Category: Featured

  • Better Defining and Measuring Higher Ed’s Value

    Better Defining and Measuring Higher Ed’s Value

    News this month that a group of stakeholders convened by the U.S. Education Department agreed on a new federal approach to assessing colleges offered fresh evidence that we as a country have decided to judge the value of higher education based primarily on students’ economic outcomes.

    The mechanism approved by the federal negotiating panel will set minimum earnings thresholds for graduates of academic programs at all colleges and universities; programs that fail to hit the mark will lose federal loan access or even Pell Grant funds, depending on how widespread the failure is.

    Building a new government accountability scheme around postcollege economic outcomes makes sense: Ensuring that learners come out of their educational experience better off financially than they would have been otherwise is a logical minimum requirement.

    But it reflects a larger problem, which is that we don’t have good ways of defining, let alone measuring, what quality or success look like in postsecondary education. And those of us who believe in higher education have erred badly by letting politicians and critics judge it exclusively by a narrow economic outcome like postgraduation salary.

    Most importantly, we’ve never come close to being able to measure learning—how much students cognitively gain from a course of study or academic experience. What a game changer it would be if we could—we’d really know which institutions actually help their learners grow the most. (I suspect such a measurement would upend our thinking about which colleges and universities are “the best,” and that part of why we haven’t ever solved this problem is because it wouldn’t be in the interest of the institutions that are most esteemed now.)

    Instead we look for proxies, and as our ability to track people’s movements between education and work has improved, we’ve focused on postcollege economic outcomes as our primary (if not exclusive) way of judging whether institutions serve learners well.

    That’s logical in many ways:

    1. Most learners cite career success as their top reason for pursuing postsecondary education and training,
    2. Federal and state governments invest in higher education in large part because of the institutions’ economic contributions, and
    3. It’s comparatively easy. We can’t expect politicians with limited understanding and expertise to develop sophisticated accountability systems.

    But overdependence on postcollege economic outcomes to judge higher education’s success and value ignores the full range of benefits that colleges and universities purport to deliver for individuals and for society collectively. It also has a range of potential unintended consequences, including deterring students from entering fields that don’t pay well (and institutions from supporting those fields).

    Many academic leaders hoped that if they ignored calls for accountability, the demands would fade. But in that vacuum, we ended up with limited, flawed tools for assessing the industry’s performance.

    The resulting loss of public confidence has damaged higher education, and turning that tide won’t be easy. But it’s not too late—if college leaders take seriously their need to marshal proof (not just words) that their institutions are delivering on what they promise.

    What would that look like? College leaders need to collectively define for themselves and for the public how their institutions are willing to be held accountable for what they say they do for learners and for the public good.

    This needs to be a serious attempt to say (1) this is what we purport to provide to individuals and to society, (2) this is how we will gauge success in achieving those goals, and (3) we commit to publicly reporting on our progress.

    Pushback against this sort of measurement and accountability (excluding those who simply don’t believe colleges should have to prove themselves, who at this point must be ignored) tends to focus on two reasonable complications: (a) different types of institutions do different things and have differing missions, and (b) some of what colleges and universities do can be difficult (and perhaps impossible) to measure.

    On argument (a), it’s certainly true that any effort to compare the full contributions of major research universities and of community colleges, for example, would need to focus on different things. The research university indicators might account for how many inventions their scientists have developed and how many graduate students they train; the community college indicators might include reskilling of unemployed workers and ESL classes for new immigrants preparing to become citizens.

    But in their core functioning focused on undergraduate learners, most colleges do pretty much the same thing: try to help them achieve their educational goals, including a mix of the practical (developing knowledge, skills and preparation for work), the personal (intellectual and personal growth), and the collective (contributions to society, including being engaged participants in communities and society).

    And on critique (b), yes, it’s true that some of what colleges and universities say they do may be hard to measure. But have we really tried? There are lots of big brains on college and university campuses: Couldn’t a working group find ways to quantify whether or not participation in a postsecondary course of study produces people with greater intercultural understanding or empathy? Or that they are more likely to donate to charity or to vote in national elections?

    The goal of this initiative would be to develop (through the collective participation of a diverse group of institutional and other stakeholders, through an existing association or a new coalition of the willing created expressly for this purpose) a broadly framed but very specific menu of indicators that would present a fuller picture of whether colleges and universities are delivering on the promises they make to students and to society more broadly. Ideally we’d generate institution-level data that would scaffold up to an industrywide portrait.

    The information would almost certainly give college leaders fodder to make a better public case about what their institutions already do well. But it would just as likely also reveal areas where the institutions fall short of what they say in their mission statements and where they collectively need to improve, and provide a scorecard of sorts to show progress over time.

    At the core, it would give them a way of showing, to themselves and to their critics, that they are willing to look at their own performance and prove their value, rather than just asserting it as they have arrogantly done for a long time. Colleges and universities would get public credit for being willing to hold themselves accountable.

    What would we want to measure, and how would we do so? Smarter people than me would need to help answer those questions, but possible areas of exploration include the following, based on ground laid over the years by the Gates Foundation’s Postsecondary Value Commission, Lumina and Gallup in a 2023 report, and others.

    Economic indicators might include:

    • Lifetime earnings
    • Employment and unemployment rates/job placement in desired field
    • Return on investment (comparing learners’ spending on their education with their lifetime earnings)
    • Social mobility (Do colleges help people advance up the economic ladder? Can we update the 2017 Chetty data to become a regular part of the landscape?)
    • Debt repayment

    Noneconomic indicators might include:

    • Employer alignment (Do higher education programs help students develop the skills and knowledge employers demand—technical skills like AI readiness and “human skills” such as critical thinking, problem-solving and creativity?)
    • Civic and democratic engagement (voting rates, charitable contributions)
    • Empathy and social cohesion (Does going to college make us more empathetic? More inclined to understand those who are different? Less racist?)
    • Health and emotional well-being/happiness (Surely with all the health data out there, one might be able to document some correlation, if not causation?)
    • Intercultural/global understanding

    Most of the indicators above would gauge contributions to individuals, rather than to society as a whole (though obviously some accrue to society). Those who believe we’ve stopped viewing higher education as a public good might argue for trying to measure the contributions institutions make to local and national economies (through their research, role as employers. etc.), as community anchors (medically, culturally, spiritually), and the like.

    Higher education has serious work to do to earn back the American public’s trust and confidence. Argumentation won’t suffice. I recognize that it may be hard to find (or develop) tangible information to build a data-based case that colleges and universities do what they say they do in their mission statements and promotional brochures.

    But could it hurt to try? What we’re doing now isn’t working.

    Doug Lederman was editor and co-founder of Inside Higher Ed from 2004 through 2024. He is now principal of Lederman Advisory Services.

