Category: Policy

  • Promoting access to higher education worldwide

    Promoting access to higher education worldwide

    by Graeme Atherton

    The shift to the political right in many countries in the world, including it appears the UK now, presents a new set of challenges for equitable access and success to higher education. Not that it needed any new ones. Inequalities in participation in higher education are pervasive, entrenched and low on the list of priorities of most governments. Since the early 2010s we have been working with other organisations across the world including the World Bank and UNESCO to understand the extent and nature of these inequalities but more importantly to initiate activities to address them. In 2016 working with colleagues including the late, great Geoff Whitty I undertook a project to bring together as much secondary data we could on who participates in higher education by social background across the world.

    The Drawing the Global Access Map report found that in all the countries where we could find data (over 90%) higher education participation was unequal. The extent of this inequality differs but it binds together countries and higher education systems of all varieties. Following convening 2 global conferences on higher education access around the time of this report in an attempt to galvanise the global higher education community, we then launched World Access to Higher Education Day (WAHED) in 2018. The aim of WAHED was to create a vehicle that would enable universities to launch activities to address inequalities in access and success on the day in their own place. As the pandemic hit we also started a global online conference and up to 2022 over 1000 organisations from over 100 countries engaged in WAHED. We also produced research to mark the day including the All Around the World – Equity Policies Across the Globe report in 2018 which looked at policies on higher education equity in over 70 countries. The report found that only 32% of the countries surveyed have defined specific participation targets for any equity group and only 11% have formulated a comprehensive equity strategy.

    WAHED played an important role as a catalyst for activism, especially in contexts where individuals or departments felt that they were acting in isolation. However, progress will be limited if efforts are restricted just to an International Day of Action. Hence, in December 2024, working again with the World Bank, UNESCO as well as Equity Practitioners in Higher Education in Australasia (EPHEA), and a number of educational foundations, we launched the World Access to Higher Education Network (WAHEN). The aim of WAHEN is to construct an alliance for global, collective action on higher education equity and more information can be found here. It will focus on:

    •              Capacity Building via the sharing, professionalisation and enhancement of practice in learning, teaching and pre-HE outreach

    •              Collaboration – enabling organisations to formulate and deliver shared goals through a set of global communities of practice.

    •              Convening – bringing together those from across countries and sectors to affect change in higher education through World Access to Higher Education Day.

    •              Campaigning – advocating and working with policymakers and governments around the world producing research and evidence.

    •              Critical thinking – creating an online space where the knowledge based on ‘what works’ in equitable access and success can be developed & shared.

    It was because there was a national organisation that works to tackle inequalities in higher education in the UK, the National Education Opportunities Network (NEON), that I founded and led for 13 years, that WAHED and WAHEN happened. NEON led these efforts to build a global network. There remains a large way to go for WAHEN to be sustainable and impactful. We are working intently on how to position WAHEN and how it should focus its efforts. Inequalities in access and success are locally defined. They can’t be defined from a Euro-centric perspective, and they can also only be tackled through primarily work that is regional or national. The added value of international collaboration in this area needs to be articulated, it can’t be assumed. But at the same time, nor should the default assumption be that such a network or collaboration is less required where equitable access and success is concerned than in other parts of higher education. This assumption encapsulates the very problem at hand, ie the lack of willingness to recognise the extent of these inequalities and make the changes necessary to start to address them.

    The present challenges to higher education presented by the global shift to the right brings into sharp focus the consequences of a failure to deal with these inequalities. Universities and left leaning governments are unable to frame higher education as open and available to all with the potential to enter. The accusations of elitism and the threats to academic freedom etc then become an easier sell to electorates for whom higher education has never mattered, or those in their family/community. It is more important than ever then that something like WAHEN exists. It is essential that we develop the tools that give higher education systems across the world to become more equitable and to resist populist narratives, and that we do this now.

    Professor Graeme Atherton is Director of the World Access to Higher Education Network (WAHEN) and Vice Principal, Ruskin College, Oxford.

    A hybrid conference Access and Geopolitics: Next Steps in Tackling the Equity Crisis in Global Higher Education, was held on 3 June 2025 at the Department of Education in Oxford, jointly organised by WAHEN, The Centre for Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance (SKOPE) and the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE). There were almost 40 presentations on: the politics – and geopolitics – of widening participation; the challenge of financing access; private provision and higher education as a public good; populism and the equity ‘backlash’; and, the challenge of generating meaningful participation data. Speakers included: John Blake, Director for Fair Access and Participation at the Office for Students, England;  Dr Jamil Salmi, global tertiary education expert; Professor Shamit Saggar, Executive Director of Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success; Professor Rachel Brooks, Professor of Higher Education, Oxford and President of the British Sociological Association; Professor Johanna Waters, Professor of Human Geography, UCL; Dr James Robson, Director of SKOPE and Associate Professor of Tertiary Education Systems, Oxford; Graeme Atherton, Director of the World Access to Higher Education Network (WAHEN) and Vice Principal, Ruskin College, Oxford; and Danielle Watkis, DPhil student, Department of Education, Oxford. A full record of the event will soon be available on the CGHE website.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

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

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  • That Was the Quarter That Was

    That Was the Quarter That Was

    What’s been going on around the world since the end of March, you ask? 

    Well, unsurprisingly, the biggest stories have come from the United States.  There are in effect four fronts to the Trump administration’s attacks on the world of higher education.  First of all, the government’s new budget is going to reduce student eligibility for student loans and grants, meaning there will be less opportunity available to American students.  Second, the budget also proposes to radically slash the budgets of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (the cuts you heard about in the early months of the Trump administration were cuts to existing and in-progress grants – the new budget is about slashing expenditures going forward).   Third, it had decided to get itself into an enormous spat with Harvard, starting with issuing a bizarre set of demands on April 11th, followed by an admission that the letter had been sent in error, followed by enraged bellicosity that Harvard wasn’t submitting to a letter the administration had not meant to send.  Things escalated: the Trump administration impounded more billions of dollars, Harvard responded by shrugging and raising a few hundred million on the bond market, and Trump escalated by, eventually, banning Harvard from accepting or hosting any international students.  And fourth, shortly after a court granted Harvard an injunction on the international students matter, the Trump administration began delaying all student visas and aggressively cancelling Chinese student visas.

    (Whew.)

    This is of course a massive own goal with dangerous implications, as commentators such as Holden Thorp and William Kirby have pointed out.  But it is not simply about Americans losing scientific/technological supremacy.  As the Economist has pointed out, the entire world has a stake in what happens to American science; its hobbling will have consequences not just for global science but for the global economy as well.

    It has been fascinating over the past few weeks watching how the American debacle had grabbed the attention of the rest of the world as well.  It has been very difficult this past month or so to be somewhere where the papers weren’t obsessing about what was happening to students at Harvard (check out a representative smattering from Ethiopia, Iceland, Vietnam, Malaysia, India and Kazakhstan).   At the policy level, almost every OECD government is revving up plans to poach US-based researchers even in places which genuinely don’t have the scientific infrastructure to poach anyone (Ireland?  Czechia?  C’mon).  In other words, you have basically the entire world looking at how the American debacle in a massively self-centred way.  Basically, it’s all: “Yeah, yeah, death of the American research university, how does this affect me/how can I profit?”

    But the world has yet to grapple in any kind of serious way is how to maintain growth and innovation in a world where the largest spender on research is reducing expenditures by 50%.  This has implications for absolutely everybody and at the moment there are no serious discussions about how the world gets by without it.  Obviously, other countries can’t replace what used to come out of NSF and NIH.  But they can, as Billy Beane from Moneyball might say, recreate it “in the aggregate” by working together.  Unfortunately, that’s not quite what they are doing.  That would require Australia, Canada, Japan and Korea to be working actively with the European Union; not only is that not happening, but these days the EU can’t even get it’s own act together on research.

    Meanwhile, in large parts of the world, the main higher education story we hear about is one of “cutbacks”, “austerity” and the like.  But there are, I think, some fundamentally different issues at work in different countries.  In the rich Anglosphere, which happens to be where most of the big producers of higher education are located, mature higher education systems highly reliant on market fees are being forced into big cuts as governments remove their ability to attract funds, usually by changing their student visa regimes.  (An aside here: many people ask: where will international students go if not Canada/US/Australia/wherever?  To which the answer is usually: to a great extent, they will just stay home. But a few countries do seem to be doing better on international students as of late, mostly in Asia.  Turkey, Dubai and Uzbekistan in particular seem to be the big winners, though the growth in their intakes is lower than the drop in the intakes of the big anglophone countries).

