Over 60,000 students have benefited from the math program built on how the brain naturally learns
A new analysis shows that students using ST Math at Phillips 66-funded schools are achieving more than twice the annual growth in math performance compared to their peers. A recent analysis by MIND Research Institute, which included 3,240 students in grades 3-5 across 23 schools, found that this accelerated growth gave these schools a 12.4 percentile point advantage in spring 2024 state math rankings.
These significant outcomes are the result of a more than 10-year partnership between Phillips 66 and MIND Research Institute. This collaboration has brought ST Math, created by MIND Education, the only PreK–8 supplemental math program built on the science of how the brain learns, fully funded to 126 schools, 23 districts, and more than 60,000 students nationwide. ST Math empowers students to explore, make sense of, and build lasting confidence in math through visual problem-solving.
“Our elementary students love JiJi and ST Math! Students are building perseverance and a deep conceptual understanding of math while having fun,” said Kim Anthony, Executive Director of Elementary Education, Billings Public Schools. “By working through engaging puzzles, students are not only fostering a growth mindset and resilience in problem-solving, they’re learning critical math concepts.”
The initiative began in 2014 as Phillips 66 sought a STEM education partner that could deliver measurable outcomes at scale. Since then, the relationship has grown steadily, and now, Phillips 66 funds 100% of the ST Math program in communities near its facilities in California, Washington, Montana, Oklahoma, Texas, Illinois, and New Jersey. Once involved, schools rarely leave the program.
To complement the in-class use of ST Math, Phillips 66 and MIND introduced Family Math Nights. These events, hosted at local schools, bring students, families, and Phillips 66 employee volunteers together for engaging, hands-on activities. The goal is to build math confidence in a fun, interactive setting and to equip parents with a deeper understanding of the ST Math program and new tools to support their child’s learning at home.
“At Phillips 66, we believe in building lasting relationships with the communities we serve,” said Courtney Meadows, Manager of Social Impact at Phillips 66. “This partnership is more than a program. It’s a decade of consistent, community-rooted support to build the next generation of thinkers and improve lives through enriching educational experiences.”
ST Math has been used by millions of students across the country and has a proven track record of delivering a fundamentally different approach to learning math. Through visual and interactive puzzles, the program breaks down math’s abstract language barriers to benefit all learners, including English Learners, Special Education students, and Gifted and Talented students.
“ST Math offers a learning experience that’s natural, intuitive, and empowering—while driving measurable gains in math proficiency,” said Brett Woudenberg, CEO of MIND Education. “At MIND, we believe math is a gateway to brighter futures. We’re proud to partner with Phillips 66 in expanding access to high-quality math learning for thousands of students in their communities.”
About MIND Education MIND Education engages, motivates and challenges students towards mathematical success through its mission to mathematically equip all students to solve the world’s most challenging problems. MIND is the creator of ST Math, a pre-K–8 visual instructional program that leverages the brain’s innate spatial-temporal reasoning ability to solve mathematical problems; and InsightMath, a neuroscience-based K-6 curriculum that transforms student learning by teaching math the way every brain learns so all students are equipped to succeed. Since its inception in 1998, MIND Education and ST Math has served millions and millions of students across the country. Visit MINDEducation.org.
About Phillips 66 Phillips 66 (NYSE: PSX) is a leading integrated downstream energy provider that manufactures, transports and markets products that drive the global economy. The company’s portfolio includes Midstream, Chemicals, Refining, Marketing and Specialties, and Renewable Fuels businesses. Headquartered in Houston, Phillips 66 has employees around the globe who are committed to safely and reliably providing energy and improving lives while pursuing a lower-carbon future. For more information, visit phillips66.com or follow @Phillips66Co on LinkedIn.
eSchool Media staff cover education technology in all its aspects–from legislation and litigation, to best practices, to lessons learned and new products. First published in March of 1998 as a monthly print and digital newspaper, eSchool Media provides the news and information necessary to help K-20 decision-makers successfully use technology and innovation to transform schools and colleges and achieve their educational goals.
For most of the past 30 or so years, big Canadian universities have all been working off more or less the same business model: find areas where you can make big profits and use those profits to make yourself more research-intensive.
That’s it. That’s the whole model.
International students? Big profit centres. Professional programs? You better believe those are money-makers. Undergraduate studies – well, they might not make that much money in toto but holy moly first-year students are taken advantage of quite hideously to subsidize other activities, most notably research-intensity.
Just to be clear, when I talk about “research-intensity”, I am not really talking about laboratories or physical infrastructure. I am talking about the entire financial superstructure that allows profs to teach 2 courses per semester and to be paid at rates which are comparable to those at (generally better-funded) large public research universities in the US. It’s about compensation, staffing complements, the whole shebang – everything that allows our institutions to compete internationally for research talent. Governments don’t pay enough, directly, for institutions to do that. So, universities have found ways to offer new products, or re-arrange the products they offer, in such a way as to support these goals of competitive hiring.
Small universities do not have quite the same imperatives with respect to research, but this business model affects them nonetheless. To the extent that they wish to compete for staff with the research-intensive institutions, they have to pay higher salaries as well. Maybe the most extreme outcome of that arms race occurred at Laurentian, whose financial collapse was at least in part due to the university implicitly trying to align itself to U15 universities’ pay scales rather than, say, the pay scale at Lakehead (unions, which like to write ambitious pay “comparables” into institutional collective agreements, are obviously also a factor here).
Anyways, the issue is that for one reason or another, governments have been chipping away at these various sources of profit that have been used to cross-subsidize research-intensity. The situation with international students is an obvious one, but this is happening in other ways too. Professional master’s degrees are not generating the returns they used to as private universities, both foreign and domestic, begin to compete, particularly in the business sector. (A non-trivial part of the reason that Queen’s found itself in financial difficulty last year was because its business school didn’t turn a profit for the first time in years. I don’t know the ins and outs of this, but I would be surprised if Northeastern’s aggressive push into Toronto wasn’t eating some of its executive education business).