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  • The Dangers of Pathologizing Administration (opinion)

    The Dangers of Pathologizing Administration (opinion)

    “One of my most distinguished colleagues … for a time refused to attend any meetings and made a point of always working on a book while others met to discuss departmental and university issues. After two years of boycotting meetings … [he] published a very nice book on the presidency … [and] cheerfully pointed out that he had written virtually the entire book during hours when he was not present at meetings.” —Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters (Oxford, 2011)

    Popular culture is rife with depictions of the hapless or even evil academic administrator, typically a dean. Most administrators know and regularly use the “double secret probation” line from the authoritarian and humorless Dean Wormer in Animal House (1978). In Old School (2003), Jeremy Piven portrayed a particularly noxious and conniving dean, who finally met his death when he was crushed by a car while fly fishing.

    More recently, dean representations have been kinder. For example, the dean from the 2021 Netflix series The Chair both misquotes Shakespeare to English faculty and uses the line “butts in seats” when trying to juice his English Department into taking action to stem the loss of majors and students. He is at least nice and kind.

    Maybe the most accurate representation of a dean was the one portrayed by Oscar Nuñez in the 2023 TV drama Lucky Hank, a modernized version of an excellent academic satire, Richard Russo’s Straight Man (1997). Constrained by a hapless president hell-bent on cutting faculty positions, and frustrated by turbulent and upset professors, again in the English Department, Dean Rose at least tries to muddle through with compassion. So, ineffective but nice is about as good as it gets for the representation of deans in popular culture.

    Popular culture provides lenses through which many of us see the world. A year before Animal House’s Dean Wormer, moviegoers were introduced to George Lucas’s menacing dark side of the force in Star Wars. And today, when a promising colleague tries their hand at administration, some may say that they have “gone over to the dark side.” Indeed, one of our old Ph.D. advisers (Jeff’s) emailed him with that remark—and he certainly heard it from many others, too—when he took an associate dean role in 2013.

    Several years ago, Jeff gave a presentation on how senior tenured faculty can make change difficult and the need for deans to more effectively consult and lead with them through shared governance. As part of his presentation, he showed an image of Bill Lumbergh, the mediocre boss played by Gary Cole in Office Space (1999), wearing a Darth Vader helmet. The line Jeff used in the presentation was, essentially, “faculty find us to be an odd mix of both pure evil and mediocrity.”

    The line landed well, with steady laughter for around 10 seconds in a room of at least 50 deans and associate deans. That strong response reveals the degree to which attacks on administrators are ubiquitous across universities and even disciplines.

    Indeed, beyond popular culture, we tend to vilify and pathologize administrators even within academia. In an Inside Higher Ed article titled “Who and What Is ‘The Administration’?,” a piece designed to help academics understand governance and organizational charts, Kathy Johnson Bowles describes academics’ general feeling about “the administration” being “a shadowy, amorphous group of suit-wearing, exorbitantly paid employees. They are to be vilified for making knuckleheaded, illogical, tone-deaf decisions that put the institution at risk, insult the faculty, demoralize the staff, enrage students and underestimate the power of the alumni.”

    Rather than taking the temperature of faculty attitudes, as Bowles does, Ginsberg, in his The Fall of the Faculty, offers a host of disparaging remarks about administrators, using a broad brush to condemn them as incompetent. For example, in writing about associate deans, whom he disparagingly calls “deanlets,” he says, “Many deanlets’ managerial savvy consists mainly of having the capacity to spout last year’s management buzz words during meetings, retreats, and planning exercises.”

    Ginsberg summarizes his whole project as such: “My book sounds a warning and offers a prescription designed to slow if not halt the spread of administrative blight. The prescribed medication will come too late for some victims, but others may yet recover.” While the expansion of administration versus faculty positions is a legitimate problem, to compare it to a disease is unnecessarily critical and simply enlarges the gap between faculty and administration that is so damaging to academic culture.

    Our own journey into academic administration was not a direct one. Years ago, we were both working together at a university in east Texas, and we had a regular poker game that included three other faculty members. On a Saturday night, once we settled seriously into the steady work of picking cards, tossing chips and reading each other’s faces, we regularly hit on two or three subjects. Invariably, we would end up talking about departmental issues (we came from three different departments, all in the liberal arts) and our less-than-impressive dean. We were all relatively young assistant professors, so we made bold claims about the way things should be at the university.

    Looking back, some were very sharp ideas, and others were naïve. One night Jeff said something along the lines of, “If we are so smart, shouldn’t we become deans? You know, lead, follow or get out of the way.” We had a good chuckle and returned to our game. Nearly 16 years later, while Jeff was the only one to take the path to become a dean, at least three of the other four friends have spent significant time serving as department-level administrators.

    If years ago we began as youthful know-it-alls with a slight disdain for our dean, what happened to commit us to various forms of administration? What led us to the dark side? For Jeff, his pathologization of administration earlier in his career began to end upon reading The Fall of the Faculty, a book he finally closed in fatigue. A fatuous and stunningly self-indulgent, even mean-spirited book, it opened his eyes not only to his knee-jerk approach to his dean at the time but also the degree to which faculty, and mostly senior faculty, had used ridicule and hatred of administration as a justification for not providing service and not engaging with the serious issues of the university. For Lee, his own concerns about the dangers of pathologization were driven home when a faculty colleague actually said to him that just because he had an administrative role, he would continue to lose friends.

    In both of these examples, we find the myth of the dark side at play. Faculty render an image of Darth Administrator so they can imagine themselves to be the light side of the force—Professor Skywalkers all, pure in defending the virtue and mission of higher education. But light and dark are complementary opposites, and as Jeff’s example above should indicate to anyone familiar with Star Wars’ lore, anger and hatred are the way of the Sith.

    An essay about the othering of university administrators written by two middle-aged, straight, white full professors may seem problematic, to say the least. To be clear, we are not claiming this othering as an issue of oppression. And indeed, we note that administrators from underrepresented backgrounds can be othered in very troubling ways. Rather, we identify this pathologizing of administration because it disrupts the functioning of higher education.

    It would be unfair if we did not acknowledge that administrators also grouse about faculty. For Lee, in his less generous moments, this may take the form of simply repeating a faculty complaint in a new setting as a bit of dry humor (e.g., “Did you know that requiring faculty to teach more than twice a week might cause the university to lose its R-1 status?”). We are not so naïve as to suggest that there should be no tension between faculty and administration or in any workplace. But what makes the faculty pathologizing of administration so different is its pervasive and public nature. Treating administration as the “dark side” has become the norm within academia, but it is a norm that is our undoing.

    Probably the most important problem that arises from this pathologization is the inability of faculty and administrators to cross the divide and work effectively together. There are always faculty who figure out how to do it, or do it because they know it is key to winning the support and advocacy they require. But what happens when faculty disdain or distrust for administration creates an obstacle? Perhaps a faculty member, lacking faith in their administration, will fail to ask for support for a student to attend a conference. In such a case, it is the student who will suffer the consequences. Or perhaps upon receiving a request from a faculty member who has repeatedly slighted the administration, an administrator may do their job in a professional but minimal way, still helping the faculty member, but maybe not moving heaven and Earth to make their life better. Why should they?

