Category: Featured

  • Social mobility is about to die – and university won’t help

    Social mobility is about to die – and university won’t help

    In 1994, the year that HESA was born and we started to count those with degrees from former polytechnics in the stats, about 225,000 full-time home-domiciled students graduated with a first degree in the UK.

    Today the Russell Group enrols about 350k. Funny that those who say too many people go to university tend to stay tight lipped about that part of the sector’s “dilution”.

    Ten years later, then funding council boss Howard Newby said:

    [T]he English—and I do mean the English—do have a genius for turning diversity into hierarchy and I am not sure what we can do about that, to be quite honest. It is very regrettable that we cannot celebrate diversity rather than constantly turning it into hierarchy.

    The switch of circa 125,000 students from poly to university in the early 90s was one of the signature moments of the status/sorting panic that has accompanied the expansion of higher education over time.

    The story runs something like this. Access to university has never been evenly distributed across the social-economics. And having a degree seems to bestow upon graduates socio-economic advantages.

    So over the long-run, rather than doing the hard yards of making entry distribution fairer – which, whatever method is used, necessarily involves saying “no” to some who think they have a right to go – the easier thing has always been to say “yes” and expand instead.

    Hence when in 2018 OfS had a choice between Option 1:

    …it obviously couldn’t persuade ministers to front out Option 1. So everyone let Option 2 happen instead – only without the money to support it. And now look at the mess we’re in.

    Option 2 – whether applied to the whole sector or just the elite part – creates a problem for those who enjoy the relative rarity of the signalling. The signal is less powerful, partly because there are few who look back on their time at university and think “maybe if it was truly meritocratic I wouldn’t have made it in”.

    It also ought to be expensive to expand – so over time both universities and their students are instead expected to become more and more efficient, or fund participation through future salary contributions to pay for the expansion.

    And if overall participation levels off, Option 2 applied just to the elite part of the sector yanks students away from everywhere else – with huge geographical and social consequences along the way.

    There is a human capital upside of mass participation. The better educated the population, the more inventive and healthy and happy and productive it will be in general. But without other actions, that doesn’t address the relative inequalities of getting in or getting on.

    Onwards and upwards

    The phrase “social mobility” doesn’t actually appear in the 2024 Labour Manifesto – but it’s lurking around in the opportunity mission as follows:

    We are a country where who your parents are – and how much money they have – too often counts for more than your effort and enterprise… so breaking the pernicious link between background and success will be a defining mission for Labour.

    Good luck with that. Part of the question for me that surrounds that is the scale of that challenge insofar as it concerns higher education – and what is coming soon in the stats that will make that easier or harder.

    For the past few decades, different iterations of the “efficiencies” needed to massify – which focussed largely on the transfer of the costs of participation from state to graduate – have had three core features designed to reconcile the expansion and efficiency thing with the goals of social mobility before, during and after HE:

    • Initiatives (a mix of sticks and carrots, inputs and outcomes and getting in v getting on) aimed at broadening the characteristics of those getting in into higher education
    • No upfront participation costs via loans to students for maintenance and tuition – so being in it felt “equal”
    • Loan interest and income-contingent repayment arrangements designed to redistribute some of the relative economic success to the less successful

    Taken together, the idea has been that accessing the signalling benefits will be easier via expansion and fairness fixes; that the experience itself resembles the “school uniform” principle of everyone having a fairly similar experience; and then that those who reap the economic rewards shoulder the biggest burden (and in that a burden a bit bigger than it actually cost) in paying for it all.

    You tackle inequality partly through opportunity, and partly through outcomes – the rich pay more both than others and more than the actual cost. So central was redistribution to the design of the fee and loan system in the last decade that the government announced and formally consulted on a plan for early repayment mechanisms to stop people on high incomes being able to “unfairly buy themselves out of this progressive system”.

    But a decade on, the government is in a real bind. The initiatives aimed at broadening the characteristics of those enrolling into higher education look much less impactful than just expanding – especially in “high tariff” providers.

    The cost of living – especially for housing – is wrecking the “school uniform” principle unless we were to loan students even more money – which has its… costs.

    And having reduced interest on student loans to inflation – paid for by a longer loan term – it’s hard to think of a more politically toxic move than slapping it back on, however redistributive it will look on an excel sheet.

    A bigger mountain to climb

    That all exacerbates the social mobility challenge. Students cluster into the Russell Group because that group of providers now has the same “meaning” for the press and parents that “university” had prior to 1992.

    Whether in the Russell Group or not, the differential student experiences of haves and have-nots (both inside and outside of the curriculum) will show up both in their actual skills and what they can “sell” to employers. And the most successful graduates from the most attractive-sounding universities will pay less for university across their lifetime, while everyone else will pay more.

    In a way though, even thinking about social mobility or the redistributive graduate contribution scheme in terms of relative lifetime salary is the biggest problem of all. Because given what’s coming, it really should be the least of our worries.

    Since Tony Blair increased tuition fees to £3,000, above-inflation house price growth has delivered an unearned, unequal and untaxed £3 trillion capital gains windfall in Britain. 86 per cent above inflation house price growth over the past 20 years has delivered capital gains on home owners’ main residences worth £3 trillion – now a fifth of all wealth in Britain.

    The value of household wealth stood at around three times the value of national income throughout the 1960s and 1970s – but since the 1980s, the rate at which households have accumulated wealth has accelerated, outpacing the growth in national income, so that the stock of household wealth was estimated to be 7.6 times GDP at the end of 2020.

    Wealth matters. For those who have accumulated it, it provides a better ability to absorb shocks to income, easier access to lower-cost credit, and facilitates investment in significant assets such as housing. But it’s not equally held.

    Wealth is about twice as unequal as the income distribution, and because growth in wealth is outpacing growth in household income it is harder for those currently without it to accumulate it, and enjoy the same benefits outlined above – because as the value of assets rise relative to income, it becomes harder for someone to “save” their way up the wealth distribution.

