Category: Students

  • Students on the Frontlines: The Ongoing Protests in Serbia with Jim Dickinson

    Students on the Frontlines: The Ongoing Protests in Serbia with Jim Dickinson

    If I say the word “Serbia”, chances are your mind goes to things like the NATO air attacks of 1999 and the associated Kosovo War, to the breakup of Yugoslavia and to Marshal Tito and maybe – if you’re more historically-minded – to the origins of World War I.  It probably doesn’t go to higher education or radical student politics.

    But that’s kind of unfortunate because in fact Serbia’s recent history has had plenty of instances where youth- or student-based movements have had an effect on politics, most notably with respect to the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.  And that’s very relevant today, because for the last 18 weeks, Serbia students have been on a campaign to rid the country of the governing Serbian Progressive Party on grounds of corruption.  They have formed some extraordinary alliances across civil society leading to regular marches involving tens of thousands of people as well as a series of rotating strikes.  The movement has not yet reached its ultimate objective, but it has claimed some notable victories along the way, most notably when the Prime Minister, Milos Vucevic, was forced to resign in January. 

    With me today to analyze all of this is Jim Dickinson.  He’s an associate editor at Wonkhe in London, one of the most remarkable Higher education sites in existence, and to my mind absolutely the best-informed person on the European student politics scene.  Jim wrote an excellent summary of the situation in Serbia around the time of the Vucevic resignation, and we thought it was high time to finally bring Jim on the show. 

    Jim talks about the origins of the protests, its growth and metastasis into a genuinely popular national protest movement and its prospects for future success.  Will Serbia end up being like Bangladesh, with students actually forcing regie change?  The future is never certain, of course.  But what I liked about Jim’s perspective is the way he takes account of the interplay between official student “unions” and an unofficial student “movement” and explains why you need to take account of both to understand the current situation in Serbia.

    But enough from me.  Let’s turn it over to Jim.

    The World of Higher Education Podcast
    Episode 3.21 | Students on the Frontlines: The Ongoing Protests in Serbia with Jim Dickinson 

    Transcript

    Alex Usher: Jim, before we get to current day events, tell me—what are student politics normally like in Serbia? Are student unions more about service delivery or activism? Is there just one national student union, or are there multiple ones? Are they organized on a party-political basis? Tell me how it all works in a normal year.

    Jim Dickinson: You know, we were there about 14 or 15 months ago, and we were quite impressed. We took a group of UK student unions on a little bus tour, as I do each year to different parts of Europe, and it was quite impressive. Student representation is guaranteed at both the faculty and university levels. Broadly speaking, what is also guaranteed is a student union, which has responsibility for extracurricular activities, as well as for student voice and representing students.

    These unions then feed into something called the Student Conference of the Universities of Serbia. What’s interesting—and a few countries in Europe have done this—is that they’ve put the national student union on a statutory footing. So, it’s actually mentioned in legislation. Essentially, they took the National Conference of Rectors, the university association, added an “S” at the front, and set it up as a statutory body that listens to students’ views on higher education.

    So, in theory, the legislation establishes representation at the faculty, university, and countrywide levels. Students have the opportunity to elect other students, organize student activities, and be the voice of students—which are broadly the two activities you would expect when you hear the phrase “student union.” Maybe not in the U.S., but certainly in most other parts of the world.

    Alex Usher: Is there party political involvement in student unions there?

    Jim Dickinson: I mean, this is really interesting. Some people would say there is. But one of the things that’s kind of, I guess, moderately characteristic of the former Yugoslavian and Eastern European countries is that there’s not much open talk of politics.

    Sometimes students will align with particular political views, but this isn’t like what we might see in Austria, Germany, or even Finland, where large factional or party political groups of students stand for election to student councils. In Serbia, student unions are framed as being independent from formal politics—pure, in a sense, and separate from direct political involvement.

    Now, of course, what actually happens—depending on who you listen to and believe—is that youth branches of political parties do stand in these elections. And depending on the perspective, the government—certainly the current government—is accused of pumping in money and candidates to ensure a level of control in these bodies, much like what might happen in other parts of civil society in the country.

    But officially, you don’t see that. In fact, in some of these countries, student unions will even sign documents declaring their complete independence from party politics as a way of signaling, “We’re not about that; we’re about the students.”

    Alex Usher: Tell me about the history of student unions getting involved in national politics. I know there’s a history going back to the 1960s in Bulgaria of student involvement in politics.

    After the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were two major instances in Serbia. In 1996–97, students led protests against what were seen as rigged elections in favor of Slobodan Milosevic. Then in 2000, there was a youth-led—but not student union-led—movement called Otpor, which was the central organizing group that ultimately helped remove Milosevic after the 2000 elections.

    Now, obviously, there’s a big mobilization happening today. What’s the connection between those events in the late 90s and early 2000s and what we’re seeing now?

    Jim Dickinson: So, ahead of putting student unions—both locally and nationally—on a statutory footing, there were always student groups and associations, often based around faculties or entire universities. Because these groups were relatively loose and voluntary, their level of political interest and influence would fluctuate.

    They often got caught up in the kind of events you described—first in the late 80s and then throughout the 90s. And that’s actually quite common. When student groups are loosely organized and not statutory, with many different associations and organizations floating around, they tend to get swept up in big political movements when those arise.

    Now, while you’re right that Otpor was technically a youth movement, in practice, it was largely dominated by students. That group of people was widely credited with the overthrow of Milosevic. We’ve actually visited some of the student accommodations where they were organizing, and you can really see how that must have worked—how students would have been talking to each other, coordinating, and mobilizing.

    Beyond that point, things get a bit more complicated.

    Alex Usher: So, Otpor was student-led, but not student union-led. That’s the distinction here?

    Jim Dickinson: Yeah.

    Alex Usher: Let’s get to current events. It’s November 1st, 2024. We’re at the railway station in Novi Sad, which is Serbia’s second-largest city. What happens next?

    Jim Dickinson: So, a canopy collapses, killing 15 people. By the time they’d completed their assessment about 24 hours later, the death toll had risen to 15. Pretty quickly, rumors started going around that this must be linked to corruption.

    There’s been a series of complex, controversial deals linked to some Chinese companies involving infrastructure projects across different parts of the country. So the view was that this was negligence, this was corruption, and that this was another example—right on their doorstep in this big student city—of the Serbian government’s corruption causing harm and death.

    Social media videos of the canopy collapsing on young people were pretty heartbreaking, and they went viral very quickly.

    What was interesting at that point was that this student group based in the Faculty of Philosophy, which had already been upset about the formal student union elections in their faculty and at the University of Novi Sad, then switched their attention from occupying the faculty building over student union election politics.

    They turned their focus to this incident, and quite quickly organized a blockade of the railway station, a blockade of the faculty, and then things kind of swept on from there.

    Alex Usher: I get that—it’s understandable why the collapse of a public building might make people upset about corruption. But why is it youth leading this charge? I mean, it’s not unnatural, but it’s also not a given that students would be the ones leading this.

    Why them and not some other group in society? Or even opposition parties? Why a small group of disaffected philosophy students?

    Jim Dickinson: Well, I mean, in many ways, that is the big question. I’m sure if the Serbian Progressive Party knew the answer, Alex, they’d have stopped it by now.

    I think the reality is that all of those involved in formal mechanisms of politics—to some extent—are discredited. And that’s something you see across many political systems, right? There’s a general distrust of politicians and of formal politics, both on the right and the left, in North America and across Europe.

    What’s interesting about this group of students is that, in many ways, you’ll find a similar type of group at almost every relatively elite, fairly academic, large university in the world. You’ve got the students who get elected to official positions, wear suits, and sit down with the rector, vice-chancellor, or president. And then there’s this other, rougher-looking group—the ones who like to think about bigger political issues. They’re the ones who will blockade a building, go on a protest, or join a demonstration.

    This particular group has probably always been there, usually complaining about student union elections. Then, suddenly, this huge tragedy happens in the city, and they find their big issue—something they can build their movement around.

    Often, they talk about building a social movement, but it’s hard to do when the issues they focus on don’t gain traction. This, however, was not a hard issue to mobilize around. It was a tragedy, it was clear-cut, and off the back of that, they took action.

    Alex Usher: That’s early November. The protests build and build, and by early December, they’ve secured the resignation of the minister of construction.

    So, at this point, what were the student movement’s aims? I get that they were upset about corruption, but what were they actually demanding in these demonstrations? And, given how informal the structure was, who was deciding what those demands were?

    Jim Dickinson: It’s really interesting because the demands haven’t really changed since then. Some were directly related to the tragedy, some were broader, and some were focused on higher education.

