Kurt Micklo lost interest in academics after he failed to make the basketball team as a sophomore at Chapin High School. Soon after, he fathered a son and began to work full time, which put him further behind in his studies.
A counselor finally advised him during his junior year that he should withdraw and try to earn a GED. He dropped out and – through hard work – found professional success as a general manager of a subcontracting logistics company. However, the lack of a high school diploma haunted him. He wants one to give his family – especially his mother – another reason to be proud of him.
A busy work and family schedule have kept him from returning to school, but the flexibility of a new state program aimed at people aged 18 and older without a high school diploma will allow him to earn a diploma and a college career and technical education, or CTE, credential for programs such as health care, welding or computer science at the same time.
The concept of Opportunity High School Diploma was part of House Bill 8, which the state Legislature passed in 2023. The state funneled about $2 million into this program to help the approximately 4.3 million Texans as of 2023, including about 30,000 adult El Pasoans, without a diploma to earn the academic credits most of them will need to acquire higher-paying jobs. The program is scheduled to launch in spring 2026.
“If I could juggle it, I’d be pretty interested” in the program, said 34-year-old Micklo, a father of three ages 15, 10 and 5. He is the general manager of three warehouses, two in El Paso and one in Laredo, Texas, as well as four sites near the international ports of entry with Mexico in El Paso, Tornillo and Santa Teresa, New Mexico, were commodities are offloaded.. “It would make my stepfather (a retired educator) and my mother happy if I earned my high school diploma.”
El Paso Community College is one of five community college districts in the state selected for the design and implementation phases of this program. The other institutions in the design phase are Alamo Colleges District, Austin Community College, Dallas College and San Jacinto College near Houston.
They work under the direction of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. The board will review the instructional outcomes and performance expectations that the college collaborators created during an October meeting. Once finalized, the college faculty will begin to work with school districts to design the curriculum.
The program is flexible for students who probably work full time and have family obligations. Courses would have suggested timelines, but students would turn in assignments as their schedule allowed through the end of the term.
Micklo, a Northeast resident, said the promised flexibility is the only reason he might consider the program. As for his credential, he said he would need to review EPCC’s career and technical education options. The college offers more than 100 career programs such as HVAC, or heating, ventilation and air conditioning, and electrical, automotive or diesel technologies.
Students will be co-enrolled in competency-based high school curriculum such as math, civics, sciences and communication, and a career and technical workforce program. Competency based courses are focused more on a students’ mastery of a skill or subject than the amount of time spent in a classroom.
Isela Castañón Williams
Isela Castañón Williams, professor and coordinator of EPCC’s teacher preparation programs, is in charge of the college’s 13-member team. She called the project a “monumental task” because of its scope and uniqueness. She said her team, and its counterparts, played a critical role in the design phase.
“Faculty at EPCC are very innovative,” she said. “I think that my colleagues have approached this process with a great deal of enthusiasm. We’re always looking to provide better services and educational experiences to the community we serve.”
EPCC faculty advocated for the program to be designed to accommodate English Second Language and English Language Learner populations, a THECB spokesman said in a July 1 statement. He said last year that the board selected EPCC for the project’s design phase because of its border insights, and because its CTE degrees and credentials are in line with the program.
While the state wants to attract students aged 18 and older, EPCC officials will aim for people 25 and older so as to not compete with K-12 school districts that have their own dropout recovery programs. EPCC, which will offer the program at its five campuses, expects some of the program’s younger students to come from rural areas outside El Paso.
Steven E. Smith
Steven E. Smith, vice president of Instruction and Workforce Education at EPCC, said the state will provide funds to the colleges to cover tuition for initial cohorts. He expects the first groups will range from 30 to 50 students and scale up from there.
“We think this is a big market in El Paso, and I think once the word starts to get out, that will grow tremendously,” Smith said.
The administrator said that he would work on ways to market the program later this month with the college’s External Relations, Communication & Development Division. He said the college would work with school district partners to build lists of potential OHSD students.
“As you might imagine, that is a pretty difficult population to identify and reach out to because they are not in the system anymore,” Smith said.
In SRHE News and Blog a series of posts is chronicling, decade by decade, the progress of SRHE since its foundation 60 years ago in 1965. As always, our memories are supported by some music of the times (which had improved somewhat after the nadir of 1975).
In 1985 Ronald Reagan became the US President, which seemed improbable at the time, but post-Trump now appears positively conventional – that joke isn’t funny any more. Reaganomics fuelled the present US multi-$trillion national debt; it was the era of supply-side economics. President Reagan was of course popular with UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. She was by then at her peak after the 1982 Falklands War restored her own popularity, helping her in 1985 to bring an end to the miners’ strike and to ride out riots in Handsworth in Birmingham and Broadwater Farm in London.
Vodafone enabled the first commercial mobile phone call in the UK; the BBC micro was the computer of choice for schools. Beverley Hills Cop was one of the top movies in 1985, with Eddie Murphy featured by the Pointer Sisters as they sang “I don’t wanna take it any more”, a 1980s theme song for some in universities. Globalism was in vogue; everybody wants to rule the world. International pop stars came together to sing We are the world in January and then perform at the Live Aid concert at Wembley in July with Queen’s legendary showstopping performance. Nintendo prepared to conquer the world with the launch of Super Mario, but global multinationals took a hit with one of the biggest marketing blunders ever, as Coca-Cola changed its formula, released New Coke in April, then went back to the original less than three months later.
Higher education in 1985
Global HE had its own marketing and governance issues after what Guy Neave (then UCL, now Twente) described as a period of consolidation from 1975 to 1985:
“ … it was during this decade … that these systems assumed the level of dealing with mass higher education … By the late 1980s or 1990s … there are certain countries which anticipate participation rates in higher education of over 30% (Neave, 1984a). Highest amongst them are Denmark and Finland with 40% of the appropriate age group, the Federal Republic with 35% and France with 33%. … In effect, transition to mass higher education gave rise to additional bodies to control, monitor and hold accountable a sector of increasing significance in government social expenditure. Such intermediary agencies stand as a response to the advent of mass higher education, not an anticipation of it.”
This was prescient: who’s gonna tell you things aren’t so great? Later Paul Windolf (Heidelberg) would take a very long view in his comparative analysis of Cycles of expansion in higher education 1870-1985 in Higher Education (1992:23, 3-19): “For most countries the data confirm the theory of ‘status competition’ (perverse effects): universities expand particularly fast during times of an economic recession … The human capital theory is not confirmed by this longitudinal analysis.” However human capital theory dominated policy thinking in many parts of the world, especially the UK, as Adam Matthews (Birmingham) argued in his blog for Wonkhe on 12 June 2024:
“Despite so much adversarial and ideologically polarised politics in the 1980s domestically and internationally, we do find consensus around higher education and universities. Growth was still on the agenda. As the country found itself economically struggling, teaching and research was seen as the solution rather than the problem, particularly around research findings being applied to real world issues.”
UK HE in 1985: a ferment of planning
In that decade of consolidation after 1975, in the UK no new universities were created until the 1980s. By 1985 there were just two: the University of Buckingham and the University of Ulster. Expansion of UK HE in the 1980s was driven by the polytechnics, especially after the UGC’s unevenly distributed and dramatic financial cuts of 1981. The universities and UGC had tried and failed to protect the so-called ‘unit of resource’, the level of funding per full-time equivalent (FTE) undergraduate student, and the UGC’s established pattern of quinquennial funding had been reluctantly abandoned. Neave noted that:
“Strictly speaking, university finance in the United Kingdom did not involve change to the basic unit of resource, an issue raised only under dire economic pressure in the period following the 1981 reductions in university budgets. Nor was the abandonment of quinquennial funding a response to mass higher education per se, so much as to the country’s parlous economic status.”
The UK economy and HE were in Dire Straits: there was no money for nothing. The rapid expansion of the polytechnics, driving down costs, was the dominant influence on policy. A National Advisory Body for Local Authority Higher Education (NAB) had been set up on 1 February 1982 to advise the Secretary of State for Education and Science on matters relating to academic provision and the approval of advanced courses, reconstituted as the National Advisory Body for Public Sector Higher Education (PSHE) from 1 February 1985. In 1985 there were 503,000 students in PSHE in Great Britain, of whom 214,000 were part-time. Universities had 291,000 full-time and 114,000 part-time students. PSHE in England included 29 polytechnics, 30 major colleges, 21 voluntary colleges, and 300 others. In Wales there was one polytechnic, 7 major colleges and 16 others. The Further Education Act 1985 gave more powers to local authorities, who still governed the whole of PSHE, to supply goods and services, especially teaching and research, through educational institutions.
Clive Booth, principal private secretary to the Secretary of State for Education and Science since 1975, later to become Director of Oxford Polytechnic, foretold government policy in 1987, reviewing HE planning since 1965 in Higher Education Quarterly:
“The development of a planning body for public sector higher education in England has created the potentiality for an integrated planning approach to university and non-university higher education.”
“Looking back from 2015, some of these observations and recommendations do seem quite tentative. But in 1985 they were dynamite. After the extraordinary and unprecedented cuts of 1981 and Keith Joseph’s unsuccessful approach to introduce fees in 1984 this seemed like another attack on universities.”
“… to my mind one of the most damaging inquiries into higher education over the last half-century was the Jarratt report … a mischievous and malevolent investigation (which, inter alia, popularised if it did not invent the notion that students are “customers”, which foisted on the sector the delusion that factory-floor “performance indicators” are entirely suited to a higher-education setting, and which led to the abolition of academic tenure and the concomitant triumph of managerialism in the academy) … Jarratt was self-inflicted. The inquiry was not a government creation. It was established by the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals. … Jarratt was betrayal from within.”
