Category: Featured

  • Teaching Critiques in an Unsettled Political Time (opinion)

    Teaching Critiques in an Unsettled Political Time (opinion)

    As a university professor, I recently found myself in an awkward spot. I teach a large survey course called Introduction to Cultural Anthropology that enrolls some 350 students. As part of the course, I usually spend one class period every semester lecturing on the anthropology of development. This is a field in which the dominant strains have involved critiquing development projects, most frequently for two sorts of reasons: either for ignoring local cultural practices and priorities, or for exacerbating the very things that development projects are meant to ameliorate.

    In the spring semester of 2025, after I had already finalized and posted the course syllabus, something unprecedented happened in the United States: the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was dismantled by the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). From the standpoint of the standard critiques of development, some of the rationales the Trump administration provided for this unprecedented move were eerily familiar. “Musk and the Right Co-Opt the Left’s Critique of U.S. Power,” The New York Times proclaimed.

    Development isn’t the only topic on which such a critique of power has suddenly shifted politically. Science, another topic on which I spend some class sessions, is similarly fraught. For a long time, many researchers in the anthropology of science argued that the values and beliefs of scientists shape the sciences. The attacks on scientific authority that began during President Trump’s first term and have intensified since amplify these very same sorts of arguments. So how do we broach these topics today, as university professors?

    In pondering this question in the context of my own class, I came to view the common refrain that the right is “coopting” or “appropriating” the critiques made by the left with some curiosity and a bit of suspicion. Both of these terms carry some connotations of misuse and bad faith. Don’t get me wrong: There certainly is truth to the view that some Republican politicians in the United States have recently lifted and re-deployed arguments simply because they justify a desired end (and achieve a little trolling as an added benefit). But, educationally, “appropriation” in this context is not always a useful refrain. It sidesteps the arguments themselves by drawing pre-determined boundaries around their fair use.

    Further, the view that these migrating arguments are cases of “cooptation” does not always stand up to historical scrutiny. Take, for example, questions concerning the power vested in experts. Today, the right is waging more of a battle against experts and the institutions that house them than the left. This battle is undergirded by several arguments, including claims of insufficient “viewpoint diversity” and elite capture, themselves logics that have migrated.

    This battle against experts is most vociferously waged in the name of a populist view: that the people know what’s best for them. A couple of decades ago, the left was more invested in critiquing the ways that expertise was used to exert control over people who understood their own circumstances and their own needs better than many experts.

    But before that, a similar argument sat at the core of the neoliberal right. The famed neoliberal theorist Friedrich von Hayek made this sort of argument against expertise as part of his case for unfettered markets, which, he argued, aggregated and responded to the locally informed decisions of large numbers of individuals better than any expert ever could. It’s also a mistake to think about the migration of these ideas in terms of a stable divide between left and right: MAGA has instilled in the “right” in the guise of the current Republican party a new hostility toward the free market while the “left” of today’s Democratic party has embraced elements of neoliberalism.

    Instead of simple “appropriation,” the migration of arguments across an array of worldviews should be interpreted as zones of agreement where the depth of that agreement—superficial or comprehensive?—has to be scrutinized. Why and how are different implications drawn from these zones? This entails continuing to think about and teach these critical perspectives rather than shying away from them for fear of exacerbating the attacks they now authorize.

    Ultimately, recognizing that similar critiques cross-pollinate with disparate ideological positions is an invitation to engage even more deeply with the substance of these arguments, both in the classroom and beyond.

    Talia Dan-Cohen is an associate professor of sociocultural anthropology and associate director of the Center for the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis.

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  • How Neoliberalism Haunts Our Lives: 24/7/365

    How Neoliberalism Haunts Our Lives: 24/7/365

    Neoliberalism isn’t just an economic theory or a dry policy framework. It’s a lived reality that operates around the clock, shaping our lives in ways many people don’t fully see. Neoliberalism tells us that markets solve everything, that individual responsibility trumps social solidarity, and that human worth is best measured by productivity, consumption, and credentialing. Its presence is constant—at work, in education, in healthcare, in housing, even in our relationships.