    Actually, if you look at some of the pro-Palestinian blockades and demonstrations in different countries over the past couple of years, they’ve also had a mix of demands like this.

    In this case, there were demands to publish all the documents related to the reconstruction of the station. There were calls to ensure that no criminal proceedings would be brought against protest participants. There was also a demand for the dismissal of all public officials who had assaulted students and professors—of which there were quite a few.

    Then there were demands related to higher education, like increasing the budget for higher education by 20%. And what’s fascinating is that this list of demands hasn’t really changed.

    Now, to answer your question about leadership—one of the defining characteristics of this kind of activism, which some people see as very old-fashioned, is that it’s highly decentralized. Decisions are made collectively, with lots of people sitting in circles discussing them. There’s no single figurehead. They’ve really tried to stick to those principles, even though, historically, that kind of approach sometimes falls apart depending on which allegorical novel you read.

    Despite the media’s efforts to identify particular ringleaders or intellectual figures behind the movement, it’s been difficult to pin down a single “bad guy” or figurehead. This stands in stark contrast to the formal student movement, which operates like a traditional hierarchy—a structured system where representatives elect other representatives, and so on.

    Alex Usher: So, it’s a little like the Occupy movement?

    Jim Dickinson: Yeah, very, very similar.

    Alex Usher: Over the course of December and January, the movement builds to the point where, eventually, the prime minister resigns on January 28th. That wasn’t even one of the demands, but it happened anyway. To make that happen, they had to build a coalition—not just within the student movement, which is one thing, but also by making links across civil society, with other groups like legal organizations, unions, teachers’ unions, and so on. How did a group of students manage that, especially given how decentralized their power structure was?

    Jim Dickinson: Part of it was about peaceful protest. If you look at historical examples like the Prague protests or the Velvet Revolution, they were always very deliberately peaceful, even though allegations are often thrown at them.

    So, good framing was key—absolutely sticking to those principles. And then, night after night, day after day, at each protest, they slowly built support from wider society. As time went on, they captured the imagination of more and more people. First, musicians got involved, then lawyers, then farmers, then taxi drivers.

    Each time a new group joined or more people expressed sympathy, the movement grew. And there’s historical precedent for this—going back to the late 80s and early 90s—where what started as a student movement began to voice deeper concerns about corruption, about the direction of the government, about how citizens are treated, and about the growing disconnect between the public and politicians. And they used powerful, simple, visually striking imagery. You might have seen the red hands in some of the protest photos—symbolizing “blood on their hands.” That really resonated with people.

    Because these countries have been through this kind of thing before—where students lead the charge and wider society gets behind them—there was this sense that both the students and the broader public felt the weight of history on their shoulders. And from there, it just kept growing.

    I was watching over Christmas—one night, there were 10,000 people in the streets, then 12,000 the next night, then 15,000. It just kept building. And every time the government tried to use traditional authoritarian tactics, the protesters held their nerve. They maintained their dignity, and in doing so, they were able to expose the government as authoritarian—cracking down on people who were making perfectly reasonable demands.

    Alex Usher: So that’s what’s happening in the streets. But what about the campuses? Are they shut down? Is there a strike? Is there a risk of losing the school year? And how are university administrations dealing with all of this?

    Jim Dickinson: That’s a really interesting question.

    Quite often—and this is probably true in the UK, certainly true in Canada and the U.S.—when there’s a blockade of a building, an occupation, or a major protest, you still get a form of teaching happening. There are efforts to ensure that education continues, though it might not be the same curriculum the university originally intended, and it often takes on a particular political edge.

    So, what they’ve been doing is blockading faculty buildings and university buildings, stopping some administrative functions from happening. But some teaching is still taking place.

    Now, whether that translates into exams happening or students receiving certificates at the end of the year varies widely. It depends on the campus, the faculty, and the university.

    A lot of that comes down to the level of support for the movement. So, it depends on what you mean by a “write-off.” There’s plenty of evidence that students are still getting an education, but if you’re the kind of student who isn’t interested in any of this and just wants your diploma at the end of the year, then it’s probably a disaster.

    Alex Usher: Just so listeners and viewers know, we’re recording this on February 11th—nine days before the air date. This is the 101st day of the protests. What do you think the endgame is here? What would it take at this point for students to achieve the aims you talked about earlier? Or are they going to have to settle for half a loaf?

    Jim Dickinson: Well, I mean, it’s really interesting.

    Just this week—or maybe it was right at the end of last week, I’ve lost track—they got the 20% budget increase, for example. Nobody expected that to happen two weeks ago. So, slowly, they’re managing to achieve pretty much everything except the dismissal of all the public officials they’ve been demanding.

    The problem, of course, is that even if they achieve all of those demands, they still won’t have reached their broader political goal—which is that they believe this is a deeply corrupt government. And while they don’t frame it in party political terms, they think this populist government needs to go. So, the endgame starts to get tricky for them.

    They’ve already achieved far more than most people expected. And historically, there’s precedent for this. There were plenty of student uprisings in Eastern Europe in the 1960s that captured the public’s imagination but ultimately didn’t lead to political change.

    So, once most of the demands are met and we get closer to the end of the academic year, will the movement start to fizzle out? Who knows?

    But for many of the people involved, they’re probably already thinking, “We’ve accomplished a hell of a lot more than we ever thought we would.” And certainly a lot more than the official student movement was ever going to achieve on these issues.

    Alex Usher: That brings me to my last question. This has been a success for the student movement—if you can call it that—but not necessarily a success for student unions. So, what do you think the impact will be on more official student organizations going forward? Are unions likely to be supplanted by something a little more anarchist? Or do they just go back to providing the same services they always have?

    Jim Dickinson: I mean, look—across the world, the bigger, more sophisticated, and more formally recognized student unions are, and the more access they have to decision-makers, the more mistrust tends to build.

    Both the textbooks and reality tell us that when student leaders start spending too much time with people who aren’t students, people begin to see them as too close to decision-makers. And that dynamic exists in every student movement around the world.

    The real question for a system like Serbia’s—which has student unions written into the constitution and structured to mirror the conference of rectors, university presidents, and vice-chancellors—is whether, in hindsight, that structure is simply too close to power.

    And that comes down to one of two concerns.

    If the official student movement hasn’t actually been controlled by the government but just appears too close to it, then there’s some broader reflection needed on the system’s credibility. But if it has been deliberately set up as a way for a corrupt national government to control it—to act as a puppet master—then that carries much bigger implications.

    Either way, you have to assume that where student energy is focused will shift. And that’s key because there’s only so much student energy available.

    Right now, the biggest problem for formal student unions is that student energy hasn’t gone into electing people to run the social committee or to be the faculty vice president and have a chat with the dean about curriculum.

    This year, the bulk of student energy has gone into something bigger—and they’ve won. That’s something a lot of people, both within the sector and seemingly within the country as a whole, will have to reckon with.

    Alex Usher: Jim, it’s been a pleasure. Thanks so much for joining us today. And I just want to take a moment to thank our excellent producers, Sam Pufek and Tiffany MacLennan, as well as you—our viewers, listeners, and readers—for joining us. If you have any questions about today’s episode, don’t hesitate to reach out at podcast@higheredstrategy.com. Never miss an episode of The World of Higher Education podcast—subscribe to our YouTube channel today. Next week, we’re off, but join us two weeks from today when our guest will be Israeli scholar Maya Wind. She’s a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Riverside, and the author of Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom. Bye for now.

    *This podcast transcript was generated using an AI transcription service with limited editing. Please forgive any errors made through this service.

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  • Shifting institutional thinking about commuter students

    Shifting institutional thinking about commuter students

    As more and more students travel from their home to study, grappling with all the challenges of supporting commuter students has become the norm for the sector.

    How do we create a sense of belonging for these students, how do we make their time on campus as positive as possible and how do we increase attendance and then keep them on campus? It’s often approached as a problem to fix.

    And at the University of Worcester we did just this. And we’ve had some great solutions – providing fridges and microwaves, so commuters could bring and store food. Students services have run “fancy a cuppa” sessions throughout the week so that students have space to gather at no cost and many academic teams are developing flexible approaches to delivery that recognise the challenges of travel.

    But behind the scenes colleagues were starting to recognise that the reasons for commuting and the challenges this created were complex, multi-faceted and far reaching.

    Commuting students are now the majority of our students and this impacts on the experience for all students – getting it right for commuting students means getting it right for all students.

    We need to shift our thinking from commuters as a problem to solve to instead how can the university change and adapt across the institution to meet the evolving needs of our students.