    Constant negativity coarsens administrator experiences and attitudes. Over the years we have openly heard “We need fewer deans here,” “You’re just going to leave soon for another higher-paying job,” “I don’t know why you are paid so much,” “We need to return to the old model with no deans,” “Administrators don’t teach real classes” and other troubling statements. With all this in mind, we ask our faculty colleagues—because faculty are the colleagues of administrators and vice versa—to consider a few questions.

    • Think of the damage that has been done to U.S. institutions by politicians vilifying university professors as lazy and ineffective. Why would you contribute to this effort? And how would you feel about your colleagues if that is how they spoke about you, and so unabashedly?
    • Effective administration often requires learning the culture of an institution and building strong relationships. Faculty rightly complain about administrators job-hopping across institutions. But to what degree do faculty drive away potential leaders and allies?
    • Consider also the opportunity cost for faculty. Viewing administrators through the “dark side” lens, or knowing that their colleagues hold these negative views, may deter talented faculty from moving into leadership roles and accomplishing great things in their careers. This, of course, leaves a lot of space for the less talented among us. Whom do you want in the administrative role—the person with the strongest knowledge of how the university works, vision for the program, capacity for listening, etc.? Or simply the person with the thickest skin, who can take the most guff from faculty and who plays favorites to make the right people happy?

    Finally, we need to shift the debate away from faculty versus administration. If we remember that the purpose of higher education is our students, and if we always center our students in conversations between faculty and administration, we stand a much better chance of working together.

    Closing this gap is a responsibility that falls on all of us. Administrators and faculty can do a lot more to communicate and engage more effectively, thereby making such othering less likely. In an earlier essay, we discussed ways to improve shared governance. Administrators who build trust through small actions—i.e., doing the thing they said they would do, closing out communications and being as transparent and consultative as possible—will close the gap on their side substantially. Faculty who are able and willing to set aside the casual critiques and invite administrators into collaborations, to bring problems with solutions to them—or who are even willing to have a chat over a cup of coffee—will likewise do a great deal to close the gap from their side.

    Returning to Ginsberg’s example of the faculty member who wrote a book instead of attending departmental meetings, this moment epitomizes the desire of some faculty to see themselves as islands alone in the ocean. However, a university is not a place for islands. It is more like one of those ancient Mediterranean warships, the triremes, with masses of people rowing together in unison. By refusing department meetings and service, Ginsberg’s colleague took his oar out of the water, making the rowing harder for everyone else. Likewise, as junior faculty we observed the failure of some senior faculty to perform their work while engaging in casual slander of administrators. To what degree does faculty abdication of their duties actually contribute to the growth of administration? Somebody has to do the work.

    So, please, do the work, step into leadership, put your oar in the water, come to the dark side, acknowledge the humanity of administrators and let us work together to build a stronger and more positive university for everyone.

    Jeff Crane is the dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, and host of the Yeah, I Got a F#%*ing Job With a Liberal Arts Degree podcast and co-host of the SNAFUBAR podcast.

    Lee Bebout is a professor of English and recovering departmental administrator at Arizona State University whose recent research on political efforts to thwart social transformation has provided insight into how higher education resists change.

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  • As men stop going to college, women have now overtaken them in graduate and professional degrees

    As men stop going to college, women have now overtaken them in graduate and professional degrees

    by Jon Marcus, The Hechinger Report
    January 20, 2026

    WATERTOWN, Mass. — Amanda Leef remembers thinking for the first time about becoming a veterinarian when she was 4 and found a garter snake in her Michigan backyard.

    “I think every girl goes through a phase of wanting to be a vet,” Leef said.

    For her, it wasn’t just a phase. Now, at 48, she co-owns her own bustling veterinary practice, Heal Veterinary Clinic, in this Boston suburb. 

    All seven veterinarians here are women. So is the large team of vet techs, and the entire rest of the 22-member medical staff.

    “In really broad generalities, I think women are more interested in the emotional and empathetic side of things than men are,” Leef said, sitting on the floor of an examination room with one of her patients, an affectionate, white-furred golden retriever named Cypress.

    For that and other reasons, women studying veterinary medicine now outnumber men by four to one. 

    It’s not just veterinary school. The number of women has surpassed the number of men in law school, medical school, pharmacy school, optometry school and dental school.

    Women in the United States now earn 40 percent more doctoral degrees overall, and nearly twice as many master’s degrees, as men, according to the U.S. Department of Education — a trend transforming high-end work. 

    This is no longer some distant statistical abstraction. Americans can see it when they take their pets to the vet or their kids to the dentist, need a lawyer or an eye exam, see a therapist or pick up a prescription.

    The dramatic shift in who is being trained for these fields is partly because more women are going into them. But it’s also the result of a steady slide in the number of men enrolling in graduate and professional schools. And while that may be elevating women, it’s affecting the nation’s economic competitiveness and even the point at which people get married and have children.

    “Having all students represented and engaged in graduate study ensures that we have healthy communities and families and a vital economy,” said Chevelle Newsome, president of the Council of Graduate Schools.

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

    Graduate schools — including the 460 Newsome represents — have their own motive for wanting more men to enroll. They’re facing new threats from declining international enrollment, impending federal borrowing limits for graduate study and a public backlash against the high cost and uneven returns of graduate degrees.

    The main reason women have overtaken men in graduate school, however, is that more women than men are earning the undergraduate degrees required to go on to advanced study. 

    “Women certainly still see education in terms of upward mobility,” said Lisa Greenhill, chief organizational health officer at the American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges, whose job includes trying to diversify veterinary medicine. “Men have a lot more options. They feel like they don’t have to go to a four-year program or a graduate program.”

    The number of men enrolled as undergraduates in college nationwide has dropped by nearly a quarter of a million, or 4 percent, just since 2020, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reports. 

    Women now account for about 60 percent of undergraduate enrollment. Nearly half of women aged 25 to 34 have bachelor’s degrees, compared to 37 percent of men, according to the Pew Research Center.

    “Men aren’t seeing higher education as valuable,” said Newsome. Many go into the trades or take other jobs straight out of high school to begin immediately earning a wage, forgoing the need to spend time in or money on college. Even men who do get undergraduate degrees may not see the value in continuing beyond them, she said.

    The effects of this have been stark and swift.

    The number of women earning law degrees passed the number of men in 2019, figures from the American Bar Association, or ABA, show; while only four of the law schools ranked among the 20 most prestigious by U.S. News & World Report had more women than men in 2016, women now outnumber men at 18 of them, according to the nonprofit law student news site JURIST. 

    Related: Trump’s attacks on DEI may hurt men in college admission

    That’s already having a real-world impact. By 2020, the ABA says, the majority of general lawyers working for the federal government were women, and by 2023, the majority of associates at law firms were.