For Greatrix:
“Looking back these do not look like the proposals filled with malevolence or mischief. Many of these changes were inevitable, most were long overdue, a lot would have happened in any case. … From today’s viewpoint it looks more like that what Jarratt offered were some pointers and directions in this strange new terrain.”
The Green Paper, still Green and not White, announced by Secretary of State Keith Joseph in May 1985, came as the preliminary conclusion to this ferment of planning. He said in Parliament that “…it is vital for our higher education to contribute more effectively to the improvement of the performance of the economy. This is not because the Government place a low value on the general cultural benefits of education and research or on study of the humanities.” But HE mostly heard only the first sentence, and thought we were on the road to nowhere, rather than seeing the opportunities.TheThatcher White Paper Higher Education: Meeting the Challengewould not appear until 1987, and NAB and the UGC would survive only until 1988. REO Speedwagon captured the mood: Can’t fight this feeling any more.
SRHE and research into higher education in 1985
The chairs of SRHE from 1975-1985 included some great names: Lewis Elton (Surrey) 1977-78, Gareth Williams (Lancaster, later London Institute of Education) 1978-80 (and 1986-88), Donald Bligh (Exeter) 1980-82, David Warren-Piper (London Institute of Education) 1982-84, and Michael Shattock (Warwick, later London Institute of Education/UCL) 1984-86. The outstanding highlight of the decade was a major review into higher education organised by the Society. As Gareth Williams wrote:
“With the help of a substantial grant from the Leverhulme Trust, the Society for Research into Higher Education set up a comprehensive programme of study into the future of higher education which I directed. The aim of the programme was not to undertake new research but rather to focus recent research findings and the views of informed people on the major strategic options likely to be available to higher education institutions and policy making bodies in the 1980s and 1990s.”
The programme ran from 1980 to 1983 and led to nine themed reports, an overall review and a final report. SRHE had, in Michael Shattock’s words:
“… established itself as an important voice in policy. It was addressed by higher education Ministers (William Waldegrave 1982, Peter Brooke 1983), at an SRHE/THES Conference on the Green Paper by Sir Keith Joseph the Secretary of State, in 1985. Most unusually it received a visit from the former Prime Minister, Edward Heath, in February 1983 who wished to seek the Society’s advice about higher education.”
SRHE might have hoped like Madonna to be Into the Groove policywise, but the Prime Minister had a list of questions which were more about living in a material world:
To what extent (if any) has the balance between disciplines been inappropriate for Britain’s economic needs?
How far should the labour market determine the shape of higher education?
Are research and teaching indivisible in higher education if standards are to be maintained?
Is it better to have a few research institutions or many, given financial constraints?
Is the binary line appropriate?
Are the links between HE and industry poor by comparison with other major countries?
What are the merits of shorter courses – two years liberal arts followed by two years vocational?”
“The interest of these questions is both the extent to which the issues were addressed and answered in the Leverhulme Programme and the fact that their underlying assumptions formed the basis of the 1985 Green Paper. It was clear that the Society was at the sharp end of discussions about the future policy.”
The Leverhulme findings were perhaps just too balanced for the times – can’t get there from here. Shattock as SRHE chair initiated an Enquiry on ‘Questions of Quality’ which became the theme of SRHE’s 1985 annual conference, and one of SRHE’s founders, Graeme Moodie (York), edited a 1986 bookStandards and Criteria in Higher Education. Shattock also established the influential SRHE Policy Forum, a seminar involving leading academics, civil servants and HE managers which met five times a year under the alternate chairmanship of Michael Shattock and Gareth Williams.
Nevertheless it was not long after 1985 that a special meeting of SRHE’s Council at the FE Staff College received a report, probably from its administrator Rowland Eustace, saying: “general knowledge and understanding of the Society remains relatively low in higher education despite attempts over recent years to give the Society a higher profile”. Perhaps still a little out of touch, hoping for glory days, still running up that hill, hoping or even believing that things can only get better.
Rob Cuthbert is editor of SRHE News and the SRHE Blog, Emeritus Professor of Higher Education Management, University of the West of England and Joint Managing Partner, Practical Academics. Email rob.cuthbert@uwe.ac.uk. Twitter/X @RobCuthbert.
In the nearly two years since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down race-conscious admissions, there have been repeatedcalls for universities to address the resulting decline in diversity by recruiting from community colleges.
On the surface, encouraging students to transfer from two-year colleges sounds like a terrific idea. Community colleges enroll large numbers of students who are low-income or whose parents did not attend college. Black and Latino students disproportionately start college at these institutions, whose mission for more than 50 years has been to expand access to higher education.
But while community colleges should be an avenue into high-value STEM degrees for students from low-income backgrounds and minoritized students, the reality is sobering: Just 2 percent of students who begin at a community college earn a STEM bachelor’s degree within six years, our recent study of transfer experiences in California found.
There are too many roadblocks in their way, leaving the path to STEM degrees for community college students incredibly narrow. A key barrier is the complexity of the process of transferring from a community college to a four-year institution.
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Many community college students who want to transfer and major in a STEM field must contend with three major obstacles in the transfer process:
1. A maze of inconsistent and often opaque math requirements. We found that a student considering three or four prospective university campuses might have to take three or four different math classes just to meet a single math requirement in a given major. One campus might expect a transfer student majoring in business to take calculus, while another might ask for business calculus. Still another might strongly recommend a “calculus for life sciences” course. And sometimes an institution’s website might list different requirements than a statewide transfer site. Such inconsistencies can lengthen students’ times to degrees — especially in STEM majors, which may require five- or six-course math sequences before transfer.
2. Underlying math anxiety. Many students interviewed for the study told us that they had internalized negative comments from teachers, advisers and peers about their academic ability, particularly in math. This uncertainty contributed to feelings of anxiety about completing their math courses. Their predicament is especially troubling given concerns that required courses may not contribute to success in specific fields.
3. Course scheduling conflicts that slow students’ progress. Two required courses may meet on the same day and time, for example, or a required course could be scheduled at a time that conflicts with a student’s work schedule. In interviews, we also heard that course enrollment caps and sequential pathways in which certain courses are offered only once a year too often lengthen the time to degree for students.
To help, rather than hinder, STEM students’ progress toward their college and professional goals, the transfer process needs to change significantly. First and foremost, universities need to send clear and consistent signals about what hoops community college students should be jumping through in order to transfer.
A student applying to three prospective campuses, for example, should not have to meet separate sets of requirements for each.
Community colleges and universities should also prioritize active learning strategies and proven supports to combat math anxiety. These may include providing professional learning for instructors to help them make math courses more engaging and to foster a sense of belonging. Training for counselors to advise students on requirements for STEM pathways is also important.
Community colleges must make their course schedules more student-centered, by offering evening and weekend courses and ensuring that courses required for specific degrees are not scheduled at overlapping times. They should also help students with unavoidable scheduling conflicts take comparable required courses at other colleges.
At the state level, it’s critical to adopt goals for transfer participation and completion (including STEM-specific goals) as well as comprehensive and transparent statewide agreements for math requirements by major.
States should also provide transfer planning tools that provide accurate and up-to-date information. For example, the AI Transfer and Articulation Infrastructure Network, led by University of California, Berkeley researchers, is using artificial intelligence technology to help institutions more efficiently identify which community college courses meet university requirements. More effective tools will increase transparency without requiring students and counselors to navigate complex and varied transfer requirements on their own. As it stands, complex, confusing and opaque math requirements limit transfer opportunities for community college students seeking STEM degrees, instead of expanding them.
We must untangle the transfer process, smooth pathways to high-value degrees and ensure that every student has a clear, unobstructed opportunity to pursue an education that will set them up for success.
Pamela Burdman is executive director of Just Equations, a California-based policy institute focused on reconceptualizing the role of math in education equity. Alexis Robin Hale is a research fellow at Just Equations and a graduate student at UCLA in Social Sciences and Comparative Education.
Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
UK higher education is pulled between its lofty ambitions for transformative learning and the managerialism that sometimes constrains their realisation. This tension defines the contemporary Higher Education workplace, where the mantras of “more with less” and “highly regulated freedom” collide with the desire for rich, personalised student experiences amidst fiscal belt-tightening, quantification, and standardisation. Bubbling through the cracks in any long-term political or economic vision for the sector is a professional identity steeped in ambivalence of purpose and position, one whose contradictions are nowhere rendered more vividly than in England’s higher and degree apprenticeships (HDAs). Conceived to braid university learning with workplace productivity, HDAs promise the best of both worlds yet must be delivered within one of the most prescriptive funding and inspection regimes in UK higher education. This provision also sits amidst a precarious and volatile political landscape, with continuous changes to funding rules, age limits and eligibility of different levels of study, and ‘fit’ within a still poorly defined skills and lifelong learning landscape.
At the heart of this ongoing policy experiment stands an until-recently invisible workforce: Higher Education Tripartite Practitioners (HETP). These quiet actors emerged as a series of pragmatic institution level responses to the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA, now subsumed into the Department of Education) related to progress reviews involving the provider, apprentice, and employer. Yet, as we argued in our paper at the SRHE International Conference in December last year, they have evolved into nuanced, often misunderstood boundary-spanners who simultaneously inhabit academia, industry, and compliance. Part coach, part conduit, part compliance specialist, they facilitate developmental conversations, broker cultural differences, and ensure every clause of the ESFA rulebook is honoured. The quality of this brokerage is decisive; without it even the most carefully designed apprenticeship fractures under audit pressure.