    The least wealthy third of households have gained less than £1,000 per adult on average, compared to an average gain of £174,000 for the wealthiest ten per cent. Gains have been largest in London, where on average people have gained £76,000 since 2000, and smallest in the North East of England, with an average gain of just £21,000.

    As Robert Colville points out in The Times:

    We have come to realise that what is really dividing our society, as that £5.5 trillion starts to cascade down the generations, is not the boomers’ greed but their love.

    There’s an age aspect to the inequality – those aged 60+ have seen the biggest windfalls at around £80,000 on average – compared to an average of less than £20,000 for those under 40 years of age. But that age aspect also points to something hugely important that’s coming next – because eventually, those older people will die – and who they transfer their wealth to, and what it’s invested in, will matter. Because not only does wealth inequality dwarf wage inequality, it also predicts and drives it.

    Student transfers

    Here thanks to the Resolution Foundation we can see how intergenerational transfers (both gifts and inheritances) will become increasingly important during the century, as older households disperse their wealth at death via inheritances. It estimates that those transfers are set to double over the next 20 years as the large baby-boomer cohort move into late retirement – and it is likely that more wealth will be dispersed by these households while they are alive through gifts.

    And it’s when that ramps up that the interaction with any tuition fee system that will really start to matter.

    Since 2015/16, DfE figures for England tell us that between 10.1 and 13.6 per cent of entrants at Level 6 have self-funded. Some of that will be PT/CPD type activity, some of it students running out of SLC entitlement, and some not drawing down debt for religious reasons – but most will be people who can just afford it.

    Of course what a fixed-ish percentage hides a bit is the number growth – if HE participation has been growing “at the bottom” of the social-economics, a fixed-ish percentage means that more on equivalent incomes are paying upfront. In 2022/23, a record 54,700 entrants were marked up as “no award or financial backing”.

    In the original £9,000 fees system, it made little sense to opt-out of student loans – because the vast majority never paid it back in full by design. But now with a cheaper (in real terms) tuition fee, a frozen repayment threshold and an extended term of 40 years, the calculation has changed – suddenly it makes much more sense to avoid the debt if you can.

    And so given that paying for your younger relatives’ tuition fees represents a way of investing some of that inheritance in way that avoids inheritance tax, we’d have to assume that unchecked, not only will richer graduates in the loan scheme get a much better lifetime deal than they did a few years ago, more and more won’t be in the scheme at all.

    (The green line is the system we had for most of the last decade – the grey line the system the Conservatives slipped past everyone on their way out).

    Even if every penny of an inheritance was drained away on paying for HE upfront, if we compare two graduates – one with 40 years of graduate repayments ahead of them, and one without, it doesn’t take long to clock how impossible social mobility becomes for otherwise notionally equal graduates.

    Then assume that those getting their fees and costs paid for them while they’re a student are clustered into the Russell Group and its signals already – and lay on top of that the fact that those without a windfall coming are more likely to be those with a pretty thin “student experience” and so without the skills or cultural capital to cheat the socio-economic odds, and you pretty quickly need to give up and go home.

    The problem that that all leaves is pretty significant – partly because wealth inequality is already more stratified than income, partly because it drives the type and value of HE experience a student might have, and partly because HE participation has a much better track record at delivering salary gains and salary redistribution than it does at delivering wealth gains or wealth redistribution.

    Put another way, it might be a rite of passage, and it might be good to have a better educated population, but without the prospect of it delivering social mobility, it will lose both real and symbolic value.

    Hierarchy or diversity?

    So in reverse order, what can be done? On the way out, if there must be a graduate contribution system, not only does it have to return to attempting to redistribute from the richest to the poorest, it has to do so by expecting a fair chunk of that boomer windfall to fund some redistribution.

    An above inflation interest rate has to return – and upfront fee payers shouldn’t be able to just buy a better education for themselves, as they can in the US – they should be expected to contribute more into the pot for everyone’s benefit. Higher fees, but only for for upfront payers – DfE needs to dust off that consultation from the last decade, and fast.

    During, we’ll need to redouble efforts to re-establish at least a notional run at the school uniform principle – carefully calibrating student income and experience to return to a baseline where everyone experiences something similar.

    Some of that is about reducing the costs of participation rather than loaning more money to meet them, some is about defining a contemporary student experience so that those who need to work can do so with dignity while extracting educational value, and those that don’t are expected to. It’s also about a credit system that recognises the educational value of extracurricular activity – so that everyone has time to take part in it.

    Then on the way in, we need more mixing – we do need Scenario 1 to return as a much tougher target.

    As well as that, the clustering up the league tables as a way of avoiding harder questions about access in our elite institutions almost certainly needs to stop. Taken to its logical conclusion, in a couple of decades there will only be 24 universities left (and in the minds of the press and parents, we’re arguably already there) – but if Labour facilitates only 19 cities having students and graduates in them, both it and everywhere else is doomed.

    Labour, in other words, has to start saying no:

    • It could say “no” to current university growth altogether, letting further education grow to soak up demand as polytechnics did when universities were capped in the 80s;
    • It could say “no” to any more university growth in current locations, allowing expansion into other places with all the economic and social benefits that would bring;
    • It could say “no” to any more “residential” places at universities, causing colleges and universities to become more comprehensive as they rush to make commuting more normal;
    • Or it could say “no” to “low value” courses, on the assumption that supply and then demand will flow into “high value” ones – if, of course, it could find a credible way of differentiating between the two.

    Part of the balancing act to choking off clustering is one other thing that should matter to Labour. The scandal isn’t that applicant X can’t quite get into the Russell Group with 3 A*s. It’s that we still have a system that somehow writes off the student and the university they attend if they don’t.

    Making it much more attractive to commute (coupled with a domestic Erasmus), talking up not just alternatives to university but universities that aren’t the Russell Group, abolishing the archaic degree classification system, ripping up all the quality systems that have singularly failed to “assure” the press and the public that quality can be found elsewhere, and forcing through some institutional subject specialisms (and obvious vocational excellence) within the system would all help.