    In medical schools, the number of women also overtook the number of men in 2019. Today, 55 percent of future doctors are women, up from 48 percent in 2015, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges, or AAMC.

    Women already make up significantly larger proportions of residents in specialties including endocrinology, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, family medicine and psychiatry.

    Women also outnumber men by three to one in doctoral programs in psychology, and by nearly four to one in master’s programs, the American Psychological Association reports. They make up 55 percent of graduates of dental schools, and 72 percent in pediatric dentistry, according to the American Dental Association. 

    More than seven out of 10 students in schools of optometry are women, the Association of Schools and Colleges of Optometry says. And at pharmacy schools, women constitute two-thirds of students working toward master’s degrees and 56 percent of those seeking doctorates, statistics from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy show.

    There are still more men than women in doctoral and master’s degree programs in business, engineering, math and the physical sciences. But women make up substantial majorities of graduate enrollment in health sciences, public administration, education, social and behavioral sciences and biological and agricultural sciences, according to the Council of Graduate Schools.

    While this represents impressive progress for women, the declining number of men enrolling in graduate programs is bad news for universities and colleges that offer them, for some patients in the health care system and for the economy.

    That’s because the growing number of women going to graduate and professional schools can’t continue forever to outpace the decline in the number of men. Total graduate enrollment at private, nonprofit colleges and universities was already down this fall, the Clearinghouse reports. 

    Related: Football fantasy: Colleges add sports to bring men, but it doesn’t always work

    That’s a problem made worse by visa restrictions and cuts to federal research funding, which have helped reduce the number of international students coming to the United States for graduate study by 12 percent, according to the Institute of International Education. 

    New federal loan limits scheduled to take effect next year are widely expected to further eat into graduate school enrollment. The changes will cap borrowing at $100,000 for graduate students and $200,000 for those in professional programs. That’s much less than the $408,150 the AAMC says it costs to get a medical degree from a private, nonprofit university or the $297,745 from a public one. The association of medical colleges projects a national shortage of as many as 124,000 physicians by 2034.

    The price of getting a graduate degree has more than tripled since 2000, according to the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Graduate degrees have become a critical revenue source for universities, which take in about $20 billion a year from master’s programs alone, a separate analysis, by the right-leaning think tank the American Enterprise Institute, calculates.

    Students of all genders are increasingly questioning the return on that investment. Nearly 40 percent of prospective graduate students say graduate programs that cost more than $10,000 a year are too expensive, a new survey by the enrollment management consulting firm EAB finds. Payoffs vary widely, making some graduate degrees “a potentially high-risk investment,” the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce has concluded. 

    The proportion of Americans 25 and older with master’s degrees or higher has fallen since 2000, from first in the world to 24th, according to the World Bank, while the percentage of those with doctoral degrees has dropped during that period from first to seventh.

    “That is a huge concern, when you think about where economies are going,” said Claudia Buchmann, an Ohio State University sociologist who studies this issue and is coauthor of the book “The Rise of Women.” “If we’re trying to compete on a global level, the fact that men’s college-going rates are so stagnant means we can’t fix this problem until we get more men.”

    Related: Even as women outpace men in graduating from college, their earnings remain stuck

    Men are, after all, half the nation’s labor force. And while some graduate degrees may not pay off, many of them do, substantially. People with advanced degrees are also much less likely to be unemployed.

    “When you think about global economic competitiveness for the United States — despite the skepticism that’s out there — education and training are still the keys to good jobs,” Buchmann said. Falling behind by that measure “is doing damage to men in this country.”

    But experts worry that the gender shift is self-perpetuating. Men may be put off by what they see as the “feminization” of professions in which they now are the minority, research by the veterinary medical colleges association concluded. 

    “I’m not seeing a national effort to say we need to change this,” Buchmann said. “If anything, the opposite is true.” 

    Graduate school leaders say the most effective efforts at reversing this trend are at the undergraduate level. “A lot of the effort from the graduate community has been to reach down and support those projects,” said Newsome, who was formerly dean of graduate studies at California State University, Sacramento. Universities also are encouraging employers to sponsor graduate education for male employees, she said.

    The effects of this widening gender divide are not just economic. New studies show that growing gender disparities in education can affect relationships. Marriage rates have fallen as levels of education rise, according to research from Iowa State University; each additional year of schooling reduces by about 4 percentage points the likelihood that someone between 25 and 34 is married. The proportion of Americans in that age bracket who are married has declined from 80 percent in 1970 to 38 percent today.

    Related: Universities and colleges search for ways to reverse the decline in the ranks of male students

    “When folks are looking for partners, there’s a desire to find someone economically comparable,” said Greenhill, of the veterinary medical colleges association. Added Buchmann, at Ohio State: “A lot of masculine norms are about being the breadwinner of the family. If the woman is the principal breadwinner, that presents not just economic challenges, but challenges to make marriages work.”

    More-educated women are also more likely to delay or forgo having children, according to separate research from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

    Back at her veterinary clinic, Amanda Leef makes the rounds, checking in on a dog getting his teeth cleaned and a pair of kittens waiting to be adopted. 

    Only one male veterinarian has ever applied to work there, Leef said. He was hired, but eventually left to go into research.

    “It does change the personality of a clinic” to be made up of only women, she said. “A staff that’s diverse is more accessible to a broader range of people. I just think the world is better with greater gender diversity.”

    Contact writer Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556, [email protected] or jpm.82 on Signal.

    This story about higher education and men was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.

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  • How to make online courses more engaging – Campus Review

    How to make online courses more engaging – Campus Review

    Surveys show the challenge clearly. In New Zealand, students report feeling less engaged online than in traditional classrooms. In the US, 78 per cent of learners say face-to-face courses hold their attention better.

    This pattern appears globally, and universities often identify the same cause: conventional courses are simply too long and dense for digital formats. So how do we make online learning both simpler and more engaging?

    Why engagement drops in online university courses

    Most online courses still mirror traditional academic structures. Long lectures, heavy materials, and limited interaction assume learners will consume content the same way they would in person – but that rarely happens.

    In physical classrooms, engagement comes naturally through conversation, questions, and shared energy. Online, those moments are harder to recreate. Without interaction, digital learners can easily feel isolated or overwhelmed by complicated terms and information overload – and motivation quickly drops.

    The three pillars of engagement

    Fortunately, research and practice point to three proven solutions: microlearning, interaction, and personalization.

    1. Microlearning
    Bite-sized modules help learners absorb information faster and stay focused. Studies show microlearning leads to up to 60 per cent faster completion and 50 per cent higher engagement. Over 70 per cent of Gen Z and millennials prefer short, digestible content over long lectures – and it’s easy to see why. Smaller lessons feel manageable, rewarding, and easy to complete.