Consider the core activities of HETPs. Much of their time is spent in close personal engagement with apprentices – fostering professional growth, guiding reflective practice, and offering pastoral support traditionally associated with mentoring. They encourage apprentices to think holistically, integrate theory with workplace reality, and map long-term career aspirations. Almost simultaneously, they must document progress reviews, monitor the evidence of every single hour of learning, and tick every regulatory box along a journey from initial skills analysis through to end point assessment.
This duality produces a daily oscillation between inspiring conversations and tedious paperwork. The tension is palpable and exhausting, revealing a deeper struggle between two visions of education: one expansive, transformative, and relational; the other restrictive, measurable, and dominated by compliance. Fuller and Unwin’s expansive–restrictive continuum maps neatly onto this predicament, underscoring how universities are urged by policymakers to deliver high-skilled graduates for economic growth while simultaneously squeezed by intensifying regulation and managerial oversight.
Little wonder, then, that HETPs describe their roles with the language of complexity, ambiguity, and invisibility. They are neither purely academic nor purely administrative. Instead, they occupy a liminal institutional space, mediating competing demands from employers, regulators, apprentices, and colleagues. Esmond captures the resulting “subaltern” status of these practitioners, whose contributions remain undervalued even as they shoulder the brunt of institutional attempts to innovate without overhauling legacy systems.
Their experiences lay bare the contradictions of contemporary university innovation. Institutions routinely trumpet responsiveness to labour-market need yet bolt new programmes onto structures optimised for conventional classroom delivery, leaving HETPs to reconcile expansive educational ideals with restrictive managerial realities. The role becomes a flashpoint: universities ask boundary-spanners to maintain quality, build relationships, and inspire learners within systems designed for something else entirely.
Yet amidst these tensions lies opportunity. The very ambiguity of the HETP role highlights the limits of existing support systems and points towards new professional identities and career pathways. Formal recognition of boundary-spanning expertise – relationship-building, negotiation, adaptability – would allow practitioners to progress without abandoning what makes their contribution distinctive. Communities of practice could break the apprenticeship echo-chamber and enrich the wider HE ecosystem, while institutional investment in bespoke professional development would equip practitioners to navigate the inherent tensions of their work.
Senior leadership must also acknowledge the strategic value of these hidden roles, reframing them not as incidental administrative burdens but as essential catalysts for integrated educational practice. Making such roles visible and valued would help universities reconcile expansive aspirations with regulatory realities and signal genuine commitment to reshaping education for contemporary challenges.
Policymakers and regulators, too, have lessons to learn. While accountability has its place, overly rigid compliance frameworks risk stifling innovation. Trust-based, proportionate regulation – emphasising quality, transparency, and developmental outcomes – would free practitioners to focus on learning rather than bureaucratic survival. The current neo-liberal distrust that imagines only regulation can safeguard public value inflates compliance costs and undermines the very economic ambitions it seeks to serve.
Ultimately, the emergence of HETPs challenges HE institutions to decide how serious they are about bridging academic learning and workplace practice. Recognising and empowering these quiet brokers would signal a genuine commitment to integrated, expansive education – an education capable of meeting economic demands without losing sight of deeper human and intellectual aspirations. HETPs are far more than practitioners managing checklists; they are a critical juncture at which universities must choose either to treat boundary-spanning labour as a stop-gap or to embrace the complexity and potential it represents.
Dr Phil Power-Mason is Head of Department for Strategic Management at Hertfordshire Business School, University of Hertfordshire, where he leads a diverse portfolio spanning executive education, apprenticeships and professional doctorates. A practice-focussed academic with a passion for innovative workforce development, Phil has overseen significant growth in the school’s business apprenticeships, MBA, and generalist provision, while nurturing cross-sector partnerships and embedding work-aligned learning at every level. With a research background in educational governance and strategy, he is a Senior Fellow of Advance HE and co-convenor of national apprenticeship knowledge networks. Phil’s research and sector leadership focus on emerging pedagogic and HE workforce practices, driving collaborative solutions that meet employer, learner and university needs. An invited speaker at national forums and a frequent contributor to sector conferences and publications, he remains committed to transforming vocational and work-ready learning practice for the future. (herts.ac.uk)
Dr Helen Charlton is Associate Professor of Work Aligned Learning and Head of Executive Education at Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University, where she leads the school’s business apprenticeships, executive CPD and distance-learning programmes. After almost a decade steering apprenticeship design and compliance, she stays keenly attuned to each fresh regulatory tweak – and the learning opportunities it provides. A former senior HR manager in the arts and not-for-profit sectors, Helen holds a Doctorate in Education and an MSc in Human Resource Management, is a Senior Fellow of Advance HE, a Chartered MCIPD, and a Chartered Manager and Fellow of the CMI. Her research examines how learners, employers and universities negotiate the tripartite realities of degree apprenticeships. (northumbria.ac.uk)
PITTSBURGH — Stephen Wells was trained in the Air Force to work on F-16 fighter jets, including critical radar, navigation and weapons systems whose proper functioning meant life or death for pilots.
Yet when he left the service and tried to apply that expertise toward an education at Pittsburgh’s Community College of Allegheny County, or CCAC, he was given just three credits toward a required class in physical education.
Wells moved forward anyway, going on to get his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees. Now he’s CCAC’s provost and involved in a citywide project to help other people transform their military and work experience into academic credit.
What’s happening in Pittsburgh is part of growing national momentum behind letting students — especially the increasing number who started but never completed a degree — cash in their life skills toward finally getting one, saving them time and money.
Colleges and universities have long purported to provide what’s known in higher education as credit for prior learning. But they have made the process so complex, slow and expensive that only about 1 in 10 students actually completes it.
Many students don’t even try, especially low-income learners who could benefit the most, according to a study by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education and the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning, or CAEL.
“It drives me nuts” that this promise has historically proven so elusive, Wells said, in his college’s new Center for Education, Innovation & Training.
Stephen Wells, provost at the Community College of Allegheny County in Pittsburgh. An Air Force veteran, Wells got only a handful of academic credits for his military experience. Now he’s part of an effort to expand that opportunity for other students. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report
That appears to be changing. Nearly half of institutions surveyed last year by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, or AACRAO, said they have added more ways for students to receive these credits — electricians, for example, who can apply some of their training toward academic courses in electrical engineering, and daycare workers who can use their experience to earn degrees in teaching.
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The reason universities and colleges are doing this is simple: Nearly 38 million working-age Americans have spent some time in college but never finished, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Getting at least some of them to come back has become essential to these higher education institutions at a time when changing demographics mean that the number of 18-year-old high school graduates is falling.
“When higher education institutions are fat and happy, nobody looks for these things. Only when those traditional pipelines dry up do we start looking for other potential populations,” said Jeffrey Harmon, vice provost for strategic initiatives and institutional effectiveness at Thomas Edison State University in New Jersey, which has long given adult learners credit for the skills they bring.
Being able to get credit for prior learning is a huge potential recruiting tool. Eighty-four percent of adults who are leaning toward going back to college say it would have “a strong influence” on their decision, according to research by CAEL, the Strada Education Foundation and Hanover Research. (Strada is among the funders of The Hechinger Report, which produced this story.)
The Center for Education, Innovation & Training at the Community College of Allegheny County in Pittsburgh. The college is part of a citywide effort to give academic credit for older students’ life experiences. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report
When Melissa DiMatteo, 38, decided to get an associate degree at CCAC to go further in her job, she got six credits for her previous training in Microsoft Office and her work experience as everything from a receptionist to a supervisor. That spared her from having to take two required courses in computer information and technology and — since she’s going to school part time and taking one course per semester — saved her a year.
“Taking those classes would have been a complete waste of my time,” DiMatteo said. “These are things that I do every day. I supervise other people and train them on how to do this work.”
On average, students who get credit for prior learning save between $1,500 and $10,200 apiece and nearly seven months off the time it takes to earn a bachelor’s degree, the nonprofit advocacy group Higher Learning Advocates calculates. The likelihood that they will graduate is 17 percent higher, the organization finds.
Justin Hand dropped out of college because of the cost, and became a largely self-taught information technology manager before he decided to go back and get an associate and then a bachelor’s degree so he could move up in his career.
He got 15 credits — a full semester’s worth — through a program at the University of Memphis for which he wrote essays to prove he had already mastered software development, database management, computer networking and other skills.
“These were all the things I do on a daily basis,” said Hand, of Memphis, who is 50 and married, with a teenage son. “And I didn’t want to have to prolong college any more than I needed to.”
Meanwhile, employers and policymakers are pushing colleges to speed up the output of graduates with skills required in the workforce, including by giving more students credit for their prior learning. And online behemoths Western Governors University and Southern New Hampshire University, with which brick-and-mortar colleges compete, are way ahead of them in conferring credit for past experience.
“They’ve mastered this and used it as a marketing tool,” said Kristen Vanselow, assistant vice president of innovative education and partnerships at Florida Gulf Coast University, which has expanded its awarding of credit for prior learning. “More traditional higher education institutions have been slower to adapt.”
It’s also gotten easier to evaluate how skills that someone learns in life equate to academic courses or programs. This has traditionally required students to submit portfolios, take tests or write essays, as Hand did, and faculty to subjectively and individually assess them.
Now some institutions, states, systems and independent companies are standardizing this work or using artificial intelligence to do it. The growth of certifications from professional organizations such as Amazon Web Services and the Computing Technology Industry Association, or CompTIA, has helped, too.