    Do all of that, and maybe one day, a senior figure in HE might be able to claim that mass higher education – and all the rich benefits it brings – both survived and thrived because it finally found a way to celebrate diversity rather than forever turning it into hierarchy.

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  • List of Government Contractors Involved with the Student Loan Portfolio

    List of Government Contractors Involved with the Student Loan Portfolio

    Thanks to Alan Collinge and Student Loan Justice for this information on government contractors for the US Department of Education’s Student Loan Portfolio. 

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  • Eight critical questions for the new chief executive of UKRI

    Eight critical questions for the new chief executive of UKRI

    The appointment of a new chief executive for UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) could not happen at a more crucial time.

    With public finances under strain, the case for public investment in R&D needs to be made cogently and needs to focus both on addressing the UK’s five government missions and on sustaining the fantastic research asset which the UK university sector represents. The list of issues for the new appointee will no doubt be lengthy, but we put forward the following as a possible shortlist of priorities.

    1. The interface (pipeline) between research councils and Innovate UK

    One of the main goals in establishing UKRI was to ensure a smooth pipeline from the research undertaken by the individual research councils to the industrial/end user base thereby bringing both economic and societal benefit. However, despite years of intent this pipeline seems as obstructed as ever. The fundamental question remains: to what extent is the role of Innovate UK to aid the transition of the outcomes resulting from research council funding versus simply supporting UK-based enterprises in their own research?

    Currently there are disconnects between the research priorities, often defined by government and implemented by the research councils, and the Innovate UK funding mechanism to ensure they are exploited. There are some exceptions here of course: the Creative Industries Clusters was a good example of a joint initiative between AHRC and Innovate UK which did integrate industry demand to local research strengths.

    A key priority for the new chief executive is to join up the pipeline more effectively across the whole range of industry sectors and ensure a very clear role for Innovate UK in partnership with the research councils and the subsequent interface to the National Wealth Fund or British Business Bank.

    2. Articulating and agreeing the balance between UKRI spend on government priorities and investment in the research base of the future

    As we have argued elsewhere on Wonkhe, the nation needs UKRI to fund both the research required by current government priorities relating to industrial strategies or societal challenges, and invest in the broader research base that, in the words of science minister Patrick Vallance, will feed the “goose that lays the golden egg” of our research base and the opportunities of tomorrow.

    Currently, this balance is, at best, hidden from view, suiting neither the needs of government nor the future aspirations of the sector. We urge UKRI to quantify this balance historically and to articulate a proposal to government for moving forward. We also require balance between the budget committed in the long-term to institutes, infrastructure, international subscriptions, and facilities vs. the shorter-term funding into the wider research and innovation community. Balancing these priorities requires a strengthening of the relationship, and open discussion, between UKRI, DSIT and wider government.

    3. Ensuring UKRI is relevant to the government’s regional economic development agenda

    As part of the government’s economic agenda, driving productivity growth in the tier-2 cities outside the South-East and the wealthier places in the UK is key to executing its growth mission. There is a clear tension here in UKRI acting as the key funding agency for public R&D spending driven solely by excellence, and a regional economic development mission, for which additional criteria apply. This tension must be addressed and not ignored.

    The creation of innovation accelerators in which additional funding was provided by government, but UKRI was involved in evaluating the merit of proposals, is a good example of how UKRI can drive change. As the government develops new levers to address and fund regional economic development, UKRI should play a key role in ensuring that this dovetails with the research and innovation base of the nation.

    4. Creating a highly skilled workforce

    As is becoming clear, the number of doctoral students supported by UKRI continues to fall – an issue highlighted, for example, by Cambridge vice chancellor Deborah Prentice in a recent Guardian interview. This is particularly clear in areas which have traditionally relied upon UKRI funding, such as the engineering and physical sciences. The corresponding research effort is in part bolstered by an increase in the number of fee-paying overseas students, but this does little to create the UK-based workforce industry needs.

    UKRI needs to prioritise funding and work with government to find new ways of addressing the skills the nation needs if we are to drive a productive knowledge-based economy. The skills required extend beyond doctoral degrees to include technical professionals and engineers.

    5. Sector confidence around REF as a rigorous, fair process, supportive of excellence

    The HE sector is in financial turmoil, manifested in the unprecedented number of UK higher education institutions currently implementing severance schemes. Ongoing uncertainties over the REF process, from the portability of outputs and the lack of an essential mechanism to ensure a diversity of authors (current proposals have no cap on the number of outputs that can be submitted from any one individual) to the absence of clarity on the people, culture and environment template’s support for excellence need resolution.

    This resolution is required, firstly so that research strategies institutions put in place prior to any census date have time to drive the changes required given that REF is meant to be formative as well as summative; and secondly so that institutions can efficiently deliver their REF returns to a standard and detail a government should expect to provide assurance over the future quality related (QR) spend.

    6. The importance and accountability of QR

    Virtually everyone in the sector embraces the notion that QR is central to the agility and sustainability of the UK research base. This certainty is matched with uncertainty within government as to the value for money this investment provides. If we are to maintain this level of trust in the sector’s ability to derive benefit from this investment, collectively we need to do a better job at showing how QR is central to the agility of our investment in the research outcomes of tomorrow and not simply a plugging of other, non-research related, financial holes. As both assessor and funder UKRI can lead and co-ordinate this response.

    7. Completion of the new funding service (the software needs to work!)

    The joint electronic submission system (Je-S) was outdated and potentially no longer supportable. Its back room equivalent, Siebel, even worse. Their replacement, the new funding service is an acceptable portal to applicants but seemingly still provides inadequate assurances for a system from which to make financial commitments. This shortcoming seems almost incomprehensible given it was an in-house development.