    But in other countries, the fundamental financial tension is that demand for higher education is far outstripping the ability of either public or private funding to keep the system afloat (government could choose not to meet so much demand, but political needs must).   Kenya, with its widespread university financial problems comes into this category, and Nigeria, where funding new universities seems to come at the expense of funding existing ones clearly come under this category. Intermediate cases here include France (increasing demand, flat funding), Brazil (which has done a series of policy U-turns on transfers to federal universities and whose overall policy might best be described as “confused”), and perhaps Colombia (promises of money co-existing with widespread institutional precarity, even in the public sector).  What is common here is that a lot of countries seem to have built systems which are too big/expensive for what the public – collectively or individually – is willing to pay. 

    A common response to the problem of inadequate public funding is the expansion of private higher education.  Almost unbelievably, private higher education now makes up about 20% of total provision in Spain, France and Germany (in two of those countries, tuition is free, and in the third it is minimal – under 1000 euros per year in most cases).  In many cases, the expansion is in relatively cheap classroom-heavy courses (often in business) but in many cases these universities are moving into other areas such health care provision.  This explosion has led to a significant tightening of regulations on private universities in Spain and a “tri” (meaning triage”) on France’s Parcoursup system, meaning that certain types of private college will have a harder time advertising themselves to prospective students.  This phenomenon is not constrained to Europe: Tunisia is also currently pre-occupied with how to regulate private institutions.  An alternative to letting domestic private universities rip is to invite foreign institutions into the country.  India is the country most in the news for attempting this at the moment but places like Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan and Vietnam are also eagerly heading down this route.

    Tuition fees are always an issue, and at public universities we see evidence both for and against the idea that fees are rising.  On the one hand, we have Namibia introducing free tuition (though – note – without fully announcing its operational details), and a Labor government in Australian winning on a promise to – in effect – shorten graduate repayment periods by cancelling debt.  On the other hand, Korea and Russia – both countries with abysmal youth demographics – are allowing their institutions to raise fees after years of both falling enrolments and largely frozen tuition.  Finland may be introducing fees for certain forms of continuing education.  But higher tuition isn’t the only way governments deal with crashing demographics; in Pennsylvania, the solution is outright campus closures.

    In terms of student activism, the main story so far this year is Serbia, which is now in the seventh month of student-led anti-government protests. At this point, it’s very hard to see how the students obtain their maximalist demands of regiment change.  After six months of protests, students are starting to go back to school and finish their academic year.  Recent evidence from North America suggests the movement will have trouble maintaining itself over the summer months and into next year.

    War continues to re-shape universities around the world.  Ukraine has announced changes to its system of conscription which will lower its university attendance rate (particularly for graduate studies).  Something similar has happened in Ethiopia, where new rules have been introduced requiring students to do a year of national service before graduation.  Russian universities continue to atrophy in different ways, partly due to government policy but also due to the exodus of many scholars who have fled the regime.

    Among other things from this quarter that bear watching going forward: Greece is continuing the modification of its university system at a furious pace both in terms of altering curricula and in terms of changing the post-dictatorship convention that campuses are police-free zones.  Algeria is moving its entire university system from French to English instruction, which may not have a huge effect in higher education, but certainly tells you which way global linguistic politics are going.  Hong Kong is experimenting with a new institutional type, and a billionaire in China is putting some serious coin behind a new university. 

    My tip for the story this summer?  Watch graduate unemployment rates around the world, particularly in India and China (where the situation is so bad the government has just announced a kind of emergency blitz on graduate hiring which sure seems like it is set up for failure).  I think the push to align higher education more with the labour market is about to go into overdrive.

    All caught up now!  See you back here in September.

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  • Judge blocks Trump’s international enrolment ban

    Judge blocks Trump’s international enrolment ban

    The temporary restraining order (TRO) was issued by federal judge Allison Burroughs on June 5, just one day after President Trump’s signing of a proclamation to suspend the issuing of US visas to international students entering Harvard for an initial six months.   

    During the Massachusetts hearing, Burroughs said Trump’s directive would cause “immediate and irreparable injury” to America’s oldest institution, temporarily blocking it “until there is opportunity to hear from all parties”. 

    The judge also extended a 23 May restraining order which prevents DHS’s attempt to strip Harvard of its ability to enrol international students, until June 20 or when a preliminary injunction is issued, with a hearing set for June 16. 

    The June 4 proclamation came in addition to, and aims to circumvent, DHS secretary Kristi Noem’s revocation of Harvard’s SEVP certification, which was also blocked by the courts.  

    Wednesday’s directive – which incorrectly refers to SEVP as the “Student and Exchange Visa Program” – attempts to bar all new international students, scholars and exchange visitors from pursuing any course of study at the university, for a period of six months. 

    With the stroke of a pen, the DHS Secretary and the President have sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body

    Harvard University

    This time, the government framed the ban as a matter of national security, accusing Harvard of collaborating with China. It has repeatedly criticised the institution for failing to root out antisemitism on campus and failing to hand over information on international students.  

    For its part, hours before judge Burroughs’ ruling, Harvard amended a previous lawsuit, alleging both the June 4 proclamation and the DHS revocation were “part of a concerted and escalating campaign of retaliation by the government” in clear retribution for Harvard’s exercising its First Amendment rights to free speech.  

    “With the stroke of a pen, the DHS Secretary and the President have sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body,” it reads, in what the complaint calls a “government vendetta against Harvard”.  

    Last year, Harvard hosted 6,793 international students, totalling over 27% of the entire student body, though Trump has mistakenly called the figure 31%.

    Meanwhile, on June 5, Harvard’s President Garber sent a letter to the Harvard community, informing students that “contingency plans” were being drawn up to allow students to continue their studies during the summer and the upcoming academic year.

    Reaffirming the “outstanding contributions” of international students, Garber vowed to “celebrate them, support them, and defend their interests as we continue to assert our Constitutional rights”.  

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  • Cut, Coerce, Control: What Trump Is Doing to U.S. Universities

    Cut, Coerce, Control: What Trump Is Doing to U.S. Universities

    The single biggest story in higher education for the first six months of this year, without a doubt, has been the Trump administration’s remarkable assault on science and universities. Arguably it’s the largest state-led assault on higher education institutions anywhere in the world since Mao and the cultural revolution.

    Billions of dollars already legally allocated to institutions have been stripped from them mainly, but not exclusively through the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. Billions more are going to be cut permanently through the budget process. Individual institutions in particular, Harvard, have been threatened with a variety of punishments if they do not obey the administration’s wishes on DEI and the curriculum. International students are being deported and the government has mooted a variety of policies that would see international numbers decline sharply. Low income students are looking at major cuts to both loans and grants. And we’re only, as of this recording, 134 days into this administration’s term, still 1,327 less to go.

    With me today is a returning guest, Brendan Cantwell, from Michigan State University. He joined our show last fall to talk about what, based on his reading of the now notorious Project 2025, a Trump administration might do to higher education. And he was mostly right. Certainly he was more perspicacious than most actual higher education leaders, and so we thought just before we break for the summer, we’d invite him back on, not just to say, I told you so, but to help us understand both the strategies and tactics that the Trump administration is using and where the conflict might be headed next.

    Just one note, we recorded this on Wednesday, the 28th of May. Some things such as the state of the Trump Harvard battle have changed since then, so keep that in mind as you listen.

    And now, over to Brendan.

    The World of Higher Education Podcast
    Episode 3.34 | Cut, Coerce, Control: What Trump Is Doing to U.S. Universities

    Transcript

    Alex Usher (AU): Brendan, let’s start with the big picture. We’re four months—and a week—into Trump’s presidency, with just over three and a half years to go. Let me see if I’ve got this right.

    He’s attacked the major granting agencies—NIH and NSF—and reduced direct funding to individual investigators, often on DEI grounds. He’s also cut overhead payments to universities. On top of that, he’s gone after specific institutions—Columbia, Harvard, and others—trying to pull their funding in ways that, frankly, seem completely illegal. The justification has ranged from their support for EDI to questionable claims of antisemitism or collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party.

    We’ve now got a budget moving through Congress that, as I understand it, takes an axe to the student loan and grant system. And just this week, the government appears to be targeting international students—starting with Harvard, and more broadly by ordering embassies to conduct social media checks before issuing student visas. Am I missing anything?

    Brendan Cantwell (BC): I’m not sure—there’s just been so much. It’s hard to keep up. There have been several executive orders, including ones targeting what we call Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs. Others have touched on accreditation and a range of other topics.

    The thing about this administration is that so much is happening so quickly, and these actions are in various stages of implementation. Some are being held up in court, and with others, it’s not even clear how they’re supposed to be implemented. The president makes a proclamation, but then there’s this uncertainty: what does it actually mean in practice?