    We needed to listen

    We needed to understand the why, the how and the impact of daily travel to university. And to do this we needed to raise the profile of these students with those tasked with decision making across the university.

    We launched “listening lunches” to combat survey fatigue and facilitate comfortable spaces in the middle of the day where students could drop in on their own terms, have a free lunch and share anything that was on their minds.

    Travelling to campus daily involved managing caring responsibilities, school runs, late or cancelled trains and the impact of travel disruption caused by flooding and road closures. When students were unable to attend it meant disrupted classes, low attendance and made it harder for students to maintain group assignments.

    It wasn’t all negative. Students shared examples of thoughtful and reactive responses from staff who were aware of these challenges and were adapting their practice accordingly. Crucially, this wasn’t formalised or widely applied.

    Where staff were finding ways to support students’ engagement and students had the opportunity to talk to staff about their experience and seeing things being done as a result, this improved how students felt about the university.

    Examples where students felt heard, and where their engagement was not measured in attendance but in participation, were particularly positive.

    Making a case for change.

    While we had anecdotal evidence from multiple sources, it wasn’t being captured in our formal feedback mechanisms, and therefore wasn’t being centred in discussions.

    As part of our sustainability initiatives, we have run a student travel survey for a number of years – surveys were widely seen as important in shaping students’ experience – this was an opportunity to formally gather the feedback we had had anecdotally.

    The surveys were adapted to incorporate questions relating to “commuting students” and we asked students what measures could be put in place to support their participation. Unsurprisingly a lot of the feedback was around the cost of travel, including the cost and availability of car parking and the impact of poor public transport.

    Our second round of listening lunches took the feedback from this survey back to the students as a series of discussion prompts. A complex picture started to emerge that touched on areas such as sustainability, widening participation, retention, campus experience, learning and teaching and support services.

    These are not necessarily areas that have always had a central focus on commuters.

    We need to talk about commuter students on a much broader scale across institutions.

    To do this, we’re sharing our understanding across the university, via formal committees and working groups as well as building a diverse network of colleagues who can centre the needs of commuter students in any and all conversations about the student experience.

    For example, colleagues who are now members of the transport and travel group have been able to support campus-based students needing to travel to placement with timely and affordable university managed transport.

    Building an institutional agenda

    In order to adequately support commuter students, support can’t be centred in one department. Here’s some ways to think about commuter students across an institution.

    Find ways to first centre the student voice in building your understanding of how students participate and engage when living off campus. Then consider ways to broaden the conversation to include colleagues from less obvious areas of the university such as sustainability, EDI, retention and outcomes, resources and facilities as well as continuing to include colleagues from student services and academic schools.

    Reframe the way you consider engagement to go beyond attendance and towards participation and consider that there are more students impacted by commuting than you may first think.

    Don’t view commuters as the problem, but instead a valued and core part of your student community. Making sure your university works for commuters means that it also works for all students.

    Long breaks between lectures on campus are common and when it comes to downtime between lectures, a study or hospitality space isn’t always sufficient. Meaningful things to do on campus makes commuters feel part of a community. At Worcester we’ve co-created the “You Matter” programme to facilitate this with drop-in creative focused activities during the day.

    Finally commuter students’ lives are busy and complex. They place a great deal of importance on how close the university is to their home, i.e. relocating is not a priority or an option due to complex responsibilities. The cost and availability of transport options have a significant impact on students’ ability to attend and students are often juggling family, part-time work and study in an increasingly challenging financial climate.

    The more institutions begin by understanding this, the better. Only then can you build an agenda across an institution to recognise, value and support commuters.

     

    This blog is part of our series on commuter students, click here to read more.

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  • A sea change in student partnership

    A sea change in student partnership

    A few years back now, someone who worked for one of Scotland’s sector agencies liked to draw a comparison when talking about student-centredness.

    They said that conservation charities passionately place wildlife at the heart of everything they do, but crucially would never put representatives of flora and fauna on committees (imagine the mess).

    Therefore, my erstwhile and esteemed colleague would argue, when institutional leaders proudly claim to be “student-centred” it reveals nothing about how they involve students in shaping their experiences.

    Of course, you can diligently monitor wildlife and use your data to make good decisions, in a manner not dissimilar to learning analytics in education, but the difference is that students can then go on to be a part of conversations in a way that wildlife never can.

    Waterproof papers

    My mind was cast back to this parallel when I saw the recent news that the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS), one of our partners here at the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI), has put The Ocean on its governing body.

    It’s a move that SAMS’ Director Nick Owens admits “could be seen as trivial or ‘greenwashing’”, and we might imagine other specialist institutions making similar gestures in the disciplines they so richly embody and advance.

    For instance a conservatoire could put “Music” on their board, or an agricultural college “The Land”.

    Nick explains further, however:

    The Ocean is clearly a metaphor in this context and cannot represent itself in human terms.”

    That point is vital because, if we go back to our parallel, SAMS has already gone much further with its other main cause – students.

    Like all constituent parts of UHI and indeed our university overall, SAMS has student membership on its governing body, not to just sit there and wave like the ocean might, or to flap about disruptively like a bird among a wildlife charity’s trustees.

    Instead, we expect of student governors an informed, constructive and active contribution.

    As my colleague Aimee Cuthbert wrote on Wonkhe a year ago, we have a major project that is making that student membership truly effective and impactful across UHI’s complex governance arrangements.

    On a basic level we want to build on national guidelines such as Scotland’s codes of good governance for colleges and universities and support packages such as those from the College Development Network.

    The wet room

    In our own unique context we want to make sure UHI’s governing bodies do not merely talk about students as an abstract concept or worthy concern, and instead have them in the room to provide meaningful input about students’ diverse and complex experiences and the implications for students of the difficult decisions that must be made.

    That means a lot of work with those involved in our governing bodies, exploration of the key issues on our boards’ desks at a time of change, and helping our local officers impact on their individual partner governing bodies while also working together as a team to impact on decisions that are UHI-wide.

    A core part of our project is therefore that very human process of communication – supporting the networking, sharing practice and informal relationship building that makes student governors truly a part of the process in a way that an ocean can’t be.

    So, when someone tells you their institution is student-centred, that’s arguably the very least we might expect, and in isolation such a declaration risks viewing students in the same way that others might view wildlife.

    The Ocean as governor, therefore, is not only a striking metaphor for SAMS’ important mission, but has added power in benchmarking our perceptions of those we claim to be here for – reminding us that there’s a big difference between caring about students and actively involving them as partners.

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  • 25 (Mostly AI) Sessions to Enjoy in 2025 – The 74

    25 (Mostly AI) Sessions to Enjoy in 2025 – The 74


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    South by Southwest Edu returns to Austin, Texas, running March 3-6. As always, it’ll offer a huge number of panels, discussions, film screenings, musical performances and workshops exploring education, innovation and the future of schooling.

    Keynote speakers this year include neuroscientist Anne-Laure Le Cunff, founder of Ness Labs, an online educational platform for knowledge workers; astronaut, author and TV host Emily Calandrelli, and Shamil Idriss, CEO of Search for Common Ground, an international non-profit. Idriss will speak about what it means to be strong in the face of opposition — and how to turn conflict into cooperation. Also featured: indy musical artist Jill Sobule, singing selections from her musical F*ck 7th Grade.

    As in 2024, artificial intelligence remains a major focus, with dozens of sessions exploring AI’s potential and pitfalls. But other topics are on tap as well, including sessions on playful learning, book bans and the benefits of prison journalism. 

    To help guide the way, we’ve scoured the schedule to highlight 25 of the most significant presenters, topics and panels: 

    Monday, March 3:

    11 a.m. — Ultimate Citizens Film Screening: A new independent film features a Seattle school counselor who builds a world-class Ultimate Frisbee team with a group of immigrant children at Hazel Wolf K-8 School. 

    11:30 a.m. — AI & the Skills-First Economy: Navigating Hype & Reality: Generative AI is accelerating the adoption of a skills-based economy, but many are skeptical about its value, impact and the pace of growth. Will AI spark meaningful change and a new economic order, or is it just another overhyped trend? Meena Naik of Jobs for the Future leads a discussion with Colorado Community College System Associate Vice Chancellor Michael Macklin, Nick Moore, an education advisor to Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, and Best Buy’s Ryan Hanson.

    11:30 a.m. — Navigation & Guidance in the Age of AI: The Clayton Christensen Institute’s Julia Freeland Fisher headlines a panel that looks at how generative AI can help students access 24/7 help in navigating pathways to college. As new models take root, the panel will explore what entrepreneurs are learning about what students want from these systems. Will AI level the playing field or perpetuate inequality? 