    Moving beyond the essential financial controls it seems to offer little by way of the AI assistance in the identification of reviewers that the software behind the submission systems for many of our research publications has offered for decades. Whether we lack the skills or investment to solve these issues is unclear, but the inefficiency of the current situation is wasteful of perhaps an even more precious resource, namely the time of UKRI staff to add human value to our research landscape. This seeming lack of skills and the systems we require is worrying too to the future REF exercise, even once the framework is known.

    8. Evidencing the effects of change

    Of course the world should and must move on. As a funder of research, it is appropriate that UKRI experiments with better ways of funding, becoming an expert in metascience. Changes inspired by ideology are fine, but it is essential that these changes are then assessed to see if the outcomes are those we desired.

    One example is the narrative CV, a well-meaning initiative to recognise a wider definition of excellence and an equality of opportunity. Is this what it achieved? Do we acknowledge the risks associated with AI or the unintended consequence of favouring the confident individual with English as their first language? While not advocating a return to the tradition of lists CV, we urge a formal reporting of outcomes achieved through the narrative CV using both quantitative and qualitative data and an evidenced based plan to move forward.

    Looking to the future

    We realise that criticism is easy and solutions are hard to find. So in case of doubt, we would like to finish with a call out to UKRI’s greatest resource, namely at all levels its committed and highly professional staff. We know at first hand the dedication of its workforce which is committed to fairly supporting the community, the research they do and the impact it creates.

    The role of chief executive of UKRI provides vital leadership not just to UKRI but to the sector as a whole, and the sector must unite to stand behind the new incumbent in solving the challenges that lie ahead.

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  • Trump admin threatens to rescind federal funds over DEI

    Trump admin threatens to rescind federal funds over DEI

    The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights declared all race-conscious student programming, resources and financial aid illegal over the weekend and threatened to investigate and rescind federal funding for any institution that does not comply within 14 days.

    In a Dear Colleague letter published late Friday night, acting assistant secretary for civil rights Craig Trainor outlined a sweeping interpretation of the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which struck down affirmative action. While the decision applied specifically to admissions, the Trump administration believes it extends to all race-conscious spending, activities and programming at colleges.

    “In recent years, American educational institutions have discriminated against students on the basis of race, including white and Asian students,” Trainor wrote. “These institutions’ embrace of pervasive and repugnant race-based preferences and other forms of racial discrimination have emanated throughout every facet of academia.”

    The letter mentions a wide range of university programs and policies that could be subject to an OCR investigation, including “hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies, and all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life.”

    “Put simply, educational institutions may neither separate or segregate students based on race, nor distribute benefits or burdens based on race,” Trainor writes.

    Backlash to the letter came swiftly on Saturday from Democratic lawmakers, student advocates and academic freedom organizations.

    “This threat to rip away the federal funding our public K-12 schools and colleges receive flies in the face of the law,” Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, wrote in a statement Saturday. “While it’s anyone’s guess what falls under the Trump administration’s definition of ‘DEI,’ there is simply no authority or basis for Trump to impose such a mandate.”

    But most college leaders have, so far, remained silent.

    Brian Rosenberg, the former president of Macalester College and now a visiting professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed that the letter was “truly dystopian” and, if enforced, would upend decades of established programs and initiatives to improve success and access for marginalized students.

    “It goes well beyond the Supreme Court ruling on admissions and declares illegal a wide range of common practices,” he wrote. “In my career I’ve never seen language of this kind from any government agency in the United States.”

    The Dear Colleague letter also seeks to close multiple exceptions and potential gaps left open by the Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action and to lay the groundwork for investigating programs that “may appear neutral on their face” but that “a closer look reveals … are, in fact, motivated by racial considerations.”

    Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that colleges could legally consider a student’s racial identity as part of their experience as described in personal essays, but the OCR letter rejects that.

    “A school may not use students’ personal essays, writing samples, participation in extracurriculars, or other cues as a means of determining or predicting a student’s race and favoring or disfavoring such students,” Trainor wrote.

    Going even further beyond the scope of the SFFA decision, the letter forbids any race-neutral university policy that could conceivably be a proxy for racial consideration, including eliminating standardized test score requirements.

    It also addresses university-sanctioned programming and curricula that “teach students that certain racial groups bear unique moral burdens that others do not,” a practice that Trainor argues can “deny students the ability to participate fully in the life of a school.”

    The department will provide “additional legal guidance” for institutions in the coming days.

    That wide-reaching interpretation of the SFFA decision has been the subject of vigorous debate among lawmakers and college leaders, and in subsequent court battles ever since the ruling was handed down. Many experts assumed the full consequences of the vague ruling would be hammered out through further litigation, but with the Dear Colleague letter, the Trump administration is attempting to enforce its own reading of the law through the executive branch.

    Even Edward Blum, the president of Students for Fair Admissions, doesn’t believe the ruling on his case applies outside of admissions.

    “The SFFA opinion didn’t change the law for those policies [in internships and scholarships],” he told Inside Higher Ed a few days before the OCR letter was published. “But those policies have always been, in my opinion, outside of the scope of our civil rights law and actionable in court.”

    What Comes Next

    The department has never revoked a college or state higher education agency’s federal funding over Title VI violations. If the OCR follows through on its promises, it would be an unprecedented exercise of federal influence over university activities.

    The letter is likely to be challenged in court, but in the meantime it could have a ripple effect on colleges’ willingness to continue funding diversity programs and resources for underrepresented students.

    Adam Harris, a senior fellow at the left-leaning think tank New America, is looking at how colleges responded to DEI and affirmative action orders in red states like Florida, Missouri, Ohio and Texas for clues as to how higher education institutions nationwide might react to the letter.

    In Texas, colleges first renamed centers for marginalized students, then shuttered them after the state ordered it was not enough to comply with an anti-DEI law; they also froze or revised all race-based scholarships. In Missouri, after the attorney general issued an order saying the SFFA decision should apply to scholarships as well as admissions, the state university system systematically eliminated its race-conscious scholarships and cut ties with outside endowments that refused to change their eligibility requirements.