    Even for someone who spends a lot of time tracking this, it’s really difficult to stay on top of everything. But the overall thrust seems clear: the administration is using every mechanism it believes it controls—and some it probably doesn’t, legally—to pressure universities to align with the president’s agenda.

    That’s not just my interpretation. It’s actually a common talking point from the administration: if universities want funding, they ought to support the president’s goals. More broadly, there’s a clear effort to weaken the sector—to undermine its role as an independent political and cultural force that could challenge the president or the party.

    AU: I think Linda McMahon actually said exactly that earlier today—that universities are fine as long as they’re aligned with the president and the administration. So, I think you’ve done a good job explaining the through line across these various actions. But how coherent are those actions, really?

    Is this a well-oiled plan, where they expected to be at this point by month three or four? Or is it more like the tariff policies, where the president just thinks of something new each day and rolls it out on a whim?

    BC: I almost want to push back on the either/or framing. It’s definitely true that the president—and to some extent his top policy people and enforcers—are just throwing things at the wall. A lot of it is reactionary: this university defied me, so now I’m mad and I’m going to do something outrageous to show how much authority I have over them.

    So yes, there’s an erratic, incoherent aspect to it. The rationale for their actions shifts constantly: one day it’s antisemitism, the next it’s about violating a Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action, then it’s about foreign collaboration. The justification just keeps changing.

    But if you take a step back and look at the cumulative effect of what the administration is doing—getting universities to be more compliant, weakening their financial position, causing faculty and staff to lose their jobs—that broader objective is being advanced. And that’s exactly the kind of outcome that people like Chris Rufo, who claim to speak for the administration’s education policy, seem to be aiming for.

    So no, it’s not tactically precise—it’s not some kind of meticulously calibrated battle plan. But the overall strategy of flooding the sector with challenges is definitely happening.

    AU: I’ll come back to the strategy in a second, but let’s talk tactics. Do you get the sense that the Trump team is getting smarter in how it’s operating? That maybe they’ve been caught off guard a few times and are starting to adapt?

    I’m just thinking about what’s happened in the last week. First, they attacked Harvard—saying, essentially, “we’re getting rid of all your international students.” Then the court pushes back. But right away, the administration has a response: the court says, “No, you can’t do that,” and they immediately pivot to pulling individual scholarships or research grants for international students—ones that hadn’t already been cut.

    Then they go a step further, announcing cuts that apply not just to Harvard, but to all international students. Are they getting smarter, or not? I never had the sense this group was particularly good at learning, but maybe that’s changing?

    BC: Are they getting smarter? I’m not sure. Are they more determined? Yes. And I think the voices inside the administration that might have constrained the president’s impulses back in 2016 to 2020—those are gone now. He’s unconstrained. He’s persistent. And he and his senior policy advisors genuinely believe in what they’re doing. They’re committed to the project and they’re looking for ways to push it forward.

    Take the example you just mentioned: there’s an injunction—you can’t bar Harvard from enrolling international students, at least not before the courts weigh in. And the administration responds, “Fine. We’ll just create a new process to vet all international student visas.” So suddenly, they’re grinding the whole system to a halt.

    They’re absolutely more willing now to use tactics that are difficult to block—tactics that escalate the situation every time someone pushes back. And they’re building out those tactics in a way that moves them closer to their goals.

    That said, I don’t think their objectives are ever really precise or coherent. It’s more of a generalized impulse: they don’t like foreigners, they don’t like foreign students, they don’t like Harvard, they don’t like universities. So, they hit where it hurts—and this is one way to do it.

    Now, is that smart? Maybe more effective, yes. I’m not sure it serves the country, or even the president’s long-term agenda, in any meaningful way. But it’s definitely happening.

    AU: So let me turn to the Trump administration’s broader strategy. Last time you were on, we talked about Project 2025 and its implications for higher education. How closely do you think the White House’s actions over the past four months align with what was outlined in Project 2025? And by the way, this is your chance to say “I told you so.”

    BC: Yeah, I love to say “I told you so”—it’s one of my character flaws.

    A lot of what was in Project 2025 has now been implemented—or at least, versions of it have. Take the cap on indirect costs, for example. They’ve implemented a 15% cap, rather than the negotiated rates that were often quite a bit higher for individual campuses. Those rates sometimes raised eyebrows, especially among people unfamiliar with how the U.S. system works.

    And even the rhetoric is the same. They’ve said, essentially, “Marxist foundations only pay 15%, so why should we subsidize Marxist stuff?” That language comes directly from Project 2025.

    There are other examples, too. Many of the student loan reforms currently working their way through Congress have Project 2025 fingerprints on them. The executive order on DEI? Same thing. So yes, there are a lot of specific elements from the plan that are now showing up in policy.

    And beyond the specifics, the overall spirit of Project 2025 is clearly visible in the administration’s posture toward higher education.

    That said, there’s one key difference: Project 2025 envisioned a more active role for Congress and a more deliberative policymaking process than what we’re actually seeing. It assumed, at least implicitly, more checks on presidential power than the president has been willing to accept.

    So, while many of Project 2025’s ideas have been implemented—some fully, some partially—how long they last is still an open question. And ironically, the actual execution by the administration is in many ways less constrained, and possibly less lawful, than what Project 2025 originally proposed. That’s my impression, at least—as a non-lawyer.

    AU: We’ve been talking about the Trump administration. I want to shift now to the higher education sector. For most of February and part of March, the sector seemed… bewildered. Almost unable to process what was happening. It was like, “This must be a mistake—they can’t possibly mean that.”

    And as a result, I think the response was pretty slow. When the administration went after Columbia, which was the first institutional target, many universities seemed to instinctively say, “Let’s stay quiet. Maybe we’ll be spared.”

    You, and a few others, were pretty clear-eyed from the beginning about how this would unfold. Why didn’t university leaders see it coming? This feels like a colossal failure of imagination. What happened?

    BC: Let me start by offering a partial defense of university leaders.

    There are people like me—and others—who are pretty knowledgeable but also pessimistic. We say bad things are going to happen a lot, and often they don’t. During Trump’s first term, there was concern that a lot of his anti-higher-ed rhetoric would turn into policy. And in some ways, it did. But in many ways, it didn’t. Congress constrained him. The courts constrained him. Even people inside his administration held him back. And he also lost focus on higher ed.

    So, I think university leaders had some reason to believe that the best strategy was to remain quiet, lobby Congress, and let the courts do their work. That approach worked last time, so it wasn’t irrational to assume it might work again. It just took them some time to adjust to the new reality.

    Some of that delay is about individual cognitive response, which I’m not really qualified to speak to. But some of it is structural—university bureaucracies and associations take time to pivot. Shifting strategies isn’t easy.

    So yes, it’s fair to say the sector was caught flat-footed. And yes, leaders should have had a better sense of what was coming. That’s a valid critique. But once they figured out what was happening, I think the sector showed a fair amount of agility. Associations started taking a more aggressive posture. ACE, for instance, became part of the resistance—which I wouldn’t have predicted would happen so quickly.

    Universities are still trying to find their footing. And then you have Red State universities, which are really hemmed in by state legislatures. They’re facing a whole different set of challenges, apart from what’s coming out of the federal administration. Those institutions are in a very tough spot.

    AU: What does it say about American higher education that Harvard has become ground zero for the resistance?

    BC: Full credit to Harvard—absolutely.

    Here’s my hedge: they had the benefit of seeing what happened to Columbia. That experience showed there was no good-faith negotiation to be had with this administration.

    In some ways, it makes strategic sense for Trump to pick on Harvard. It’s not the most lovable institution. It’s a big, juicy target.

    But at the same time, it’s also kind of foolish. Harvard has enormous resources—financial, social, institutional. They have more capacity to fight back than almost any other institution in the country.

    I think they recognized what Columbia’s experience revealed: if you give in to this administration, institutional autonomy is gone—possibly for a long time.

    If Harvard wants to preserve the American establishment—which it’s often accused of doing, by reproducing elite institutions and elite classes—then it has to resist Trump. That resistance is a condition of preserving the pre-Trump order.

    So yes, it’s good and necessary that Harvard is doing this. But I wouldn’t interpret this as Harvard becoming some scrappy underdog street fighter. It’s simply one of the few institutions with the resources and standing to try to defend the old order.

    AU: What about going forward, though? I mean, I hear more institutions—maybe not acting, but at least sounding like they understand they all have to hang together, or they’ll hang separately. But will they?

    I mean, take the University of Michigan on DEI—they folded like Superman on laundry day. Part of that was probably about Santa Ono’s personal ambitions. But there are a lot of institutions, both public and private, that have already bent the knee at least once.