    2. Interaction
    Gamified tasks, simulations, and quizzes turn learners from passive viewers into active participants. Studies show that interactive simulations can boost retention by 67 per cent. In some cases, gamified online learning can be even more engaging than traditional classroom discussions because every learner participates equally.

    3. Personalisation
    When training adapts to a learner’s goals or progress, it becomes more meaningful. 78 per cent of teachers confirm that personalisation drives higher motivation and completion rates. It makes learners feel seen, and helps them focus on what really matters to their growth.

    Why short courses are easier to build than ever

    Many institutions want to create short, interactive, and personalised courses but worry it will take too much time or too many resources. That was true in the past, when updating course structure meant redoing everything manually.

    Now, new authoring tools make the process fast and scalable. For instance, iSpring Suite AI helps educators design short courses directly in PowerPoint, complete with quizzes, interactive scenarios, and gamified elements. Its templates and built-in content library significantly cut course creation time down from months to weeks.

    Middlesex University adopted iSpring Suite to increase learner participation through shorter, interactive, and personalised experiences. The result? Over 12,000 quiz views in a single academic year.

    With AI-assisted authoring, educators can also now test and refine ideas in real time – no large teams or budgets required.

    Creating digital courses is as easy as designing a presentation, and you can try it free for two weeks.

    The bottom line

    To keep learners engaged, universities must rethink course design and focus on shorter, interactive, and personalised learning experiences. These formats match how people actually consume information today.

    The next generation of online education won’t just replicate traditional classrooms It will redefine engagement. And with the right tools, creating meaningful digital learning experiences is now faster, simpler, and more accessible than ever.

    Find out how iSpring Suite AI can turn slides into engaging courses in minutes and register for your two week free trial.

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  • Why universities struggle to act on early warning data

    Why universities struggle to act on early warning data

    Dashboards light up with warning signals weeks into term, yet intervention often comes too late—if at all.

    Despite significant investment in learner analytics and regulatory pressure to meet an 80 per cent continuation threshold for full-time undergraduates, universities consistently struggle to act when their systems flag at-risk students.

    This implementation gap isn’t about technology or data quality. It’s an organisational challenge that exposes fundamental tensions between how universities are structured and what regulatory compliance now demands.

    The Office for Students has made its expectations clear: providers must demonstrate they are delivering positive outcomes, with thresholds of 80 per cent continuation and 75 per cent completion for full-time first degree students. Context can explain but not excuse performance below these levels. Universities are expected to identify struggling students early and intervene effectively.

    Yet most institutions remain organised around systems designed for retrospective quality assurance rather than proactive support, creating a gap between regulatory expectations and institutional capability.

    The organisational challenge of early intervention

    When analytics platforms flag students showing signs of disengagement—missed lectures, incomplete activities, limited platform interaction—institutions face an organisational challenge, not a technical one. The data arrives weeks into term, offering time for meaningful intervention. But this is precisely when universities struggle to act.

    The problem isn’t identifying risk. Modern analytics can detect concerning patterns within the first few weeks of term. The problem is organisational readiness: who has authority to act on probabilistic signals? What level of certainty justifies intervention? Which protocols govern the response? Most institutions lack clear answers, leaving staff paralysed between the imperative to support students and uncertainty about their authority to act.

    This paralysis has consequences. OfS data shows that 7.2 per cent of students are at providers where continuation rates fall below thresholds. While sector-level performance generally exceeds requirements, variation at provider and course level suggests some institutions manage early intervention better than others.

    Where regulatory pressure meets organisational resistance

    The clash between regulatory expectations and institutional reality runs deeper than resource constraints or technological limitations. Universities have developed (sometimes over centuries) around a model of academic authority that concentrates judgement at specific points: module boards, exam committees, graduation ceremonies. This architecture of late certainty served institutions well when their primary function was certifying achievement. But it’s poorly suited to an environment demanding early intervention and proactive support.

    Consider how quality assurance typically operates. Module evaluations happen after teaching concludes. External examiners review work after assessment. Progression boards meet after results are finalised. These retrospective processes align with traditional academic governance but clash with regulatory expectations for timely intervention. The Teaching Excellence Framework and B3 conditions assume institutions can support students before problems become irreversible, yet most university processes are designed to make judgements after outcomes are clear.

    The governance gap in managing uncertainty

    Early intervention operates in the realm of probability, not certainty. A student flagged by analytics might be struggling—or might be finding their feet. Acting means accepting false positives; not acting means accepting false negatives. Most institutions lack governance frameworks for managing this uncertainty.

    The regulatory environment compounds this challenge. When the OfS investigates providers with concerning outcomes, it examines what systems are in place for early identification and intervention. Universities must demonstrate they are using “all available data” to support students. But how can institutions evidence good faith efforts when their governance structures aren’t designed for decisions based on partial information?

    Some institutions have tried to force early intervention through existing structures—requiring personal tutors to act on analytics alerts or making engagement monitoring mandatory. But without addressing underlying governance issues, these initiatives often become compliance exercises rather than genuine support mechanisms. Staff comply with requirements to contact flagged students but lack clear protocols for escalation, resources for support, or authority for substantive intervention.

    Building institutional systems that bridge the gap

    Institutions successfully implementing early intervention share common organisational characteristics. They haven’t eliminated the tension between regulatory requirements and academic culture—they’ve built systems to manage it.

    Often they create explicit governance frameworks for uncertainty. Rather than pretending analytics provides certainty, they acknowledge probability and build appropriate decision-making structures. This might include intervention panels with delegated authority, clear escalation pathways, or risk-based protocols that match response to confidence levels. These frameworks document decision-making, providing audit trails that satisfy regulatory requirements while preserving professional judgement.

    They develop tiered response systems that distribute authority appropriately. Light-touch interventions (automated emails, text check-ins) require minimal authority. Structured support (study skills sessions, peer mentoring) operates through professional services. Academic interventions (module changes, assessment adjustments) involve academic staff. This graduated approach enables rapid response to early signals while reserving substantive decisions for appropriate authorities.

    And they invest in institutional infrastructure beyond technology. This includes training staff to interpret probabilistic data, developing shared vocabularies for discussing risk, and creating feedback loops to refine interventions. Successful institutions treat early intervention as an organisational capability requiring sustained development, not a technical project with an end date.

    The compliance imperative and cultural change

    As the OfS continues its assessment cycles, universities face increasing pressure to demonstrate effective early intervention. This regulatory scrutiny makes organisational readiness a compliance issue. Universities can no longer treat early intervention as optional innovation—it’s becoming core to demonstrating adequate quality assurance. Yet compliance-driven implementation rarely succeeds without cultural change. Institutions that view early intervention solely through a regulatory lens often create bureaucratic processes that satisfy auditors but don’t support students.

    More successful institutions frame early intervention as aligning with academic values: supporting student learning, enabling achievement, and promoting fairness. They engage academic staff not as compliance officers but as educators with enhanced tools for understanding student progress. This cultural work takes time but proves essential for moving beyond surface compliance to genuine organisational change.