    “We’ve already seen the ways institutions have acquiesced to demands in ways that even go past what they’ve been told to do by the courts,” Harris said.

    The letter portrays the rise of DEI initiatives and race-conscious programming on college campuses as a modern civil rights crisis. Trainor compared the establishment of dormitories, facilities, cultural centers and even university-sanctioned graduation and matriculation ceremonies that are advertised as being exclusively or primarily for students of specific racial backgrounds to Jim Crow–era segregation.

    “In a shameful echo of a darker period in this country’s history, many American schools and universities even encourage segregation by race at graduation ceremonies and in dormitories and other facilities,” Trainor wrote.

    Harris, who studies the history of racial discrimination on college campuses, said he finds that statement deeply ironic and worrying.

    “A lot of these diversity programs and multicultural centers on campuses were founded as retention tools to help students who had been shut out of higher education in some of these institutions for centuries,” Harris said. “To penalize institutions for taking those steps to help students, that is actually very much an echo of the segregation era.”

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  • Lawmakers Advance Bill Requiring SD Schools to Teach Native American History, Culture – The 74

    Lawmakers Advance Bill Requiring SD Schools to Teach Native American History, Culture – The 74


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    South Dakota public schools would be required to teach a specific set of Native American historical and cultural lessons if a bill unanimously endorsed by a legislative committee Tuesday in Pierre becomes law.

    The bill would mandate the teaching of the Oceti Sakowin Essential Understandings. The phrase “Oceti Sakowin” refers to the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota people. The understandings are a set of standards and lessons adopted seven years ago by the South Dakota Board of Education Standards with input from tribal leaders, educators and elders.

    Use of the understandings by public schools is optional. A survey conducted by the state Department of Education indicated use by 62% of teachers, but the survey was voluntary and hundreds of teachers did not respond.

    Republican state Sen. Tamara Grove, who lives on the Lower Brule Reservation, proposed the bill and asked legislators to follow the lead of Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Chairman J. Garret Renville. He has publicly called for a “reset” of state-tribal relations since the departure of former Gov. Kristi Noem, who was barred by tribal leaders from entering tribal land in the state.

    “What I’m asking you to do today,” Grove said, “is to lean into the reset.”

    Joe Graves, the state secretary of education and a Noem appointee, testified against the bill. He said portions of the understandings are already incorporated into the state’s social studies standards. He added that the state only mandates four curricular areas: math, science, social studies and English-language arts/reading. He said further mandates would “tighten up the school days, leaving schools with much less instructional flexibility.”

    Members of the Senate Education Committee sided with Grove and other supporters, voting 7-0 to send the bill to the full Senate.

    The proposal is one of several education mandates that lawmakers have considered this legislative session. The state House rejected a bill this week that would have required posting and teaching the Ten Commandments in schools, and also rejected a bill that would have required schools to post the state motto, “Under God the People Rule.”

    South Dakota Searchlight is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: [email protected].


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  • Greensboro School Is First Public Gaming and Robotics School in the Country – The 74

    Greensboro School Is First Public Gaming and Robotics School in the Country – The 74


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    Historic Foust Elementary School has had a game changing start to the year. School and district leaders, parents, and community members were eager to get inside one of Greensboro’s newest elementary schools for their ribbon cutting ceremony on Feb. 3, 2025 to witness an innovative progression in the school’s history. They were greeted by students and the school’s robotic dog, Astro.

    Foust Elementary School, part of Guilford County Schools (GCS), is the country’s first public gaming and robotics elementary school, according to the district. The school still sits on its original land, but the building has been rebuilt from the ground up. They began welcoming students into the new building at the start of 2025.

    Foust Elementary School’s history goes all the way back to the 1960s. Foust student Nyla Parker read the following account at the ribbon cutting ceremony:

    “Since its construction in 1965, Julius I Foust Elementary School has prided itself in serving the students and families of its community, with the goal of creating citizens who will leave this place with high character and academic excellence. … Now, almost 60 years later, we welcome you to the new chapter of Foust Gaming and Robotics Elementary School. As a student here at Foust, I am excited about various opportunities that will be offered to me as I learn more about exciting industries such as gaming, robotics, coding, and 2D plus 3D animation. Thank you to the voters of our community for saying yes to the 2020 bond that allowed this place to become a reality for me and my fellow classmates. Game on!”

    Foust is a Title I school in a historically underinvested part of Guilford County. Several years ago, the district conducted a master facility study, which resulted in Foust getting on the list to receive an entirely new building.

    “Foust was one of the oldest buildings in the district and it was literally falling apart, so we were on the list to have a total new construction,” said Kendrick Alston, principal of Foust.

    “During that time, we also talked with the district and really thought about, well, building a new school. What can we also do differently in terms of teaching and learning, instead of just building a new building?”

    The mission of Foust is to “envision a future where students are equipped with the skills, knowledge, and tools to lead the new global economy,” according to their website. The new global economy, featuring high projected growth in fields that include technology, was a driving factor for planners as they decided to focus the school on gaming and robotics.

    There are many jobs that can come from learning the skills necessary to build video games and robots. Looking at recent labor market trends, many of those jobs are growing. Web developers and digital designers have an 8% projected growth rate from 2023-2033 with a median pay of $92,750 per year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

    “We looked at a lot of studies, we looked at research, and one of the things that we looked at was something from the World Economic Forum that looked at the annual jobs report. We saw that STEM, engineering, those kinds of jobs, were some of the top fastest growing jobs across the world,” said Alston. “When we think about school looking different for our students and being engaging, well, let’s make it something that’s relevant to them but is also giving them a skill set that they can be marketable in the global workforce as well.”

    The team at Foust, including teachers and staff, have spent several months in specialized training on a new and unique curriculum designed to help prepare students for the ever evolving world of work. The building, designed to bring 21st century learning to life, is part of the first phase of schools constructed from a combined $2 billion bond.