    How do you come back from that? And can it really be done through the courts alone? Because right now, it’s all being held up by temporary restraining orders. And as you’ve said, that doesn’t provide clarity. Eventually, these cases are going to have to go up to the Supreme Court—where, incidentally, four or five justices are Harvard alums. Whatever else they believe, they might have some interest in preserving these institutions.

    How do you see the resistance evolving over the next few months?

    BC: I’d be disingenuous if I told you I know exactly how this is going to play out.

    AU: Best guess.

    BC: I think the strategy for the sector is to try to win where it can in the courts, and hope the administration abides by those rulings—which, honestly, is a real concern at this point.

    And then also to behave like a school of fish: move together, so it becomes difficult to single out and take down any one institution.

    The hope is that they can wait the president out—that the administration will shift its focus to something else, burn through its energy on attacks, and that most of the sector will remain intact enough to keep operating.

    And then, when that moment comes, institutions can manage the fallout: the indirect consequences like how states deal with a recession if healthcare or food assistance burdens shift onto them, or the winding down of research operations as the pool of available grant funding shrinks.

    I think the approach is: keep your head down, don’t explicitly cave, and hope the administration moves on. It’s probably the best available strategy right now.

    But I don’t know if it will work. If the administration manages to keep its attention fixed on higher education and maintains this pace of attacks and cuts, then it’s going to be very difficult for large parts of the sector to emerge unscathed.

    AU: You mentioned at the beginning of the interview an executive order related to accreditation. We haven’t talked about that yet, and I think some people see that as the sleeper issue—not necessarily for the big, wealthy private institutions, but for the vast majority of colleges and universities.

    Changes to the U.S. accreditation system could have huge implications. What’s been happening on that front so far? What’s actually in that executive order, and what could these changes mean for institutional autonomy and academic freedom?

    BC: Most of the executive orders from this administration, it’s not exactly clear what it does. It directs the Secretary of Education—who, by the way, has also been tasked with dismantling the Department of Education, so there’s that contradiction to hold in your mind.

    AU: But she’s still the Secretary. I saw her today.

    BC: Yes, she’s still there.

    So, this order directs her to collaborate with new accreditors and to open up competition in accreditation. The stated goal is to “foster innovation” and “rein in the accreditation cartel”—that’s the language they use. They frame current accreditors as promoters of Marxist, DEI, anti-Semitic, or otherwise ideologically objectionable agendas. It’s a jumble of terms, but it signals their intent.

    There are really two key elements here. First, increasing competition among accreditors. That means recognizing accreditors that wouldn’t have been approved under a Democratic administration—and maybe not even under many Republican ones. These would be organizations willing to give the stamp of approval to short-term or for-profit programs that don’t meet U.S. or international best practices for educational quality. If I were being snarky, I’d call them scammer programs.

    Second, they could use accreditation as a way to impose standards that align with the president’s political agenda. For example, they might require changes to how campuses regulate student conduct, admissions policies, or even faculty hiring practices. They could try to use accreditation to reach into curriculum—mandating, say, a general education requirement focused on Western Civilization or other ideologically favored content.

    Accreditation is the clearest vehicle they have to influence what’s taught and how institutions operate. But these kinds of changes take time and require more methodical planning—something this administration has been less consistent about, as we’ve discussed.

    So, we’ll see what happens. But it’s definitely something to keep an eye on over the next couple of years. If universities are already weakened by all the other pressures—funding cuts, legal battles, political attacks—they may be less able to resist a fundamental restructuring of the accreditation system.

    AU: The sector’s had a lot thrown at it over the last four months. But looking ahead—have we seen the end of all this sabotage innovation, so to speak? Is there more coming? We talked about Project 2025 a little earlier. Is there anything in there that hasn’t been used against the sector yet? What should we be even more worried about?

    BC: I’m not sure there’s any one Project 2025 policy I’d point to and say, “watch out for that specifically.” But a couple of things are worth keeping an eye on.

    One would be if the administration attempts to block institutions—or even groups of institutions, or the entire country—from accessing federal student financial aid. That’s Title IV under the Higher Education Act. If they were to go after Title IV the same way they’ve unilaterally blocked access to research grants or are now targeting international students, that would be hugely disruptive. It’s a big, coercive lever. They could do a lot of damage with it.

    The other thing to watch is the relationship between federal and state policy. We’re already seeing red states passing legislation that mirrors or reinforces the Trump administration’s higher ed agenda. Utah, for example, just passed a bill where institutions face a big cut to their appropriations—unless they agree to evaluate and cut programs the state deems nonessential.

    And even individual boards of governors, particularly in Republican-dominated states, are taking it upon themselves to implement Trump-aligned policies. I think we might be seeing that at the University of North Carolina, for instance, where no one outside of the health sciences has received tenure in the past year. We don’t know exactly what’s going on, but it certainly looks like the board is using its technical authority to enact the administration’s broader political agenda. So those are the kinds of developments to watch.

    AU: Brendan, best of luck—and thanks for joining us.

    BC: Thanks very much, Alex. Always a pleasure to be here.

    AU: That just leaves me to thank our excellent producers—Tiffany MacLennan and Sam Pufek—and you, our viewers, listeners, and readers, for joining us. If you have any questions or comments about today’s podcast, or suggestions for future episodes, don’t hesitate to reach out at [email protected]. Run—don’t walk—to our YouTube page and subscribe. That way, you’ll never miss an episode of The World of Higher Education Podcast. Join us next week for what will be our final episode before the summer break. Our special guest? Me. Tiffany will be turning the tables and peppering me with questions about higher education in Canada and internationally during the first half of 2025. I’ll do my best to make it all sound coherent. Bye for now.

    *This podcast transcript was generated using an AI transcription service with limited editing. Please forgive any errors made through this service. Please note, the views and opinions expressed in each episode are those of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host and team, or our sponsors.

    This episode is sponsored by KnowMeQ. ArchieCPL is the first AI-enabled tool that massively streamlines credit for prior learning evaluation. Toronto based KnowMeQ makes ethical AI tools that boost and bottom line, achieving new efficiencies in higher ed and workforce upskilling. 

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  • Risk-based quality regulation – drivers and dynamics in Australian higher education

    Risk-based quality regulation – drivers and dynamics in Australian higher education

    by Joseph David Blacklock, Jeanette Baird and Bjørn Stensaker

    Risk-based’ models for higher education quality regulation have been increasingly popular in higher education globally. At the same time there is limited knowledge of how risk-based regulation can be implemented effectively.

    Australia’s Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) started to implement risk-based regulation in 2011, aiming at an approach balancing regulatory necessity, risk and proportionate regulation. Our recent published study analyses TEQSA’s evolution between 2011 and 2024 to contribute to an emerging body of research on the practice of risk-based regulation in higher education.

    The challenges of risk-based regulation

    Risk-based approaches are seen as a way to create more effective and efficient regulation, targeting resources to the areas or institutions of greatest risk. However, it is widely acknowledged that sector-specificities, political economy and social context exert a significant influence on the practice of risk-based regulation (Black and Baldwin, 2010). Choices made by the regulator also affect its stakeholders and its perceived effectiveness – consider, for example, whose ideas about risk are privileged. Balancing the expectations of these stakeholders, along with their federal mandate, has required much in the way of compromise.

    The evolution of TEQSA’s approaches

    Our study uses a conceptual framework suggested by Hood et al (2001) for comparative analyses of regimes of risk regulation that charts aspects respectively of context and content. With this as a starting point we end up with two theoretical constructs of ‘hyper-regulation’ and ‘dynamic regulation’ as a way to analyse the development of TEQSA over time. These opposing concepts of regulatory approach represent both theoretical and empirical executions of the risk-based model within higher education.

    From extensive document analysis, independent third-party analysis, and Delphi interviews, we identify three phases to TEQSA’s approach:

    • 2011-2013, marked by practices similar to ‘hyper-regulation’, including suspicion of institutions, burdensome requests for information and a perception that there was little ‘risk-based’ discrimination in use
    • 2014-2018, marked by the use of more indicators of ‘dynamic regulation’, including reduced evidence requirements for low-risk providers, sensitivity to the motivational postures of providers (Braithwaite et al. 1994), and more provider self-assurance
    • 2019-2024, marked by a broader approach to the identification of risks, greater attention to systemic risks, and more visible engagement with Federal Government policy, as well as the disruption of the pandemic.

    Across these three periods, we map a series of contextual and content factors to chart those that have remained more constant and those that have varied more widely over time.

