Category: Students

  • Born on Third Base | HESA

    Born on Third Base | HESA

    Cast your minds back to January of 2024, when the federal government suddenly decided that housing was an issue, international students were the problem and implemented a complicated and irritating-to-implement set of caps that were 35% lower nationally than for 2023 (and in Ontario significantly more than that). Then, in 2025 came another set of changes including a 10% cut in the national limit. And then, on top of that, a set of new conditions on post-graduate work visas were imposed which were specifically designed to depress demand for certain types of education.

    To the extent that the world outside post-secondary education absorbed this news and didn’t dismiss it outright because Ontario colleges in particular “deserved it” for pouring gasoline onto a housing shortage bonfire, the reaction to all this was: “boy, losing nearly half your international students is really going to lead to a financial pinch”. But this reaction was wrong in two ways. First, that 50-percent was an average – in most cases, institutions either saw drops that were either significantly higher or significantly lower than that. Partly, this was because the federal government designed the cap drop to hit provinces unequally (Ontario to the max and Quebec not at all, for instance) and part of it had to do with the fact that some provinces distributed the cap hit in some peculiar ways (see back here for an earlier blog on this).

    But second, and most importantly, not many institutions actually even met these significantly-lowered quotas. Talk to folks in institutions these days and they will tell you that it’s not that the caps are too low, but that demand for Canadian post-secondary has simply dried up: no one wants to come to Canada anymore. I believe this. Former Immigration Minister Marc Miller did a serious number on the reputation of Canada’s post-secondary. If you go around accusing institutions of fraud and deceit and imposing clampdowns on student visas (it wasn’t just the caps – visa processing times are up and visa refusal rates are rising too), foreign students might get the idea that the country doesn’t want them, and so they never apply in the first place. I am sure Marc Miller would deny ever wanting to dry up demand, but it is exactly what his ham-fisted, Attila-the-Hun in a China shop approach to student visas managed to achieve.

    (And still, so many bien-pensant people think Liberals are the good guys on higher education. Or think more federal involvement in the higher education file would be a good thing. God Save Us All.)

    Anyways, as a result of this, universities and colleges are in a funk and wondering if and when international students will come back and (partially) save their bacon, financially speaking. But what is shocking, to me at least, is how unbelievably passive the sector is. They are waiting for students to come. Just waiting. ‘Why don’t they come?’ people ask. ‘It’s that darn Marc Miller! Nothing we can do about it’.

    You see the problem with the international student industry in Canada is that institutions themselves never grew an overseas recruitment game the way UK and Australian institutions did. By the time Canadian institutions started thinking about the whole international-students-as-revenue thing, the feds had already created the student-to-permanent immigration pathway via our post-graduate work visas and the like. And then, when things got hotter, aggregators like ApplyBoard came along and made it so easy to attract students that a lot of Canadian institutions just never upped their ground game on student recruitment.

    You see, despite Canadian institutions’ tendency to congratulate themselves on their “international outlook” and their ability to attract international students, very few of them ever bothered to go deep either on recruitment tactics (spending time abroad, juicing the recruitment pipeline) or on paying attention to the international student experience on campus. Some did, of course, but I can count the number who would be considered on par with the top institutions in the anglosphere on one hand.

    When it comes to internationalization, Canada is the kid who was born on third base and thinks they hit a triple. So many unearned advantages. And so, when Attila-the-Minister came along and took away most of those unearned advantages, people did not know what to do. The simple answer – UP YOUR GROUND GAME IN A FEW KEY TARGET MARKETS FOR GOD’S SAKE – seems not to have been considered very widely.

    I suspect one of the reasons for this is a deeply unsexy one: internal funding formulas for non-academic units. You see, under the enshittification model that is widely prevalent in Canadian institutions (more so in universities than colleges, but the latter aren’t immune from it), when a budget crunch happens, everyone needs to cut back. And so, international units, far from being given more money to go fight for students in overseas markets, sometimes have to scale back their activities (or at least not increase them as they should). The idea that it takes money to make money does not fit easily with a budget model that bases this year’s budget on what you got last year plus or minus a percentage point or two.