Provincial governments – some of them, anyway – are also setting up colleges to compete with universities in a number of areas for undergraduate students. In Ontario, that has been going on for 20-25 years, but in other places like Nova Scotia it is just beginning. Some on the university side complain about these programs, primarily in polytechnics, being preferred by government because they are “cheap”, but they rarely get into specifics about quality. One reason college programs are often better on a per-dollar measure? The colleges aren’t building in a surplus to pay for research-intensity – this is precisely what allows them to do revolutionary things like not stuffing 300 first-year students in a single classroom.
In brief then: the feds have taken away a huge source of cross-subsidy. Provinces, to varying degrees (most prominently in Ontario), have been introducing competition to chip-away at other sources of surplus that allowed universities to cross-subsidize research intensity. Together, these two processes are putting the long-standing business model of big Canadian universities at risk.
The whole issue of cross-subsidization raises two policy questions which are not often discussed in polite company – in Canada, at least. The first has to do with cross-subsidization and whether it is the correct policy or not. I suspect there is a strong majority among higher education’s interested public that think it probably is a good policy; we just don’t know for sure because the policy emerged, as so many Canadian policies do, through a process of extreme passive-aggressiveness. Institutions were mad at governments for not directly funding what they wanted to do, so they went off and did their own thing. Governments, grateful not to be harassed for money, said nothing, which institutions took for approval whereas in fact it was just (temporary) non-disapproval.
(I should add here – precisely because of all the passive-aggressiveness – it is not 100% clear to me the extent to which provincial governments understand the implications of introducing competition. When they allow new private or college degree programs, they likely think “we are improving options for students” not “I wonder how this might degrade the ability of institutions to conduct research”. And, of course, the reason they don’t think that is precisely because Canadians achieve everything through passive-aggression rather than open policy debates which might illuminate choices and trade-offs. Yay, us.)
The second policy question – which we really never ever raise – is whether or not research-intensity, as it is practiced in Canadian universities, is worth subsidizing in the first place. I know, you’re all reading that in shock and horror because what is a university if it is not about research? Well, that’s a pretty partial view, and historically, a pretty recent one. Even among the U15, there are several institutions whose commitment to being big research enterprises is less than 40 years old. And, of course, we already have plenty of universities (e.g. the Maple League) where research simply isn’t a focus – what’s to say the current balance of research-intensive to non-research-intensive universities is the correct one?
I am not, of course, advocating this as a course of policy. But given the way both the politics of research universities and the economics of their business models are heading, we might need to start discussing this stuff. Maybe even openly, for a change.
While there is wide agreement that student engagement plays a vital role in learning, educators continue to face uncertainty about what engagement looks like, how best to measure it, and how to sustain it, according to a new study from Discovery Education.
“Discovery Education conducted the EducationInsights report to gain a deeper understanding of how engagement is defined, observed, and nurtured in K-12 classrooms nationwide, and we are thankful to the participants who shared their perspectives and insights with us,” said Brian Shaw, Discovery Education’s Chief Executive Officer. “One of the most important findings of this report is that engagement is seen as essential to learning, but is inconsistently defined, observed, and supported in K-12 classrooms. I believe this highlights the need for a more standardized approach to measuring student engagement and connecting it to academic achievement. Discovery Education has embarked on an effort to address those challenges, and we look forward to sharing more as our work progresses.”
Key findings of the Education Insights 2025–2026: Fueling Learning Through Engagementreport include:
Engagement is broadly recognized as a key driver of learning and success. Ninety-three percent of educators surveyed agreed that student engagement is a critical metric for understanding overall achievement, and 99 percent of superintendents polled believe student engagement is one of the top predictors of success at school. Finally, 92 percent of students said that engaging lessons make school more enjoyable.
But educators disagree on the top indicators of engagement. Seventy-two percent of teachers rated asking thoughtful questions as the strongest indicator of student engagement. However, 54 percent of superintendents identified performing well on assessments as a top engagement indicator. This is nearly twice as high as teachers, who rank assessments among the lowest indicators of engagement.
School leaders and teachers disagree on if their schools have systems for measuring engagement. While 99 percent of superintendents and 88 percent of principals said their district has an intentional approach for measuring engagement, only 60 percent of teachers agreed. Further, nearly one-third of teachers said that a lack of clear, shared definitions of student engagement is a top challenge to measuring engagement effectively.
Educators and students differ on their perceptions of engagement levels. While 63 percent of students agreed with the statement “Students are highly engaged in school,” only 45 percent of teachers and 51 percent of principals surveyed agreed with the same statement.
Students rate their own engagement much higher than their peers. Seventy percent of elementary students perceived themselves as engaged, but only 42 percent perceived their peers as engaged. Fifty-nine percent of middle school students perceived themselves engaged in learning, but only 36 percent perceived their peers as engaged. Finally, 61 percent of high school students perceived themselves as engaged, but only 39 percent described their peers as engaged.
Proximity to learning changes impressions of AI. Two-thirds of students believe AI could help them learn faster, yet fewer than half of teachers report using AI themselves to complete tasks. Only 57 percent of teachers agreed with the statement “I frequently learn about positive ways students are using AI,” while 87 percent of principals and 98 percent of superintendents agree. Likewise, only 53 percent of teachers agreed with the statement “I am excited about the potential for AI to support teaching and learning,” while 83 percent of principals and 94 percent of superintendents agreed.
In classrooms across the country, students are mastering their ABCs, solving equations, and diving into science. But one essential life skill–behavior–is not in the lesson plan. For too long, educators have assumed that children arrive at school knowing how to regulate emotions, resolve conflict, and interact respectfully. The reality: Behavior–like math or reading–must be taught, practiced, and supported.
Today’s students face a mounting crisis. Many are still grappling with anxiety, disconnection, and emotional strain following the isolation and disruption of the COVID pandemic. And it’s growing more serious.
Further complicating matters is social media and device usage. Students and adults alike have become deeply reliant on screens. Social media and online socialization–where interactions are often anonymous and less accountable–have contributed to a breakdown in conflict resolution, empathy, and recognition of nonverbal cues. Widespread attachment to cell phones has significantly disrupted students’ ability to regulate emotions and engage in healthy, face-to-face interactions. Teachers, too, are frequently on their phones, modeling device-dependent behaviors that can shape classroom dynamics.