    Of course, we do not suggest that TEQSA’s actions fit precisely into these timeframes, nor do we suggest that its actions have been guided by a wholly consistent regulatory philosophy in each phase. After the early and very visible adjustment of TEQSA’s approach, there has been an ongoing series of smaller changes, influenced also by the available resources, the views of successive TEQSA commissioners and the wider higher education landscape as a whole.

    Lessons learned

    Our analysis, building on ideas and perspectives from Hood, Rothstein and Baldwin offers a comparatively simple yet informative taxonomy for future empirical research.

    TEQSA’s start-up phase, in which a hyper-regulatory approach was used, can be linked to a contextual need of the Federal Government at the time to support Australia’s international education industry, leading to the rather dominant judicial framing of its role. However, TEQSA’s initial regulatory stance failed to take account of the largely compliant regulatory posture of the universities that enrol around 90% of higher education students in Australia, and of the strength of this interest group. The new agency was understandably nervous about Government perceptions of its performance, however, a broader initial charting of stakeholder risk perspectives could have provided better guardrails. Similarly, a wider questioning of the sources of risk in TEQSA’s first and second phases could have highlighted more systemic risks.

    A further lesson for new risk-based regulators is to ensure that the regulator itself has a strong understanding of risks in the sector, to guide its analyses, and can readily obtain the data to generate robust risk assessments.

    Our study illustrates that risk-based regulation in practice is as negotiable as any other regulatory instrument. The ebb and flow of TEQSA’s engagement with the Federal Government and other stakeholders provides the context. As predicted by various authors, constant vigilance and regular recalibration are needed by the regulator as the external risk landscape changes and the wider interests of government and stakeholders dictate. The extent to which there is political tolerance for any ‘failure’ of a risk-based regulator is often unstated and always variable.

    Joseph David Blacklock is a graduate of the University of Oslo’s Master’s of Higher Education degree, with a special interest in risk-based regulation and government instruments for managing quality within higher education.

    Jeanette Baird consults on tertiary education quality assurance and strategy in Australia and internationally. She is Adjunct Professor of Higher Education at Divine Word University in Papua New Guinea and an Honorary Senior Fellow of the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne.

    Bjørn Stensaker is a professor of higher education at University of Oslo, specializing in studies of policy, reform and change in higher education. He has published widely on these issues in a range of academic journals and other outlets.

    This blog is based on our article in Policy Reviews in Higher Education (online 29 April 2025):

    Blacklock, JD, Baird, J & Stensaker, B (2025) ‘Evolutionary stages in risk-based quality regulation in Australian higher education 2011–2024’ Policy Reviews in Higher Education, 1–23.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

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

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  • courts intensify effort to block Trump’s int’l enrolment ban

    courts intensify effort to block Trump’s int’l enrolment ban

    • District judge moves to take out an injunction on Trump administration’s Harvard international enrolment ban while the case moves through the legal system.
    • University’s international students report “emotional distress” as many cancel travel plans over fears they will not be allowed back into the US.
    • US Department of Homeland Security boss accuses Harvard of “disdain” for American people and spreading hate.

    Following on from her decision last week to temporarily block the move, district judge Allison Burroughs told a packed court that she wanted to “maintain the status quo” while Harvard’s case works its way through the legal system.

    It’s the latest twist in the university’s ongoing battle with the Trump administration, which has accused it of anti-semitism and stripped it of billions of dollars in funding. For its part, Harvard is coming out swinging against the directive, swiftly mounting a legal challenge – the latest step of which culminated in Burroughs’ judgement in a hearing yesterday.

    In court documents filed ahead of the hearing, Harvard’s director of immigration services at the institution’s international office, Maureen Martin, detailed the toll that the administration’s announcement is taking on the campus’s international students.

    She wrote that the revocation notice has caused both students and faculty to express “profound fear, concern, and confusion” – with the university “inundated” with queries from worried international students.

    “Many international students and scholars are reporting significant emotional distress that is affecting their mental health and making it difficult to focus on their studies,” said Martin, adding that some are too afraid to attend their own graduation ceremonies this week in case immigration-related action is taken against them.

    Meanwhile, others are cancelling international travel plans over concerns they will not be able to re-enter the US. “Some fear being compelled to return
    abruptly to home countries where they might not be safe due to ongoing conflicts or where they could face persecution based on their identity or background,” Martin wrote.

    Many international students and scholars are reporting significant emotional distress that is affecting their mental health and making it difficult to focus on their studies
    Maureen Martin, Harvard University

    While US stakeholders may be breathing a sigh of relief at Harvard’s temporary reprieve, Donald Trump’s government is showing no signs of backing down.

    In a letter sent to Harvard before Thursday’s hearing, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confirmed that it wanted to move ahead with revoking the university’s SEVP certification, which would mean it could no longer host international students. Notably, though, the letter did not repeat last week’s assertion that Harvard would have 30 days to challenge the decision and suggested the government would not look to immediately enact the directive.

    In a statement released yesterday, US secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, doubled down on accusations that Harvard has not complied with SEVP regulations, has “encouraged and allowed anti-semitic and anti-American violence to rage on its campus” and has been working with the Chinese Communist Party.

    “Harvard’s refusal to comply with SEVP oversight was the latest evidence that it disdains the American people and takes for granted US taxpayer benefits,” she said. “Following our letter to Harvard, the school attempted to claim it now wishes to comply with SEVP standards. We continue to reject Harvard’s repeated pattern of endangering its students and spreading American hate – it must change its ways in order to participate in American programs.”

    Harvard’s row with the Trump administration stems from the stand it took against a raft of government demands, including that it reform its admissions and hiring practices to combat antisemitism on campus, end DEI initiatives and hand over reports on international students.

    When the institution refused to comply with the demands, the government – seemingly in retaliation – froze $2.2 billion in the university’s funding, threatened to revoke its tax-exempt status, and demanded that international students’ records be handed over. If Harvard didn’t play ball, it was warned, it risked losing its SEVP certification. 

    Although Harvard did send over some student information on April 30, and maintained that it had provided the information it was legally bound to supply, this seems to have been insufficient for the Trump administration, which then moved to black the institution from hosting international students.

    In yet another blow to the US international education sector, the US government announced this week that it would pause all new study visa interviews at American consulates around the world – sparking dismay from stakeholders.

    And Chinese students studying in the US were plunged into uncertainty yesterday after – amid a trade war with Beijing – the government announced plans to “aggressively revoke” their visas. As yet, it remains unclear whether all Chinese students will be affected or just those with links to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in so-called key areas.

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  • Judge halts ban on international enrolments at Harvard

    Judge halts ban on international enrolments at Harvard

    In the latest move in the government’s dramatic feud with the US’s oldest university – and a major victory for international education sector – district judge Allison Burroughs issued a temporary restraining order yesterday, halting the directive stripping Harvard of its eligibility to enrol students from overseas.

    It follows the institution’s swift decision to mount a legal challenge against the administration’s demands that it hand over all disciplinary records for international students from the last five years if it wanted to regain its SEVP status.

    In its lawsuit, Harvard said: “With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body, international students who contribute significantly to the University and its mission.” The next hearing in the case will be held in Boston on May 29.

    If it comes to pass, the ban on international student enrolments would significantly harm Harvard’s financial situation – with last year’s 6,793 overseas students making up a sizeable 27% of the student body.

    With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body, international students who contribute significantly to the University and its mission
    Harvard University

    Orders from the Trump administration would not only prevent Harvard from enrolling any F-1 or J-1 students for the 2025/26 academic year, but also force current international students to transfer to another university if they want to stay in the country. 

    The move cause widespread panic among international students – especially given that some are set to graduate in just one week.

    Students told The PIE News that they were worried about what was happening, but trusted Harvard to “have our backs”.

    The institution’s row with Harvard stems from the stand it took – one of the only US institutions to do so – against the administrations raft of demands, including that it reform its admissions and hiring practices to combat antisemitism on campus, end DEI initiatives and hand over reports on international students.

    When the institution refused to do so, the government froze $2.2 billion in the university’s funding, threatened to revoke its tax-exempt status, and demanded international students’ records if it didn’t want to lose its SEVP certification. 

    Although Harvard did send over some student information on April 30, and maintained that it had provided the information it was legally bound to supply, this seems to have been insufficient for the Trump administration.

    In US homeland security secretary Kristi Noem’s letter to Harvard, she said: “This action should not surprise you and is the unfortunate result of Harvard’s failure to comply with simple reporting requirements”.  

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  • Panic hits Harvard international students after Trump crackdown

    Panic hits Harvard international students after Trump crackdown

    As per a statement released by Kristi Noem, US homeland security secretary, Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification has been revoked because of their “failure to adhere to the law.” 