    This is bananas, of course. Self-destructive, even. But even if you gave international offices more money, they wouldn’t necessarily know how to spend it. The born-on-third-base thing meant we never needed to fight that hard for international students – they just kind of showed up. The situation Canadian institutions are in right now requires a lot more bodies on the ground overseas, understanding individual city markets, developing relationships with schools and agents, and attending more fairs, in more cities and more countries. This is how Australia and the UK developed their international markets. We managed to skip a lot of that in the ‘10s. We are going to have to learn it now.

    The shock, pain and impact of both the visa caps and Marc Miller setting fire to the country’s reputation are all real. Never forgive, never forget (but also: never again wish for the federal government to be more active in post-secondary education). But institutions are not without agency here. My feeling is that in too many cases they are just throwing up their hands, either because they prefer not to spend on recruitment or are insufficiently skilled at doing so in the absence of a cuddly national image or an absurdly favorable visa system.  

    You want markets? Invest in them. Fight for them. If Canadian post-secondary education is as good as everyone claims it is, students will come. Passiveness helps no one.

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  • Europe’s cautionary merger tales through student eyes

    Europe’s cautionary merger tales through student eyes

    I can’t be the only person who, on reading the press releases, was confused about what Kent and Greenwich are actually planning.

    The releases call it a “trailblazing” collaboration that will “bring both institutions under one structure” – with one unified governing body, academic board and executive team, and one vice chancellor.

    At the same time, students will continue to apply to, study at and graduate from their chosen university, and Kent’s FAQ reassures that “nothing will change for the foreseeable future” and that the “day-to-day experience will remain the same.”

    So which is it – one provider with two brands, or two universities with some shared services? And will change be felt on the ground, or just in the cloud?

    The messaging is a masterclass in cakeism – implying all the efficiency benefits of merger with none of the disruption costs, all the scale advantages of integration with none of the identity losses, and all the governance streamlining of unification with none of the democratic deficits.

    Maybe the most positive spin possible is inevitable when at least one of the partners is in financial strife.

    But the apparent contradictions matter – because while a “single spine, shared standards, separate shopfronts” model may be novel in UK terms, it’s one of many hybrid approaches that plenty of European universities have been experimenting with for over a decade.

    Frustratingly, there’s never been much research that might help us learn lessons from the seemingly constant process of group consolidation and (sometimes quasi-)merger in UK further education since incorporation in the 1990s.

    There’s not even been much analysis on the reshaping of Welsh HE in the last decade following then Welsh Education Minister Leighton Andrews’ “urge to merge” – at least not that’s focussed on the upsides or otherwise for students.

    But on the wider continent, the last two decades have witnessed what Pedro Teixeira from the University of Porto describes as a “surge” in university mergers – close to 130 cases since 2000, according to the European University Association’s comprehensive merger tool.

    Many of these have involved the kind of complex institutional arrangements Kent and Greenwich seem to be proposing – shared governance with retained identities, unified back-office functions with separate student-facing brands, promises of continuity alongside fundamental structural change.

    For all the grand pronouncements about “trailblazing models” and “world-class institutions”, the European experience repeatedly tells a more mundane story – one where student consultation means performative surveys that don’t produce policy changes, where staff meetings devolve into ideological standoffs over academic direction, and where promised synergies dissolve into territorial disputes between competing institutional cultures and administrative hierarchies.

    So the good news is that Kent-Greenwich, and all the others that may follow, can potentially learn from them all.

    Et s’il fallait le faire

    What happens when political ambition meets student reality? France’s merger programme (2009-2020) aimed to create globally competitive “super-universities” capable of challenging MIT and Stanford. The result was students describing a “loss of soul” during extended integration periods.

    The University of Paris-Saclay (2018-2020) – Emmanuel Macron’s flagship answer to MIT – united 19 institutions covering 15 per cent of France’s research output. Students at UVSQ linked their opposition to wider concerns about precarity and democracy.

    Student organiser Tristan Peglion argued that the university’s board should be “on the side of students rather than international rankings,” while protesters complained that “things aren’t clear.” Even the French National Assembly acknowledged that student consultation was “far from smooth”.

    Students experienced administrative confusion creating parallel systems that operated simultaneously for years, while the emphasis on research excellence meant undergraduate teaching quality became secondary to international profile development.

    And at Aix-Marseille University (2012), students faced tougher academic rules as the university standardised policies by adopting the most restrictive options from across departments, while student support services were cut through mergers and downsizing.