It’s clear: students can’t be expected to know what they haven’t been taught. And teachers can’t teach behavior without real tools and support. While districts have taken well-intentioned steps to help teachers address behavior, many initiatives rely on one-off training without cohesive, long-term strategies. Real progress demands more–a districtwide commitment to consistent, caring practices that unify educators, students, and families.
A holistic framework: School, student, family
Lasting change requires a whole-child, whole-school, whole-family approach. When everyone in the community is aligned, behavior shifts from a discipline issue to a core component of learning, transforming classrooms into safe, supportive environments where students thrive and teachers rediscover joy in their work. And when these practices are reinforced at home, the impact multiplies.
To help students learn appropriate behavior, teachers need practical tools rather than abstract theories. Professional development, tiered supports, targeted interventions, and strategies to build student confidence are critical. So is measuring impact to ensure efforts evolve and endure.
Some districts are leading the way, embracing data-driven practices, evidence-based strategies, and accessible digital resources. And the results speak for themselves. Here are two examples of successful implementations.
Evidence-based behavior training and mentorship yields 24 percent drop in infractions within weeks
With more than 19,000 racially diverse students across 24 schools east of Atlanta, Newton County Schools prioritized embedded practices and collaborative coaching over rigid compliance. Newly hired teachers received stipends to complete curated, interactive behavior training before the school year began. They then expanded on these lessons during orientation with district staff, deepening their understanding.
Once the school year started, each new teacher was partnered with a mentor who provided behavior and academic guidance, along with regular classroom feedback. District climate specialists also offered further support to all teachers to build robust professional learning communities.
The impact was almost immediate. Within the first two weeks of school, disciplinary infractions fell by 24 percent compared to the previous year–evidence that providing the right tools, complemented by layered support and practical coaching, can yield swift, sustainable results.
Pairing shoulder coaching with real-time data to strengthen teacher readiness
With more than 300,000 students in over 5,300 schools spanning urban to rural communities, Clark County School District in Las Vegas is one of the largest and most diverse in the nation.
Recognizing that many day-to-day challenges faced by new teachers aren’t fully addressed in college training, the district introduced “shoulder coaching.” This mentorship model pairs incoming teachers with seasoned colleagues for real-time guidance on implementing successful strategies from day one.
This hands-on approach incorporates videos, structured learning sessions, and continuous data collection, creating a dynamic feedback loop that helps teachers navigate classroom challenges proactively. Rather than relying solely on reactive discipline, educators are equipped with adaptable strategies that reflect lived classroom realities. The district also uses real-time data and teacher input to evolve its behavior support model, ensuring educators are not only trained, but truly prepared.
By aligning lessons with the school performance plan, Clark County School District was able to decrease suspensions by 11 percent and discretionary exclusions by 17 percent.
Starting a new chapter in the classroom
Behavior isn’t a side lesson–it’s foundational to learning. When we move beyond discipline and make behavior a part of daily instruction, the ripple effects are profound. Classrooms become more conducive to learning. Students and families develop life-long tools. And teachers are happier in their jobs, reducing the churn that has grown post-pandemic.
The evidence is clear. School districts that invest in proactive, strategic behavior supports are building the kind of environments where students flourish and educators choose to stay. The next chapter in education depends on making behavior essential. Let’s teach it with the same care and intentionality we bring to every other subject–and give every learner the chance to succeed.
Dr. Tami Dean, The Equity Hour Podcast & Kareeme Hawkins, RethinkEd and Pivot Path Strategic Solutions
Dr. Tami Dean is a veteran educator, coach, and leader with over 20 years of experience in classroom instruction, curriculum design, and educational leadership. She supports K-12 and higher education through strategic planning, professional development, and innovative program design and hosts The Equity Hour Podcast™, where she leads thought-provoking conversations on teaching, leadership and transformation in education.
Kareeme Hawkins is an education leader, executive coach, and SEL expert with over 15 years of experience in K–12 instruction, counseling, and edtech leadership. As national director of Client Success at RethinkEd and an executive coach with Pivot Path Strategic Solutions, she drives strategic initiatives, fosters partnerships, and empowers leaders to navigate change and advance equity-driven practices.
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The UK’s particular malaise is manifold. The IFS talks about it as a result of “Low investment, policy mistakes, political instability, and Brexit,” (Covid didn’t help either). The result is what former LSE president and now advisor to Keir Starmer Minouche Shafik and founder of the Resolution Foundation Clive Cowdery have called a “toxic combination of low growth and high inequality.” Their view is stagnation is because of low records of investment in staff by business, regional inequalities, and the overplaying of the UK’s manufacturing strengths at the expense of its actual strengths in services.
New advisor old problems
As the country has ambled through its decade and more of low growth the university sector has expanded rapidly. As I wrote about in a paper for the Post-18 Project this presents a fundamental problem for people like me that believe in the economic utility of universities.
The best version of the story is that universities have genuinely transformed the economic fortunes of some parts of the country, if not the entire country. A recent Centre for Cities report suggests there are some places that have become more prosperous through all the economic goods a university attracts to their place including students, knowledge workers, and some kinds of innovation.
The second sunniest version is that the country would be in an even greater mess were it not for its universities. The gloomiest picture is that despite the enormous amount of additional public funding, increases in turnover, new research schemes, capital builds, and other fiscal levers, universities have not been able to get the country out of its fiscal funk.
The rejoinder to this is that universities don’t just exist for reasons of economic utility. The problem is, as Jane Robinson has pointed out for Wonkhe, university’s social contract and the funding that flows to them is increasingly about how they choose to invest, the partnerships they build, the ways in which they grow their economies, and their role in regional development. Their ability to meet the challenges Shafik and Cowdery have set out is the bargain for further funding.
This is fair enough. It is unreasonable for universities to expect more public funding in a tight economy without offering something in return. The problem is the things that universities are doing are often going under the radar and the things they might do better are often beyond their control.
It’s not that universities don’t want to contribute to economic growth, it is that it is hard and government policy often makes it harder. To demonstrate, let’s consider Shafik’sand Cowdery’s triangle of growth; skills (as a key part of productivity), regions, and maximising the UK’s strengths.