    “I am excited for what this new space is going to produce,” said Hope Purcell, a teacher at Foust. “With the continued support from our robotics curriculum, students will have the opportunity to tap into a new world of discovery that will prepare them for the future.”

    Many community and education leaders were present at the ribbon cutting, including several county commissioners and Guilford superintendent Whitney Oakley. Oakley shared excitement about the new school and reminded everyone that the leaders who came before her who advocated for the passing of the bond and were open to the vision of a school like Foust were a huge part of making this new school a reality.

    “Today is not just about celebrating a building,” Oakley said. “It’s about celebrating what this building really represents, and that’s opportunity and access to the tools of modern K-12 education. It represents the culmination of years of planning and conversation and design to make sure that we can build a space that serves families and students for decades to come. The joy on the faces of the staff and the families and the students is just a reminder that teaching and learning is more effective when everybody has the resources that they need to thrive, and that should not be the exception, that should be the rule.”

    Students sometimes need different levels of support and resources in order to thrive. Foust hopes to be a place where all students can succeed. Another school district in New Jersey, the Morris-Union Jointure Commission, is using gaming and technology to engage students with cognitive and behavioral differences. They have created an esports arenadesigned specifically for students with cognitive challenges, like Autism Spectrum Disorder. This is just one example of how gaming can create an inclusive learning environment.

    As Foust settles into its brand new building, they are already planning for new opportunities ahead, including partnerships with the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University for innovative programming for students and parents.

    This article first appeared on EducationNC and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.


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  • WEEKEND READING: Matt Goodwin’s ‘Bad Education’ isn’t good scholarship, but does that matter?

    WEEKEND READING: Matt Goodwin’s ‘Bad Education’ isn’t good scholarship, but does that matter?

    • Steven Jones is Professor of Higher Education at the University of Manchester and his latest book is Universities Under Fire (2022). This review of Bad Education by Matt Goodwin has been written in a personal capacity.
    • HEPI’s other review of the Matt Goodwin’s book can be accessed here.

    In Bad Education, Matt Goodwin makes the argument that Western universities have moved ‘sharply and radically to the left’ (p.51) over the last six decades, to the extent that diversity is now deemed more important than merit. According to Goodwin, a woke orthodoxy has gripped the sector: free speech is stifled; non-authorised viewpoints are unwanted; and social justice trumps the pursuit of truth. Some minorities flourish within this culture, but other ‘political’ minorities – like the one to which Goodwin claims membership – are structurally disadvantaged. 

    To stand this argument up, Goodwin needs the reader to accept two fundamental premises. The first is that the author’s sense of victimhood is real, while others are imaginary or exaggerated. Goodwin achieves this by attributing his every professional setback – from having journal articles and funding bids declined to being overlooked for invited talks (p.47) – to his whiteness, his maleness, or his political positions, such as his refusal to participate in ‘cult-like worship of the EU on campus’ (p.44). No other explanation is countenanced. 

    The second premise is that the real power in universities is cultural, not economic, and therefore held by diversity champions and other woke activists. The evidence Goodwin offers here is underwhelming. Where academic scholarship is cited, the sources are mostly US-based, and the author shows no curiosity about the think-tanks and lobby groups that funded the surveys in which he places his faith. Critical higher educational research is studiously avoided, though Goodwin does turn to Elon Musk for a quote about the ‘woke mind virus’ (p.104). In places, Bad Education reads as a checklist of debunked myths and personal memoirs (‘as I’ve seen first-hand’ is a familiar clause). Yet in the final chapter, Goodwin addresses the reader directly to assert: ‘I’ve bombarded you at times with statistics and research because I wanted you to read it for yourself and make up your own mind’ (p.198). 

    I tried hard to make up my own mind, but it’s difficult to be persuaded by Goodwin’s case against universities when the bulk of empirical data point in an opposite direction. If recruitment practices are so diversity conscious, why were there only 25 Black British female professors in the UK as recently as 2019? If ‘reverse racism’ is such a problem, why did the awarding gap between White and Black students achieving high degrees stand at 18.4% in 2021? In my experience, and according to my research, minority groups are far from over-represented in senior levels of university management and governance, and board cultures tend to be driven by corporate principles, not woke ideologies. As for no-platforming, fewer than 0.8 per cent of university events or speaker invitations were cancelled in 2021-22. In other words, the truths that Goodwin is so boldly willing to speak may be his truths, but they are not universal.

    Among the fellow marginalised white men willing to support Goodwin is the University of Buckingham’s Eric Kaufmann, who is quoted extensively, and whose back-cover endorsement describes Bad Education as ‘deeply personal and impeccably researched.’ It’s certainly deeply personal. Take Goodwin’s indignation towards a lecturer who unfriended some Conservative voters on Facebook after the 2015 UK general election (p.89). The reader is not told what this incident is supposed to signify, let alone why Goodwin’s cherished free speech principles appear not to extend to academics’ private social media accounts.

    That’s not to say that the sector is always operating to the highest ethical standards. Goodwin is on firmest ground when highlighting human rights violations in China (p.90), and calling out universities for turning a blind eye. But rather than take this argument to its logical conclusion – by critiquing a fee model that leaves sectors reliant on income from overseas students – Goodwin pivots back into anger and anecdote, rebuking universities for being defensive about their historic links with the slave trade (p.91) and sharing stories about junior colleagues too scared to disclose their pro-Brexit leanings (p.94).

    Despite Goodwin’s stated aim to ‘push back against authoritarianism’ (p.208), there are echoes of Donald Trump’s playbook throughout Bad Education. The author’s anti-diversity bombast recalls the President’s recent claim that a fatal air crash near Washington DC was connected to DEI programmes in federal government. It’s not entirely clear to which level of institutional bureaucracy Goodwin is referring when he imagines a ‘hyper-political and highly activist managerial blob’ (p.157), but the language is redolent of that being deployed in the US to justify a purge of federal bureaucrats. According to Goodwin, this ‘managerial blob’ is defined by an insistence on rainbow lanyards and flags on campus, among other things. This is not a characterisation of senior leaders that most university staff would recognise. Could it be that the author is so distracted by empty performative gestures that he fails to see where power is really located?