    The HCERES (Council for the Evaluation of Research and Higher Education) assessments systematically documented that undergraduate student experience deteriorated while research infrastructure received priority investment.

    When institutional transformation prioritises external prestige over internal community welfare, it looks like students pay the price – through reduced support, increased confusion, and weakened engagement and participation.

    Hard rock hallelujah

    Even the celebrated success stories leave students struggling with fragmentation and volatility. Finland’s Aalto University (2010) is probably the country’s most celebrated merger, backed by substantial government funding and political commitment.

    But students experienced years of uncertainty about curriculum changes, administrative confusion as three different systems were gradually integrated, and campus integration challenges.

    After more than a decade, student satisfaction remained volatile throughout integration, and cultural integration remained incomplete years after formal merger.

    The University of Tampere merger (2019) offers up some more recent evidence. Students described a sense of institutional disconnection during the process, more administrative confusion with parallel systems operating simultaneously, and faced inconsistent treatment between students from different legacy institutions.

    The University of Eastern Finland suggests that mergers can create:

    …a site of contestation where different organisational identities, values and histories collided, leaving the new university struggling to define itself.

    The Finnish experience contains some uncomfortable truths – merger benefits are not automatic, cultural integration can’t be forced through administrative restructuring, and student experience can suffer for years during transition periods.

    If the Finns – with their additional funding, careful planning, and institutional commitment – struggled with these challenges, what does that suggest for UK mergers driven by financial pressures?

    Like a satellite

    If you were planning a merger, you’d want to avoid students being left orbiting inefficiently around duplicated services, never quite connecting.

    The creation of the University of Duisburg-Essen tells a story of efficiency-focused consolidation that can create persistent practical problems for students. Rather than streamlined admin, the merger created duplicated services requiring constant coordination between sites.

    Student support services, IT help desks, and academic administration operated in parallel, creating confusion about procedures and reducing overall responsiveness. Academic staff spent significant time travelling between campuses, reducing their availability for tutorials, office hours, and research supervision.

    Students studying identical programmes experienced different levels of access to laboratories, specialist software, and research equipment depending on their campus location. Library resources and study spaces required duplication, straining budgets and reducing overall provision quality.

    Graduate employment suffered from employer confusion about degree equivalence and institutional reputation, while professional accreditation processes became more complex across multiple sites. And twenty years later, student satisfaction consistently remains below sector averages – while admin costs exceed initial projections.

    It seems that efficiency-focused consolidation often creates complexity rather than simplification, with students bearing the cost through reduced support and service quality.

    Fly on the wings of love

    Let’s try to avoid students becoming casualties of administrative chaos when comprehensive reform creates systematic disruption.

    Denmark’s 2007 reforms reduced 12 universities to 8 while simultaneously integrating government research institutes. The scale and speed created chaos in student-facing services that persisted for years.

    Multiple exam registration systems operated simultaneously, while student records and transcripts became scattered across different databases. Online learning platforms remained inconsistent between campuses and faculties, with digital resource access unreliable. Students faced years of uncertainty about academic regulations, with different rules on extensions and appeals persisting in parallel.

    After an initial period, students were forced to travel between campuses for different programme elements, with accommodation and living costs increasing given housing market disruption.

    Especially concerning was the marginalisation of student voice during implementation. Student representative structures were disrupted by constant organisational change, while administrative focus on merger implementation diverted attention from student concerns.

    General assurances about “no student disadvantage” proved meaningless in practice.

    This comprehensive, rapid merger programme created problems too complex for institutional management to handle effectively – and often, students became casualties of administrative chaos.

    We were the rock ‘n’ roll kids

    Federal structures often promise innovation – but if you’re not careful, can also reproduce old hierarchies and inequality.

    New Technological Universities (TUs) in Ireland are higher education institutions formed by the merging Institutes of Technology under the Technological Universities Act 2018. TUs were established to strengthen Ireland’s higher education sector, address regional disparities, and improve alignment with social and economic needs.

    TU Dublin’s experience merging three institutions initially appeared promising, with campus-level autonomy preserved while creating unified strategic direction. But Quality and Qualifications Ireland reviews document persistent inequalities between campuses.

    Timetabling systems remained inconsistent and student support services varied significantly across different sites. Professional placement coordination remained uneven between programmes, while staff expertise distribution being uneven across campuses affected programme quality and academic support availability.