Start, stop, go
Universities generally produce people with the skills the economy needs. They do not produce as many people with the skills the economy needs at pre-degree level, because the curriculum is usually built around undergraduate degree level qualification, but there is no other game in town when it comes to producing the graduate workers an economy requires.
Universities will probably never provide all the sheet metal workers the country requires or fill the massive gaps in the care system but they will provide a good number of the nuclear physicists, programmers, engineers, lawyers, accountants, and managers the industrial strategy requires.
The problem is that universities have almost no incentive to teach the things that the industrial strategy says the country needs. They may do so for academic reasons, civic good, inertia, research profile, specialism, or something else, but teaching the future home students in high-cost programmes is the exact opposite way any sensible university financial planner would arrange their portfolio of programmes. Programmes at pre-degree level have students for less time on them, with a less obvious market, and comparable individual unit costs. An even worse deal.
To look at this another way the university which aimed solely to meet the needs of their local and national labour markets would have to ignore the financial reality they exist within. My own view is that on narrow economic terms it’s a good thing universities teach broad based curricula because the labour market is unpredictable and benefits from a range of skilled people to draw upon. The government view is that it’s not only necessary to entirely reform the skills pipeline but to provide more specific skills in AI, engineering, cyber, and other STEM related fields.
The government has therefore created a misalignment between financial incentives and the labour market outcomes they are trying to achieve. To address this the government could increase university funding generally through strategic grants (probably not going to happen), boost other forms of income through relaxing visa regulations (absolutely not going to happen,) or improve incentives to teach home students in high cost programmes (we might get some inflationary fee increases).
The alternative is to recognise that an entirely student demand led model is going to lead to some skills gaps. Various attempts to nudge students into certain qualifications (remember the adverts on cyber?) don’t seem to have made an awful lot of difference. Through the Post-18 project my co-authors and I argued that some HE provision could be commissioned:
The Devolution Bill should make provision for mayoral combined authorities to convene a post-18 education and skills provision group with a diversity of provider and industry representation that can draw on the insight from regional growth insight centres to develop post-18 pathways, provision and partnerships. These groups could initially propose business cases for reprofiling of funding but over time could be given direct commissioning powers and/or direct injections of public funding to catalyse new provision aligned to national or regional economic growth priorities.
The government can find ways of boosting or redirecting teaching resources or the country, in the long term, can have fewer graduates in high-cost degrees. There is no path to more students studying more expensive things in line with government priorities without resources to do so.
Regions
Regional growth is another area where the incentives make absolutely no sense. The UK is unusually imbalanced where second cities are comparably unproductive to many other large economies. One way in which to rebalance economies is to increase investment and the supply of skilled human capital.
The single most important measure of skilled human capital in the university sector is Graduate Outcomes. Graduate Outcomes measure whether a student is in highly-skilled employment fifteen months after they graduate. Universities are regulated and placed in league tables based on this metric. The incentive for universities is to place their graduates where there are the highest number of available highly skilled jobs which is London. Even building a spin-out outside of London only gives a 6/10 chance the spin-out won’t migrate to the capital anyway.
Universities do not have golden handcuffs to their places and the economic geography of London can too easily pull their economic goods away. Research excellence and impact is not measured on a regional footprint. Infrastructure investment does not follow where there is the greatest latent potential. There is astoundingly little policy that is place sensitive.
In supporting the UK’s strengths universities are not often the primary beneficiaries of the economic growth they support. There is lots of stick for them to do good economic things but the carrots for supporting growth, particularly in local economies, tend to be the odd grant and bit of underspend like the Regional Innovation Fund. The government cannot be surprised about investment and talent flight where regional educational incentives are non-existent.
Leave alone
It can feel like the role of universities in the economy is both over- and understated. On the one hand they are not designed to, never will, and should not be expected to solve every problem with the economy.
They will not bring back manufacturing, they will not rebalance regions on their own, and they will not fill all of the gaps in the labour market. At the same time they do a lot of good stuff as employers, innovators, anchors, coalition builders, contributing to clusters, attracting knowledge workers, and through educating students.
The bit where the incentives do work is producing students for the knowledge economy. The part of the UK’s economy that has grown as manufacturing has declined. Universities have a reliable (if not predictable) income, their graduate outcomes are regulated (how well is a different question), and parts of the economy make good use of their graduate skills. If university marketing departments are to be believed this good employment is also one of their major selling points which through student recruitment then puts more funding back into the system. The incentives just line up a bit better.
The problem is that universities are not only not always supported to get on with the job but they aren’t left alone to do so. It would perhaps be too much to hope for but welcome that the reshuffle leads to clear direction on what universities are expected (or maybe even regulated or incentivised to do) in the local economy, recognition for their national role and how they will continue to be supported to do so, and a clear sense of where they will be given a little boost but mostly left alone to keep doing the good things they are doing.
Refiring the economy does not have to be about doing new things. It might be about doing old things in a more joined up, properly funded, and regionally focussed way. As growth goes to the top of the agenda, let’s not forget the work universities are already doing.
Hi all. Today, HESA is releasing the eighth edition of The State of Postsecondary Education in Canada, co-authored by myself and HESA’s Jiwoo Jeon and Janet Balfour. Many thanks to our partners – Pearson, Studiosity, Duolingo, Capio, Element451 and Riipen – for supporting this year’s edition.
You probably don’t need to actually read this year’s edition to know that the state of postsecondary education in Canada is a bit perilous. And the reason for this, quite simply, is that public funding for higher education has been stagnant for well over a decade now.
At one level, of course, it is possible to look at public funding in Canada and proclaim that nothing is wrong. As Figure 1 shows, public spending on higher education has stayed relatively constant over the past fifteen years in inflation-adjusted dollars. Individual provinces may have seen swings up or down in their spending, but collectively the ten provinces have spent a collective $20 billion/year or so on higher education since about 2011-12 (excluding transfer payments from the federal government), and the federal government has spent about $10 billion/year.
Figure 1: Federal and Provincial Own-Source Expenditures in Respect of PSE Institutions, Canada, in $2023, 2007-08 to 2023-24, in Billions
So, at one level it is possible to shrug off the problem. But that requires eliminating a lot of context. Let’s see how Canadian funding looks when we put it into various types of contexts.