“You literally punch [an industry certification] into our database and it tells you what credit you can get,” said Philip Giarraffa, executive director of articulation and academic pathways at Miami Dade College. “When I started here, that could take anywhere from two weeks to three months.”
Data provided by Miami Dade shows it has septupled the number of credits for prior learning awarded since 2020, from 1,197 then to 7,805 last year.
“These are students that most likely would have looked elsewhere, whether to the [online] University of Phoenix or University of Maryland Global [Campus]” or other big competitors, Giarraffa said.
Fifteen percent of undergraduates enrolled in higher education full time and 40 percent enrolled part time are 25 or older, federal data show — including people who delayed college to serve in the military, volunteer or do other work that could translate into academic credit.
“Nobody wants to sit in a class where they already have all this knowledge,” Giarraffa said.
At Thomas Edison, police academy graduates qualify for up to 30 credits toward associate degrees. Carpenters who have completed apprenticeships can get as many as 74 credits in subjects including math, management and safety training. Bachelor’s degrees are often a prerequisite for promotion for people in professions such as these, or who hope to start their own companies.
The University of Memphis works with FedEx, headquartered nearby, to give employees with supervisory training academic credit they can use toward a degree in organizational leadership, helping them move up in the company.
The University of North Carolina System last year launched its Military Equivalency System, which lets active-duty and former military service members find out almost instantly, before applying for admission, if their training could be used for academic credit. That had previously required contacting admissions offices, registrars or department chairs.
Among the reasons for this reform was that so many of these prospective students — and the federal education benefits they get — were ending up at out-of-state universities, the UNC System’s strategic plan notes.
“We’re trying to change that,” said Kathie Sidner, the system’s director of workforce and partnerships. It’s not only for the sake of enrollment and revenue, Sidner said. “From a workforce standpoint, these individuals have tremendous skill sets and we want to retain them as opposed to them moving somewhere else.”
California’s community colleges are also expanding their credit for prior learning programs as part of a plan to increase the proportion of the population with educations beyond high school.
“How many people do you know who say, ‘College isn’t for me?’ ” asked Sam Lee, senior advisor to the system’s chancellor for credit for prior learning. “It makes a huge difference when you say to them that what they’ve been doing is equivalent to college coursework already.”
In Pittsburgh, the Regional Upskilling Alliance — of which CCAC is a part — is connecting job centers, community groups, businesses and educational institutions to create comprehensive education and employment records so more workers can get credit for skills they already have.
That can provide a big push, “especially if you’re talking about parents who think, ‘I’ll never be able to go to school,’ ” said Sabrina Saunders Mosby, president and CEO of the nonprofit Vibrant Pittsburgh, a coalition of business and civic leaders involved in the effort.
“Our members are companies that need talent,” Mosby said.
There’s one group that has historically pushed back against awarding credit for prior learning: university and college faculty concerned it might affect enrollment in their courses or unconvinced that training provided elsewhere is of comparable quality. Institutions have worried about the loss of revenue from awarding credits for which students would otherwise have had to pay.
That also appears to be changing, as universities leverage credit for prior learning to recruit more students and keep them enrolled for longer, resulting in more revenue — not less.
“That monetary factor was something of a myth,” said Beth Doyle, chief of strategy at CAEL.
Faculty have increasingly come around, too. That’s sometimes because they like having experienced students in their classrooms, Florida Gulf Coast’s Vanselow said.
Still, while many recognize it as a recruiting incentive, most public universities and colleges have had to be ordered to confer more credits for prior learning by legislatures or governing boards. Private, nonprofit colleges remain stubbornly less likely to give it.
More than two-thirds charge a fee for evaluating whether other kinds of learning can be transformed into academic credit, an expense that isn’t covered by financial aid. Roughly one in 12 charge the same as it would cost to take the course for which the credits are awarded.
Debra Roach, vice president for workforce development at the Community College of Allegheny County in Pittsburgh. The college is working on giving academic credit to students for their military, work and other life experience. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report
There are other confounding roadblocks and seemingly self-defeating policies. CCAC runs a noncredit program to train paramedics, for example, but won’t give people who complete it credits toward its for-credit nursing degree. Many leave and go across town to a private university that will. The college is working on fixing this, said Debra Roach, its vice president of workforce development.
It’s important to see this from the students’ point of view, said Tracy Robinson, executive director of the University of Memphis Center for Regional Economic Enrichment.
“Credit for prior learning is a way for us to say, ‘We want you back. We value what you’ve been doing since you’ve been gone,’ ” Robinson said. “And that is a total game changer.”
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
I recently stood before hundreds of young people in California’s Central Valley; more than 60 percent were on that day becoming the first in their family to earn a bachelor’s degree.
Their very presence at University of California, Merced’s spring commencement ceremony disrupted a major narrative in our nation about who college is for — and the value of a degree.
Many of these young people arrived already balancing jobs, caregiving responsibilities and family obligations. Many were Pell Grant-eligible and came from communities that are constantly underestimated and where a higher education experience is a rarity.
These students graduated college at a critical moment in American history: a time when the value of a bachelor’s degree is being called into question, when public trust in higher education is vulnerable and when supports for first-generation college students are eroding. Yet an affordable bachelor’s degree remains the No. 1 lever for financial, professional and social mobility in this country.
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A recent Gallup poll showed that the number of Americans who have a great deal of confidence in higher education is dwindling, with a nearly equal amount responding that they have little to none. In 2015, when Gallup first asked this question, those expressing confidence outnumbered those without by nearly six to one.
There is no doubt that higher education must continue to evolve — to be more accessible, more relevant and more affordable — but the impact of a bachelor’s degree remains undeniable.
And the bigger truth is this: America’s long-term strength — its economic competitiveness, its innovation pipeline, its social fabric — depends on whether we invest in the education of the young people who reflect the future of this country.
There are many challenges for today’s workforce, from a shrinking talent pipeline to growing demands in STEM, healthcare and the public sector. These challenges can’t be solved unless we ensure that more first-generation students and those from underserved communities earn their degrees in affordable ways and leverage their strengths in ways they feel have purpose.
Those of us in education must create conditions in which students’ talent is met with opportunity and higher education institutions demonstrate that they believe in the potential of every student who comes to their campuses to learn.
UC Merced is a fantastic example of what this can look like. The youngest institution in the University of California system, it was recently designated a top-tier “R1” research university. At the same time, it earned a spot on Carnegie’s list of “Opportunity Colleges and Universities,” a new classification that recognizes institutions based on the success of their students and alumni. It is one of only 21 institutions in the country to be nationally ranked for both elite research and student success and is proving that excellence and equity can — and must — go hand in hand.
In too many cases, students who make it to college campuses are asked to navigate an educational experience that wasn’t built with their lived experiences and dreams in mind. In fact, only 24 percent of first-generation college students earn a bachelor’s degree in six years, compared to nearly 59 percent of students who have a parent with a bachelor’s. This results in not just a missed opportunity for individual first-generation students — it’s a collective loss for our country.
The graduates I spoke to in the Central Valley that day will become future engineers, climate scientists, public health leaders, artists and educators. Their bachelor’s degrees equip them with critical thinking skills, confidence and the emotional intelligence needed to lead in an increasingly complex world.
Their future success will be an equal reflection of their education and the qualities they already possess as first-generation college graduates: persistence, focus and unwavering drive. Because of this combination, they will be the greatest contributors to the future of work in our nation.
This is a reality I know well. As the Brooklyn-born daughter of Dominican immigrants, I never planned to go away from home to a four-year college. My father drove a taxi, and my mother worked in a factory. I was the first in my family to earn a bachelor’s degree. I attended college as part of an experimental program to get kids from neighborhoods like mine into “top” schools. When it was time for me to leave for college, my mother and I boarded a bus with five other students and their moms for a 26-hour ride to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.
Like so many first-generation college students, I carried with me the dreams and sacrifices of my family and community. I had one suitcase, a box of belongings and no idea what to expect at a place I’d never been to before. That trip — and the bachelor’s degree I earned — changed the course of my life.
First-generation college students from underserved communities reflect the future of America. Their success is proof that the American Dream is not only alive but thriving. And right now, the stakes are national, and they are high.
That is why we must collectively remove the obstacles to first-generation students’ individual success and our collective success as a nation. That’s the narrative that we need to keep writing — together.
Shirley M. Collado is president emerita at Ithaca College and the president and CEO ofCollege Track, a college completion program dedicated to democratizing potential among first-generation college students from underserved communities.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
ELKHART, Ind. — Ever since Ty Zartman was little, people told him he had to go to college to be successful. “It was engraved on my brain,” he said.
But despite earning straight A’s, qualifying for the National Honor Society, being voted prom king and playing on the high school football and baseball teams, the teen never relished the idea of spending another four years in school. So in fall 2023 he signed up through his Elkhart, Indiana, high school for an apprenticeship at Hoosier Crane Service Company, eager to explore other paths. There, he was excited to meet coworkers who didn’t have a four-year degree but earned good money and were happy in their careers.
Through the youth apprenticeship, Ty started his day at the crane manufacturing and repair business at 6:30 a.m., working in customer service and taking safety and training courses while earning $13 an hour. Then, he spent the afternoon at his school, Jimtown High, in Advanced Placement English and U.S. government classes.
In June, the 18-year-old started full-time at Hoosier Crane as a field technician.
“College is important and I’m not dissing on that,” Ty said. “But it’s not necessarily something that you need.”