    “As a result of your refusal to comply with multiple requests to provide the Department of Homeland Security pertinent information while perpetuating an unsafe campus environment that is hostile to Jewish students, promotes pro-Hamas sympathies, and employs racist “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policies, you have lost this privilege,” read the letter by Noem to Harvard University, shared on X, formerly Twitter. 

    “The revocation of your Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification means that Harvard is prohibited from having any aliens on F- or J- nonimmigrant status for the 2025-2026 academic school year.”

    Students set to join Harvard this year are now relying on the institution to take urgent action to keep their dreams of studying at the Ivy League institution alive.

    “I already had to defer my intake from last year to this year due to lack of funds. Deferring again just isn’t an option for me,” stated Pravin Deshmukh, an incoming student at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. 

    “We’re hoping the university can find some form of solution and keep us updated on what’s happening. Harvard has been very proactive over the past few weeks. They’ve reassured incoming students like me of their commitment through emails, provided details on continuing classes online, and shared ways to stay in touch with the International Office.”

    Currently, over 6,800 international students are enrolled at the university, making up 27% of this year’s student body, with a significant portion hailing from countries such as China, India, Canada, South Korea, and the UK.

    WhatsApp groups are on fire – everyone’s panicking, wondering what’s going to happen next. Some parents were planning to attend graduation ceremonies, but now students are telling them, ‘Don’t say you’re coming to visit us.’

    Harvard GSE student

    The vast international student cohort at the campus will also have to transfer to another US university or risk losing their legal immigration status, according to Noem, which puts the current students in jeopardy. 

    “For graduating students, it feels like our degrees could be rendered useless and we might even be labeled as illegal immigrants,” a student at Harvard’s GSE, who requested anonymity, told The PIE. 

    “Some students are considering staying in the U.S. by transferring their SEVIS to community colleges if Harvard can’t find a solution.”

    “WhatsApp groups are on fire – everyone’s panicking, wondering what’s going to happen next. Some parents were planning to attend graduation ceremonies, but now students are telling them, ‘Don’t say you’re coming to visit us,’” the student added. 

    While Noem has issued a 72-hour ultimatum to Harvard, demanding the university hand over all disciplinary records from the past five years related to international students involved in illegal activities and protests on and off campus, students across Harvard’s schools told The PIE that professors and deans have arranged meetings with them to address any questions or concerns.

    “We received an email from the Harvard University president regarding available support, information about Zoom sessions hosted by Harvard’s international offices, and a text-message service for ICE-related threats. Today, a session is being held in person at our school with professors and the Dean,” the Harvard student stated.

    “This is Harvard — they will take a stand, unlike Columbia University or MIT. They have our backs.”

    Some students have voiced concerns about their parents traveling to the US for their graduation ceremonies, but feel reassured by Harvard’s stand that commencement will proceed as planned on May 29th.

    “The Harvard website is being updated regularly, and we have been asked to keep an eye on it, but there’s still a lot of uncertainty. Since yesterday, many of us have been wondering whether we will graduate and the next steps. The morning email confirmed that commencement will continue as planned,” stated another Harvard student, who didn’t wish to be named. 

    “There’s a shift in the atmosphere, making it very difficult to plan the next steps. We couldn’t have imagined something like this happening six months ago, but you have to be prepared for anything.”

    In the meantime Harvard has a released a statement, doubling down on its commitment towards international students.

    “We are fully committed to maintaining Harvard’s ability to host our international students and scholars, who hail from more than 140 countries and enrich the University – and this nation – immeasurably,” stated the University. 

    “We are working quickly to provide guidance and support to members of our community. This retaliatory action threatens serious harm to the Harvard community and our country, and undermines Harvard’s academic and research mission.”

    Furthermore, the institution’s swift lawsuit against the Trump administration over the international student ban resulted in a major victory, as US District Judge Allison Burroughs issued a temporary restraining order against the government’s plan to strip Harvard of its ability to recruit international students.

    According to Sameer Kamat, founder, MBA Crystal Ball, a leading MBA admissions consultancy in India, the Trump administration could choose to extend the deadline for Harvard to comply with its requirements, similar to its approach on trade tariffs in recent weeks.

    “For all we know, Trump may ease off the pressure and give Harvard more time to comply, like he did with the tariff deadlines on his trade partners. But for now, it puts all international students in a limbo. They’ve become collateral damage in a fight that they never wanted to be part of,” stated Kamat.

    “He had played a similar move on Canada and Mexico by giving them a very tight deadline to bring down their tariffs for American goods. This was to push them into action. And then on the final day, he pushed the deadline by a month. Which is why I am thinking, we can’t rule out the possibility of that happening this time. Considering he put a 72-hour deadline, which runs into the weekend.”

    According to Namita Mehta, president, The Red Pen, consultancies like hers are actively supporting affected students by providing guidance, clarifying policy updates, and connecting them with legal or immigration experts as needed.

    “While the announcement has understandably caused concern, it’s essential to recognise that such decisions are often part of broader political narratives and may be temporary,” stated Mehta.

    “While students and families should stay engaged, informed, and proactive, it is equally important to remain hopeful. The strength of institutions like Harvard lies in their academic excellence and capacity to navigate complex challenges with integrity and vision.”

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  • Incremental Change or System Overhaul? An Update on Higher Ed Reform in NZ with Roger Smyth

    Incremental Change or System Overhaul? An Update on Higher Ed Reform in NZ with Roger Smyth

    In some countries, higher education policy just seems to sit still for decades. In others, hyperactivity is a more normal state. Today we’re looking at the 2020s poster child for higher education hyperactivity. It’s not the usual suspects, the UK or Australia, it’s little New Zealand where we’re making our fourth stop on this podcast in just over two and a half years.

    When last we were in Wellington, we talked to Chris Whelan from Universities New Zealand about university underfunding the consequences of losing international students, and something called the University Advisory Group, which was supposed to set the national system on a new course along with a research advisory group who weirdly was made up of exactly the same people only following a different mandate.

    Since then, while these groups were noodling on how best to steer the system, the government made two big table flipping moves. One musing about creating a new type of institution, which was neither a university nor a college, and nobody knew what they were talking about, and the other simply deciding it wasn’t going to fund any more research in the social sciences and humanities through its research granting system. Fun times.

    Anyways, with all this excitement, we figured it was worth going back to the Tasman Sea to check in with one of our regular correspondents, Roger Smyth. He’s a former senior New Zealand public servant and now a consultant based in Canterbury. He’s got all the skinny for us. And so, over to Roger.

    The World of Higher Education Podcast
    Episode 3.32 | Incremental Change or System Overhaul? An Update on Higher Ed Reform in NZ with Roger Smyth

    Transcript

    Alex Usher (AU): Roger, the last time we did a show about New Zealand, we had Chris Whelan from Universities New Zealand on, and we talked a lot about the University Advisory Group process. How far along is that work, and what are people in the sector saying about it? What’s the view at this stage? Is there still interest and momentum behind the process, or has it stalled out a little?

    Roger Smyth (RS): Okay, so the advisory group submitted an interim report late last year, and it’s scheduled to submit its final report this month. I understand that the report has now been submitted, but nothing has been published yet. Neither the interim report nor the final report, nor any of the dozens of submissions made in response to the UAG’s questions, have been released publicly.

    In these sorts of cases, the report usually isn’t published until the government has had a chance to make its initial decisions on some of the high-level questions—and that could still be a little way off.

    Of course, as you implied, Alex, there are rumors. And in some of the face-to-face consultations, the UAG has given a bit of a steer as to where it was heading. For instance, it’s pretty clear that in their interim report, they were proposing a machinery of government change—a reorganization of some of the government agencies in higher education, such as the Tertiary Education Commission, the Ministry of Education, and the policy unit responsible for research and innovation. But we won’t know that for sure until the report comes out.

    One of the big challenges the advisory group would have faced is that the government is committed to returning to a financial surplus in the 2027–28 fiscal year. That’s a significant challenge, with major demands on the budget. So the advisory group would have been instructed to make their proposals fiscally neutral, and that’s a big constraint on what they could recommend.

    My main view on this whole process is that it was never really clear what problem the University Advisory Group was set up to solve—apart from a general instruction to look for improvement and to make the system work better. One of the most distinctive features of the New Zealand system is its homogeneity. That has a lot of positives—it means that wherever you go, you’re guaranteed a reasonable level of quality. But it also has the downside that there isn’t really any outstanding, world-leading university.

    AU: Let me stop you there, because alongside the University Advisory Group, there’s also been a commission on research—on research and science—a review going on at the same time. Why did that happen in parallel rather than together?