If we describe public funding in per-student terms, as in Figure 2, what you see is a mixed picture. Total public funding per full-time equivalent domestic student has dropped by about 6% since 2009, and for university students by about 15%. Complicating this figure is the fact that per-student funding for college students has risen somewhat, however, this is due not to extra funding but rather to a very significant drop in the number of domestic students enrolled in colleges. Whether this is due to a reduction of interest in college programs among Canadians, or a deliberate move away from Canadian to international students on the part of colleges is difficult to answer, but in either event, the rise in funding per college student is a function of fewer students rather than more funding.
Figure 2: Per-student Spending by Sector, Canada, in $2023, 2007-08 to 2023-24
If we describe public funding as a percentage of the country’s economy, the picture looks significantly worse. Prior to the recession of 2008-09, public funding on postsecondary education was about 1.3% of GDP, which was substantially above the level seen across other industrialized countries (about 1.0%, according to the OECD). Briefly, that number popped up during the Great Recession, partly because spending increased but also partly because GDP stagnated. Since then, however, spending has stayed constant while GDP has grown. The result is that public spending on postsecondary has fallen to the OECD average of 1% – and the financial advantage our system once held over competitor nations has largely disappeared.
Figure 3: Public Spending on Postsecondary Education as a Percentage of GDP, in $2023, 2007-08 to 2023-24
We can also look at these figures in per-inhabitant terms. There was a point in the late 00s where Canada had about 33 million inhabitants and public sources spent $30 billion per year on postsecondary education. Fifteen years and seven million new inhabitants later, we’re still spending $30 billion per year. That results in a 21% reduction in spending on universities and colleges per inhabitant from public sources, as shown in Figure 4. In Figure 5, we look at postsecondary spending as a percentage of government budgets. Again, we see a case of spending on postsecondary institutions falling consistently because overall government expenditure is rising quickly. In the past fifteen years, aggregate provincial spending on postsecondary has fallen as a percentage of total provincial expenditures from 5.4% to just 3.3%; for federal spending it has fallen from 1.6% to just 1%.
Figure 4: Public Spending on Post-Secondary Education Institutions Per Inhabitant, in $2023, 2007-08 to 2023-24
Figure 5: Public Spending on Postsecondary Education Institutions as a Percentage of Total Government Spending, Federal and Provincial Governments, in $2023, 2007-08 to 2023-24
In other words: we have been able – just — to keep our public investments in higher education level with inflation. But we have only been able to do so because our population is larger, and our economy has grown over the last fifteen years, and we can do so with less relative effort. Had we kept up funding on a domestic per-student level with where it was in the immediate aftermath of the Great Financial crisis, post-secondary education system would have an extra $2.1 billion. If we had kept funding on postsecondary education level with overall population growth we would have invested another $7.3 billion. If we’d had funding for postsecondary institutions level with GDP growth we would have invested another $13.6 billion. And if we had kept it level with the overall growth in program spending, we would have invested another $19.1 billion. So, depending on the measure chosen, we are anywhere from $2-20 billion short of where we would be had we kept our spending levels of the late 00s/early 10s.
But, you say, isn’t this true everywhere? And aren’t we at least better than the United States?
It is certainly true that Canada is in a pattern that would seem familiar both to residents of Australia and the United Kingdom. These three countries have all followed roughly the same path over the past decade and a half, combining stagnant public funding with slightly growing domestic numbers, paid for by an absolute free-for-all with respect to international students paying market tuition rates. All three countries looked like they had made a good deal at least for as long as the international student boom lasted.
But take a look at our biggest competitor, the United States. During the financial crisis of 2008-9, funding for postsecondary institutions tumbled by over 10%. But then, in just the eight years between 2012 and 2020, funding for higher education grew by a third – from about $150B (US) per year to over $200B/year. In fact, for all we hear about cuts to funding under Trump (not all of which may come true, as at the time of writing the Senate seems quite intent at least on reversing the billions of proposed cuts to the National Institutes of Health), even if all the proposed cuts were to come through, total US spending on higher education would be roughly 20% higher than it was in 2008-09, while Canada’s would be more or less unchanged. And of course, in the United States domestic enrolments are falling, meaning that in per- student terms, the gap is even more substantial.
Figure 6: Indexed Real Public Spending on Postsecondary Institutions, Canada vs. US, 2011-12 to 2023-24 (2011-12 = 100)
In sum: Canada is not alone in seeing significant falls in higher education spending, but few countries have seen declines in quite as an across-the-board fashion, for quite as long, as we have. Canada began the 2010s with one of the best-funded tertiary education systems in the world, but, quite simply, governments of every stripe at both the federal and provincial levels have been systematically squandering that advantage for the past 15 years. We had a genuine lead in something, an advantage over the rest of the world. But now it is gone.
So much for the past: what about the future? Well, it depends a bit on where you stand. The federal Liberals came back to power on a platform which was the least science-friendly since 1988. They promised money for postsecondary education, but most of it was either for apprenticeship grant programs which they themselves had deemed poor value for money just last year, or for programs to switch apprenticeship training from public colleges to union-led training centres – as crass a piece of cash-for-union endorsements as one can imagine. (The only saving grace? The losing Conservatives promised the unions even larger bribes). What they promised for science, for direct transfers to public universities and colleges, was a pittance in comparison.
Moreover, following the election, in the face of a set of tariff threats from the Trump Administration, the federal and provincial governments united in a program of “nation-building” which revolved entirely around the notion that national salvation was to be found in programs which “produced more goods” and “gets them to markets” (i.e. non-US markets, meaning ports) more quickly. The idea that the country might pivot to services, to a more knowledge-intensive economy in which university and college research efforts might be seen as useful, was apparently not even considered. Rather, the country rushed head-first into the familiar – but in the long-term disastrous – role being hewers of wood and drawers of water.
Now, hewing wood and drawing water has traditionally been Canada’s lot, and one could argue that historically have not fared so very badly by focusing on this core competence. But it is worth remembering the Biblical origin of this phrase, in the book of Joshua. A group of Canaanites known as the Gibeonites had not been entirely truthful when signing a treaty with the returning Israelites; claiming to be a nomadic people rather than a settled one (which would have led to them being exterminated). When the Israelites discovered the deception, many wanted the Gibeonites killed; instead, Joshua decided that they should hew wood and draw water for the Israelites instead. That is to say, they fell into bondage. The political analogies in today’s Trumpian world should be obvious.