Elkhart County is at the forefront of a movement slowly spreading across Indiana and the nation to make apprenticeships a common offering in high school.
In 2019, as part of a plan to boost the region’s economic prospects, county leaders launched an effort to place high schoolers in apprenticeships that combine work-based training with classroom instruction. About 80 students from the county’s seven school districts participated this academic year, in fields such as health care, law, manufacturing, education and engineering. In April, as part of a broader push to revamp high school education and add more work-based learning, the state set a goal of 50,000 high school apprentices by 2034.
Tim Pletcher, the principal of Jimtown High, said students are often drawn first to the chance to spend less time in class. But his students quickly realize apprenticeships give them work-based learning credits and industry connections that help them after graduation. They also earn a paycheck. “It’s really causing us to have a paradigm shift in how we look at getting kids ready for the next step,” he said.
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This “earn and learn” model is taking hold in part because of deepening disillusionment with four-year college, and the fact that well-paying jobs that don’t require bachelor’s degrees are going unfilled nationally. The past three presidential administrations invested in expanding apprenticeships, including those for high schoolers, and in April, President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for 1 million new apprentices. In a recent poll, more than 80 percent of people said they supported expanding partnerships between schools and businesses to provide work-based learning experiences for students.
Yet in the United States, the number of so-called youth apprenticeships for high schoolers is still “infinitesimally small,” said Vinz Koller, a vice president at nonprofit group Jobs for the Future. One estimate suggests they number about 20,000 nationally, while there are some 17 million high school students.By contrast, in Switzerland — which has been praised widely for its apprenticeship model, including by U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon — 70 percent of high schoolers participate. Indiana is among several states, including Colorado, South Carolina and Washington, that have embraced the model and sent delegations to Switzerland to learn more.
Elkhart, Indiana, known as the “RV capital of the world,” saw widespread unemployment during the Great Recession. That led community leaders to focus on apprenticeships as a way to diversify their economy. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report
Experts including Ursula Renold, professor of education systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, note that importing the model to the United States at a large scale won’t be simple. Most businesses aren’t accustomed to employing apprentices, parents can be resistant to their students trading four-year college aspirations for work, and public transportation to take students to apprenticeships is limited, especially in rural areas. Many high schoolers don’t have a driver’s license, access to a car or money for gas. School districts already face a shortage of bus drivers that makes transporting students to apprenticeships difficult or impossible.
Still, Renold, who is known as the “grande dame of apprenticeships,” said Indiana’s commitment to apprenticeships at the highest levels of state government, as well as the funding the state has invested in work-based learning, at least $67 million, seem to be setting the state up for success, though it could take a decade to see results.
“If I had to make a bet,” said Renold, “I would say it’s Indiana who will lead the way.”
Elkhart County’s experiment with apprenticeships has its roots in the Great Recession. Recreational vehicle manufacturing dominates the local economy, and demand for the vehicles plummeted, contributing to a regional unemployment rate at that time of nearly 20 percent. Soon after, community leaders began discussing how to better insulate themselves from future economic instability, eventually focusing on high school education as a way to diversify industries and keep up with automation, said Brian Wiebe, who in 2012 founded local nonprofit Horizon Education Alliance, or HEA, to help lead that work.
Elkhart County, Indiana, was the first community in Indiana to encourage businesses to employ high school students as apprentices, where they can earn work-based learning credits and make industry connections that help them, even if they decide to go on to college. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report
That year, Wiebe and two dozen local and state political, business, nonprofit and education leaders visited Switzerland and Germany to learn more about the apprenticeship model. “We realized in the U.S., there was only a Plan A, a path to college,” he recalled. “We were not supporting the rest of our young people because there was no Plan B.”
HEA partnered with Elkhart County school districts and businesses, as well as with CareerWise, a youth apprenticeship nonprofit that works nationally. They began rolling out apprenticeships in 2019, eventually settling on a goal of increasing participation by 20 percent each year.
In 2021, Katie Jenner, the new secretary of education for Indiana, learned about Elkhart’s apprenticeships as she was trying to revamp high school education in the state so it better prepared students for the workforce. Elkhart, as well as six other apprenticeship pilot sites funded by Indianapolis-based philanthropy the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation, provided a proof of concept for the apprenticeship model, said Jenner.
In December, the state adopted a new diploma system that includes an emphasis on experiential and work-based learning, through apprenticeships, internships and summer jobs.
On a weekday this winter, 17 sophomores at Elkhart’s Concord High School were sitting at computers, creating resumes they planned to use to apply for apprenticeships. The students were among some 50 sophomores at the high school who’d expressed interest in apprenticing and met the school’s attendance and minimum 2.5 GPA requirements, out of a class of roughly 400. They would receive coaching and participate in mock interviews before meeting with employers.
Becca Roberts, a former English teacher who now oversees the high school’s college and career programs, said apprenticeships help convince students of the importance of habits like punctuality, clear communication and regular attendance. “It’s not from a book,” she said. “They’re dealing with real life.”
Becca Roberts, who oversees college and career programs at Concord High School in Indiana, helps students research different companies offering apprenticeships, including job descriptions, work schedules and commuting distances. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report
One student, Ava Cripe, said she hoped for an apprenticeship of some sort in the health care field. She’d only been a pet sitter and was nervous at the thought of having a professional job. “You’re actually going out and working for someone else, like not for your parents or your grandma, so it’s a little scary,” she said.
CareerWise Elkhart has recently beefed up its support for students and businesses participating in apprenticeships. It employs a business partnership manager and customer success managers who help smooth over issues that arise in the workplace — an apprentice who isn’t taking initiative, for example, or an apprenticeship that isn’t sufficiently challenging. “Before, if an issue came up, a business would just fire a student or a student would leave,” said Sarah Koontz, director of CareerWise Elkhart County. “We’re now more proactive.”
In Elkhart and across the state, the embrace of work-based learning has worried some parents who fear it will limit, not expand, their children’s opportunities. In previous generations, career and technical programs (then known as vocational education) were often used to route low-income and Black and Hispanic students away from college and into relatively low-paying career paths.
Anitra Zartman, Ty’s mother, said she and her husband were initially worried when their son said he wanted to go straight to work. They both graduated from college, and her husband holds a master’s degree. “We were like, ‘Don’t waste your talent. You’re smart, go to college.’” But she says they came around after seeing how the work experience influenced him. “His maturity has definitely changed. I think it’s because he has a responsibility that he takes very seriously,” she said. “He doesn’t want to let people down.”
Her eldest daughter, Senica Zartman, also apprenticed during her final two years of high school, as a teacher’s assistant. She is now in college studying education. “The apprenticeship solidified her choice,” Anitra Zartman said, and it helped her decide to work with elementary students. Anitra Zartman said she would encourage her two youngest children to participate in apprenticeships too.
Ty Zartman works from 6 a.m. to noon at his apprenticeship at Hoosier Crane Service Company before he goes to school for afternoon classes. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report
Sarah Metzler, CEO of the nonprofit HEA, said apprenticeships differ from the vocational education of the past that tended only to prepare students for relatively low paid, entry-level jobs. With apprenticeships, she said, students must continually learn new skills and earn new licenses and industry certifications as part of the program.
Litzy Henriquez Monchez, 17, apprentices in human resources at a company of 50 people, earning $13.50 an hour. “I deal with payroll, I onboard new employees, I do a lot of translating. Anything that has to do with any of the employees, I deal with,” she said. She’s also earning an industry-recognized certification for her knowledge of a human resources management system, and says the company has offered to pay for her college tuition if she continues in the position.
Koontz said most companies pay for their apprentices to attend Ivy Tech, a statewide community college system, if they continue to work there. One is even paying for their apprentice’s four-year degree, she said.
Attracting employers has proven to be the biggest challenge to expanding youth apprenticeships — in Elkhart and beyond. In total, 20 companies worked with the Elkhart school districts last year, and 28 have signed on for this coming school year — only enough to employ about a third of interested students.
The obstacles, employers say, include the expense of apprentices’ salaries, training and other costs.
Metzler and others, though, point to studies showingbenefits for employers, including cost savings over time and improved employee loyalty. And in Indiana, the Fairbanks foundation and other organizations are working on ways to reduce employer costs, including by developing a standard curriculum for apprenticeships in industries like health care and banking so individual companies don’t bear the costs alone.
Business leaders who do sign on say they are happy with the experience. Todd Cook, the CEO of Hoosier Crane Service Company, employs 10 high schoolers, including Ty Zartman, as engineering and industrial maintenance technician apprentices, approximately 10 percent of his staff. He said the pipeline created by the apprenticeship program has helped reduce recruiting costs.
“We’re starting to build our own farm system of talent,” he said. Students initially earn $13 an hour, and finish their apprenticeship earning $18. If they continue with the company, he said, they can earn up to $50 an hour after about five years. And if they go on to become trainers or mentors, Cook said, “Honestly, there is no ceiling.”
Transportation has been a limiting factor too. There’s no public transit system, and students who can’t rely on their parents for rides are often out of luck. “We’d love to offer a bus to every kid, to every location, but we don’t have people to run those extra bus routes,” said Principal Pletcher.
The state has tried to help by investing $10 million to help students pay for costs such as transportation, equipment and certifications. Each school that provides work-based learning opportunities also receives an additional $500 per student.