    RS: Yeah, I think that’s an important point. The first thing is that the two advisory groups were actually chaired by the same person—Peter Gluckman, a distinguished medical scientist and academic—and they began operating at roughly the same time.

    You can see there was a desire to think about knowledge transfer opportunities within universities and how they contribute to the broader economy and the wider science system.

    The Science Advisory Group has now completed its report. It’s been submitted, and the government has published its initial decisions. This is an area where the review proposed a very substantial overhaul of the machinery of government. They proposed creating a super ministry for higher education, science, technology, and innovation.

    The government, however, did not accept that proposal. Most governments are a bit wary of major machinery-of-government reshuffles unless there’s a very strong rationale. These kinds of changes often involve a settling-in period where the system can lose its way, as people jockey for position and the focus shifts away from the core goals the system is meant to achieve.

    Instead, the review also proposed merging the seven non-university research institutes into a single public research organization. The government opted for a partial reorganization, establishing three public research organizations—focused on the bioeconomy, earth sciences, and health and forensic science. They’re also creating a new organization to cover advanced technology fields like AI, synthetic biology, aerospace, and quantum tech. So that’s probably a reasonable foundation for advancing the science system.

    AU: But of course, before they even got to that point—before the advisory group had reported—the government unilaterally made a change to what’s called the Marsden Fund. That’s sort of like our combination of the social sciences, humanities, and natural science councils. And it effectively nuked the humanities and social sciences, as I understand it. They basically said, “We’re not going to fund those anymore.” Why did the government do that? Why undercut your own report before it even comes out?

    RS: Yeah, this was definitely a decision that caused a lot of pushback and consternation—real ill feeling in universities and across the broader community.

    Most of the government’s research funding is directed toward major national strategic priorities, so it tends to go to areas like health, the hard sciences, engineering, agriculture—things like that. The Marsden Fund was one of the few avenues where humanities researchers could secure external funding, outside of what universities provide internally.

    I think part of this decision reflects the government’s desire to place greater focus on the hard sciences. If you look at the Marsden Fund trends, the social sciences and humanities panel had been gaining a slightly larger share of the funding in recent years, which naturally came at the expense of the hard sciences. So in some sense, this was a declaration that the government wants to reorient support toward areas seen as having greater economic impact.

    That said, the main driver was probably to send a message. But in doing so, it sent a very negative signal to the humanities community. Even researchers in the now-favored areas were concerned about the loss of this funding stream—particularly given that social science research can produce huge social value.

    AU: This tension between favored STEM subjects and less-favored fields like the social sciences, humanities, and business is also playing out in discussions around the government’s funding model. My understanding is that in New Zealand, the funding model essentially funds places. So, the government allocates a certain number of places to each institution. Now we’re projecting that there will be more enrollments than there are funded places, and the government would like to provide a bit of additional funding for STEM subjects, but not for others. We’re very familiar with this in Canada—it’s exactly what’s happening in Ontario right now. I’m curious how you think that will play out in New Zealand?

    RS: Okay, well, just to give a bit of context on the financial situation of the universities: like most Anglophone countries with a heavy reliance on the international student market, COVID hit New Zealand universities hard. In 2021, the impact was cushioned by a surge in domestic enrollments. The labor market was weak due to the pandemic, so more people turned to study, and universities did okay financially.

    But in 2022, following government stimulus measures, the labor market recovered and became more robust. Domestic enrollments fell sharply, and the international student market still hadn’t bounced back. That made 2022 the worst financial year ever for the universities. Six of the eight were in deficit, and one was just breaking even.

    In 2023, when finances were still tight, there was a lot of concern about university viability. The government stepped in with a short-term funding rate boost—not an increase in the number of places, but an increase in the dollars per place.

    Then there was a small increase in funding again last year. But the broader funding review never happened. The government changed, and that process was superseded by the UAG process we discussed earlier.

    And that process, as we said, is likely to avoid anything that would seriously impact the government’s bottom line. So, the universities have been in a tough situation.

    But now, the international market is starting to recover. It’s been slower than in the other countries we compete with, but in EFTS terms—equivalent full-time students—2024 saw an 11% increase in international enrollments. It’s still below pre-pandemic levels, but the trend is positive. And that matters because each international student generates about 60% more revenue than a domestic student.

    Right now, we’re in the middle of the financial reporting season. Five of the universities have reported for 2024. One reported a small deficit on its core business, but it was much lower than expected and offset by a surplus on its wider trading operations.

    So, it’s still tough—marginal—but not as gloomy as it was a couple of years ago.

    Even though there’s still pressure, and enrollments may be shifting toward more expensive fields, financially speaking, the worst appears to be over. The system is beginning to grow again.

    And on the point about STEM versus other fields—it’s worth remembering this is a system driven by student choice. The government doesn’t have much influence over where students choose to go. So, no matter how the government might want to steer things, it can’t really control those choices under the current policy environment. So, I’d say that the universities are managing through this.

    AU: Roger, I want to get into something I read recently—there was a fascinating article where the government, or at least the minister, was musing about the idea of creating a new type of tertiary institution. Something that’s not quite a university and not quite a polytechnic.But before I ask you about that, I think we need to give our listeners a bit of background on polytechnics in New Zealand.

    Your system merged all the polytechnics into one big national institution just before COVID, right? That was Te Pūkenga. Why do that? What was the point of one national institution? It’s a big country—two islands, 15 campuses. That’s a lot to bring together. What was the thinking behind that?

    RS: These reforms had two separate sources.

    First, we talked earlier about the financial challenges in the university sector, but the polytechnics were facing a real financial crisis. They’d been growing for years and carried high fixed costs, with relatively small student numbers spread across multiple campuses.

    Between 2012 and 2019, domestic enrollments dropped by about 25%. By 2019, nearly all the polytechnics were running deficits, and the sector’s collective deficit was quite substantial. So something clearly had to be done.

    Second, the government looked at what had been done in Australia. In New South Wales, for example, they merged all the TAFE institutions into a single statewide TAFE. It worked reasonably well there, and in Queensland as well.

    So they decided to follow a similar path and merge all 16 institutions—along with all work-based training—into a single national organization. That was the rationale behind the creation of Te Pūkenga.

    AU: What about the un-merger? So, a few years later you get a new government—the National government—and they’re going to undo the whole thing. Was that because it was, as you said, a machinery-of-government issue? Or was it more about a shift in how the government views vocational education?

    RS: I think it was both.

    Let’s look at both sides. First, the merger didn’t go well. There were some good aspects to the reforms. For instance, they set up six Workforce Development Councils to set standards for training and take a forward-looking view of labor market needs in specific fields. That was a positive.

    The idea of reintegrating polytechnic and work-based training into one coherent trades training system was also a good one. But the merger was very poorly executed.

    Costs blew out, and after three years they still hadn’t settled on a functioning operating model. There was almost no progress on the actual integration of work-based and polytechnic-based training. The initial chief executive didn’t work out and had to go.

    So that was one rationale for reconsidering—or unpicking—the merger.

    But the second reason was political. The incoming minister in 2023 had previously been a very successful chief executive of one of the polytechnics that was merged into the national institution.

    She was deeply committed to undoing the merger and restoring control to regions and local communities. So, the government came in with a clear policy to do this, and she got the ministry, and things got moving quickly.

    But, of course, life’s not that simple. No one wanted to go back to a system everyone agreed had serious problems. So how do you reconcile those two positions?

    After two years of back and forth, we’re now getting close to the new model. Those six Workforce Development Councils—the best part of the previous reform—are being disbanded and replaced with smaller organizations focused mainly on setting standards.

    The polytechnics, which remained as divisions within the larger organization, have all gone through what are called ruthless efficiency reviews to determine what could be dropped or changed to make them financially viable.

    We haven’t seen the full results of those yet, but some institutions will likely be deemed viable and split off as standalone, autonomous polytechnics. These will focus partly on trade training, but also on foundation education and some degree-level programs. Those will become autonomous institutions.

    But for those polytechnics that aren’t viable in the long term, they’ll be required to join a federation anchored by the Open Polytechnic, which delivers programs online. The idea is that those institutions can draw on the federation’s expertise and infrastructure to complement their face-to-face delivery with online components.

    AU: So I don’t want to ask you what’s going to happen, but I do want to ask when it’s going to happen—because there are a whole bunch of moving parts here, and you’ve got an election coming up. Is there enough time for the government to unwind all of this before the next election? Because I know, for example, with the Universities Accord process in Australia, the report came out well before the election, and even then, they couldn’t get everything done before voting day. So, what’s the pace of decision-making here?