    12:30 p.m. — Boosting Student Engagement Means Getting Serious About Play: New research shows students who are engaged in schoolwork not only do better in school but are happier and more confident in life. And educators say they’d be happier at work and less likely to leave the profession if students engaged more deeply. In this session, LEGO Education’s Bo Stjerne Thomsen will explore the science behind playful learning and how it can get students and teachers excited again.

    1:30 p.m. — The AI Sandbox: Building Your Own Future of Learning: Mike Yates of The Reinvention Lab at Teach for America leads an interactive session offering participants the chance to build their own AI tools to solve real problems they face at work, school or home. The session is for AI novices as well as those simply curious about how the technology works. Participants will get free access to Playlab.AI.

    2:30 p.m. — Journalism Training in Prison Teaches More Than Headlines: Join Charlotte West of Open Campus, Lawrence Bartley of The Marshall Project and Yukari Kane of the Prison Journalism Project to explore real-life stories from behind bars. Journalism training is transforming the lives of a few of the more than 1.9 million people incarcerated in the U.S., teaching skills from time management to communication and allowing inmates to feel connected to society while building job skills. 

    Tuesday, March 4:

    11:30 a.m. — Enough Talk! Let’s Play with AI: Amid the hand-wringing about what AI means for the future of education, there’s been little conversation about how a few smart educators are already employing it to shift possibilities for student engagement and classroom instruction. In this workshop, attendees will learn how to leverage promising practices emerging from research with real educators using AI in writing, creating their own chatbots and differentiating support plans. 

    12:30 p.m. — How Much is Too Much? Navigating AI Usage in the Classroom: AI-enabled tools can be helpful for students conducting research, outlining written work, or proofing and editing submissions. But there’s a fine line between using AI appropriately and taking advantage of it, leaving many students wondering, “How much AI is too much?” This session, led by Turnitin’s Annie Chechitelli, will discuss the rise of GenAI, its intersection with academia and academic integrity, and how to determine appropriate usage.  

    1 p.m. — AI & Edu: Sharing Real Classroom Successes & Challenges: Explore the real-world impact of AI in education during this interactive session hosted by Zhuo Chen, a text analysis instructor at the nonprofit education startup Constellate, and Dylan Ruediger of the research and consulting group Ithaka S+R. Chen and Ruediger will share successes and challenges in using AI to advance student learning, engagement and skills. 

    1 p.m. — Defending the Right to Read: Working Together: In 2025, authors face unprecedented challenges. This session, which features Scholastic editor and young adult novelist David Levithan, as well as Emily Kirkpatrick, executive director of the National Council of Teachers of English, will explore the battle for freedom of expression and the importance of defending reading in the face of censorship attempts and book bans.

    1 p.m. — Million Dollar Advice: Navigating the Workplace with Amy Poehler’s Top Execs: Kate Arend and Kim Lessing, the co-presidents of Amy Poehler’s production company Paper Kite Productions, will be live to record their workplace and career advice podcast “Million Dollar Advice.” The pair will tackle topics such as setting and maintaining boundaries, learning from Gen Z, dealing with complicated work dynamics, and more. They will also take live audience questions.

    4 p.m. — Community-Driven Approaches to Inclusive AI Education: With rising recognition of neurodivergent students, advocates say AI can revolutionize how schools support them by streamlining tasks, optimizing resources and enhancing personalized learning. In the process, schools can overcome challenges in mainstreaming students with learning differences. This panel features educators and advocates as well as Alex Kotran, co-founder and CEO of The AI Education Project.

    4 p.m. — How AI Makes Assessment More Actionable in Instruction: Assessments are often disruptive, cumbersome or disconnected from classroom learning. But a few advocates and developers say AI-powered assessment tools offer an easier, more streamlined way for students to demonstrate learning — and for educators to adapt instruction to meet their needs. This session, moderated by The 74’s Greg Toppo, features Khan Academy’s Kristen DiCerbo, Curriculum Associates’ Kristen Huff and Akisha Osei Sarfo, director of research at the Council of the Great City Schools.

    Wednesday, March 5:

    11 a.m. — Run, Hide, Fight: Growing Up Under the Gun Screening & Q&A: Gun violence is now the leading cause of death for American children and teens, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, yet coverage of gun violence’s impact on youth is usually reported by adults. Run, Hide, Fight: Growing Up Under the Gun is a 30-minute documentary by student journalists about how gun violence affects young Americans. Produced by PBS News Student Reporting Labs in collaboration with 14 student journalists in five cities, it centers the perspectives of young people who live their lives in the shadow of this threat. 

    11:30 a.m. — AI, Education & Real Classrooms: Educators are at the forefront of testing, using artificial intelligence and teaching their communities about it. In this interactive session, participants will hear from educators and ed tech specialists on the ground working to support the use of AI to improve learning. The session includes Stacie Johnson, director of professional learning at Khan Academy, and Dina Neyman, Khan Academy’s director of district success. 

    11:30 a.m. — The Future of Teaching in an Age of AI: As AI becomes increasingly present in the classroom, educators are understandably concerned about how it might disrupt their teaching. An expert panel featuring Jake Baskin, executive director of the Computer Science Teachers Association andKarim Meghji of Code.org, will look at how teaching will change in an age of AI, exploring frameworks for teaching AI skills and sharing best practices for integrating AI literacy across disciplines.

    2:30 p.m. — AI in Education: Preparing Gen A as the Creators of Tomorrow: Generation Alpha is the first to experience generative artificial intelligence from the start of their educational journeys. To thrive in a world featuring AI requires educators helping them tap into their natural creativity, navigating unique opportunities and challenges. In this session, a cross-industry panel of experts discuss strategies to integrate AI into learning, allowing critical thinking and curiosity to flourish while enabling early learners to become architects of AI, not just users.

    2:30 p.m. — The Ethical Use of AI in the Education of Black Children: Join a panel of educators, tech leaders and nonprofit officials as they discuss AI’s ethical complexities and its impact on the education of Black children. This panel will address historical disparities, biases in technology, and the critical need for ethical AI in education. It will also offer unique perspectives into the benefits and challenges of AI in Black children’s education, sharing best practices to promote the safe, ethical and legal use of AI in classrooms.

    2:30 p.m. — Exploring Teacher Morale State by State: Is teacher morale shaped by where teachers work? Find out as Education Week releases its annual State of Teaching survey. States and school districts drive how teachers are prepared, paid and promoted, and the findings will raise new questions about what leaders and policymakers should consider as they work to support an essential profession. The session features Holly Kurtz, director of EdWeek Research Center, Stephen Sawchuk, EdWeek assistant managing editor, and assistant editor Sarah D. Sparks.

    2:30 p.m. — From White Folks Who Teach in the Hood: Is This Conversation Against the Law Now? While most students in U.S. public schools are now young people of color, more than 80% of their teachers are white. How do white educators understand and address these dynamics? Join a live recording of a podcast that brings together white educators with Christopher Emdin and sam seidel, co-editors of From White Folks Who Teach in the Hood: Reflections on Race, Culture, and Identity (Beacon, 2024).

    3:30 p.m. — How Youth Use GenAI: Time to Rethink Plagiarism: Schools are locked in a battle with students over fears they’re using generative artificial intelligence to plagiarize existing work. In this session, join Elliott Hedman, a “customer obsession engineer” with mPath, who with colleagues and students co-designed a GenAI writing tool to reframe AI use. Hedman will share three strategies that not only prevent plagiarism but also teach students how to use GenAI more productively.  

    Thursday, March 6:

    10 a.m. — AI & the Future of Education: Join futurists Sinead Bovell and Natalie Monbiot for a fireside discussion about how we prepare kids for a future we cannot yet see but know will be radically transformed by technology. Bovell and Monbiot will discuss the impact of artificial intelligence on our world and the workforce, as well as its implications for education. 

    10 a.m. — Reimagining Everyday Places as Early Learning Hubs: Young children spend 80% of their time outside of school, but too many lack access to experiences that encourage learning through hands-on activities and play. While these opportunities exist in middle-class and upper-income neighborhoods, they’re often inaccessible to families in low-income communities. In this session, a panel of designers and educators featuring Sarah Lytle, who leads the Playful Learning Landscapes Action Network, will look at how communities are transforming overlooked spaces such as sidewalks, shelters and even jails into nurturing learning environments accessible to all kids.

    11 a.m. — Build-a-Bot Workshop: Make Your Own AI to Make Sense of AI: In this session, participants will build an AI chatbot alongside designers and engineers from Stanford University and Stanford’s d.school, getting to the core of how AI works. Participants will conceptualize, outline and create conversation flows for their own AI assistant and explore methods that technical teams use to infuse warmth and adaptability into interactions and develop reliable chatbots.  