    Implications for the sector

    The OfS shows no signs of relaxing numerical thresholds—if anything, regulatory expectations continue to strengthen. Financial pressures make student retention more critical. Public scrutiny of value for money increases pressure for demonstrable support. Universities must develop organisational capabilities for early intervention not as a temporary response to regulatory pressure but as a permanent feature of higher education.

    This requires more than purchasing analytics platforms or appointing retention officers. It demands fundamental questions about institutional organisation: How can governance frameworks accommodate uncertainty while maintaining rigour? How can universities distribute authority for intervention while preserving academic standards? How can institutions build cultures that value prevention as much as certification?

    The gap between early warning signals and institutional action is an organisational challenge requiring structural and cultural change. Universities investing only in analytics without addressing organisational readiness will continue to struggle, regardless of how sophisticated their systems become. These aren’t simple changes, but they’re necessary for institutions serious about supporting student success rather than merely measuring it.

    The question facing universities isn’t whether to act on early warning signals—regulatory pressure makes this increasingly mandatory. The question is whether institutions can develop the organisational capabilities to act effectively, bridging the gap between data and decision, between warning and intervention, between regulatory compliance and educational values.

    Those that cannot may find themselves not just failing their students but failing to meet the minimum expectations of a regulated sector.

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  • A new international education strategy

    A new international education strategy

    The Westminster government’s newest iteration of the international education strategy commits the UK to three ambitions: to increase the UK’s international standing through education, to recruit high quality international higher education students from a diverse range of countries, and to grow education exports to £40bn a year by 2030.

    Last time we got an International Education Strategy from the government was back in 2019 – famously it committed the government to increase education exports to £35bn per year, and to increase the number of international HE students studying in the UK to 600,000 per year, again: both by 2030.

    The government’s current best estimate for performance against those targets – which deals with the 2022 calendar year – suggests income from education exports was £32.3bn for that year – with around three quarters of that being derived from higher education activity. For a variety of reasons, it isn’t great data.

    And HESA tells us that there were 758,855 international higher education students during the 2022-23 academic year, though numbers have fallen since.

    Diversification across sub-sectors

    Within the higher education sector the perception has been that this decline in international student numbers has been a political choice in the face of wider public concerns around immigration rather than any failing among universities: changes to dependant visa access, a reduction in the length (from 24 months to 18 months) of the graduate visa for postgraduate taught students, reported difficulties in obtaining student visas, and the onset of price rises linked to the forthcoming international student levy.

    Though a lot of the UK’s historic strengths in international education come via its higher education providers, the strategy is at pains to emphasis the full spectrum of what is on offer, noting:

    We see diversification across sub-sectors as key to long-term success

    Accordingly much of the strategy deals with early years and schools, non-HE tertiary education, English language training, special educational needs, and education technology. But, as with higher education, there is little detail: this will be filled in via an action plan developed by a reconstituted Education Sector Action Group (ESAG). This ministerially-chaired forum will bring together government, industry, and sector representative bodies: each representative will lead on a sub-sector action plan to be published within 100 days of appointment.

    Of course, we don’t even know which minister will chair the forum yet – the strategy is owned jointly by the Department for Education, the Department of Business and Trade, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office. We do know that Steve Smith retains his role as international education champion, and that the strategy will be supported by a range of existing tools and programmes: notably for higher education these include research and technology partnerships including Horizon Europe, plus things like Erasmus+ (from 2027) and Turing (newly confirmed for 2026-27).

    The British Council will play a prominent role too – most notably in the expansion of transnational education provision across every part of the sector. Here robust quality assurance will play a key part – we get detail on schools-level accreditation and oversight, but the parallel section on higher education quality assurance and international standards is missing (despite case studies on the University of London, and the India campus of the University of Southampton). The section on the work of the British Council-led Alumni UK programme (launched in 2022) offers recognition of the value of alumni as international ambassadors.

    And what’s in it for higher education?

    The meat of the strategy for higher education providers concerns a “strategic approach to sustainable international student recruitment”. The key words are “well-managed” and “responsible” recruitment, and a quality student experience should lead to world-class outcomes. It is very encouraging to see that support systems and infrastructure (including local housing) are on the radar too.

    Institutions will be “encouraged to diversify their recruitment”, moving away from reliance on any single country”. There’s support for the sector-owned Agent Quality Framework to tackle poor practices, and a suggestion that government will:

    work closely with the sector to ensure that our institutions recruit international higher education students in a way that maintains quality and student experience. This includes considering factors such as skills and entry requirements, adequate infrastructure, local housing, and support systems

    A section on “maintaining a competitive offer” flags the retention of the (18 month) graduate route, the high potential individual route for those graduating from top 100 institutions (nothing to do with helping UK international education expand, but it is in there), and the change in visa conditions enabling graduates to start businesses while transferring to the “investor founder” route. The international student levy clearly does not help to maintain a competitive offer but we get details of that here too:

    The levy will be fully reinvested into higher education and skills, including the reintroduction of targeted maintenance grant for disadvantaged domestic students, helping to break down barriers to opportunity as part of the government’s Plan for Change and making our higher education system more inclusive for the benefit of all students

    However this ends up benefitting home students, there is no detail on how the policy might discourage (via higher prices, for example) international recruitment.

    Indeed, throughout the strategy there is nothing that deals with the restrictions being placed on higher education as the largest single contributor to educational exports, and how that situation will cause problems (despite warm words about “unlocking the full potential of our education sector”) in meeting this expanded and challenging financial target.

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  • UK unveils new international education strategy

    UK unveils new international education strategy

    • Government aims to grow education exports to £40 billion per year by 2030, growth to come from TNE, ELT, skills and edtech
    • New strategy removes targets on international student numbers with focus on sustainable recruitment
    • Ministerial group known as the Education Sector Action Group (ESAG) to work with sector to deliver action plans tackling key concerns and identifying partnership opportunities

    The long-awaited document marks the first new UK international education strategy (IES) since 2019, which at the time revealed goals to grow international student numbers by 30% by 2030. Education is already one of the UK’s most important exports, bolstering the economy by £32bn per year, with the IES building on 2019’s stated ambition to grow its export value to £35 bn.

    However, after a post-pandemic boom, with international student numbers in the UK reaching 732,285 in 2023/24, the government has moved away from targetting increased enrolments, instead making clear that growth should come from areas such as English language training (ELT), transnational education (TNE) and edtech sectors – worth some £560m, £3bn and £3.89bn in exports respectively.

    The revamped IES outlines three main priorities for UK international education; to grow education exports to a collective $40bn per year, oversee sustainable overseas student recruitment and amplify the UK’s international standing through education – including a focus on cutting red tape for TNE partnerships abroad.