    This is not a new critique. But as the 21st century drags on and late capitalism becomes more extractive, predatory, and digitally surveilled, the impacts of neoliberal ideology have intensified. For the working class, for students, for adjuncts, for debtors, for renters, and for the chronically ill, neoliberalism is not an abstraction—it is a system of permanent exhaustion.

    The Day Begins: Sleep-Deprived and Algorithmically Watched

    The neoliberal day begins before the alarm rings. If you’re poor, you may be sleeping in your car or waking up in a crowded home. If you’re middle-class, the first thing you see is likely your phone, already feeding you metrics about your body (sleep scores, heart rate, missed messages). Neoliberal logic tells us our time must be optimized, even our rest must be productive.

    Gig workers check their apps to see if they’ll get enough rides or orders to survive. Others log into remote jobs monitored by keystroke trackers, digital timesheets, or AI productivity tools. Control is constant, and surveillance is internalized: we discipline ourselves with planners, metrics, reminders, shame.

    Education: Credentials Over Knowledge

    For students, neoliberal education is a high-cost simulation of opportunity. Degrees are sold as investments in “human capital,” with ever-rising tuition and debt. Public funding is replaced by predatory loans, branding consultants, and privatized ed-tech platforms. The curriculum is shaped by market demand, not civic responsibility. Liberal arts are gutted, and adjuncts are paid poverty wages while administrators balloon in number.

    The university, once imagined as a space for critical thinking and collective inquiry, is now a debt-fueled credential mill—an HR pipeline for corporations, a subscription model of social mobility that rarely delivers.

    Healthcare: A Business of Despair

    Neoliberalism doesn’t take a break when you get sick. In fact, your illness becomes a profit center. In the U.S., the healthcare system is a financial trap. Insurance is often tied to employment; losing your job means losing your access to care. Big Pharma, hospital chains, and insurance conglomerates operate under the logic of maximizing shareholder value—not public health.

    Even mental health is commodified. Wellness apps, “self-care” products, and Instagram therapy push the idea that individual solutions will fix systemic problems. Suffering is reframed as personal failure.

    Housing: A Market, Not a Human Right

    Housing insecurity is one of neoliberalism’s clearest failures. Real estate speculation, gentrification, and the financialization of housing have made shelter a luxury good. Renters face skyrocketing costs and eviction threats, while homes sit vacant as investment vehicles.

    Public housing is stigmatized and underfunded. Homelessness becomes a criminal issue instead of a humanitarian one. You’re told to “pull yourself up” while the ladder is systematically removed.

    Work and Labor: You’re Always On

    The 9-to-5 is no longer the norm. Neoliberal work is either hyper-precarious or all-consuming. The gig economy pretends to offer flexibility, but in practice it strips away rights, benefits, and security. Professional workers face unpaid overtime, side hustles, and an expectation of constant availability. Labor laws lag decades behind. Union-busting is normalized.

    At the same time, those without work are treated with suspicion. Unemployment, disability, and even retirement are framed as moral failings or burdens on the system.

    Nightfall: No Rest for the Weary

    At night, the apps don’t sleep. Your data is still harvested. Your bank is still charging fees. Your landlord’s algorithm is still adjusting rent. Your student loan is still accruing interest. Your body, overstressed and under-cared-for, begins to break down.

    Even dreams aren’t free: entertainment has been colonized by neoliberal culture, feeding you aspirational lifestyles and endless content to dull your exhaustion. Everything is monetized. Everything is a subscription.

    Resistance in the Cracks

    Despite its pervasiveness, neoliberalism is not invincible. People are resisting in small and large ways—through union organizing, mutual aid, alternative media, degrowth activism, and radical pedagogy. These aren’t just political choices; they are survival strategies.