    11:30 a.m. — Responsible AI: Balancing Innovation, Impact, & Ethics: In this session, participants will learn how educators, technologists and policymakers work to develop AI responsibly. Panelists include Isabelle Hau of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, Amelia Kelly, chief technology officer of the Irish AI startup SoapBox Labs, and Latha Ramanan of the AI developer Merlyn Mind. They’ll talk about how policymakers and educators can work with developers to ensure transparency and accuracy of AI tools. 


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  • Philadelphia Schools Could Start Before Labor Day for the Next 2 Years – The 74

    Philadelphia Schools Could Start Before Labor Day for the Next 2 Years – The 74


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    Philadelphia students could head back to classes before Labor Day for the next two years, according to proposed academic calendars the district released Tuesday.

    The pre-Labor Day start for the 2025-26 and 2026-27 calendars will allow for longer spring and winter recesses as well as additional cultural and religious holidays throughout the year, district officials said this week.

    Superintendent Tony Watlington also confirmed Tuesday that district schools and offices will be closed on Friday for the Philadelphia Eagles celebratory Super Bowl parade.

    “We look forward to celebrating the Eagles’ victory as a community, and we hope that our students, staff and families will do so safely and responsibly,” Watlington said in a statement.

    The question of whether to start before or after Labor Day has rankled families and district leaders in recent years, in part because many Philly schools do not have adequate air conditioning. That has forced some buildings to close or dismiss students early due to excessive heat in the first week back.

    This school year, the first day back landed before Labor Day, and 63 schools without air conditioning dismissed students early, during the first week of classes. However, school started after Labor Day in 2023-24, and heat closures still impacted students’ learning time that first week.

    Watlington said at his state of the schools address this year that over the past three school years, the number of schools without air conditioning has shrunk from 118 to 57 thanks in part to a donation from Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts.

    Shakeera Warthen-Canty, assistant superintendent of school operations and management at the district, said their academic calendar recommendations this year are built off of a survey and several in-person feedback sessions.

    The majority of parents and caregivers who responded preferred a post-Labor Day start, the survey found. But students, teachers, school staff, and community members reported they overwhelmingly preferred starting the school year before Labor Day.

    Some 16,400 parents, students, school staff, principals, and community members responded to the survey the district sent out last September, Warthen-Canty said.

    Respondents also said they wanted more frequent breaks for longer durations to accommodate family vacations, as well as time to rest, support mental health, and prevent staff burnout.

    State law says districts must have a minimum of 180 student days, or a minimum of 900 instructional hours for elementary school students and 990 hours for middle and high school students. The district’s collective bargaining agreement with the teachers union also requires 188 teacher work days, as well as a minimum of 28 professional development hours.

    The district officials’ calendar recommendations will go to the school board for a vote before they are enacted.

    If approved, winter recess would be seven days in 2025-26 and eight days in 2026-27, while spring break would be five days both years.

    In addition to the five state and national holidays (Memorial Day, Independence Day, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Year’s Day), Philadelphia school district school holidays in 2025-26 and 2026-27 would include:

    • Labor Day
    • Rosh Hashanah
    • Yom Kippur
    • Indigenous Peoples Day
    • Veterans Day
    • Martin Luther King Jr. Day
    • Presidents Day
    • Lunar New Year
    • Eid al-Fitr
    • Good Friday
    • Eid al-Adha
    • Juneteenth

    This school year, both Indigenous Peoples Day and Veterans Day were school days.

    As for how the new calendar may interact with Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker’s commitment to “extended-day, extended-year” school: Deputy Superintendent Jermaine Dawson said this week the district has ensured any expansion of that program will work “alongside our calendar of school days.”

    This story was originally published at Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Onwards and upwards

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    A bigger mountain to climb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    As Robert Colville points out in The Times:

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

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

    Student transfers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Hierarchy or diversity?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  • OfS is starting to better understand the student interest

    OfS is starting to better understand the student interest

    Part of the point of having a regulator focused on students, rather than – say – a funding council or a department, was always about acting in “the student interest” rather than, say, the “provider” interest.

    But ever since HEFCE started talking about “the student interest” back when it made the Quality Assurance Agency bid to become its quality assurance agency, there’s always been a vague sense that “the student interest” is only ever really definable by reference to what it isn’t, rather than what it is.

    Can you define “a seminar”? Maybe not. Is 150 people in a room “a seminar?” Nope. And so on.

    In theory, once you know what “the student interest” actually is, you can then embed it into regulatory priority setting, regulatory design and regulatory activity.

    It’s a laudable principle, but as the idea hit reality it turned out that the sheer diversity and complementarity of student interests are not easily understood or quickly realised.

    As the Office for Students (OfS) has dealt with “monster of the week” framings of freedom of speech and grammar in assessment, a common criticism has been that student interest has been “ventriloquised” to back (sometimes questionable) ministerial priorities.

    And in areas where the body it has been using to define the student interest has gone against the views of ministers – for example on decolonisation and inclusive curricula – there appears to have been a concerning tendency to silence competing voices.

    Have students historically been able to trust OfS to advocate for their interests? It’s not entirely clear. The publication of new research into student priorities is therefore supposed to centre aspects of the authentic student voice within regulation and policy.

    Research findings

    OfS has worked with polling companies and conducted its own surveys and focus groups to gather information. Sources include:

    • Polling conducted by Savanta (1,761 students and graduates)
    • Two online focus groups conducted by YouGov
    • A YouGov online survey (750 responses) with prospective students, current students and graduates
    • An online focus group with students from small and specialist providers, arranged with the support of GuildHE
    • The Office for Students Student Panel

    Though this is a fair amount of evidence, OfS is clear that what is presented is a snapshot – the interests and priorities of students will evolve in future. The outputs from this exercise have helped to shape the recent OfS strategy – future strategic thinking would need to be shaped by more recent examples of this kind of engagement.

    The research is presented in four themes, covering student experiences and expectations, the idea of students as consumers, student interests in the long and short term, and the relationship between the student interest and the public interest.

    As presented, each section offers headline findings and key results from polling followed by a range of illustrative quotes from individual students.

    Students expect a high quality education that “reflects their financial investment and the promise that was made to them” – this includes opportunities to engage in social and extra-curricular activities. Academic and personal needs should be supported, and students also expect opportunities that will help their future careers.

    Yougov polling found that 79 per cent of undergraduates believed that university had either met or exceeded their expectations – 91 per cent felt they would end up with a credible qualification, 90 per cent felt they would leave with credible knowledge of their subject area.

    In contrast students do not feel they have received sufficient one-on-one support from staff, and have experienced disruption from the Covid-19 restrictions on activity and industrial action. More widely, the cost of living has had an impact on studies (60 per cent of students polled by Savanta agreed) – students were clear there is insufficient financial support available. And there is a persistent feeling that tuition fees are too high – 60 per cent felt their degree represented value for money.

    Specific issues have included difficulties in finding suitable and affordable accommodation, and a lack of mental health support for those who need it. Savanta polling suggested that 28 per cent of undergraduates felt contact hours had been insufficient to support their learning, 32 per cent of undergraduates had issues with the way their course has been taught, and 40 per cent said that one of the three biggest influences on their success was financial support.

    I was promised x amount of hours in person and I wasn’t able to due to strikes/Covid. Online lectures/seminars were not fruitful at all. (Male, 23, graduate, YouGov focus group)

    You can’t do anything without your health and with the stress that can come with the intense study and financial restraints of university life it is particularly important that the university supports students so they can maintain good wellbeing. (Male, 20, higher education student, YouGov focus group)

    Lots of different things can influence student interests. Cultural differences can mean some students might need varying levels of support to properly enjoy university life. Socioeconomic backgrounds for example can require that students will have an interest in needing either more financial support or the ability to balance part time work with studies.’ (Female, 23, higher education student, YouGov focus group)

    As signalled over the summer, students as a whole do not like the term “consumer”, feeling that the term implied education could be bought rather than acquired through personal effort. That said, there was an identification with the idea of “student rights” – both in terms of promises being met and access to refunds.

    And the idea of students as “investors” in their education was not viewed favourably either – students don’t consider their financial contribution as a choice, preferring to think about how they invest their time and effort.