To return to higher education: things look pretty bleak. Investment is falling. Governments are unwilling either to spend more on higher education, or to permit institutions to generate money on their own through tuition fees. Their idea of economic growth is, at best, out of the 1960s: sell more natural resources to foreigners. The idea of making our way in the world as a knowledge or science powerhouse, a spirit that infused policymaking at both the federal and provincial level in the early 2000s, has simply disappeared. Colleges might see some boosts in funding over the coming years for vocational programming, although it’s likely that they will need to scrap with private-sector unions for the money; the likelihood is that universities will see real decreases in funding. The fate of the promised increase in research spending in the 2024 budget seems especially at-risk.
The path to a better Canada does not lie in becoming better hewers of wood and drawers of water. It lies in developing new industries based on cutting-edge knowledge and science. Spending on postsecondary students, on its own, does not guarantee that these new industries will come into existence. But the absence of spending on postsecondary education certainly guarantees that they will not.
The country has a choice to make. And right now, we seem to be choosing poorly.
It’s been a busy summer at HESA Towers. We’ve been developing Boardwise, our new suite of governance products with our partners at Balsam Advisory, and exploring new ideas on data governance and analytics with our friends at Plaid Analytics. We’ve also been touring the country with the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) Thought Leadership Office and the Business + Higher Education Roundtable (BHER) to talk about higher education, economic growth and productivity. The “what we heard” document from those sessions will be out in mid-September, and there are several follow-up events scheduled, including a leaders’ summit hosted by RBC later this month. This event will focus mainly on how higher education and business can work together to tackle some of the country’s most pressing challenges, such as clean energy and technology, artificial intelligence, and defence. Further insights from this work will also be explored at the BHER Executive Summit in February 2026.
And, of course, our own Re: University conference – where we will be presenting some of the most interesting ideas out there to improve and inspire the quality, effectiveness and experience of postsecondary education in Canada – is coming up in late January in Ottawa. (Tickets are going fast – reserve your spot!)
A couple of other small programming notes:
The State of Post-Secondary Education in Canada 2025 will be released tomorrow.
The World of Higher Educationpodcast will still come out every Thursday, but we’re back to an audio-only format because editing is a hassle and apparently very few of you are videophiles.
TheFifteen will continue to bring you the top global higher education stories every other week.
Next Friday will mark the debut of a new biweekly webinar series, Friday Focus, to be hosted by Tiffany MacLennan, surfacing the most interesting shifts and innovations in Canadian higher education – from AI & technology, cutting-edge programming, and the everchanging student experience – through the voices of those leading the change. We hope you can join us.
Our University Vice Presidents Network (UVPN) is going strong and is scheduled to convene in Victoria in November, Quebec City in February, and then internationally for a May 2026 Study Tour in Germany.
Finally, we are targeting the first week of December for the launch of the World of Higher Education Annual Review 2025, a new year-in-review publication which tries to document the year’s shifts across the whole of our crazy sector, right around the globe, using statistics, stories and strategic planning documents.
Now, on to the year ahead.
In most places, I think the hard part for colleges is over. 2025-26 isn’t going to be an easy year, by any means, but the big decisions have mostly been made, future directions have been set and the floor on institutional income has either been reached or is in sight.
Universities, on the other hand, are a different story. They have – not everywhere, but in the main – been more hesitant to act. It’s a conservative sector that is resistant to change, be it financial, organizational or cultural. And the financial problems the sector faces – again, not everywhere but in the main – are going to drag on for quite awhile mainly because international student numbers aren’t bouncing back the way they might have (more on that next week) and because an imminent recession is the opposite of helpful when it comes to provincial finances.
So, it’s going to be a tough year ahead. In my mind, I think there are 5 rules for success.
Rule 1 – Act like Universities are a Means to an End, not an End in Themselves. Literally the worst thing universities can say right now is “universities are crucial, give us more money”. It’s an utterly tone-deaf approach, even if you give it an “elbows up” spin. The sector has been saying it for years and it clearly hasn’t worked, so continuing with this approach is the literal definition of insanity. And the reason it doesn’t work is because Canadians (or at least Canadian politicians) simply don’t believe that universities are crucial because they don’t believe that knowledge and science is useful. Rather, they far prefer a Canada where the construction and natural resources industries continue to call the shots (if there is a Deep State in Canada, it is surely comprised of these two sectors and their watercarriers). The case we need to make is not “spend on universities”, it’s “a knowledge-driven Canada is a better Canada”. And more importantly, it’s not a case institutions can make on their own – they need to make it with lots of other actors, particularly from industry. Alliances, people. Form alliances. Downsize your government relations team, build up your community relations efforts.
Rule 2 – Stop with the Tri-Council Fundamentalism. Federal budgets for research are going to get hammered in the coming months. This will make a lot of people argue that we should ditch all research funds except the tri-councils because inquiry-driven research is sacred etc. I understand the instinct here because so many institutions make council success a key part of the tenure/promotion process. But it’s a bad instinct. No one in Ottawa cares about your tenure processes. You can argue all you want about how basic research is more cost-efficient in terms of driving long-term discovery, but i) the public likes some short-term wins mixed in with the long-term ones and b) nobody outside universities is buying that one story about NSERC funding Geoffrey Hinton’s AI research 30 year ago as a business case for science. Like, nobody. Get over it. Understand that if there is to be growth in Canadian research funding in future, it’s going to look a lot more like Horizon Europe or the Biden Administration’s Chips and Science Act, both of which were widely hailed as being good for science despite – or perhaps because – they are largely mission-driven rather than inquiry-driven. If this is the hill the community chooses to die on, God help us all.
Rule 3 –Focus on what you can control, not what you can’t. Yes, things are bad. You can spend time complaining about it – government is short-sighted, we’re always getting shafted by the granting councils, etc. – or you can get busy. Fire up your friend-raising and fund-raising. Ramp up your spend/effort on international recruitment (more on this next week). Make a big bang with some new programs that stand out. Go big on one theme. Stand out. Please.
