerful allies in helping to fund projects. The local library and city or county government may also offer grants or partnership opportunities. Schools should also reach out to locally-headquartered businesses, many of which have community outreach or corporate social responsibility goals that align with supporting local education.

    Colleges and universities are another valuable resource. They may be conducting research that aligns with your school’s technology project. Building relationships with these institutions and organizations can put your school “in the right place at the right time” when new funding opportunities arise.

    Strategies to win the grant

    Once potential funding sources are identified, the next step is crafting a compelling proposal. Consider the following strategies to strengthen your application.

    1. Focus on the “how and why,” not just the “what.” If your school is seeking funds to buy hardware, don’t simply say, “Here’s what we want to buy.” Instead, frame it as, “Here’s how this project will improve student learning and why it matters.” Funders want to see the impact their support will have on outcomes. The more clearly a proposal connects technology to learning gains, the stronger it will be.

    2. Highlight the research. Use evidence to validate your project’s value. For example, if a school plans to purchase virtual reality headsets, cite studies showing that VR improves knowledge retention, engagement, and comprehension compared to traditional instruction. Demonstrating that the technology is research-backed helps funders feel confident in their investment.

    3. Paint a picture. Bring the project to life. Describe what students will experience and how they’ll benefit. For example: “When students put on the headset, they aren’t just reading about ancient civilizations, they’re walking through them.” Vivid descriptions help reviewers visualize the impact and believe in your vision.

    Eight questions to consider when applying for a grant

    Use these guiding questions to sharpen your proposal and ensure a strong foundation for implementation and long-term success.

    1. What is the goal? Clearly define what students will be able to do as a result of the project. Use action-orientated language: “Students will be able to…”
    2. Is the technology effective? Support your proposal with evidence such as whitepapers, case studies, or research that can demonstrate proven impact.
    3. How will the technology impact these specific students? Emphasize what makes your school or district unique, whether it’s serving a rural, urban, or high-poverty community and how this technology addresses those specific needs.
    4. What is the scope of the application? Specify whether the project involves elementary school, secondary school, or a specific subject or program like a STEM lab.
    5. How will success be measured? Too often schools reach the end of a project without a plan to track results. Plan your evaluation from the start. Track key metrics such as attendance, disciplinary data, academic performance, or engagement surveys, both before and after implementation to demonstrate results.
    6. What are your budgetary needs? Include all associated costs, including professional development and substitute coverage for teacher training.
    7. What happens after the grant is over? If you plan to use the technology for multiple years, apply for a multi-year grant rather than assuming future funding will appear. Sustainability is key.
    8. How will success be celebrated and communicated to stakeholders? Share results with the community and stakeholders. Host events recognizing teachers, students, and partners. Invite local media and highlight your funding partners–they’re not just donors, but partners in student success.

    Moving forward with confidence

    Education funding will likely remain uncertain in the years ahead. However, by being intentional about where to look for funds, how to frame proposals, and how to measure and share impact, schools can continue to implement innovative technology initiatives that elevate teaching and learning.

    Latest posts by eSchool Media Contributors (see all)

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  • Will US science survive and thrive, or fade away?

    Will US science survive and thrive, or fade away?

    by Paul Temple

    When Robert Oppenheimer graduated from Harvard in 1925, young American scientists wanting to work with the world’s best researchers crossed the Atlantic as a matter of course. As a theoretical physicist, Oppenheimer’s choice was between Germany, particularly Göttingen and Leipzig, and England, particularly Cambridge. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll know that Cambridge didn’t work out for him, so in 1926 he went to work with Max Born, one of the leading figures in quantum mechanics, at Göttingen, receiving his doctorate there just a year later. His timing was good: within a few years from the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, attacks on academics, Jewish and otherwise, and then of course the Second World War, had destroyed what was perhaps the world’s most important university system. Let us note that academic structures, depending on relatively small numbers of intellectual leaders, usually able to move elsewhere, are fragile creations.

    I used to give a lecture about the role of universities in driving economic development, with particular reference to scientific and technological advances. Part of this lecture covered the role of US universities in supporting national economic progress, starting with the Land Grant Acts (beginning in 1862, in the middle of the Civil War for heaven’s sake!), through which the federal government funded the creation of universities in the new states of the west; going on to examine support for university research in the Second World War, of which the Manhattan Project was only a part; followed by the 1945 report by Vannevar Bush, Science – the endless frontier, which provided the rationale for continued government support for university research. The Cold War was then the context for further large-scale federal funding, not just in science and technology but in social science also, spin-offs from which produced the internet, biotech, Silicon Valley, and a whole range of other advanced industries. So, my lecture concluded, look at what a century-and-a-half of government investment in university-derived knowledge gets you: if not quite a new society, then one changed out of all recognition – and, mostly, for the better.

    The currently-ongoing attack by the Trump administration on American universities seems to have overlooked the historical background just sketched out. My “didn’t it work out just fine?” lecture now needs a certain amount of revision: it is almost describing a lost world.