    Elsewhere, the government is drawing on expertise from the international education sector through a reformed ministerial group known as the Education Sector Action Group (ESAG) – a collective tasked with tackling key concerns and identifying partnership opportunities, as well as smoothing the path towards international alliances.

    Each representative will develop an action plan drawing on how its members will support the IES’s three main goals to be published within the first 100 days of their accession to ESAG. As yet it is unclear who will be included in the group.

    Meanwhile, Sir Steve Smith will stay on as the UK’s international education champion, with a remit to “remove barriers to education partnerships” by continuing to engage with India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam. Sir Steve is also looking into opportunities in “emerging economies” such as Brazil, Mexico, and Pakistan, the IES said.

    By expanding overseas, our universities, colleges and education providers can diversify income, strengthen global partnerships and give millions more access to a world-class UK education on their doorstep, all whilst boosting growth at home
    Bridget Phillipson, education secretary

    The document also signals the publication of more specific strategy documents in the future, including a Soft Power Strategy outlining plans to grow the UK’s global influence through its education, sports, science, governance, development and tech sectors.

    Expanding the UK’s soft power abroad is a key part of the IES, which recognises the power in education as a way to position the country as “a place of learning, openness, research and innovation – building life‐long alliances and deepening trust in the UK”.

    Education secretary Bridget Phillipson said that supporting international partnerships would help institutions to “diversity and strengthen their business models”.

    “By expanding overseas, our universities, colleges and education providers can diversify income, strengthen global partnerships and give millions more access to a world-class UK education on their doorstep, all whilst boosting growth at home,” she added.

    Minister for Trade Chris Bryant branded education exports as a “major UK success story”.

    “We’re on track grow the sector to £40 billion by 2030, powered by world leading providers driving digital learning, AI enabled innovation and future skills development,” he said. 

    Malcolm Press, president of Universities UK welcomed the new document, saying it “signals a renewed commitment to fostering the global reach, reputation and impact of our universities”.

    This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates on this emerging story…

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  • Realpolitik: 10 points to note about today’s new International Education Strategy

    Realpolitik: 10 points to note about today’s new International Education Strategy

    Author:
    Nick Hillman

    Published:

    HEPI Director, Nick Hillman, takes a look at the new International Education Strategy, which is out today.

    1. It is a relief to have the paper finally out, as it has been a wait. First, the Coalition had their initial 2013 version (which still reads pretty well, except for its comments about MOOCs, even if it had a rather different list of target countries … ); the subsequent Conservative Governments then had their 2019 Strategy, with its clear targets, and subsequent updates in 2021, 2022 and 2023; and, in October 2024, the newly installed Labour Government promised ‘a review of the International Education Strategy’, which is what has now landed. It is good to have clarity: the new paper provides a comprehensive summary of UK strengths, usefully reinvigorates some tired initiatives (like a ‘reformed’ Education Sector Action Group) and commits to achieving £40 billion of educational exports by 2030. I do not underestimate the challenges involved in getting the paper to this stage, which has been overseen like most of its predecessors by the indefatigable Sir Steve Smith (the UK Government’s International Education Champion to whom the sector owes so much), despite my mixed commentary below – given the general rightwards shift in the country, given the differences of opinion across Whitehall on issues like student migration and given all the other energy-sapping issues on Number 10’s plate.
    2. My first impression was that the paper is shorter than we might have expected – c.50 pages of large text, with lots of ‘throat clearing’ (the Introduction arrives on page 10 and the meat doesn’t start until page 17…). In contrast, the 2019 Strategy was of a similar length but with a much smaller text and included 23 clear ‘Actions’, while the 2021 Update was c.70 pages of dense text, including an update on progress towards the specific actions.
    3. Similarly, the three Ministers put up to front the report are, in government terms, second rank (Minister of State) rather than first rank (Secretary of State) and two sit in the unelected Upper Chamber rather than the elected House of Commons. Along with the lowish word count, this sends a slightly unfortunate signal about the seriousness with which education export issues are taken in government. The 2019 Strategy and the 2021 Update each had two Secretaries of State pen the Foreword, for example.
    4. Perhaps none of this matters. It is better to be concise than wordy. Who cares how many pages there are, what font size has been used and which Ministers have written the inoffensive Foreword? I think it probably does matter a bit as there are no areas of education as competitive as international exports, and it is one of the few areas where the UK can still undeniably claim world-class status. Our main competitors read such UK strategies closely, just as the UK’s own initial 2013 strategy emerged partly as a response to the strategies that had already been adopted in other English-speaking countries. A confident country keen to expand its share of a particular global market tends to project itself as such, whereas a thinner paper that hedges its bets may be regarded, perhaps accurately, as reflecting lukewarm support for educational exports in parts of Whitehall.
    5. More importantly, the new Strategy is keen to emphasise that it is a cross-Government initiative: ‘Leadership of this agenda now sits firmly across the government, with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office joining the Department of Education and the Department of Business and Trade as co-owners of the strategy.’ This is welcome. But the Home Office remain notable by their absence, and it is they that have sole control over things like student visas, post-study work rules and Basic Compliance Assessments. Until the Home Office are forced to share responsibility for international students studying in the UK equally with other parts of government or until the Home Office is overridden by the centre of Whitehall, our higher education institutions will continue to have one arm tied behind their back while trying to expand this important export market.
    6. The Home Office ministers and mandarins will still, however, have had to sign the new paper off and their behind-the-scenes influence is evident. While the paper is full of commitments to ‘leverage’, ‘champion’ and ‘continue’ doing things, it eschews the opportunity to set clear new targets for higher education. The 2013 paper looked to increase the number of international students studying in the UK at higher education ‘by 15-20% over the next five years.’ The 2019 Strategy had a target of increasing students ‘in the UK to 600,000 per year’ by 2030. Now, however, there is an overall goal of increasing all ‘education exports to £40 billion per year’ by the end of this decade but, on higher education students specifically, we only get a commitment to ‘support the sustainable recruitment of higher-quality international students’, warm words about ‘Well-managed and responsible recruitment’ and an objective of ‘building a more resilient, diverse and long-term pipeline of international talent.’ How many more synonyms are there for ‘reducing’ the number of new student arrivals in the UK, I wonder. The Department for Education’s press release suggests TNE (transnational education), with all its challenges and opportunities, has displaced students coming to the UK as the flavour of the month.
    7. As it is a UK-wide document, so the rUK or the ‘rest of the UK’ as it is known in Whitehall get a brief look in. There are nice words about Scotland’s (in truth poor-performing) schools system and the controversial Curriculum for Excellence, which may be rather useful to Scottish policymakers as they look ahead to the 2026 elections to the Scottish Parliament, when education is expected to feature quite heavily.
    8. There are a surprising number of lengthy references to things that are clearly part of modern education but which do not immediately seem directly relevant to establishing a stronger framework for encouraging UK educational exports around the globe, and which are perhaps included to flesh out the text. For example, climate change appears in the very first sentence of the document and page 22 elaborates: ‘the UK Government expects all nurseries, schools and colleges to have a climate action plan, and in collaboration with leading environmental and education organisations, provides direct support through the innovative Sustainability Support Programme. The programme ensures educational settings are inspired to act and supported to plan and deliver meaningful climate action to embed sustainability, climate awareness and connection with nature.’ One can fully subscribe to the idea of man-made climate change and a climate emergency, as well as the need for action to address these, but still be left scratching one’s head at quite what the purpose of such text is in a short paper promoting the UK’s educational exports.
    9. The paper inadvertently reveals a long-standing and tricky issue for policymakers, which is the gap in our general attitudes towards delivering education to people at home and selling UK education to people from overseas. For example, as a nation we are as favourable towards soft power abroad, by making friends in high places through education, as we are opposed to old boys’ networks at home. In England, we tightly regulate who gets to university via Access and Participation Plans, yet when it comes to overseas students, we rely on the very high fees (plus an incoming International Student Levy) that only upper-middle class students can afford and we don’t even worry too much if, on occasion, the extra international students squeeze out home students. (Those attacking Trinity Hall for advertising their outreach work to a handful of UK independent schools tend to ignore that the entire higher education system is propped up by some of the wealthiest people from other countries.)
    10. There is another contradiction illustrated by the new International Education Strategy too: while Ministers block Eton College from working with partners to set up a school for disadvantaged Brits in Middlesborough, the new Strategy celebrates famous independent schools establishing footprints abroad. So Charterhouse Lagos is, we are told, ‘a model for future school partnerships abroad, strengthening bilateral ties and delivering long-term educational and economic benefits.’ It seems to be Floreat Carthusia abroad and Pereat Etona at home (please correct my Latin in the Comments section below … ), which doesn’t in all honesty seem to make much logical sense. At least, there is a German word for it all: realpolitik. 