Indiana has a goal to employ 50,000 high school students as apprentices by 2034. State leaders in business, education, government and nonprofits are working closely with Swiss experts to adopt a youth apprenticeship program similar to the one in that country. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report
Trump’s executive order called for the secretaries of education, labor and commerce to develop a plan by late August for adding 1 million new apprenticeships. The order does not set a date for reaching that milestone, and it applies to apprentices of all ages, not just high schoolers. Vinz Koller of Jobs for the Future said the goal is modest, and achievable; the number of youth apprenticeships has doubled just in the past few years, he said, and California alone has a goal of reaching 500,000 apprenticeships, across all ages, by 2029.
Still, the order did not include additional funding for apprenticeships, and the Trump administration’s proposed budget includes major cuts to workforce development training. In an email, a White House spokesperson said the administration had promoted apprenticeships through outreach programs but did not provide additional information including on whether that outreach had a focus on youth apprenticeships.
Back in Elkhart, Ty Zartman, the Hoosier Crane apprentice, has begun his technician job with the company after graduating in early June. He is earning $19 an hour. He is also taking a class at the local community college on electrical work and recently received a certificate of completion from the Department of Labor for completing 2,000 hours of his apprenticeship.
Anitra Zartman said she wishes he’d attended more school events like pep rallies, and sometimes worried he wasn’t “being a kid.” But Ty said his supervisor is “super flexible” and he was able to go to the winter formal and prom. “I think I still live a kid life,” he said. “I do a lot of fun things.”
Of his job, he said, “I love it so much.”
Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at preston@hechingerreport.org.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
As US universities confront declining domestic enrolments, political instability, and intensified scrutiny over their financial and ideological foundations, a growing number are once again looking outward. International branch campuses (IBCs), once celebrated as symbols of academic globalism and later scrutinized as costly misadventures, seem to be returning to the strategic conversation, not only as diversification mechanisms but also as protective pivots in an era of unpredictability.
Georgetown University’s decision to extend its Qatar campus for another decade and the Illinois Institute of Technology’s plan to launch a new campus in Mumbai are recent examples. Behind such moves lies a quiet but growing calculus: that global presence may serve as both brand amplifier and institutional hedge, especially in the face of resurging nationalism, culture wars, and regulatory constraints at home.
South Korea’s Incheon Global Campus (IGC), a government-backed transnational education hub, is now preparing to welcome two additional foreign universities and one of them is American. But as the IGC experiment has already entered its second decade, its mixed results offer not a template but a cautionary tale. For any U.S. institution considering overseas expansion, IGC reminds us that expectations of seamless demand, regional magnetism, and reputational uplift often collide with complex realities.
The pitfall of assuming “If you build it, they will come”
At the heart of many US institutions’ international ventures lies a persistent assumption: that placing an American university within geographic proximity to large student markets will organically generate demand. IGC was envisioned as a Northeast Asian education magnet, ideally situated to recruit from China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and beyond. The notion was that Korea’s infrastructure, safety, and proximity, combined with US academic credentials, would make IGC highly attractive.
But the numbers tell a different story. As of 2024, IGC’s five institutions, SUNY Korea (Home of Stony Brook University, Fashion Institute of Technology), George Mason University Korea (GMUK), University of Utah Asia Campus (UAC), Ghent University Global Campus (GUGC), enrol about 4,300 students, far short of the original 10,000 target. Among them, only 400 are international students, accounting for 9%. And of those, just around 20 are from China, the very country that was expected to be a key source of enrolments.
This dearth is not for lack of infrastructure or academic rigor. Rather, it illustrates the limitations of relying on passive geographic logic. In an age where students and parents are increasingly sophisticated consumers of education, recruitment requires far more than proximity or even prestige. It demands clarity of value, strong brand presence, affordability, cultural alignment, and a persuasive post-graduation pathway.
English-medium instruction as a double-edged sword
US institutions often assume that English-medium instruction (EMI) automatically confers competitive advantage in Asia. At IGC, all programs are delivered entirely in English, and faculty are predominantly international; 188 of the 304 faculty members across the five campuses are foreign nationals. On paper, this aligns with global academic norms and affirms a commitment to international standards.
However, EMI can paradoxically limit access. While affluent Korean students may see EMI as an elite advantage, students from Vietnam, China, and Indonesia often seek local cultural immersion, language acquisition, and regional relevance. For many Chinese students in particular, one of the draws of studying in Korea is precisely to learn Korean and gain access to Korean labour markets. EMI-only models thus alienate both local integration seekers and English-language learners.
Moreover, when EMI is not paired with robust academic support services, such as English-language tutoring, multilingual advising, or transitional curriculum tracks, it can undermine retention and student success. IGC’s high leave-of-absence rate (26% of total enrolment) may in part reflect this challenge. The EMI strategy, while noble in intent, must therefore be contextualised. In transnational campuses, language policy is not just a delivery decision, it is a recruitment strategy.
Misplaced confidence in institutional brand recognition
American universities often overestimate their brand power abroad. SUNY Korea, anchored by Stony Brook University, and GMUK both represent reputable public institutions in the US academic ecosystem. Yet in East Asia, brand equity does not always travel well. Many students and parents in China, Southeast Asia, and even Korea struggle to distinguish among US institutions unless they are among the globally top-ranked or highly visible.
In contrast, joint-venture universities such as NYU Shanghai or Duke Kunshan benefit from stronger recognition, thanks in part to the halo effect of globally prestigious parent institutions and active marketing within China. These institutions also benefit from location-based credibility; being within China, their offerings align more naturally with Chinese career and immigration aspirations.
Geopolitical frictions and the fragility of demand
US institutions frequently see international branch campuses as safe havens from domestic politics. Yet international expansion brings its own geopolitical risks. IGC’s failure to attract Chinese students cannot be separated from the lingering effects of the 2017 THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) dispute – a regional conflict that emerged when South Korea agreed to deploy a US missile defense system on its soil. China strongly opposed it, viewing the system as a threat to its own strategic interests. In response, China imposed strong sanctions on South Korea, which led to the challenges in educational diplomacy between two countries. Nor can it be divorced from the broader geopolitics of US-China relations, which makes Chinese families wary of American degrees, especially those delivered from politically allied countries like Korea.
There is also the perception gap between a degree “from a U.S. university” and a degree “earned in Korea.” Even when academic standards and credentials are identical, students and employers may view transnational degrees as second-tier or less prestigious. For example, in Korea, IGC campuses are often viewed as a second choice in the stratified higher education structure locally. The reputational buffer that a US degree once offered is increasingly interrogated, especially in environments where political affiliations, social conditions, and post-graduation options matter more than branding. In this sense, branch campuses are not outside the storm; they are situated in a different part of it.
A US-oriented reality check within the local contexts
For US universities, the decision to open a branch campus abroad is no longer a question of academic vision alone; it is a financial and reputational calculation. The domestic context is sobering: declining birth rates are shrinking the college-aged population, public trust in higher education is waning, and federal support for research and student aid is increasingly politicised. Internationalisation is no longer just an opportunity; it is increasingly seen as a survival strategy.
But survival strategies must be strategic, not reactionary. IGC’s challenges illustrate what happens when institutions pursue global expansion without first understanding the local education marketplace. Without granular market research, locally embedded partnerships, and nuanced branding strategies, even well-intentioned ventures become “white elephants”, costly and underutilized. A forthcoming US institution entering IGC would have an opportunity to learn from these lessons and chart a different path. But it must begin with humility and cross-cultural understanding.
This concern is heightened by structural reforms driven by demographic decline and the growing uncertainly embedded in Korea’s higher education system. As competition for enrolment intensifies, some struggling institutions see IGC’s local recruitment as a threat, even calling it a “brain drain within Korean territory,” since most IGC students are Korean. While IGC claims it draws students who would have studied abroad, offering a net economic benefit, that argument may fall flat for universities fighting to stay afloat.
Conclusion: toward a more grounded globalism
The story of Incheon Global Campus is not one of failure, but rather a valuable case study. It reflects a potential disconnection between institutional ambition and market behaviour; between the idea of internationalisation and its on-the-ground execution. It reminds us of that proximity to students is not the same as access, and that transnational education requires more than exporting curricula across borders, it demands building relevance across cultures.
For US universities hoping to extend their reach, the time for romantic notions of global campuses has passed. What is needed now is realism. That means conducting rigorous market analysis. It means understanding the competitive landscape; not just in Seoul or Shanghai, but in second-tier cities where price sensitivity and post-graduation pathways determine enrolment decisions. It means creating flexible programs that can respond to local aspirations and global uncertainties. It means designing campuses that feel anchored, not transplanted.
The myth that a US branch campus in South Korea will become a magnet for students across Asia, particularly from China, has not materialised. With only a handful of Chinese students across IGC’s entire enrolment, it is clear that assumptions must be rethought. Transnational education remains a worthy goal. But if the next generation of branch campuses is to thrive, especially in East Asia, it must be forged not in the image of prestige, but in the crucible of strategy. It must be attentive, adaptive, and above all, aware.