Rule 4 –Faster Collegiality is a Must. Part of regaining public confidence is going to involve being able to make changes at the institutional level with much more speed and determination than is historically the case. That means being able to deliver on promises and priority in the immediate term, not in some far-off future, to be able to act as an institution and not just as a sack full of cats fighting over research priorities and teaching schedules. The way this normally happens is to concentrate power in the hands of the upper administration. This is how it works in most of Asia, most of the United States, and increasingly in Europe as well (though crucially, senior admin tends to be elected in Europe). But it doesn’t have to be like that. There’s no obvious reason why collegial governance needs to be slow: it’s just custom and practice. I’ve been saying for a while that better, faster governance is key to institutions in rough times and while too few have heeded that advice, it’s never too late to start.
Rule 5 – Do less, but do it better. Universities are ridiculously strung out. Many forces are at work here, but I will single out two. At a system level, we have governance systems that are great at approving new programs and initiatives but absolutely rotten at pruning them once they have outlived their purpose. Result: institutions do too much, but do it badly, thus leading to enshittifcation. But it works at the level of individual faculty too, since departments tend to hire the biggest keeners in the system, the kind of people who won’t say no to more research, or extra teaching, or whatever. Result: burnout. In a normal organization, a manager would come along and try to make workloads manageable. But since Canadian academia long ago decided that the main purpose of department chairs is to protect staff from unwanted Decanal or Provostial schemes rather than to manage academics’ workloads, there is no one in the system who can actually make the problem go away (high-sounding talk about “wellness” doesn’t do the trick either). So, seriously, do less.
It’s going to be a hard year (or let’s face it, a hard few years), but if everyone gets the basics right, we can come out of this better and stronger.
New research has found that rural LGBTQ+ teens experience significant challenges in their communities and turn to the internet for support.
The research from Hopelab and the Born This Way Foundation looked at what more than 1,200 LGBTQ+ teens faced and compared the experiences of those in rural communities with those of teens in suburban and urban communities. The research found that rural teens are more likely to give and receive support through their online communities and friends than via their in-person relationships.
“The rural young people we’re seeing were reporting having a lot less support in their homes, in their communities, and their schools,” Mike Parent, a principal researcher at Hopelab, said in an interview with the Daily Yonder. “They weren’t doing too well in terms of feeling supported in the places they were living, though they were feeling supported online.”
However, the research found that rural LGBTQ+ teens had the same sense of pride in who they were as suburban and urban teens.
“The parallel, interesting finding was that we didn’t see differences in their internal sense of pride, which you might kind of expect if they feel all less supported,” he said. “What was surprising, in a very good way, was that indication of resilience or being able to feel a strong sense of their internal selves despite this kind of harsh environment they might be in.”
Researchers recruited young people between the ages of 15 and 24 who identified as LGBTQ+ through targeted ads on social media. After surveying the respondents during August and September of last year, the researchers also followed up some of the surveys with interviews, Parent said.
According to the study, rural teens were more likely than their urban and suburban counterparts to find support online. Of the rural respondents, 56% of rural young people reported receiving support from others online several times a month compared to 51% of urban and suburban respondents, and 76% reported giving support online, compared to 70% of urban and suburban respondents.
Conversely, only 28% of rural respondents reported feeling supported by their schools, compared to 49% of urban and suburban respondents, the study found, and 13% of rural respondents felt supported by their communities, compared to 35% of urban and suburban respondents.
Rural LGBTQ+ young people are significantly more likely to suffer mental health issues because of the lack of support where they live, researchers said. Rural LGBTQ+ young people were more likely to meet the threshold for depression (57% compared to 45%), and more likely to report less flourishing than their suburban/urban counterparts (43% to 52%).
The study found that those LGBTQ+ young people who received support from those they lived with, regardless of where they live, are more likely to report flourishing (50% compared to 35%) and less likely to meet the threshold for depression (52% compared to 63%).
One respondent said the impact of lack of support impacted every aspect of their lives.
“Not being able to be who you truly are around the people that you love most or the communities that you’re in is going to make somebody depressed or give them mental issues,” they said in survey interviews, according to Hopelab. “Because if you can’t be who you are around the people that you love most and people who surround you, you’re not gonna be able to feel the best about your well-being.”
Respondents said connecting with those online communities saved their lives.
“Throughout my entire life, I have been bullied relentlessly. However, when I’m online, I find that it is easier to make friends… I met my best friend through role play [games],” one teen told researchers. “Without it, I wouldn’t be here today. So, in the long run, it’s the friendships I’ve made online that have kept me alive all these years.”
Having support in rural areas, especially, can provide rural LGBTQ+ teens with a feeling of belonging, researchers said.
“Our findings highlight the urgent need for safe, affirming in-person spaces and the importance of including young people in shaping the solutions,” Claudia-Santi F. Fernandes, vice president of research and evaluation at Born This Way Foundation, said in a statement. “If we want to improve outcomes, especially for LGBTQ+ young people in rural communities, their voices–and scientific evidence–must guide the work.”
Parent said the survey respondents stressed the importance of having safe spaces for LGBTQ+ young people to gather in their own communities.
“I think most of the participants recognize that you can’t do a lot to change your family if they’re not supportive,” he said. “What they were saying was that finding ways for schools to be supportive and for communities to be supportive in terms of physical spaces (that allowed them) to express themselves safely (and) having places where they can gather and feel safe, uh, were really important to them.”
Hopelab seeks to address mental health in young people through evidence-based innovation, according to its organizers. The Born This Way Foundation was co-founded by Lady Gaga and her mother, West Virginia native Cynthia Bisset Germanotta.
The organization is focused on ending bullying and building up communities, while using research, programming, grants, and partnerships to engage young people and connect them to mental health resources, according to the foundation’s website.
As a classroom teacher and district leader with over 26 years of experience, I’ve attended countless professional development (PD) sessions. Some were transformative, others forgettable. But one thing has remained constant: the need for PD that inspires, equips, and connects educators. Research shows that effective PD focuses on instructional practice and connects to both classroom materials and real- world contexts.