    Students are not really given consumers rights, as seen by Covid year students who want money back. If you are given a false promise … there should be a way to complain … but [there] is not really. (Female, 18, further education student, YouGov focus group)

    It is much more difficult to complain, and essentially impossible to claim a refund. (Female, 20, higher education student, YouGov focus group)

    I have a right to get what I was expecting when I signed up for the degree… This means having teaching provision in line with what was advertised. (Female, 20, higher education student, YouGov focus group)

    There is a slight preference (60 to 40 per cent) for a provider focus on long-term rather than short-term student interests.

    By “short term”, students mean their day-to-day experiences – so stuff like academic support, progression and success, costs of living, and mental well being. “Long term” interests extend beyond graduation, revolving around career preparation and progression, skills for employment, and networking.

    I think in the short-term, academic and pastoral support with exams and coursework deadlines is most important, as well as general support with aspects of student life such as managing finances, finding accommodation etc. (Female, 20, higher education student, YouGov focus group)

    For me long-term encompasses the whole of the time I spend at university and then the years after where my degree affects my career progression etc. (Female, 23, higher education student, YouGov focus group)

    You’ll have spotted that there’s less information in these sections as we go on – the last one gives another inconclusive split – according to students, providers should focus on delivering student benefits (66 per cent) rather than public benefits (36 per cent).

    There were “a number of perceived conflicts” between student and public interest – these were “related” to tuition fees and accommodation, but we are not told what they are precisely.

    From the focus group quotes we can deduce that there is a public interest in developing graduates. The public interest may be to minimise student debt, while individual students might benefit by not paying off loans – the public might not like student accommodation blocks in city centres, while students do.

    That these hang off a mere handful of focus group quotes is frustrating and limits the usefulness of the insights. That “provider interest” is missing is also frustrating – plenty of students will argue with themselves and each other about the extent to which their personal interests can conflict with those of “the university”.

    I think a long-term interest of developing inquisitive, interested graduates who want to continue to learn about and critically analyse the world around them is an incredibly important part of a robust society. (Female, 33, higher education student, YouGov focus group)

    Student debt is a clear conflict of interest between students and the public interest. It is in the public interest to minimise student debt as a lot of it is not paid off by the students, however an individual student is benefiting by not paying off their student loans. (Female, 20, higher education student, YouGov focus group)

    Student accommodation is another example. Generally, members of the public don’t like having large student accommodation blocks built in city centres, however many students would like to live close to university and of course, in a cheaper accommodation. (Female, 20, higher education student, YouGov focus group)

    Also frustrating is the extent to which the findings seem to assume that students can’t or won’t consider their community or collective interests – understanding the extent to which, for example, student A is prepared to cross-subsidise student B’s mental health support or more expensive teaching probably matters much more than knowing who’s thinking short-term or longer-term, when surely pretty much everyone has both rattling around in their head.

    So what?

    For anyone who works with students, or has met students, none of these findings will come as a huge surprise. There are many formal and informal surveys of students and graduates, and this new research largely acts as a way of reinforcing what is already known.

    For critics, not being able to see the underpinning polling data raises all sorts of questions – like what was asked, who was asked, when were they asked it, what the differences were by characteristic or provider type, and how the results were weighted – partly because one way for a regulator to prioritise is by focussing in on those most at risk, or most unhappy, and so on.

    It’s also possible to raise an eyebrow at some of the conclusions that OfS Director for Fair Access and Participation John Blake draws from the research. When he says, for example, that he has “discovered” that students have two categories of expectation – one relating to their experiences of higher education (what studying feels like) and the other relating to what it gets them in the future – you are left thinking “well what else would they have expectations about” if not “good job the whole of your quality improvement medals scheme, a review of which involved a shed ton of research with students, also framed things in terms of experience and outcomes”.

    It’s possible to have expectations that are too high given OfS’ form, legal remit and the realities of day to day expectations. Jim often notes that while students’ unions will carry out plenty of research into “the student interest”, they’re still going to run a freshers fair, a course rep system and elect some full-time sabbatical officers in March – just as for all the research that providers do on their strategies, they pretty much all still vow to deliver excellent teaching, groundbreaking research, something something knowledge exchange and civic, and something something buildings HR and finance. For all the high blown rhetoric about change on inception, OfS is still a cruise ship not a speedboat.

    One thing that does still feel missing is not so much the recognition that diverse students have different priorities and interests – that does come out vividly in Blake’s blog – but that when you have a fixed remit and limited resources, you do have to prioritise. Add in that sometimes diverse interests are opposed, and you then have to set out how and who makes the calls, and then demonstrate that that has impacted what you do and how you do it. You do get the sense that there are passionate people in there who recognise that – but that there’s still a way to go in delivering the old “whole provider strategy” thing inside OfS.

    There’s also the partner question. Perhaps the newly souped-up interest board will get to do some of this, but if you take that two-thirds/one-thirds split on student v public interest, the point about student as partner is that they are seen both as capable of holding both thoughts in their head at once, and capable of contributing to a discussion about how you find a way through what can feel like a contradiction. It’s true on freedom of speech v freedom from harm , it’s true on “high academic standards” v “supporting students to succeed”, and true on the often contested balance between student feedback and academic authority. Education is always co-produced, even if one side is young and paying for it and the other “provides” it.

    Nevertheless, while eight years in is a bit late to be properly considering how the “student interest” is defined strategically, this is a good start. Over the coming year it says it will share further student insight based on polls and engagement that it has done – that might be on a topic with direct links back into its regulation, or something of regulatory interest to OfS but where it’s not yet planning direct regulation, or unable to act directly. The theory of change is that that sort of information can suggest areas of focus for providers (and while it doesn’t say so, for ministers) and support informed choice by students.

    If nothing else, it should allow students and their representatives to test whether the issues they’ve spoken on – on accommodation, on support, on their rights, and on value for money – will be acted on meaningfully by a regulator that is starting to realise just how important keeping promises to students is.

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  • The secret life of university applicants

    The secret life of university applicants

    In Spring 2023, 150 students from humanities and social sciences at our university stepped up to share something deeply personal -their reasons for pursuing higher education.

    Through brief, heartfelt recorded monologues, they opened a window into what university truly means to them.

    We ended up with nearly 160 pages of raw, unfiltered transcripts. Inspired by the power of verbatim theatre, where authentic dialogue bridges the gap between characters and audience, we have curated a collection of student voices.

    These firsthand accounts cut through the cliches narratives often associated with university life. Instead, they reveal the real stories, struggles, and aspirations driving students forward in today’s complex world of higher education. This is their voice, their truth, shared directly with you.

    Going to university was the scariest and the best thing

    From “screaming at the back of the car” and “crying tears of joy” to “relief” and “apprehension”, we got a glimpse into the rollercoaster of emotions students felt when they got their university acceptance letters.

    For most, it was the first big decision of their adult lives, and it was not an easy one. One student said:

    …going to university was the scariest and the best thing, the best decision, that I’ve made so far in my 19 years of existence.

    Another felt the decision to enter higher education was made:

    …not with trepidation as a reasonable person [but] with courage and self-assuredness that only ignorance and youth can bestow in such abundance.

    Dealing with such conflicting emotions is rarely simple. So, it is not a surprise that some of the surveyed students thought about dropping out, especially in their first year. They found their degrees “boring” or “very difficult” or wondered “was the amount of work something I was prepared for?”

    I’d rather pursue a passion… than end up working a job

    A recurring thread in many students’ reflections during this study was the dilemma between entering the workforce immediately or pursuing higher education. No doubt pursuing higher education is largely viewed as the “only option towards a better paying career” and a “comfortable job without a lot of physical demands”.

    While some of them questioned whether university “is worth all the debt”, most agreed that the skills acquired through higher education are crucial for getting “further in life” and earning “more than the minimum wage”.

    But their testimonies revealed other considerations that go beyond material gains and jobs prospects.

    In our survey, students made it loud and clear – it is also about the love and passion for what they do. “Studying what I truly love”, “something I’d enjoy studying every single day of my life”, and chasing that “passion and interest to grow as a person” often took priority, leaving material gains or “just getting into a certain job” in the background.

    Just working a job for working sake didn’t feel like a good use of my time.

    Students, while contemplating their future, felt that:

    …university does feel like a good safety net to hop into… [the] perfect avenue to give myself more options to explore different careers.

    We also saw several students entering higher education determined to “dig, dig, dig [to find out their] passions”.

    More than rankings

    For some students, university felt like a “clear, logical” move toward their career goals. For others, it was more than a decision – they felt it was “compulsory” or even a personal “duty”.

    There were also students who approached their university pursuits with less conviction.

    I didn’t have anything else to do, so I ended up going to university.

    I was not ready for the 9 to 5 life.

    When else in my life would I be able to just decide to move away [from home] and receive funding from the government to help me?