    But for resistance to grow, we must name the problem clearly. Neoliberalism is not just a phase of capitalism—it’s an ideology embedded in every institution and mediated by every platform. It isolates us, overworks us, and extracts from us while pretending to offer freedom and choice.

    The 24/7/365 Trap

    We live in neoliberalism’s world, but we don’t have to live by its rules. That starts with refusing its myths: that poverty is personal failure, that education is a private good, that health must be earned, that the market is sacred.

    As long as neoliberalism governs our lives without challenge, inequality will deepen and democracy will continue to erode. The question isn’t whether we can afford to abandon neoliberalism—the question is whether we can survive if we don’t.

    Sources:

    • Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos

    • David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism

    • Sarah Jaffe, Work Won’t Love You Back

    • Marion Fourcade and Kieran Healy, “Seeing Like a Market”

    • Astra Taylor, The Age of Insecurity

    • Michael Hudson, The Destiny of Civilization

    • Maurizio Lazzarato, The Making of the Indebted Man

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  • PRINCIPAL VOICE: Inviting families into our classrooms slashed absenteeism and raised reading levels

    PRINCIPAL VOICE: Inviting families into our classrooms slashed absenteeism and raised reading levels

    Two years ago, I bought each of the teachers at Hamilton Elementary in San Diego’s City Heights neighborhood a blue chair. I told them to put it in the back of their classrooms, and that if a parent or caregiver wanted to visit to see how their children are learning — no matter what the reason — that this would be a dedicated space for them.

    I may have earned some exaggerated eye-rolls from educators that day. After all, I can appreciate the disruption to learning that classroom visitors can sometimes cause, especially among excitable elementary schoolers.

    But school is our home, and it is our responsibility to invite families into our home and welcome them. And this was a necessary olive branch, my way of saying to families: “From here on out, things are going to be different.”

    And they were. They also can be different at other schools, because the benefits of family engagement go well beyond student achievement.

    Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education.

    Research has long shown that when parents and caregivers are involved and engaged with their children’s education — whether that’s by attending parent-teacher conferences or participating in school events — student achievement, motivation and social-emotional well-being increase.

    Parent involvement with reading activities has a positive impact on reading achievement, language comprehension, expressive language skills and level of attention in the classroom, according to the National Literacy Trust.

    Research also shows that educators enjoy increased job satisfaction and are more likely to keep teaching at the school, families enjoy stronger relationships with their children and feel less isolated, and even school districts themselves become better places to live and raise children.

    None of this was the case when we returned to normalcy following Covid. Just 13 percent of students were reading on grade level, and 37 percent were chronically absent. I knew right away that before we even attempted to tackle academics, we needed to engage families and make them feel deeply connected and committed to the community I envisioned building here.

    Today, 45 percent of students are reading at grade-level, and chronic absenteeism, at 12 percent on the most recent official numbers, is down to 10 percent in our own tracking, with a goal of pushing it down to 8 percent in 2025-26.

    But it wasn’t easy given the distrust that had boiled over during the pandemic, with families skeptical of our ability to effectively support their children and school staff feeling defensive and exhausted.

    It was clear to me that families weren’t excited to send their kids to school, didn’t feel informed about what was happening on our campus and, moreover, didn’t feel comfortable — let alone capable — of communicating their needs to us.

    Complicating matters further was the need to share information across many languages other than English, which can make relationship-building and communicating expectations difficult.

    Roughly half of our students are English learners, and while the majority of their families are Spanish-speakers, there are growing populations of students whose first languages are Haitian-Creole, Pashto and Vietnamese.

    Related: What the research says about the best way to engage parents

    The first thing I did was establish open communication with parents using ClassDojo, a mobile app that gives families an easy, intuitive central access point to our teachers and staff, automatically translates all messages into parents’ native languages and allows us to share stories about what is happening in school.

    It became an easy way to build trust and collaboration between families and staff.