I began my teaching career in 1999 through an alternative certification program, eager to learn and grow. That enthusiasm hasn’t waned–I still consider myself a lifelong learner. But over time, I realized that not all PD is created equal. Too often, sessions felt like a checkbox exercise, with educators asking, “Why do I have to be here?” instead of “How can I grow from this?”
Here are some of my favorite PD resources and experiences:
edWeb
edWeb is free to join, and once you’re in, you can dive into as many sessions as you want. The service offers a live calendar of events or on-demand webinars covering a range of topics. Plus, the webinars come with CE certificates, which are approved for teacher re-licensure in states like New York, Massachusetts, Texas, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Utah, and Nevada.
You can go deeper into the state-specific options with an interactive map. I also love the community aspect of the platform, as you can connect with peers and learn from experts on so many topics for all preK-12 educators.
Career Connect This summer, I attended the Discovery Education Summer of Learning Series at the BMW facility in Spartanburg, South Carolina, for a day-long professional learning event focused on workforce readiness and preparing students for evolving career landscapes. It was an energizing day being surrounded by passionate educators. One standout resource we dove into more deeply is Career Connect by Discovery Education. Career Connect is within Discovery Education Experience and is available to all educators in South Carolina by the Department of Education.
This is quickly becoming a priority tool in our district. With early access in the spring, we’ve integrated it across grade levels–from elementary STEM classrooms to our Career Center. The platform offers students live interactions with professionals in various fields, making career exploration both engaging and real. I witnessed this firsthand during a virtual visit with an engineer from Charlotte, N.C., whose insights captivated our students and sparked meaningful conversations about future possibilities.
Professional Development Hub The ASCD + ISTE professional learning hub offers sessions on innovative approaches and tools to design and implement standards-aligned curriculum. Each session is led by educators, authors, researchers, and practitioners who are experts in professional learning. Schools and districts receive a needs assessment, so you know the learning is tailored to what educators really need and want.
Tips for Meaningful PD With over 26 years of experience as a classroom teacher and district leader, I have participated in my fair share of professional learning opportunities. I like to joke that my career began in the late 1900s, but professional development sessions from those first few years of teaching now do feel like they were from a century ago compared to the possibilities presented to teachers and leaders today.
Over these decades I’ve seen a lot of good, and bad, sessions. Here are my top tips to make PD actually engaging:
Choose PD that aligns with your goals. Seek out sessions that connect directly to your teaching practice or leadership role.
Engage with a community. Learning alongside passionate educators makes a huge difference. The Summer of Learning event reminded me how energizing it is to be surrounded by people who lift you up.
Explore tech tools that extend learning. Platforms like Career Connect and others aren’t just add-ons–they’re gateways to deeper engagement and real-world relevance.
Professional development should be a “want to,” not a “have to.” To get there, though, the PD needs to be thoughtfully designed and purpose-driven. These resources above reignited my passion for learning and reminded me of the power of connection–between educators, students, and the world beyond the classroom.
Bucky Ware, School District of Newberry County
Bucky Ware is a Technology Integration Specialist and Public Information Officer for the School District of Newberry County with over 26 years of experience in education. A former English and Journalism teacher, he specializes in integrating instructional technology, leading professional learning, and fostering community engagement. Beyond his district role, Bucky serves on statewide advisory groups and professional associations, including the South Carolina Association for Educational Technology Board of Directors, SCASA Instructional Technology Roundtables, and the National School Public Relations Association.
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Organization recognized for excellence in high-impact tutoring design and student achievement gains
PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 25, 2025 –Catapult Learning, a division of FullBloom that provides academic intervention programs for students and professional development solutions for teachers in K-12 schools, today announced it earned the Tutoring Program Design Badge from the National Student Support Accelerator (NSSA) at Stanford University. The designation, valid for three years, recognizes tutoring providers that demonstrate high-quality, research-aligned program design.
The recognition comes at a time when the need for high-impact tutoring (HIT) has never been greater. As schools nationwide work to close learning gaps that widened during the COVID-19 pandemic and accelerate recovery, Catapult Learning stands out for its nearly 50-year legacy of delivering effective academic support to students who need it most.
“Catapult Learning is honored to receive this prestigious national recognition from the NSSA at Stanford University,” said Rob Klapper, president at Catapult Learning. “We are excited to be recognized for our high-impact tutoring program design and will continue to uphold the highest standards of excellence as we support learners across the country.”
Each year, Catapult Learning’s programs support more than 150,000+ students with nearly four million in-person tutoring sessions, in partnership with 2,100 schools and districts nationwide. Its tutors, many of whom hold four-year degrees, are highly trained professionals who are supported with ongoing coaching and professional development.
Recent data from Catapult Learning’s HIT programs show strong academic gains across both math and reading subject areas:
8 out of every 10 math students increased their pre/post score
9 out of every 10 reading students increased their pre/post score
These results come from programs that have also earned a Tier 2 evidence designation under the Every Student Succeeds Act, affirming their alignment with rigorous research standards.
The Badge was awarded following a rigorous, evidence-based review conducted by an independent panel of education experts. The NSSA evaluated multiple components of Catapult Learning’s program – including instructional design, tutor training and support, and the use of data to inform instruction – against its Tutoring Quality Standards.
“This designation underscores the strength and intentionality behind our high-impact tutoring model,” said Devon Wible, vice president of teaching and learning at Catapult Learning. “This achievement reflects our deep commitment to providing high-quality, research-based tutoring that drives meaningful outcomes for learners.”
Tutoring is available in person, virtually, or in hybrid formats, and can be scheduled before, during, or after school, including weekends. Sessions are held a minimum of three times per week, with flexible options tailored to the needs of each school or district. Catapult Learning provides all necessary materials for both students and tutors.
Catapult Learning, a division of FullBloom, provides academic intervention programs for students and professional development solutions for teachers in K-12 schools, executed by a team of experienced coaches. Our professional development services strengthen the capacity of teachers and leaders to raise and sustain student achievement. Our academic intervention programs support struggling learners with instruction tailored to the unique needs of each student. Across the country, Catapult Learning partners with 500+ school districts to produce positive outcomes that promote academic and professional growth. Catapult Learning is accredited by Cognia and has earned its 2022 System of Distinction honor.