    Goodwin has now left academia, a story he tells in most chapters, steadily elevating it to the level of Shakespearean tragedy: ‘my professorship – everything I had ever wanted, everything I had worked for – was over’ (p.195). At a time when 10,000 jobs are on the line at UK universities, such self-indulgence is unfortunate. Goodwin’s contrast between the ‘luxury beliefs’ of academics and the ‘real world’ he claims to inhabit (p.78) encapsulates what makes Bad Education read like a ‘prolonged gripe,’ as another reviewer put it. Paradoxically, Goodwin now enjoys a range of high-profile platforms from which to air his grievances about being no-platformed, regularly appearing on television to blame wokeism for various social ills. Why is it that only ‘cancelled’ academics seem to have media agents?

    Bad Education builds towards what Goodwin calls a ‘manifesto’ for universities (pp.217-19) that want to have ‘good, not bad, education’ (p.217). It’s a simplistic way to wrap up any book, comprising a bullet-pointed list of the same few complaints expressed in slightly different terms. Those of us in higher education will quickly recognise Bad Education’s distortions: universities haven’t lurched radically left and there’s no woke coup. But does that matter? Are we the target readership? Or is the book speaking to external audiences? What if a review like this merely confirms what Goodwin and his fellow academic outcasts have been saying all along?

    Since accepting the terms of the market, English universities have struggled to articulate their role in society. Academic expertise has been devalued and the status of higher education as a public good compromised, with universities increasingly embroiled in unwinnable culture wars. These are perfect conditions for someone like Goodwin to ‘blow up’ his own career (p.4), break the ‘secret code of silence’ (p.3) and position himself as the fearless ‘rogue professor’ (p.16). In such ways, important debates become framed by individuals with the shallowest insights but the deepest grudges. Bad Education does a passable job of confirming suspicions about what really goes on inside a secretive and often aloof sector, guiding its readers further down an anti-university, anti-expert rabbit hole. If we continue to leave vacuums in the discourse, then diversity-blaming narratives like Goodwin’s will continue to fill them.

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  • Carousel Digital Signage Integrates with CrisisGo to Empower Safer School Communities

    Carousel Digital Signage Integrates with CrisisGo to Empower Safer School Communities

    MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA – Carousel Digital Signage announces a new technology partnership with CrisisGo that enables K-12 schools and businesses to deliver emergency alerts and other safety messages to digital displays with immediacy. The integration is enabled through an open API that triggers visual alerts, interactive maps and more to Carousel Cloud digital signage networks via the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP), a global standard that supports the digital exchange of emergency alerts and public warnings over multiple networks.

    CrisisGo’s Safety iResponse platform offers a comprehensive suite of advanced alerting software and tools that empower school districts to create safer and more secure learning environments. Its features include real-time alerting, incident management and parent notification, all of which combine to help schools respond to emergencies in an efficient and effective manner. The platform also immediately shares emergency alerts with local law enforcement when police assistance is needed.

    Direct integration of the two software platforms on a common IT network ensures consistent monitoring of incoming triggers from Safety iResponse to Carousel Cloud. Upon recognizing an incoming alert, Carousel Cloud disseminates the active alert as a priority for instant takeover of all  targeted screens. Upon resolution, Carousel Cloud immediately removes the alert and resumes normal operations, eliminating the need to schedule expiration times or manually clear the system. That accelerates the important process of reunification to ensure all students, teachers and other staff members are accounted for and safe.

    “Carousel Cloud’s ability to recognize an all-clear message is a differentiator from other digital signage solutions that we have evaluated,” said Jacob Lewis, Chief Security Officer, CrisisGo. “Carousel Cloud will also recognize the type of event our system is addressing and exactly where the alerts need to go, which could be select screens, schoolwide, or across an entire multi-campus network. This seamless interoperability represents an important step in our multimodal strategy for mass notification, which also includes delivery to all computers and mobile devices that are connected to our software.”

    The CrisisGo partnership represents the latest technology integration between Carousel Digital Signage and emergency alerting platforms aimed at strengthening school safety in K-12 environments. Lewis says that while K-12 remains the top priority for CrisisGo’s integrated solution with Carousel, he anticipates potential expansion into other verticals including corporate enterprise and manufacturing.

    “Our collaboration with CrisisGo represents the next step in our efforts to keep students and faculty informed, safe and resilient across all grade levels,” said Eric Henry, SVP of Business Architecture, Carousel Digital Signage. “Carousel Cloud’s open platform enables clean and reliable interoperability with CrisisGo, and our common integration with the CAP protocol ensures immediate dissemination of important visual alerts that will help school districts keep all campuses safe and secure.”

    About Carousel Digital Signage

    Carousel is Digital Signage Content Management Software that is easy to use, scalable, and reliable. With a deep feature set and strong technology partnerships Carousel gives you the most value in digital signage. Carousel Digital Signage is a division of Tightrope Media Systems. You can reach the Carousel team at (866) 866-4118, or visit  www.carouselsignage.com.

    About CrisisGo

    CrisisGo has been leading the K-12 industry since 2013, setting the standard for school safety. Our comprehensive emergency and safety management platform empowers schools with real-time alerting, incident management, visitor management, threat and behavioral intervention features, and reunification solutions. CrisisGo also offers comprehensive training to equip staff and teachers with handling emergencies. CrisisGo consistently innovates to enhance K-12 security, partnering with educators and administrators to create safe and nurturing learning environments and redefining school safety for a brighter future in education.

    eSchool News Staff
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  • Stand! (Sly Stone)

    Stand! (Sly Stone)

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  • Parents, Medical Providers, Vaccine Experts Brace for RFK Jr.’s HHS Takeover – The 74

    Parents, Medical Providers, Vaccine Experts Brace for RFK Jr.’s HHS Takeover – The 74


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    While Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ‘s Senate confirmation to head the Department of Health and Human Services was not unexpected, it still shook medical providers, public health experts and parents across the country. 