    Creating that type of visibility was key to breaking down walls between us. And in those early days, we didn’t post about literacy, math or anything related to academics. Instead, we focused solely on attendance and getting families to come inside the school as much as possible.

    We focused on relationship-building activities and joyful learning. We hosted after-school art classes and monthly family Fridays, when families could come to school to engage in a fun activity.

    We organized a Halloween costume drive with candy and fun games for kids; we hosted a Read Across America event where we passed out Play-Doh; and we organized other low-stakes events at school, rooted in building a partnership between home and school.

    Again, our goal wasn’t learning during these meet-ups. It was all in service of building trust and creating meaningful relationships with students and their families.

    Once we had the foundation in place, we added a focus on academics — though we rooted that learning in family engagement, too. For example, our schoolwide focus last year was phonics, so we sent activities home for families to complete with their children that were tied specifically to concepts the students needed reinforced, based on their individual assessments, like long vowel patterns and sight words.

    These activities were taught by the students and their teachers to family members during conferences.

    Beyond helping students, the exercise challenged a false narrative so many families had assumed — that they either didn’t know enough about what was happening in school to help, weren’t confident enough to help or didn’t have enough time.

    Today, the atmosphere at Hamilton feels radically different than when I first walked through the doors. When we first started hosting Family Fridays, about 10 family members and their children showed up.

    Now, we have roughly 200 caregivers at every meet-up. Families run most of the community-based initiatives at the school — from a boutique where families can shop among donated clothes twice a month, to a food distribution center, to a book club, English classes and a monthly meet-up where families can socialize.

    When district leaders visit, they’re always impressed by the participation. I tell them, if you care about family engagement, it has to be so deeply embedded into the system that people don’t have a choice but to do it.

    That’s why I’m constantly thinking about how to center family engagement in staff meetings, in attendance meetings, in literacy and math plans, in behavioral and counseling plans and in meetings about school procedures and budgets.

    It’s a strategy that not only involves families but also supports academic achievement and student well-being. For me, family engagement is the ultimate strategy for academics.

    Sometimes in the K-12 world we keep outreach and academics separate, but in reality, engagement is the key that unlocks our ability to hit academic goals and create a joyful school community.

    Dr. Brittany Daley is the principal of Hamilton Elementary School in San Diego, California.

    Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.

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

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  • General Education for Working Learners in the Age of AI – Faculty Focus

    General Education for Working Learners in the Age of AI – Faculty Focus

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  • The possibilities for radical collaboration in HE go far beyond mergers

    The possibilities for radical collaboration in HE go far beyond mergers

    2024-25 has been quite a year for collaboration in higher education. A year on from the election of the Labour government two things are pretty clear: there will be no significant injection of public funds into the sector in the current parliament; and the guiding lens for this government’s post-16 education policy will be regional.

    Instead of a highly competitive national higher education market the current policy landscape speaks to finding more ways to pool resources between institutions – so much so that Universities UK announced the formation of its taskforce on efficiency and transformation with the announcement of a “new era of collaboration” in higher education.

    Early in the year as the reality of the fiscal situation became clearer the sector saw a renewal of interest in coordinated efficiency models, including shared services, joint procurement, and up to and including mergers and acquisitions. There was only one problem: anyone who had experience of these kinds of initiatives, whether in higher education or another sector, would quickly warn that they require a great deal of upfront investment of time and energy, and the intended efficiency savings rarely materialise in the short term.

    No institution whose sole objective was to save money would look to collaboration as the best solution. But when we have explored themes of collaboration with the sector – through our radical efficiency article series with KPMG UK and our Connect More report with Mills & Reeve – we have found that despite the competitive pressures on the sector there is an appetite to explore where greater coordination between institutions could enhance value for students, employers, research funders and communities and regions.

    Play by play

    That sense of strategic potential for new ways of realising value is the starting point for a new publication from KPMG UK and Mills & Reeve. Titled Radical collaboration: a playbook, the report sets out the strategic context and considerations for boards and executives considering the range of options for structural collaboration, and the legal implications for the different kinds of possible models for structural collaboration.