    RS: The first thing is that if we look at the University Advisory Group, we should see the results of that fairly soon. I’d expect it within a couple of months—possibly even sooner. It might come out all at once, or it could follow the science review model, where there were high-level interim decisions released first.

    My sense of the brief given to the UAG is that we’re not going to see truly transformational change—nothing on the scale of the three big reviews we’ve had in the past: 1961, 1989–90, and 2002–03.

    So I’d expect incremental change rather than sweeping reform. And because of that, I think the university review will largely settle before the election.

    In contrast, the un-merging of Te Pūkenga and the broader vocational education reforms will take longer.

    Under the new arrangements, there will be greater integration between workplace and institutional training. Polytechnics and private providers will be allowed to act as arrangers and supervisors of work-based training.

    But implementing that integration will take time. There’s a two-year transition period, starting in 2026—which is the election year. So the un-merging process will only be partly complete when voters go to the polls.

    That said, I think this process will continue to play out slowly over time. Hopefully, it results in something positive.

    Despite everything—despite what will have been six years of turbulence and ongoing uncertainty—I do believe the sector will move forward with reasonable operating models.

    AU: May you live in interesting times. Roger, thanks so much for joining us today.

    RS: Thank you very much, Alex.

    AU: And that just leaves me to thank our excellent producers, Tiffany MacLennan and Sam Pufek—and you, our listeners, viewers, and readers—for joining us. If you have any questions or comments about today’s episode, or suggestions for future ones, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at [email protected]. Run—don’t walk—to our YouTube page and subscribe. That way, you’ll never miss an episode of The World of Higher Education.

    Join us next week when our guest will be David Lloyd. He’s the remarkable individual who serves as both the Vice Chancellor of the University of South Australia and the co–Vice Chancellor of the University of Adelaide. How does he manage it? Those two institutions are on the brink of what’s likely the biggest institutional shakeup in Australian higher education since the Dawkins reforms of 1988. He’ll be here to talk about the merger, how it came about, and what the future looks like. Until then—bye for now.

    *This podcast transcript was generated using an AI transcription service with limited editing. Please forgive any errors made through this service. Please note, the views and opinions expressed in each episode are those of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host and team, or our sponsors.

    This episode is sponsored by KnowMeQ. ArchieCPL is the first AI-enabled tool that massively streamlines credit for prior learning evaluation. Toronto based KnowMeQ makes ethical AI tools that boost and bottom line, achieving new efficiencies in higher ed and workforce upskilling. 

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  • HESA’s AI Observatory: What’s new in higher education (May 16, 2025)

    HESA’s AI Observatory: What’s new in higher education (May 16, 2025)

    Highlight from a Canadian PSI

    New AI Research Assistant available in library search

    April 25th, 2025. University of Manitoba. 

    UManitoba recently announced the launch of their new AI Research Assistant (beta), a GenAI tool to help with library searches and to help gather initial insights on research topics. Functions include providing summarized responses to research questions, recommending relevant publications from the libraries’ collections, and suggesting additional question prompts to expand the research topic.

    AI Policy

    Encadrement de l’IA en enseignement supérieur: des syndicats d’enseignants déplorent la lenteur de Québec à agir

    Dion-Viens, Daphnée. Le Journal de Montréal. April 24th, 2025.  

    “Québec a annoncé l’automne dernier la création d’une instance de concertation sur l’intelligence artificielle en enseignement supérieur, dont les travaux ont débuté en octobre. Le bilan des travaux devait être présenté en avril, mais cet échéancier a été repoussé à la fin de l’été. Un cadre de référence pour l’intégration de l’IA dans les cégeps et les universités devrait être présenté à la rentrée. La Fédération nationale des enseignantes et enseignants du Québec (FNEEQ-CSN) déplore ce report. Le temps presse puisque plusieurs établissements attendent ces lignes directrices pour agir. »

    Universities have a chance to lead in shaping AI’s future

    Kaya-Kasikci, S. et al. University World News. April 23th, 2025.

    The authors of a recent academic analysis of national AI policies share their thoughts about how the diverse AI policy approaches and perspectives around the world might impact the future of post-secondary education.   

    Transformation of Education

    Are You Ready for the AI University?

    Latham, S. The Chronicle of Higher Education. April 8th. 2025. 

    “What’s happening in higher education today has a name: creative destruction. The economist Joseph Schumpeter coined the term in 1942 to describe how innovation can transform industries. That typically happens when an industry has both a dysfunctional cost structure and a declining value proposition. Both are true of higher education.“

    AI is unable to outpace higher education

    Lumina Foundation. April 29th, 2025. 

    “Leaders from academia, economic development, and industry discuss how universities and colleges are advancing research and equipping students with the skills to lead in an AI-powered future. From addressing social inequities to preparing cities for the economy of the future, the conversation highlights the transformative potential of AI when nurtured within higher education, and the tradeoffs that must be made in an education system wired for the past.“

    Gen Z says AI has made their college degrees irrelevant

    Torres, R. April 29th, 2025. Higher Ed Dive.

    “The ongoing push to deemphasize college degree requirements in job postings has led half of Gen Z job seekers to view their degrees as a waste of time and money”, according to a recent Indeed report that surveyed 772 US adulted workers and job seekers with an associate’s degree or higher.

    Workforce readiness

    Labor Market Disruption and Policy Readiness in the AI Era

    McGrath, E. and Burris, M. The Century Foundation. April 29th, 2025.

    Policy recommendations to prepare current and future workforce for AI.

    Teaching and Learning

    Here is how experiential learning can save colleges from AI

    McKeen, S. University Business. April 30th, 2025.

    “If knowledge is now universally accessible, what remains of higher education’s value? (…) The traditional college lecture is obsolete. Why should students pay thousands in tuition to sit in a lecture hall when AI can summarize complex theories in seconds? The world no longer rewards passive knowledge absorption. Employers want graduates who can think critically, collaborate effectively, and apply knowledge in complex, unpredictable environments. Experiential learning isn’t just an educational trend— it’s a survival strategy.“

    Is AI Enhancing Education or Replacing It?

    Shirky, C. The Chronicle of Higher Education. April 29th, 2025.

    “The fact that AI might help students learn is no guarantee it will help them learn. […] The teacher can advance learning only by influencing the student to learn.Faced with generative AI in our classrooms, the obvious response for us is to influence students to adopt the helpful uses of AI while persuading them to avoid the harmful ones. Our problem is that we don’t know how to do that.“

    Teaching Writing in the Age of AI

    Mintz, S. Inside Higher Ed. May 2nd, 2025. 

    « As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly capable of generating polished, grammatically correct text that meets academic standards, educators face a critical challenge: How can we teach students to write authentically and effectively? » This author talks about the challenges of teaching writing in the AI era, and provide tips on how to move beyond these challenges.

    3 Laws for Curriculum Design in an AI Age

    Chaudhuri, A. and Trainor, J. Inside Higher Ed. April 30th, 2025.

    The authors share « a framework for thinking about how to address AI technology in the curriculum at all levels, from the individual classroom to degree-level road maps, from general education through graduate courses. »

    When GenAI resets the assessment baseline

    Jones, C. Times Higher Education. April 29th, 2025. 

    A visiting lecturer at Regent’s University London, Kingston University and more shares how he reassessed his assignment to mitigate students using AI to do all the work for them. His initial plan was to have ChatGPT create a « baseline » output against which he could mark his students assignments, but he was surprised to realize that the ouptut was better than most undergraduate students would have delivered. He had to review his approach, and shares his strategy in this article.

    Research

    AI Summary ‘trashed author’s work’ and took weeks to be corrected

    Ross, J. Times Higher Education. April 24th, 2025.

    AI research summaries ‘exaggerate findings’, study warns

    Ross, J. Times Higher Education. April 16th, 2025.

    « Dutch and British researchers have found that AI summaries of scientific papers are much more likely than the original authors or expert reviewers to ‘overgeneralise’ he results. (…) AI summaries – purportedly designed to help spread scientific knowledge by rephrasing it in ‘easily understandable language’ – tend to ignore ‘uncertainties, limitations and nuances’ in the research by ‘omitting qualifiers’ and ‘oversimplifying’ the text. Read the academic paper here. 

    AI Literacy

    Using peer networks to integrate AI literacy into liberal arts

    McMurtrie, B. The Chronicle of Higher Education. April 24th, 2025.

    Read how an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Texas at San Antonio is teaching students about effective AI use.

    Urgent Need for AI Literacy

    Schroeder, R. April 30th, 2025. Inside Higher Ed. 

    « As we approach May, alarm bells are ringing for all colleges and universities to ensure that AI literacy programs have been completed by learners who plan to enter the job market this year and in the future. »

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