Kyuseok Kim (KS) is the inaugural Center Director of IES Abroad Seoul, where he leads strategic, academic, and operational initiatives while building partnerships with local institutions. He brings extensive experience in student recruitment, international relations, and business development, with prior roles at UWAY, M Square Media, SUNY Korea, and Sungkyunkwan University. KS is a Fulbright Scholar and a doctoral candidate in Educational Administration and Higher Education at Korea University. He holds an MBA from Sungkyunkwan University and a BA in English Language Education from Korea University. As a scholar-practitioner, he contributes regularly to both international and South Korean publications on global education topics. ks.kyuseok.kim@gmail.comwww.linkedin.com/in/ks-kim-intled
Higher Education is under intensifying scrutiny as federal regulations tighten, and public trust continues to waver. A growing threat to this is student aid fraud. Organized schemes are exploiting institutional systems to siphon millions in financial aid, particularly targeting Pell Grant disbursements and student aid refunds. The result is a direct hit to both institutional revenue and reputation. Institutions can no longer afford to operate passively. They must lead with transparency, accountability and systems built to withstand obstacles. In an era already marked by increasing skepticism surrounding higher education, this is a risk that institutions cannot afford to ignore
In June 2025, The US Department of Education announced identity verification measures for over 125,000 FAFSA applicants—a clear signal that proactive fraud prevention is no longer optional. Failure to act risks financial loss, audit exposure and reputational damage. Explore how your institution can recognize the warning signs, implement smart prevention strategies and build a strong foundation of trust that supports both reputational and revenue goals.
Understanding the Modern Fraudster’s Playbook
Today’s fraudsters are highly strategic. They understand how to game institutional processes—enrolling just long enough to trigger student aid refunds, then disappearing soon after. By carefully selecting enough credits to qualify for more aid, these fraudsters have fueled the rise of “ghost enrollments” — fraudulent student records created to claim federal aid without actual attendance.
This surge is fueled by gaps in infrastructure, less stringent verification procedures and siloed systems, all challenges that hit resource-limited institutions hardest. The rapid expansion of online learning has outpaced the sophistication of verification systems, reducing touchpoints to confirm student legitimacy. Adding to this challenge, outdated or isolated internal systems often lack real-time data sharing between critical departments such as admissions, financial aid and academic offices.
These deceptive tactics lead to more than just financial losses; they corrupt enrollment data, misguide long-term strategic planning and damage an institution’s reputation. Enrollment fraud is not just a compliance problem but a strategic issue that compromises the very accuracy of the data institutions depend on to create budgets, predict enrollment trends and allocate resources effectively.
Without real-time data sharing and alignment between systems, institutions remain vulnerable to fraud and flawed decision-making. EducationDynamics supports colleges and universities in closing these gaps through integrated data strategies that prioritize accuracy and system-wide consistency.
Identifying the Warning Signs
Early detection is an institution’s strongest defense against coordinated financial aid fraud. As schemes grow more sophisticated, so must the systems and vigilance required to stop them. Fraudsters are increasingly leveraging tools like AI to complete assignments, VPNs to hide their locations and fake identities to access financial aid. Even with these evolving tools, fraud leaves detectable patterns—and catching these patterns can become a valuable asset for institutions.
Red Flag Reports are among the most valuable tools institutions can use to identify fraudulent activity before financial aid is disbursed. These reports highlight anomalies in student data that may otherwise go unnoticed, offering a proactive mechanism to pause and review questionable activity. Implementing this type of reporting is a critical step toward closing system gaps and elevating your fraud prevention infrastructure.
To effectively intercept fraud, institutions should actively monitor for specific indicators across the enrollment and financial aid process, such as:
Multiple students tied to the same bank account or IP address
Invalid or recycled phone numbers tied to applicants
Unusual enrollment or participation patterns, such as registering for the maximum credit load with no subsequent academic engagement
Last-minute documentation or sudden changes to refund delivery preferences
VPN usage that obscures geographic location, particularly when login or application behavior conflicts with submitted residence information
By actively seeking out these red flags and embracing modern verification practices, institutions can significantly bolster their defense.
Actionable Strategies for Institutional Defense
This is the era of proactive defense, demanding that institutions build workflows that not only accommodate scrutiny but leverage it to strengthen their practices.
To achieve this, institutions must:
Empower Staff for Early Detection
Use Red Flag Reports to monitor for suspicious indicators such as shared IP addresses, duplicate bank accounts and invalid phone numbers. These reports empower your staff to pause questionable disbursements and trigger manual reviews, catching issues that might otherwise slip through.
Build Verification Workflows to Withstand Volume
Build scalable, repeatable workflows to efficiently handle identity checks, document intake and federal verification requirements. Implement triage systems that ensure timely reviews, minimizing student disruption while maintaining operational efficiency and compliance.
Create Strategic Friction
Introduce intentional friction points that deter fraudsters without impeding legitimate students. Examples include phone verification for refund information or holding disbursements until after the add/drop period. These small process shifts significantly raise the barrier for fraudulent activity, preventing large-scale losses.
Require the Financial Responsibility Agreement
Make it standard practice to collect signed Financial Responsibility Agreements (FRAs) before disbursement. Doing so strengthens your paper trail and creates another point of identity verification, helping deter those attempting to abuse the system.
Modernize Refund Security
Require muti-factor authentication (MFA) when students update refund profiles, and default to e-refunds over checks. Limit paper disbursements and ensure funds are only returned to verified payment methods, significantly reducing fraud risk and maintaining transaction integrity.
Showcase Strong Digital Infrastructure
When institutions adopt secure, transparent payment systems, they project competence. Adopting strong digital infrastructure is more than an operational improvement; it’s a powerful brand message. A secure system builds public trust and reinforces your institution’s responsible stewardship of student funds.
Break Down Silos and Align Teams
Financial Aid cannot combat fraud in isolation. Establish a collaborative task force with key stakeholders from IT, Registrar and Academic Affairs. Faculty, for instance, are often early observers of suspicious academic behavior. When departments share insights, vulnerabilities are closed far more swiftly.
Create Real-Time Communication Loops
Facilitate consistent touchpoints between Financial Aid, Accounts Receivable and IT to rapidly flag and act on anomalies. Integrated communication accelerates response times and minimizes oversight risks.
Strengthen Awareness Across Campus
Incorporate scam awareness into existing financial literacy programs. Students who understand phishing and fraud risks are less likely to fall victim and more likely to report suspicious behavior.
Develop a Crisis Communication Playbook
A public incident of financial aid fraud extends beyond headlines; it directly threatens an institution’s credibility. Build a comprehensive crisis communication playbook that ensures a fast, transparent, and coordinated response. Proactive planning is crucial, and institutions can significantly strengthen their efforts by partnering with trusted reputation management experts.
When institutions elevate fraud prevention to a core business function, they safeguard far more than their balance sheets, protecting their reputation, enrollment pipeline and overall standing.
Why This Matters for Institutional Leaders
Fraud prevention is a strategic responsibility that demands the attention of every institutional leader. The consequences of fraud aren’t limited to financial aid offices. Fraud compromises presidential planning, marketing performance and enrollment numbers—all while chipping away at public trust. If institutional leaders want to chart a course for sustainable growth, defense against fraud must be built into the foundation of that strategy.
Presidents
For presidents, fraud erodes the central pillars that define institutional stability—financial resilience and decision-making confidence. Ghost enrollments and fake students distort budget forecasts, inflate success metrics and mask areas of real vulnerability.
Fraud prevention supports long-term vision by ensuring that enrollment, funding and performance data reflect institutional realities, not manipulations. In an environment where every resource must be justified, clarity is a leadership requirement.
Marketing Leaders
Marketing teams are measured by outcomes. Fraud makes those outcomes unreliable. Invalid inquiries and ghost enrollments inflate to the top of the funnel, while wasting precious budget. For leaders who rely on brand perception to drive engagement and attract prospects, fraud directly undermines their efforts, risking a loss of trust and diminished return on investment.
Enrollment Leaders
Enrollment leaders face rising stakes driven by declining traditional student populations and heightened expectations for conversions. In this environment, fraud distorts the metrics that enrollment leaders depend on. It artificially inflates applicant numbers, conceals melt and obscures true student movement through the funnel.
More importantly, fraudulent applications divert the time and energy of enrollment coaches. Every moment spent chasing a ghost applicant is a moment stolen from a real applicant who may never get the support they need. Over time, this leads to higher melt, poorer service and declining performance. Strategic financial aid conversations can refocus coaching efforts on real prospects and improve yield through trust-building and transparency.
Fraud prevention empowers enrollment leaders to understand their true audience and make decisions rooted in authentic student behavior, not artificial patterns. Aligning enrollment management strategies with proactive fraud prevention creates a foundation that drives sustained success.
Building a Resilient Institution
Fraud prevention is an ongoing commitment to institutional resilience. As fraudsters evolve their tactics, institutions must continually refine their defenses with smarter workflows, updated red flag criteria and technology. The most resilient schools treat fraud prevention as core infrastructure, integrating it into strategic planning rather than siloing it within financial departments. More importantly, many fraud safeguards also enhance the experience of students and staff by eliminating confusion and freeing teams to focus on supporting real students. When institutions take a proactive approach to fraud, they’re not only protecting their operations—they’re actively preserving the credibility and brand reputation that define long-term success.
EducationDynamics is here to help you turn defense into momentum. By aligning revenue strategy with reputation stewardship, we empower institutions to lead with clarity, act with confidence and build a foundation for success in an increasingly high-stakes environment.
The increasing exposure of higher education sectors worldwide to market mechanisms (eg privatisation in and of higher education, platformisation and assetization) generates market-making pressures, technologies and relations that are changing university missions and academic practices in both research and teaching, altering not only forms of knowledge production but also academic identities (Lewis et al, 2022). These corporate, competitive systems operate in and through regimes of time acceleration and compression (Rosa & Trejo-Mathys, 2013; Wajcman & Dodd (eds), 2017) that enable capitalist accumulation via a proliferation of calculative practices and surveillance techniques driven by instrumental logics. In essence, the timescapes of the ‘accelerated academy’ (Vostal, 2016) have come to be not just dominated but defined by the linear rhythms of knowledge production, accumulation, consumption, and distribution.