    “If structural collaboration is framed as a short term fix for immediate financial sustainability then it’s the wrong answer to a bad question,” says Justine Andrew, partner at KPMG UK, and one of the authors of the playbook. “I think this is the moment, looking at the medium to long term, to say ‘is there a more joined-up way of fulfilling the purposes of what universities are for which is delivering world class teaching and research with impact in our places?’”

    It is often assumed that “structural collaboration” is a euphemism for merger – which itself is a euphemism for acquisition of one education provider by another. But this is far from accurate. One of the intents of the playbook is to explore the breadth of possible collaborations available to higher education providers on a spectrum from the softer to harder forms, including contractual alliance models, federation, group structures, and even the concept of a “multi-university trust.”

    “The multi-university trust is a concept that doesn’t exist yet,” says Poppy Short, partner at Mills & Reeve, and playbook author. “But in the school sector we have multi-academy trusts where all the institutions combine into one charitable company but the legacy institutions operate out of a separate academic division within that corporate vehicle, with some localised autonomy and branding. I think we will see one or more of those in higher education in the not too distant future.”

    Better the hurdle you know

    A further, highly practical, intent of the playbook is to help institutions to navigate some of the initial barriers to thinking through those different possibilities. Where higher education providers have merged – something that, while not especially common in higher education, is hardly beyond the bounds of accepted practice – they have been surprised to discover a lack of formal guidance that sets out the legal and regulatory requirements to help two organisations become one. There is even a degree of murkiness about the extent to which organisations are allowed to start conversations about collaboration under competition law – something which, under pressure from the sector, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has said it will look into.

    To tackle this lack of guidance, for each of the collaborative entities explored the playbook sets out the corporate structure and governance, and the implications for brand identity, management of finances and delivery of services, and the impact on staff and students, including a real-world example where one exists. The playbook then sets out a worked example of a hypothetical scenario of a group of providers in a place working through options for structural collaboration, thinking through what the strategic drivers and risks for individual institutions might be, and the legal, financial and regulatory implications for a new corporate group entity.

    “We really hope the playbook can move the conversation from the theoretical into a really practical one,” says Justine. “We’re using the fictional example of a place called Newtown that has a diverse range of FE and HE providers, and looking through a regional lens, if I’m a student, if I’m an employer, if I’m a combined authority, an industrial partner is the way that the sector I’m interfacing with set up the best for me from a curriculum, a research, a delivery point of view. So we’re not only thinking through the impact on the institutions themselves but flipping the lens a bit and asking whether, from the end user point of view, there is a better way of doing this.”

    Why wait for government

    Traditionally, the sector might have looked to the government to set out an agenda or framework where policy gaps are identified – but it’s also fair to say that few in the sector want the government to start putting pressure on institutions to work together or combine forces when the strategic rationale for doing so is undercooked. Far better for the impetus to come from institutions themselves, underpinned by a shared idea of the kinds of value that can be created through collaboration and a common commitment to achieving those ends.

    That doesn’t mean there is no role for government, not least in reducing the barriers to collaboration and potentially setting out some kind of brokerage framework or regulatory support service to encourage and support exploration of options. There are also some obvious tweaks to be made to the tax system to, at the very least, ensure structural collaborations do not incur a tax penalty.

    “I think the Department for Education is in listening mode,” says Poppy. “I think they are looking for the sector to come forward with ideas, for these conversations to start happening, and for the asks to fall out of that. Obviously there are funding challenges but there are other asks as well, such as could the department broker conversations with the CMA or give some additional regulatory guidance? Also it would be helpful to work on joining up the different forms of education provision across FE and HE so you’re not constantly finding hurdles – just as you get over one issue in your sector, you’re in another sector. I think there are many things the department could do to help universities navigate their way through some of the decision-making and planning and considering what their options are.”