    Some expected higher education to create for them “a pathway towards finding some meaning in my life”. Others choose their university because its name was the same “as my great grandmother’s”.

    As we see when it comes to university studies, students bring a whole mix of ambitions to the table. So, it is no surprise that choosing a subject or a university is a deeply personal issue influenced by several factors.

    Among these, university rankings often emerged as a decisive factor. Many students associated high rankings with better career prospects, with one stating:

    …it is a lot more important where the university stands in ranking over what degree you’re doing.

    Another shared:

    I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I hadn’t at least tried [to enter an Oxbridge institution]

    …highlighting the importance for them of the prestige tied to certain universities. This sentiment was echoed by another student who observed:

    …people were looked down on if they didn’t apply to Oxford and Cambridge.

    However, it is worth noting that some students in our sample cautioned against making decisions based solely on rankings. They acknowledged that prioritising rankings over programme suitability can lead to dissatisfaction.

    I realised that I can’t force myself to like a subject or excel in a subject that I don’t enjoy.

    …one student reflected, emphasising the importance of choosing a programme aligned with personal interests and strengths. Others recognised that decisions “purely because of rankings,” without considering the nature of the programme, may result in regret, as students risk enrolling in courses they ultimately dislike.

    Reading through the transcripts, it became clear that students do not make their choices in a vacuum. Instead, they are influenced by a network of factors, including family, friends, mentors, and the vast array of information available online. These influences collectively shape the way students see their future and guide their decisions.

    Family, as expected, is a primary source of influence and will be discussed in detail in a separate section. Friends, however, also play a significant role. As one student shared:

    …it feels like you are doing something big with your friends [from which you] didn’t want to be left out.

    Mentors were another important factor. One student explained:

    …before coming to university, I spoke to people who were in the positions that I wanted to be in,”

    …highlighting the impact of role models on their decisions. Additionally, many students turned to platforms like YouTube for guidance. One student described their process, saying:

    I watched so many videos… YouTube videos on people’s experiences in different towns from Manchester to London to Liverpool, to Bristol to Birmingham.

    This underscores the significant role of online content in shaping their choices.

    Surveyed students also highlighted factors such as facilities, location and the associated lifestyle as significant influences on their university decisions. One student remarked that it was more important studying in London than having a good university ranking.

    Since all students surveyed for this project were studying at a London institution, their comments frequently referenced the “dynamic lifestyle” of London, described as “the place to be” where “everything is happening”.

    For many, being in London was about more than academics. It was about the opportunity to “see new things […] and explore different cultures”, “take part in so many events”, live in a place which is “buzzing 24/7” where they can “randomly, spontaneously […] see Wicked”, reflecting the unique cultural vibrancy that London offers.

    Prospective students were looking for everything that matters to them, and this highlights the importance of providing students with proper guidance to navigate wisely the labyrinth of educational choices.

    Several students commented on the importance of universities’ open days. Initially perceived as an “excuse to have a day off school”, one student recounted that it was during an open day that university became a “real option” for them.

    Surveyed students express enthusiasm for these events, describing them as the “first actual experience” and an opportunity to “envision my new life”. During these visits, they engaged with current students and staff, feeling “the passion within the department”.

    More importantly, they feel heard. As one student remarked:

    [I got the opportunity] to talk about things that interested me with someone that was interested in hearing my perspective.

    University has given me the space to explore who I am as a person.

    To these students, university was the bridge to adulthood. It was for them the place to find “freedom” and “independence” – two words frequently encountered in the transcripts of their recordings.

    They leave home with some apprehension, that is true, but they embrace it. And they “love that element of university”, are “really excited for the independence that university promised”, and “do not regret it”. Many viewed university as the opportunity to “learn how to live life without living with your parents”. It is striking to see so many young people eager to learn

    …important life skills such as cooking, cleaning, and shopping.

    University has given me the space to explore who I am as a person.

    Expressions such as “get out of my shell”, “without hiding in the closet”, and “without feeling scrutinised by my parents” frequently appeared in the monologues. Moving away to study at university provided a unique opportunity to embrace independence.

    As one student put it, university offered the chance to “do what I wanted to do, how I wanted to do it, exactly when I wanted to do it”. Several of the students in this study deliberately chose universities far from home, often making these decisions “without telling my parents”.

    For the young individuals in this study, university is seen as more than just an academic journey. It represents a transformative space for personal growth. It is described as a place to “grow as a person in terms of independence, but also experiences”.

    Students also view university as a setting that provides the “freedom and encouragement to be myself, fully and unapologetically, both personally, professionally, and creatively”.

    You have to go to university… it’s what we expect you to do

    While friends, mentors, and lifestyle factors shape many aspects of students’ choices, family remains a key part of the narrative. From these monologues, we see its role as both inspiring and constraining.

    Constraining in that students appear to enter higher education out of guilt or obligation to their families.

    One student mentioned pursuing higher education studies due to “the cultural aspect and expectation within my family”, another to make “the family proud and happy despite not sharing the sentiment”, and another simply because it is “what my family wanted me to do anyway, so… I just end up doing it”.

    The desire to enter higher education was coerced by a feeling that otherwise they would have “wasted everything that my parents have done for me”, and “disappoint them”, and that “would have been the worst thing”.

    Prior academic attainment of family members was also sometimes perceived as limiting students’ choices. In terms of degree choice, students mentioned that families with a background in certain fields “wouldn’t agree with me exploring [other] degrees” and “I feel like my parents just don’t understand that there are opportunities outside of this field”.

    Other students whose families had completed higher education claimed that their decision to join university was so that they would not be the “odd one out” or to prove that ”they are not dumb”, and that their intellectual ability reflects “somehow that of my family’s or my post-code’s”.

    My mum always wanted me to have a lot more. More choice in my life and so university really allows me that.”

    Family can also serve as a source of power and inspiration, fueling students’ academic journeys. Many said their family’s academic achievements and backgrounds inspired them to join university and choose specific subjects.

    One student cited the “admiration” for their grandfather’s life and job as “primarily the reason” to choose their subject. Another passionately spoke of wanting to “follow my parents’ first steps”. Another enthusiastically praised their parent’s commitment “to spend whatever they have saved in their lives to afford what they think is important” for their children.

    It was been fascinating to see what university meant for students whose family did not attend university. To them university was the opportunity to “take advantage of opportunities many of the members of my family didn’t have”, as “it was just seen as something unattainable for us of this economic class, race and learning difficulties”.

    The dialogues shared within families hold immense power. In these intimate moments, life altering decisions often take shape. A student recalled their mother’s wisdom:

    …university is not just about getting that qualification […] It’s personal worth. And once you have that education, no one can take it away from you.

    Another reflected on the life-story of their mother, her unfinished studies, and the aspirations that span generations:

    Oh child, you know when you graduate, it’s going to be like I’m graduating as well […] which I guess is true because the amount of support that I had from my mum and my family has been like insane.

    I can go to university so I can get one step closer to my dreams.

    For some of the students surveyed, university was more than a path to knowledge – it was a journey for recognition, a way to overcome societal barriers, and to “fulfil [their] dreams in life”.

    One student said their studies will help them reach “the standing in society” they think they deserve, and will allow them “to be taken more seriously”. A student with a disability told us it is a means to “overcome low expectations that people in the society have for people like me”.

    For this student, it is their “liberation mechanism” to “escape the oppression that I felt I was facing and move my life towards a more success-oriented trajectory”.

    In their testimonies, students expressed dreams of becoming Supreme Court judges, CEOs, working in politics or international organisations. They acknowledged that without university education, as one student said,

    …I just didn’t have the confidence to dream big

    …I do feel proud when I say hey, I’m a [. . . ] student. It’s kind of nice when people are like, wow!

    Reading the transcripts felt like tuning into the unfiltered thoughts of students standing at the crossroads of their academic and professional lives. Their stories form a vivid tapestry of dreams, ambitions, and doubts about joining university each one unique, each one unfiltered.

    Our aim was not to evaluate their motivations or rank the importance of the influences they shared with us. Instead, we gave space for their voices to be heard. Because listening to these stories matters.

    It reveals the beautiful complexity behind their decisions and helps us understand them better. And perhaps, it will inspire us to create a learning environment that truly supports them, one that meets them where they are and helps them get where they are going.