    Mary Koslap-Petraco, a pediatric nurse practitioner who exclusively treats underserved children, said when she heard the news Thursday morning she was immediately filled with “absolute dread.”

    Mary Koslap-Petraco is a pediatric nurse practitioner and Vaccines for Children provider. (Mary Koslap-Petraco)

    “I have been following him for years,” she told The 74. “I’ve read what he has written. I’ve heard what he has said. I know he has made a fortune with his anti-vax stance.”

    She is primarily concerned that his rhetoric might “scare the daylights out of people so that they don’t want to vaccinate their children.” She also fears he could move to defund Vaccines for Children, a program under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that provides vaccines to kids who lack health insurance or otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford them. While the program is federally mandated by Congress, moves to drain its funding could essentially render it useless.

    Koslap-Petraco’s practice in Massapequa Park, New York relies heavily on the program to vaccinate pediatric patients, she said. If it were to disappear, she asked, “How am I supposed to take care of poor children? Are they supposed to just die or get sick because their parents don’t have the funds to get the vaccines for them?” 

    And, if the government-run program were to stop paying for vaccines, she said she’s terrified private insurance companies might follow suit. 

    Vaccines for Children is “the backbone of pediatric vaccine infrastructure in the country,” said Richard Hughes IV, former vice president of public policy at Moderna and a George Washington University law professor who teaches a course on vaccine law.

    Kennedy will also have immense power over Medicaid, which covers low-income populations and provides billions of dollars to schools annually for physical, mental and behavioral health services for eligible students.

    If Kennedy moves to weaken programs at HHS, which experts expect him to do, through across-the-board cuts in public health funding that trickle down to immunization programs or more targeted attacks, low-income and minority school-aged kids will be disproportionately impacted, Hughes said. 

    “I just absolutely, fundamentally, confidently believe that we will see deaths,” he added.

    Anticipating chaos and instability

    Following a contentious seven hours of grilling across two confirmation hearings, Democratic senators protested Kennedy’s confirmation on the floor late into the night Wednesday. The following morning, all 45 Democrats and both Independents voted in opposition and all but one Republican — childhood polio survivor Mitch McConnell of Kentucky — lined up behind President Donald Trump’s pick.

    James Hodge, a public health law expert at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, said that while it was good to see senators across the political spectrum asking tough questions and Kennedy offering up some concessions on vaccine-related policies and initiatives, he’s skeptical these will stick.

    “Whatever you’ve seen him do for the last 25 to 30 years is a much, much greater predictor than what you saw him do during two or three days of Senate confirmation proceedings,” Hodge said. “Ergo, be concerned significantly about the future of vaccines, vaccine exemptions, [and] how we’re going to fund these things.”

    Hodge also said he doesn’t trust how Kennedy will respond to the consequences of a dropoff in childhood vaccines, pointing to the current measles outbreak in West Texas schools.

    “The simple reality is he may plant misinformation or mis-messaging,” he said.

    During his confirmation hearings, Kennedy tried to distance himself from his past anti-vaccination sentiments stating, “News reports have claimed that I am anti-vaccine or anti-industry. I am neither. I am pro-safety … I believe that vaccines played a critical role in health care. All of my kids are vaccinated.”

    He was confirmed as Linda McMahon, Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Education, was sitting down for her first day of hearings. At one point that morning, McMahon signaled an openness to possibly shifting enforcement to HHS of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act — a federal law dating back to 1975 that mandates a free, appropriate public education for the 7.5 million students with disabilities — if Trump were to succeed in shutting down the education department.

    This would effectively put IDEA’s $15.4 billion budget under Kennedy’s purview, further linking the education and public health care systems.

    In a post on the social media site BlueSky, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, wrote she is “concerned that anyone is willing to move IDEA services for kids with disabilities into HHS, under a secretary who questions science.”

    Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union and a parent of a child with ADHD and autism, told The 74 the idea was “absolutely absurd” and would cause chaos and instability. 

    Kennedy’s history of falsely asserting a link between childhood vaccines and autism — a disability included under IDEA coverage — is particularly concerning to experts in this light.

    “You obviously have a contingent of kids who are beneficiaries of IDEA that are navigating autism spectrum disorder,” said Hughes, “Could [we] potentially see some sort of policy activity and rhetoric around that? Potentially.”

    Vaccines — and therefore HHS — are inextricably linked to schools. Currently, all 50 states have vaccine requirements for children entering child care and schools. But Kennedy, who now has control of an agency with a $1.7 trillion budget and 90,000 employees spread across 13 agencies, could pull multiple levers to roll back requirements, enforcements and funding, according to The 74’s previous reporting. And Trump has signaled an interest in cutting funding to schools that mandate vaccines.

    “There’s a certain percentage of the population that is focused on removing school entry requirements,” said Northe Saunders, executive director of the pro-vaccine SAFE Communities Coalition. “They are loud, and they are organized and they are well funded by groups just like RFK Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense.”

    Kennedy will also have the ability to influence the makeup of the committees that approve vaccines and add them to the federal vaccine schedule, which state legislators rely on to determine their school policies. Hodge said one of these committees is already being “re-organized and re-thought as we speak.”

    “With him now in place, just expect that committee to start really changing its members, its tone, the demeanor, the forcefulness of which it’s suggesting vaccines,” he added.

    Hughes, the law professor, said he is preparing for mass staffing changes throughout the agency, mirroring what’s already happened across multiple federal departments and agencies in Trump’s first weeks in office. He predicts this will include Kennedy possibly asking for the resignations “of all scientific leaders with HHS.” 

    Kennedy appeared to confirm that he was eyeing staffing cuts Thursday night during an appearance on Fox News’s “The Ingraham Angle.”

    “I have a list in my head … if you’ve been involved in good science, you have got nothing to worry about,” Kennedy said.


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