    None of this looks like the kind of funding investment in transformation the sector might hope to see, but it’s worth noting that in some cases a benefit of scale can be to unlock opportunities for private investment. The playbook works through the circumstances under which private investment could be a sensible option and points to some existing public/private partnerships already in place in the sector.

    Radical collaboration may not be the answer for all or even most higher education institutions in England. But both the sector and government have to answer the fundamental policy question of how to organise the post-16 education sector in such a way as to support the provision of the kinds of diversity of qualifications, subjects and modes of delivery that will enable the largest possible numbers to benefit from the opportunity to enhance their life chances.

    If there is a chance that broader and deeper structural collaborations across further and higher education can help to deliver that agenda, then at the very least boards and executive teams have to give those options meaningful consideration – and this playbook just radically lowered the bar to starting that process.

    This article is published in association with KPMG UK and Mills & Reeve. You can view and download Radical collaboration: a playbook here.

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  • Canberra staff “in the dark” after council review – Campus Review

    Canberra staff “in the dark” after council review – Campus Review

    A review of the University of Canberra’s (UC) management said governing body members should be held more accountable after staff felt ‘shut down‘ and shunned from decision making.

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  • New UOW leadership reduces job cuts – Campus Review

    New UOW leadership reduces job cuts – Campus Review

    The new University of Wollongong (UOW) leader will cut senior staff and reduce non-salary spending to save some non-academic positions in the university’s restructure.

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  • Antisemitism scorecard will harm unis: Opinion – Campus Review

    Antisemitism scorecard will harm unis: Opinion – Campus Review

    Last week the Australian Government’s special antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal delivered her report to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

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  • The disagreements on REF cannot go on forever – it may be time for a compromise

    The disagreements on REF cannot go on forever – it may be time for a compromise

    The submission deadline for REF is autumn 2028. It is not very far away and there are still live debates on significant parts of the exercise without an obvious way forward in sight.

    As the Contributions to Knowledge and Understanding guidance makes clear there are still significant areas where guidance is being awaited. The People, Culture and Environment (PCE) criteria and definitions will be published in autumn this year. Undoubtedly, this will kick off rounds of further debate on REF and its purposes. It feels like there is a lot left to do with not much time left to do it in.

    Compromise

    The four UK higher education funding bodies could take a view that the levels of disquiet in the sector about REF, and what I am hearing at the events I go to and from the people I speak to it does seem significant, will eventually dissipate as the business of REF gets underway.

    This now seems unlikely. It is clear that there are increasingly entrenched views on the workability or not of the new portability measures, and there is still the ongoing debate on the extent to which research culture can be measured. Research England has sought to take the sector toward ends which have broad support, improving the diversity and conditions of research, but there is much less consensus on how to get there.

    The consequences for continuing as is are unpredictable but they are potentially significant. At the most practical level the people working on REF only have so much resource and bandwidth. The debate about the future of REF will not go away as more guidance is released, in fact the debate is likely to intensify, and getting to submission where there is still significant disagreement will drain resources and time.

    The debate also crowds out the other work that is going on in research. All the while that the future of REF is being debated it is time taken away from all of the funding which is not allocated through REF, all of the problems with research that do not stem from this quinquennial exercise, and the myriad of other research issues that sit beyond the sector’s big research audit. The REF looms large in the imagination of the sector but the current impasse is eclipsing much else.

    If the government believes that REF does not have broad support from the sector it could intervene. It is faulty to assume that the REF is an inevitable part of the research landscape. As Chancellor, Gordon Brown attempted to axe its predecessor on the basis that it had become too burdensome. Former advisor to the Prime Minister Dominic Cummings also wished to bin the REF. UCU opposed REF 2014. Think Tank UK Day One also published a well shared paper on the argument for scrapping the current REF.

    The REF has survived because of lack of better alternatives, its skilful management, and its broad if not sometimes qualified support. The moment the political pain of REF outweighs its perceived research benefits it will be ripe for scrapping by a government committed to reducing costs and reducing the research burden.