    President Trump and his MAGA movement, says Nathan Heller writing in The New Yorker this March, sees American universities as his main enemies in the culture wars on which his political survival depends. Before he became Trump’s Vice-President, JD Vance in a 2021 speech entitled “The Universities are the enemy” set out a plan to “aggressively attack the universities in this country” (New York Times, 3 June 2025). University leaderships seem to have been unprepared for this unprecedented assault, despite ample warning. (A case where Trump and his allies needed to be taken both literally and seriously.) Early 2025 campus pro-Palestinian protests then conveniently handed the Trump administration the casus belli to justify acting against leading universities, further helped by clumsy footwork on the part of university leaderships who seem largely not to have rested their cases on the very high freedom of speech bar set by the First Amendment, meaning that, for example, anti-Semitic speech (naturally, physical attacks would be a different matter) would be lawful under Supreme Court rulings, however much they personally may have deplored it. Instead, university presidents allowed themselves to be presented as apologists for Hamas. (Needless to say, demands that free speech should be protected at all costs does not apply in the Trump/Vance world to speech supporting causes of which they disapprove.)

    American universities have never faced a situation remotely like this. As one Harvard law professor quoted in the New Yorker piece remarks, the Trump attacks are about the future of “higher education in the United States, and whether it is going to survive and thrive, or fade away”. If you consider that parallels with Germany in 1933 are far-fetched, please explain why.

    SRHE Fellow Dr Paul Temple is Honorary Associate Professor in the Centre for Higher Education Studies, UCL Institute of Education.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

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  • A week of media literacy across the globe

    A week of media literacy across the globe

    From 24 to 31 October, the world marks Global Media and Information Literacy Week, an annual event first launched by UNESCO in 2011 as a way for organizations around the world to share ideas and explore innovative ways to promote media and information literacy for all. This year’s theme is Minds Over AI — MIL in Digital Spaces. 

    To join in the global conversation, over the next week News Decoder will present a series of articles that look at media literacy in different ways.

    Today, we give you links to articles we’ve published over the past year on topics that range from fact-checking and information verification to the power of social media and the good and bad of artificial intelligence. 

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  • 70% of Americans say feds shouldn’t control admissions, curriculum

    70% of Americans say feds shouldn’t control admissions, curriculum

    This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.

    Dive Brief: 

    • Most polled Americans, 70%, disagreed that the federal government should control “admissions, faculty hiring, and curriculum at U.S. colleges and universities to ensure they do not teach inappropriate material,” according to a survey released Wednesday by the Public Religion Research Institute. 
    • The majority of Americans across political parties — 84% of Democrats, 75% of independents and 58% of Republicans — disagreed with federal control over these elements of college operations. 
    • The poll’s results come as the Trump administration seeks to exert control over college workings, including in its recent offer of priority for federal research funding in exchange for making sweeping policy changes aligned with the government’s priorities. 

    Dive Insight: 

    The poll from the nonpartisan PRRI isn’t the first survey to suggest that large swaths of Americans disagree with the Trump administration’s approach to higher education policy. 

    Slightly more than half of Americans, 56%, said they disapproved of how President Donald Trump was handling higher education-related issues, a May poll from The Associated Press and NORC at the University of Chicago found. 

    However, the AP-NORC poll found a stark political divide, with 90% of Democrats disapproving of Trump’s approach and 83% of Republicans approving of it. 

    More specifically, 73% of Democrats said at the time that they disapproved of the withholding of colleges’ federal funds for not complying with the government’s political goals. Conversely, 51% of Republicans approved of that approach. 

    Another poll — this one of Jewish Americans conducted by Ipsos and researchers from the University of Rochester and the University of California —  found in September that 58% said they disagree with the Trump administration pausing or canceling vast sums of federal research funding to Harvard University and the University of California, Los Angeles.

    In both cases, the Trump administration has accused the universities of not doing enough to address antisemitism on campus and demanded sweeping policy changes. However, federal judges have largely blocked the government’s attempted suspension of their research funding. 

    In the Ipsos poll, 72% of Jewish Americans said they were concerned about antisemitism on college campuses. But the same share said they believed the Trump administration was “using antisemitism as an excuse to penalize and tax college campuses.” 

    The Trump administration has so far cut deals with four colleges: three Ivy League institutions and, most recently, the University of Virginia, the first public institution to strike such an agreement. 

    More deals could be coming down the pike. 

    Earlier this month, the Trump administration offered priority research funding to nine colleges if they signed a compact dictating certain policies impacting their tuition, admissions and academics. Those provisions spanned from adopting a five-year tuition freeze to potentially dissolving campus units that “purposefully punish” and “belittle” conservative ideas. 

    While most of the colleges rejected the compact, Trump appeared to open up the deal to any interested institution. Additionally, two of the initial nine colleges — the University of Texas at Austin and Vanderbilt University — haven’t yet said publicly if they will sign or reject the compact. 

    Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier said he would provide feedback on the compact, adding that he looked forward to “continuing the conversation,” according to The Vanderbilt Hustler. 

    Meanwhile, UT-Austin officials have been silent on the compact lately, though the chair of the UT System initially said it was “honored” its flagship received the proposal.

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