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  • How academics are making lectures more engaging – Campus Review

    How academics are making lectures more engaging – Campus Review

    Commentary

    Breaking content into mini episodes and investing in quality audio are some ways academics are creating a more engaging learning experience

    Audrey MooreJanuary 20, 2026Last Updated: January 20, 2026

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    A lecture is no longer synonymous with a room full of students and a wall of text. Something new is happening at our universities.

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  • After L.A.’s Wildfires, Reshaping Disaster Response to Address Children’s Needs – The 74

    After L.A.’s Wildfires, Reshaping Disaster Response to Address Children’s Needs – The 74


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    As the one-year anniversary of the Los Angeles wildfires passes, rebuilding efforts continue to lag despite assurances to the contrary and many families are still navigating their search for a return to normalcy. For children in particular, the effects of a disaster do not end when the smoke clears or the debris is removed. 

    As more people’s lives are upended each year due to climate disasters communities — and our political leaders at the local, state and federal levels — must do more to ensure the needs of children and families are met during these emergencies.

    During wildfires and other disasters, we continually see the familiar pattern of school closures, child care disruption, families moving into temporary housing and routines essential to children’s sense of safety abruptly severed. Communities and political leaders at every level must confront a hard truth: Our emergency systems were not designed with children in mind. 

    During wildfires, schools and child care systems are among the first institutions to fail. Children are displaced from classrooms, separated from trusted adults and thrust into shelters or hotel rooms never designed to support their physical, emotional or developmental needs. Studies show that stress brought on by exposure to natural disasters can have an outsized impact on children and lead to lifelong trauma. This trauma can lead to socio-emotional impairments; health-risk behaviors, such as alcohol and drug abuse; and even early death, according to the Adverse Childhood Experiences study published in 2011 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser Permanente. 

    This past year has made it clear that local jurisdictions can no longer rely on federal disaster systems to carry the full burden of recovery. As the future of entities such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency becomes more uncertain, states, cities and counties must assume greater responsibility for protecting their most vulnerable citizens. 

    This starts with treating schools as critical infrastructure. While schools became formally recognized as part of critical infrastructure — specifically within the Education Facilities subsector in 2003 under Homeland Security Presidential Directive-7 (HSPD-7) — they are not allocated commensurate resources and protections for security as other designated critical infrastructure. 

    The Covid-19 pandemic underscored the central role that schools play in economic stability, as widespread closures rapidly disrupted labor markets and productivity. Treating schools as critical infrastructure would align education with other essential public systems that underpin public health, safety and economic performance; as such, it merits long-term investment.

    Second, schools need contingency plans that ensure continuity of in-person education when normal operations are disrupted. After the LA wildfires, many schools scrambled to set up alternate sites or transitioned to online learning. Students are still making up learning losses from the pandemic, and it is unclear whether those losses can be stemmed. Online learning should be used only when all other options have been exhausted, given the devastating impacts on student learning. The planning needs to begin now, not after disaster strikes.  

    Third, practice is key to success. Emergency plans often fail children not because they are poorly written but because they are never written with children in mind. Children experience disasters differently than adults, and procedures designed without them can inadvertently heighten fear and trauma. Age-appropriate drills, school-based tabletop exercises and responder training in developmentally appropriate communication can dramatically improve outcomes. 

    Local governments can formally integrate school districts, child care providers and pediatric health systems into emergency planning rather than treating them as afterthoughts once a crisis unfolds. Practicing with children builds familiarity, reduces panic and accelerates recovery — not just for young people, but for entire communities.

    Finally, funding structures must reflect the realities families face after disasters. While billions are allocated for fire suppression and mitigation, far fewer resources are earmarked for sustaining schools, child care and pediatric mental health in the months and years that follow. Local and state governments should establish dedicated funding streams for child- and family-centered recovery — supporting school continuity, mental health care and family stabilization — since these investments can reduce long-term social and economic costs.

    Implementing a family-centric disaster response model isn’t just a moral imperative. Adverse childhood experiences lead to an economic burden of  hundreds of billions of dollars annually in the U.S, much of it absorbed by taxpayers through Medicaid and Medicare spending, special education, disability programs and lost lifetime tax revenue. When disaster responses destabilize children, short-term emergencies are converted into long-term public liabilities, driving government inefficiency and reactive spending. These failures also spill into insurance markets, increasing claims, raising premiums and deepening reliance on federal backstops that distort risk pools and shift costs to the public.

    In an era of escalating disasters and constrained budgets, policies that protect family stability during crises are not social add-ons but high-return investments: reducing future taxpayer exposure, stabilizing insurance systems and limiting the need for costly federal intervention after the fact.

    The one-year mark of the Los Angeles wildfires should not serve as a memorial to what was lost, but as a reckoning with what must change. Disasters will continue to test our systems, but allowing children to bear the brunt of those failures is a policy choice, not an inevitability. Protecting children during emergencies necessitates radical change. If we fail to act, we are not merely accepting risk: We are knowingly passing preventable harm and long-term costs onto the next generation.


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