    Student representation structures needed a complete redesign for multi-campus operation, and campus-level student voice was weakened by centralisation pressures. The students’ union faced particular challenges coordinating activity across geographic separation – with representation structures favouring larger campuses through practical accessibility advantages.

    Despite regulatory oversight emphasising student equality and equivalence, resource allocation formulas continued favouring established campuses, and services remained inconsistent between sites. Transport and accessibility issues also created lasting barriers for some student populations.

    It looks like federal governance models can work – but require sustained attention to equality and democratic participation. And explicit equivalence commitments clearly need robust monitoring arrangements to prevent campus hierarchies from emerging.

    J’entends la voix

    Geography can silence the voice that should be heard. Nordic merger experiences in recent decades suggest that geographic dispersion can exclude students on peripheral campuses from institutional decision-making and identity formation.

    In Norway’s 00s and 10s mergers, students on rural and smaller campuses consistently felt excluded, with geographic barriers creating social and academic isolation, while cultural differences became marginalised by “urban-dominated” institutional culture.

    Student participation suffered through geographic barriers limiting effective participation in democratic structures. Travel funding proved inadequate for equal representation across all sites, and administrative complexity overwhelmed student representative capacity.

    Meanwhile in Sweden, students on peripheral campuses faced systematic disadvantage unless specific measures addressed transport, accommodation, and coordination costs. The research suggests that merger processes accidentally recreated “colonial” relationships between central and peripheral locations.

    Research concluded that when mergers are implemented to achieve political or financial rather than educational goals, student welfare can become secondary to policy success metrics, with rapid integration timelines preventing the gradual relationship building that’s necessary for successful multi-campus cooperation.

    It looks like geographic integration requires explicit investment in coordination infrastructure – and can’t rely on efficiency assumptions that may prove false in practice.

    Sanomi

    When institutions can’t speak the same language, students can pay the price through communication breakdown.

    The University of Antwerp’s three-institution merger in the late 2010s required efficiency-focused implementation that affected student support services, with different institutional cultures requiring extended integration periods. Students experienced particular difficulties during the harmonisation of academic regulations, which created all sorts of inconsistencies in assessment and progression requirements.

    And in Lisbon in 2013, the University of Lisbon (ULisboa) was formed through the merger of two institutions – the original University of Lisbon and the Technical University of Lisbon (Universidade Técnica de Lisboa). The unification combined their academic resources, faculties, and research centers to create a single, larger university under the name ULisboa.

    University records and official notices show a prolonged drive to integrate legacy academic IT platforms – culminating in a project to implement a single system across the institution – and a staggered programme of regulation updates across schools. For a time, undergraduates encountered baffling parallel systems and non-uniform rules while harmonisation proceeded.

    Success clearly requires sustained attention to student experience throughout extended integration periods – rather than assuming that formal merger completion resolves underlying tensions all on its own.

    Come on, everybody, let’s sing along

    Tallinn University’s integration of over ten institutions through multiple phases over an extended timeline created constant uncertainty for students, with academic programme rationalisation affecting diverse disciplines over many years.

    Students experienced academic regulations that remained inconsistent across different institutional components, creating confusion about progression requirements and appeal procedures. Support services varied significantly in quality and accessibility between legacy units, with standardisation efforts often reducing rather than enhancing service levels. Nobody signs up for “levelling down”.

    It looks like extended merger processes can create prolonged uncertainty that undermines student experience and institutional effectiveness. Ongoing organisational change can prevent participation structures from stabilising, and reduces student capacity for effective advocacy and representation.

    Students can, in other words, become casualties of perpetual transition – with normal institutional development suspended during extended integration periods. Extended uncertainty seems to serve neither student interests nor institutional development – and ongoing change can prevent effective quality assurance and democratic accountability from functioning properly.

    Nothing about us without us

    So what does all this European evidence mean for Kent and Greenwich students, and anyone else in the coming months and years facing their own institutional transformation?

    The fundamental test of merged institutions’ democratic credentials lies not in reassuring rhetoric about consultation, “retention” of existing experiences, or “improvements” to the student experience, but in a willingness to resource meaningful student participation – involvement in decisions that will reshape the student experience for tens of thousands of people.