    The future

    The premise of the new REF is that research is a team sport and the efforts of the team that create the research should be measured and therefore rewarded. The corollary of identifying research as a product of a unit rather than an individual is that the players, in this case researchers and university staff, have had their skills unduly diminished, hidden, or otherwise not accounted for because of pervasive biases in the research landscape.

    It is impossible to argue that by any reasonable measure there aren’t significant issues with equality in research. This impacts the lives and career prospects of researchers and the UK economy as whole. It would be an issue for any serious research funder to back away from work that seeks to improve the diversity of research.

    It is in this light where perhaps the biggest risk of all lies for Research England. If it pushes on with the metrics and measures it currently has and the result of REF is seen as unfair or structurally unsound it will do irreversible harm to the wider culture agenda. The idea of measuring people, culture, and environment will be put into the “too hard to do” box.

    This work is too important to be done quickly but the urgency of the challenge cannot be dropped. It is an unenviable position to be in.

    REF 2030?

    If a conclusion is reached that it is not feasible to carry the sector toward a new REF in time for 2029 there only seems to be one route forward which is to return to a system more like 2021. This is not because the system was perfect (albeit it was generally seen as a good exercise) but because it would be unfeasible to carry out further system changes at this stage. Pushing the exercise back to 2030 would mean allocating funding from an exercise completed almost a decade prior. It seems untenable to do so because of how much institutions will have changed in this period.

    The work going on to measure PCE is not only helpful in the context of REF but alongside work coming out of the Metascience Unit and UKRI centrally, among others, part of the way in which the sector can be supported to measure and build a better research culture and environment. This work within the pilots is of such importance that it would make sense to stand these groups up over a long time period with a view to building to the next exercise, while improving practice within universities more generally on an ongoing basis.

    As I wrote back in 2023 complexity in REF is worthwhile where it enhances university research. The complexity has now become the crux of the debate. If Research England reaches the conclusion that the cost and complexity of the desired future outstrips the capacity and knowledge of the present, the opportunity is to pause, pilot, learn, improve, and go again.

    Tactical compromise for now – with the explicit intention of taking time to agree a strategic direction on research as more of a shared and less of an individual endeavour – is possible. To do so it will require making the political and practical case for a different future (as well as the moral one) ever more explicit, explaining the trade-offs it will involve, and crucially building a consensus on how that future will be funded and measured. Next year is a decade on from the Stern Review; perhaps it is time for another independent review of REF.

    A better future for research is possible but only where the government, funders, institutions, and researchers are aligned.

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  • Many Kids Aren’t Ready for School Before Age 5. So Why Do They Have to Go Anyway? – The 74

    Many Kids Aren’t Ready for School Before Age 5. So Why Do They Have to Go Anyway? – The 74


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    This summer, Washington, D.C., parents were notified that they’d no longer be able to hold their child back from starting kindergarten if the student turned 5 years old before Sept. 30. Previously, the decision on so-called redshirting had been left up to families, with advice from pediatricians and child psychologists.

    In New York City, America’s largest school district, the birthday cut-off is even later: Dec. 31. One-third of children are required to begin kindergarten prior to turning 5. This is a cause of concern for many families.

    The city Department of Education doesn’t see it as a problem. In an email, a spokesperson told me its official stance is, “We work to provide all families access to a world-class education, and we work closely with families to ensure students’ placements are academically and developmentally appropriate, in alignment with state guidelines. Our policies allow for flexibility, our kindergarten curriculum is responsive to the needs of our younger learners, and our dedicated educators are prepared to support every student.”

    Not all are appeased.

    “I have a 4-year-old who will start kindergarten this fall but doesn’t turn 5 until after Thanksgiving,” worried mom CK told me. “I think it’s a big disservice to these kids. The amount of sitting isn’t developmentally appropriate, and the lack of free play is concerning.”