In this context, ever-present tensions continue to pit institutional time scarcity/pressure against the often non-linear times, rhythms and practices that characterise the craft of intellectual work. These are acutely visible in doctoral education, which is considered both a liminal space-time of profound transformation for students and a rite of passage through which doctoral candidates enter the academic community.
Doctoral students in the accelerated academy experience tremendous institutional pressures to complete their research projects within tight timeframes punctuated by developmental milestones. At the same time, they are pressed to publish and participate in externally funded projects before completing their course of studies, to secure a positional advantage in a hyper-competitive, precarious job market.
Much less attention is devoted to reading as an autonomous practice in relation to educational research. Reading is generally approached instrumentally for research and mostly equated with a strategic, extractive process whereby academics retrieve, survey or review the information needed for writing to maximise efficiency and speed (Fulford & Hodgson (eds) 2016; Boulous Walker, 2017).
Doctoral students are taught to tackle the volume of readings by deploying selective, skim and speed-reading techniques that ‘teach’ them a practical method to ‘fillet’ publications (Silverman, 2010 p323) or ‘gut(ting) an article or book for the material you need’ (Thomas, 2013 p67). Without dismissing the validity of these outcome-oriented techniques, I argue that reading should be approached and investigated as research, which is to say as a philosophical orientation whose intimate relation with thinking (meditation and contemplation) and writing (as a method of inquiry) constitutes a conjuncture with transformative potential for both the reader and the text (Hoveid & Hoveid, 2013; Dakka & Wade, 2018). [RC1][FD2]
In 2024, I was awarded a BA/Leverhulme grant that allowed me to examine, in collaboration with Norwegian colleagues, the under-researched area of reading habits, rhythms and practices among doctoral students in two countries, the UK and Norway, characterised by a markedly different cultural political economy of higher education. The project set out to explore how a diverse group of doctoral students related to, made sense of, and engaged with reading as a practice, intellectually and emotionally. Through such exploration, the team intended to examine pedagogical and philosophical implications for doctoral education, supervision, and, more generally, higher education through a distinct spatiotemporal lens.
The project experimented with slow reading (Boulous Walker, 2017) as an ethico-political countermovement that invites us to dwell with the text and reflect on the transformations it can produce within the self and the educational experience tout-court. Examining the practice of reading is, therefore, vital to foster the development of the criticality and creativity that inform the students’ thinking and, ultimately, their writing, helping to create better conditions for meaningful educational engagement.
As briefly mentioned earlier, there is a dearth of literature in educational research focused explicitly and directly on reading as a research practice. Conversely, Reading Theory and Reader-Response criticism (Bennett, 1995) are well-established strands in literary studies.
Two contributions inspired the project in the cognate fields of philosophy, pedagogy, and education ethics, underpinning the theoretical and methodological framework adopted: Aldridge (2019), exploring the association between reading, higher education and educational engagement through the phenomenological literary theorisations of Rita Felski (2015) and Marielle Macé (2013). Reading here is considered as a phenomenological ‘orientation’ with ontological character: the entanglement of body, thought, and sense makes reading an ‘embodied mode of attentiveness’ with ‘rhythms of rapprochement and distancing, relaxation and suspense, movement and hesitation’ (Felski 2015, p176). Lastly, Boulous Walker (2017) introduces the concept of ‘slow reading’, or reading philosophically against the institution. This practice stands in opposition to the institutional time, efficiency, and productivity pressures that prevent the intense, contemplative attitude toward research that is typical of active educational engagement. The author calls, therefore, for slow reading, careful reading, and re-reading as antidotes against institutional contexts dominated by speed and the cult of efficiency.
Bridging cultural sociology and philosophy of education, the project combined Hermeneutic Phenomenology (Schutz, 1972; Ricoeur, 1984) and Rhythmanalysis (Lefebvre, 2004) to gain insight into the lived experiences, embodied and cognitive processes of meaning-making, and spatiotemporal (rhythmic) dimensions of reading among doctoral students.
The complementarity of these frameworks enabled a richer and deeper understanding of the phenomenon from a socio-cultural and philosophical perspective. The rhythmanalytical dimension drew on the oeuvre of the French philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre. Conceived as both a sensory method and a philosophical disposition, Rhythmanalysis (2004) foregrounds the question of the everyday and its rhythms, offering insightful takes on repetition, difference, appropriation and dwelling. Lefebvre’s analysis of the conflicting rhythms of the social and the critical moments that revive/subvert the humdrum of the quotidian pivot on the experience and resonance of bodies in space-time, their imbrication with the fabric of the social and the multiplicity of their perceptual interrelations with human and more-than-human environments. Methodologically, Rhythmanalysis enabled a closer look at the students’ reading habits, rhythms and practices in relation to their doctoral studies. The emphasis on spatio-temporality and (auto-)ethnographic observations made it possible to register and grasp the tensions that derive from clashes between meso institutional constraints and demands (eg set timeframes for completion; developmental milestones), micro individual responses and circumstances (eg different modes of study, private and/or professional commitments) and macro societal context (eg cognitive, extractive capitalism).
The phenomenological facet of the project drew on the hermeneutic, existential, and ontological dimensions found in Ricoeur’s and Schutz’s philosophy, which are concerned with grasping experiential meanings and understanding the complexity of human lifeworld. Acknowledging the entanglement of being and Dasein as an ontological standpoint, human lived experiences are situated within a contingent spatiotemporality and understood through an interpretivist epistemology founded on intersubjectivity, intentionality and hermeneutics.
This phenomenological-rhythmanalytical inquiry was therefore designed to explore students’ cognitive and affective experiences and practices of reading as they unfolded in the spaces and times of their doctoral education. The project involved two groups of doctoral candidates based in the Education department of, respectively, a teaching-intensive university in the West Midlands of England (Birmingham, UK), and a large, research-intensive university in Norway (Trondheim).
The first phase of data collection involved Focus Groups and Reflective Diaries. It foregrounded the times, places, and rhythms of reading, considering reading modalities and patterns of doctoral students in the context of institutional demands vis-à-vis personal and professional constraints. Rhythmanalysis was employed both as a method (reflective diaries) and as an interpretive, diagnostic tool to uncover and critically reflect on arrhythmias (ruptures) and/or eurythmic pockets in the reading patterns of doctoral students.
The second data collection phase relied on hermeneutic phenomenological techniques, such as Episodic Narrative Interviews (Mueller, 2019), to delve deeper into the affective, material, and cognitive experience that connects and transforms students and their readings.
The final stage of data collection involved an experiment in collective slow reading and re-reading against the institution, inspired by Boulous Walker’s philosophical reading and Felman’s description of the interpretative process as a never-ending ‘turn of the screw’ (Felman, 1977) that generates a hermeneutical spiral of subsequent, ever richer, and different textual interpretations.
Initial findings point to a complex and layered reading time experience, captured in its nuanced articulation by a rhythmic analysis of the students’ everyday practices, habits and affective responses.
Commonsensical as it may sound, reading takes time. Engaging with a text to interpret and understand it is time-consuming, and most of our respondents in this project discussed this. Reading seems to project an experience of oneself as a slow reader, followed by a feeling of guilt for ‘just’ reading.
Interestingly, clock time and phenomenological time appear to be juxtaposed in the reading process, creating conflicts and productive tensions for most of the PhD students in the project. For example, the students often welcome writing deadlines, as they create a linear rhythm that provides structure to their reading time. At the same time, the idea that reading should be done quickly and targeted to extract material for their thesis hovers over many participants, generating performance-related pressure and anxiety. Procedural aspects of reading, particularly managing volume and note-taking, are treated as a sign of success or failure, reinstating Rosa’s neoliberal equation of fast-winner, slow-loser in the accelerated, competitive academy (Rosa, Chapter 2 in Wajcman & Dodd (eds), 2017).
However, a deeper engagement with reading both opposes and coexists with this tendency, evoking the notion of Barthes’ idiorrhythmy (Dakka, 2024) to describe the process of discovering and imposing one’s own rhythm. This rhythm typically resists linearity and dominant structure, requiring slowness as a disposition or a mode of intense attention to oneself and the world through the encounter with text. Even more intriguingly, slowness as heightened focus and immersion often occurs within short and fragmented bursts of reading, strategically or opportunistically carved into the students’ everyday lives, resulting from an incessant act of negotiation over and encroachments with personal, professional, and institutional times.
The project explored, examined, and interpreted the rhythms and practices of reading in contemporary doctoral education along three axes: times (institutional, personal, inner, tempo, duration); spaces (physical, digital, mental); and affects as ways of relating (joy, guilt, anxiety, surprise, fantasy, etc). Together, these elements combine in unique and shifting configurations of dominant rhythms and idiosyncratic responses (rhuthmόs or idiorrhythmy), exposing the irreducibility of students’ experiences to harmful binaries (eg fast versus slow academia) while revealing the pedagogic affordances of a rhythmic and phenomenological analysis for contemporary universities. Spotlighting different approaches to reading, thinking, and writing enhances awareness of and attunement to developing one’s voice, listening and resisting capacity.
Fadia Dakka is an Associate Professor in Philosophy and Theory of Higher Education at Birmingham City University. Her interests lie at the intersection of philosophy, sociology and theory of higher education. She is currently working toward theorising Rhythm as a form of ethics underpinning critical pedagogy in higher education. She recently received a BA/Leverhulme small grant (2024-25) to examine doctoral reading habits and practices in the UK and Norway.