    European evidence demonstrates repeatedly that mergers done “to” students rather than “with” them establish patterns of institutional authoritarianism that persist long after the initial transformation. When student voices are marginalised during merger negotiations – dismissed as lacking technical expertise or operating on inappropriate timescales – the resulting institutions embed democratic deficits from their foundation.

    Much of merger planning is indeed complex, often presented as confidential and beyond student representative capacity. But that framing is itself political.

    The instinct to exclude students reflects familiar institutional prejudices – “they won’t be around long enough to engage as genuine partners,” “they’re not sophisticated enough to understand complex governance,” “they can’t be trusted with confidential information.” Each assumption reveals more about institutional mindset than the actual capacity of student representatives or their organisations.

    Students at Aalto University required years of advocacy – including formal complaints to Finland’s Chancellor of Justice – to secure basic language rights that should have been protected from the outset. In other examples, the failure wasn’t procedural but practical – student representatives were denied information and resources to engage meaningfully with complex negotiations.

    To learn the lessons in any future mergers in the UK, universities should establish dedicated funding to support enhanced SU capacity during transition – enabling SUs to gather and synthesise student input effectively. More importantly, SUs need actual power – not consultative status – on all merger-related governance bodies, with access to documentation and independent legal advice.

    Students will inevitably demand that all policies, services, and facilities be “levelled up” to the highest standard of either institution rather than harmonised to a convenient middle ground. It’ll be wise to factor that in early – enabling honest and early conversations about what will be standardised, what will be bespoked, when, and why.

    Regulators will need to both play, and be seen to play, an active role in student protection. In England, students “getting what they were promised” is both something it knows students are concerned about, but something it consistently appears to sideline at the altar of institutional survival. That will need to change.

    For student representation itself, there’s three obvious structural options. One approach would dissolve existing SUs to create an entirely new organisation. Another would preserve existing identities while creating coordination mechanisms. The conservative option would be to sustain separate SUs with coordination only on shared concerns.

    But in many ways, none of these structural options adequately addresses the real problem – which goes wider than the SUs themselves.

    These are the heroes of our time

    All the evidence from our study tours in Europe suggests that successful student communities depend on small-scale structures that build belonging and peer support – precisely what institutional merger threatens to destroy.

    Even in the largest universities on the continent, good systems consistently implement shallow ends – where students are organised into associative school or faculty structures that are capable of taking peer-responsibility for aspects of the student experience.

    In some ways, it’s the fundamental contradiction of mega-mergers – and of massified higher education more broadly. Institutions grow ever larger in pursuit of efficiency and status, while students and their staff require ever smaller communities to thrive academically and socially.

    Whatever SU structure emerges will need to embed small-scale structures within whatever governance arrangements are necessary for institutional advocacy.

    The tone set during merger will likely echo through decades of institutional culture. European failures teach us that consultation without power becomes performance, and performance without genuine partnership breeds cynicism. In other words, invest in democratic participation now, or explain democratic exclusion later.

    But as well as that, successful participation at institutional level can’t substitute for the daily experience of belonging that comes from knowing the people in your lecture hall rather than facing five hundred strangers.

    That requires a different kind of investment – in academic societies, peer mentoring, and the patient work of building academic communities at human scale within institutional structures designed for bureaucratic efficiency. After all, nine out of ten broadway musicals fail – but school plays sell out.

    If any set of managers embarking on a merger are serious about creating institutions that engage rather than merely process students, they’ll need to embrace the principle that there should be nothing about us without us.

    And they need to recognise that “us” means both the collective student body requiring effective institutional representation – and the individual students requiring small communities where they can learn, belong, thrive, and take responsibility for their own experience.

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  • Supporting neurodiverse learners requires more than accommodation: It demands systemic change

    Supporting neurodiverse learners requires more than accommodation: It demands systemic change

    Key points:

    Approximately 1 in 5 children in the United States are estimated to be neurodivergent, representing a spectrum of learning and thinking differences such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and more. These children experience the world in unique and valuable ways, but too often, our education systems fail to recognize or nurture their potential. In an already challenging educational landscape, where studies show a growing lack of school readiness nationwide, it is more important than ever to ensure that neurodivergent young learners receive the resources and support they need to succeed.