    We would like to thank Lyubomir Vasilev for valuable research assistance and helpful comments and discussion. Financial support for this project was provided by the Queen Mary University of London’s Westfield Fund for Enhancing the Student Experience. Authors: Dr. Emmanouil Noikokyris, Reader in Economics and Finance Education, School of Economics and Finance, Queen Mary University of London; Emanuela Nova, Strategic Project Manager, School of Economics and Finance, Queen Mary University of London

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  • Counslr Launches in New Mexico and Illinois; Expands Footprint in New York to Increase Access to Mental Health Support

    Counslr Launches in New Mexico and Illinois; Expands Footprint in New York to Increase Access to Mental Health Support

    NEW YORK, NY – Counslr, a leading B2B mental health and wellness platform, announced today that it has expanded its footprint into the State of New Mexico starting with a partnership with Vista Nueva High School, Aztec, NM; and into the State of Illinois starting with a partnership with Big Hollow School District, Ingleside, IL. These initial partnerships will empower students and staff to prioritize their mental health by enabling them to access unlimited wellness resources and live texting sessions with Counslr’s licensed and vetted mental health support professionals, who are available on-demand, 24/7/365. By increasing accessibility to Counslr’s round-the-clock support, Vista Nueva and Big Hollow aim to bridge gaps in mental health support for students and staff, enabling those who previously did not or could not access care, whether due to cost, inconvenience, or stigma, to receive the support they desire.

    1 in 6 youth suffer from a mental illness, but the majority do not receive mental health support due to substantial obstacles to care. Additionally, mental health is even a bigger challenge in rural America due to unique barriers, including fewer providers resulting in longer wait times or insufficient access to crucial mental health services. This resource scarcity underscores the urgency for additional resources and innovative solutions to bridge this critical gap in mental health care for school communities.

    “We are happy to be able to offer students another tool that they can use to support their mental well-being. Knowing that students have been able to speak with a professional outside of school hours helps us know this app was needed and is useful,” states Rebekah Deane, Professional School Counselor, Vista Nueva High School. “We hope this tool also assists students in learning how to navigate systems so that when they graduate high school they know these options exist and they can continue to seek out support when necessary.”

    As factors such as academic pressures, social media influence, burnout and world events contribute to heightened stress levels and mental health challenges, schools throughout the country are recognizing the growing need to offer more accessible resources and preventative mental health services to both students and staff.

    “Counslr provides an extremely easy-to-access platform for those who otherwise may not seek the help they need, and we are very excited to join Counslr in this partnership. We are all very well aware of the impact that technology has had on the mental health of our students and we feel that Counslr can meet our students in a setting they are comfortable with,” states Bob Gold, Big Hollow School District Superintendent. “Outside of our students, we are thrilled to be able to offer this service to the amazing adults who work with our students every day. There are so many families dealing with some sort of trauma, and the life of an educator is no different.  These adults tend to give so much of themselves to their students, so we strongly feel that our efforts here to join with Counslr is our way of providing an opportunity for our educators to focus on their own mental health.”

    In addition to the geographic expansion,Counslr has also expanded its existing footprint in states like New York, most recently partnering with the Silver Creek Central School District to support its students and staff.  

    “We know mental health needs are on the rise, for students and adults.  To me, Counslr is a resource our students and staff both deserve,” states Dr. Katie Ralston, Superintendent, Silver Creek Central. “In the beginning stages at Silver Creek Central, it has proven to be an asset, as it offers access to everyone on the spot, any day, for any situation.”

    “Supporting diverse populations of students and faculty across the country clearly illustrates that mental health knows no boundaries,” said Josh Liss, Counslr CEO. Adding that, “With 86% of Counslr’s users being first-time care seekers, we strive to reach these silent sufferers who need help, but do not or cannot access it, no matter where they are located.”

    ABOUT COUNSLR

    Counslr is a text-based mental health support application that provides unlimited access to robust wellness resources and live texting sessions with licensed professionals, 24/7/365. Users can access support on-demand within two minutes of opening the app, or by scheduled appointment. Through real-time texting, users enjoy one-on-one, private communication with a licensed counselor that can be conducted anytime, anywhere. Counslr was designed to help individuals deal with life’s day-to-day issues, empowering individuals to address concerns while they are “small” to help ensure that they stay “small”. Counslr partners with organizations of all shapes and sizes (companies, unions, nonprofits, universities/colleges, high schools, etc) so that these entities can provide Counslr’s services to their employees/members/students at no direct cost. For more information, please visit www.counslr.com.

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  • Fun with Participation Rate Data

    Fun with Participation Rate Data

    Just a quick one today, mostly charts.

    Back in the fall, StatsCan released a mess of data from the Labour Force Survey looking at education participation rates—that is, the percentage of any given age cohort that is attending education—over the past 25 years. So, let’s go see what it says.

    Figure 1 shows total education participation rates, across all levels of education, from age 15 to 29, for selected years over the past quarter century. At the two ends of the graph, the numbers look pretty similar. At age 15, we’ve always had 95%+ of our population enrolled in school (almost exclusively secondary education, and from age 26 and above, we’ve always been in the low-tweens or high single digits. The falling-off in participation is fairly steady: for every age-year above 17, about 10% of the population exits education up until the age of 26. The big increase in education enrolments that we’ve seen over the past couple of decades has really occurred in the 18-24 range, where participation rates (almost exclusively in universities, as we shall see) have increased enormously.

    Figure 1: Participation rates in Education (all institutions) by Age, Canada, select years 1999-00 to 2023-24

    Figure 2 shows current participation rates by age and type of postsecondary institution. People sometimes have the impression that colleges cater to an “older” clientele, but in fact, at any given age under 30, Canadians are much more likely to be enrolled in universities than in colleges. Colleges have a very high base in the teens because of the way the CEGEP system works in Quebec (I’ll come back to regional diversity in a minute), and it is certainly true that there is a very wide gap in favour of universities among Canadians in their mid-20s. But while the part rate gap narrows substantially at about age 25, it is never the case that the college participation rate surpasses the university one.

    Figure 2: Participation Rates by Age and Institution Type, Canada, 2023-24

    Figure 3 shows college participation rates by age over time. What you should take from this is that there has been a slight decline in college participation rates over time in the 19-23 age range, but beyond that not much has changed.

    Figure 3: College Participation Rates by Age, Selected Years, 1999-2000 to 2023-24

    Figure 4 uses the same lens as figure 3 only for universities. And it’s about as different as it can be. In 1999, fewer than one in ten Canadians aged 18 was in university: now it is three in ten. In 1999, only one in four 21 year-olds was in university, now it is four-in-ten. These aren’t purely the effects of increased demand; the elimination of grade 13 in Ontario had a lot to do with the changes for 18-year-olds; Alberta and British Columbia converting a number of their institutions from colleges to universities in the late 00s probably juices these numbers a bit, too. But on the whole, what we’ve seen is a significant increase in the rate at which young people are choosing to attend universities between the ages of 18 and 24. However, beyond those ages the growth is less pronounced. There was certainly growth in older student participation rates between 1999-00 and 20011-12, but since then none at all.

    Figure 4: University Participation Rates by Age, Selected Years, 1999-2000 to 2023-24

    So much for the national numbers: what’s going on at the provincial level? Well, because this is the Labour Force Survey, which unlike administrative data has sample size issues, we can’t quite get the same level of granularity of information. We can’t look at individual ages, but we can see age-ranges, in this case ages 20-24. In figures 5 and 6 (I broke them up so they are a bit easier to read), I show how each province’s university and college participation rates in 2000 vs. 2023.

    Figure 5: University Participation Rates for 20-24 Year-olds, Four Largest Provinces, 2000-01 vs. 2023-24

    Figure 6: University Participation Rates for 20-24 Year-olds, Six Remaining Provinces, 2000-01 vs. 2023-24

    Some key facts emerge from these two graphs:

    • The highest participation rates in the country are in Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia.
    • In all provinces, the participation rate in universities is higher than it is for colleges, ranging from 2.5x in Quebec for over 4x in Saskatchewan.
    • Over the past quarter century, overall postsecondary participation rates and university participation rates have gone up in all provinces; Alberta and British Columbia alone have seen a decline in college participation rates, due to the aforementioned decision to convert certain colleges to university status in the 00s.
    • Growth in participation rates since 2000 has been universal but has been more significant in the country’s four largest provinces, where the average gain has been nine percentage points, and the country’s six smaller provinces, where the gain has been just under five percent.
    • Over twenty-five years, British Columbia has gone from ninth to second in the country in terms of university participation rates, while Nova Scotia has gone second to ninth.
    • New Brunswick has consistently been in last place for overall participation rates for the entire century.

    Just think: three minutes ago, you probably knew very little about participation rates in Canada by age and geography, now you know almost everything there is to know about participation rates in Canada by age and geography. Is this a great way to start your day or what?

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