    Parents are justified in their concerns. As the Child Mind Institute summarized in June:

    Several studies have concluded that kids who are youngest in their class are disproportionately diagnosed with ADHD. A Michigan study found that kindergartners who are the youngest in their grade are 60% more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than the oldest in their grade. And it doesn’t affect just kindergarteners: A North Carolina study found that in fifth and eighth grade, the youngest children were almost twice as likely as the oldest to be prescribed medication for ADHD.

    The research didn’t sit well with some teachers. One blasted my social media inquiry seeking views on redshirting by writing, “ADHD is a very serious IEP (Individualized Education Plan) and we don’t hand them out like candy.”

    Others, however, agreed.

    “My daughter was one of the youngest in her class,” wrote an anonymous mother. “The teacher and school counselor mislabeled her with psychological disorders that both NY special education testing and private neurological tests did not support.”

    “More of my students with an IEP have a birthday in the second half of the calendar year,” confirmed Mary C., who has been a special ed teacher for 12 years. “I understand where an incoming K parent would be concerned that their December baby is much younger than a June baby.”

    That was the case with Upper West Side parent KE’s son. “He is the youngest and smallest boy in the grade,” she wrote. “He started kindergarten at 4 years old, still sucking his thumb. The physical, emotional, social, psychological and other developmental differences between a 5-year-old born in January and a 4-year-old born in December impacts everything from holding a pencil to kicking a ball, to the length of time one can sit and concentrate. It was too early, too soon and too young, but we literally had no choice in the matter in order to enroll him.”

    The problems that pop up with younger students can reverberate beyond elementary school.

    Pree Kaur lamented that her daughter “is always the younger one and is not as mentally developed as her peers, so she always feels as if something is wrong with her.”

    The Riverdale dad of a son born in November wrote, “He had some difficulty following his teacher’s instructions in first grade, and his teacher repeatedly pointed out that he has difficulty sitting still, staying focused, etc. We had him evaluated by a pediatric developmental specialist and he was diagnosed with ADHD. I really struggle with the whole situation, as I believe if we were able to get him to go to school a year later, matters may have been different.”

    “My daughter attended a citywide gifted program. She was doing great, but it came with a price,” confessed Annie Tate. “She was high-functioning until high school, where she was overwhelmed and was diagnosed with ADHD, a diagnosis I believe she wouldn’t have received if I didn’t send her to school at 4 years, 8 months. She would have matured emotionally and physically to be a healthier, happier child.”

    Pediatric occupational therapist KJL sees this situation frequently: “Children with ADHD have a 30% delay in executive function compared to their peers. Combine that with young ages, and these children are set up to fail.”

    When I posed the question of allowing parents to hold back their children on my mailing list, the most frequent response I received was, “SOMEONE has to be the youngest.”

    That’s true. But the situation can still be ameliorated.

    Grades with multiple classes can be broken up into three- or four-month bands, so students are learning with a narrower-aged peer group.

    Repeating a year should be a more acceptable option, unlike the situation faced by mom Heather Hooks: “My son was very behind academically in first grade. The school refused to hold him back and cited studies on ‘retention’ being not good for kids in the long run. I found these didn’t take into consideration that this was not straight retention, but redshirting an ADHD kid. Other studies were significantly different, and suggested these kids have better outcomes and are less likely to be medicated.”

    Another mom was told her daughter “wasn’t behind enough,” despite the child’s pleas that “it’s too much for my head.”

    Any steps taken to help New York City’s youngest learners would provide the largest experimental sample size in the country, making those results potentially beneficial for students across America.

    Based on what happens in NYC, the educational system can stop treating children as developmentally identical and schools as one-size-fits-all, giving families more options.

    As Maureen Yusuf-Morales, who has worked at public, charter and independent schools, suggests, “Parents with children born after September should be allowed choice with guidance based on developmental milestones, as opposed to birthdays being the only hard-and-fast rule.”


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