    Early support and intervention

    As President and CEO of Collaborative for Children, I have personally seen the impact that high-quality early childhood education can have on a child’s trajectory. Birth to age five is the most critical window for brain development, laying the foundation for lifelong learning, behavior, and health. However, many children are entering their academic years without the basic skills needed to flourish. For neurodivergent children, who often need tailored approaches to learning, the gap is even wider.

    Research indicates that early intervention, initiated within the first three years of life, can significantly enhance outcomes for neurodivergent children. Children who receive individualized support are more likely to develop stronger language, problem-solving, and social skills. These gains not only help in the classroom but can also lead to higher self-confidence, better relationships and improved well-being into adulthood.

    The Collaborative for Children difference

    Collaborative for Children in Houston focuses on early childhood education and is committed to creating inclusive environments where all children can thrive. In Houston, we have established 125 Centers of Excellence within our early childhood learning network. The Centers of Excellence program helps child care providers deliver high-quality early education that prepares children for kindergarten and beyond. Unlike drop-in daycare, our certified early childhood education model focuses on long-term development, combining research-backed curriculum, business support and family engagement.

    This year, we are expanding our efforts by providing enhanced training to center staff and classroom teachers, equipping them with effective strategies to support neurodivergent learners. These efforts will focus on implementing practical, evidence-based approaches that make a real difference.

    Actionable strategies

    As educators and leaders, we need to reimagine how learning environments are designed and delivered. Among the most effective actionable strategies are:

    • Creating sensory-friendly classrooms that reduce environmental stressors like noise, lighting, and clutter to help children stay calm and focused.
    • Offering flexible learning formats to meet a range of communication, motor, and cognitive styles, including visual aids, movement-based activities, and assistive technology.
    • Training teachers to recognize and respond to diverse behaviors with empathy and without stigma, so that what is often misinterpreted as “disruption” is instead seen as a signal of unmet needs.
    • Partnering with families to create support plans tailored to each child’s strengths and challenges to ensure continuity between home and classroom.
    • Incorporating play-based learning that promotes executive functioning, creativity, and social-emotional development, especially for children who struggle in more traditional formats.

    Benefits of inclusive early education

    Investing in inclusive, high-quality early education has meaningful benefits not only for neurodivergent children, but for other students, educators, families and the broader community. Research indicates that neurotypical students who learn alongside neurodivergent peers develop critical social-emotional skills such as patience, compassion and acceptance. Training in inclusive practices can help educators gain the confidence and tools needed to effectively support a wide range of learning styles and behaviors as well as foster a more responsive learning environment.

    Prioritizing inclusive early education can also create strong bonds between families and schools. These partnerships empower caregivers to play an active role in their child’s development, helping them navigate challenges and access critical resources early on. Having this type of support can be transformative for families by reducing feelings of isolation and reinforcing that their child is seen, valued, and supported.

    The benefits of inclusive early education extend far beyond the classroom. When neurodivergent children receive the support they need early in life, it lays the groundwork for increased workforce readiness. Long-term economic gains can include higher employment rates and greater earning potential for individuals. 

    Early childhood education must evolve to meet the needs of neurodivergent learners. We cannot afford to overlook the importance of early intervention and tailored learning environments. If we are serious about improving outcomes for all children, we must act now and commit to inclusivity as a core pillar of our approach. When we support all children early, everyone benefits.

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  • Comparing students with the general population is misleading when it comes to suicide

    Comparing students with the general population is misleading when it comes to suicide

    The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has published new estimates of suicides among higher education students, linking mortality records with student data between 2016 and 2023.

    The findings are stark – 1,108 student deaths by suicide over seven years – an average of 160 each year, or more than three every week.

    The headline takeaway, however, is that the suicide rate among students is lower than that of the general population of similar age. While technically correct, this framing is misleading and risks creating a false sense of reassurance.

    The ONS emphasises that these are “statistics in development.” They are the product of recent advances in linking mortality and student record data, improving on older estimates. In that sense, this is important progress.

    But the way the figures have been presented follows a familiar pattern: the headline is built around a simple comparison with the general population. It is neat, digestible, and apparently positive – yet it obscures more than it reveals.

    This matters because the way numbers are framed shapes public understanding, institutional behaviour, and government response. If the story is “lower than average,” the implicit message is that the sector is performing relatively well. That is not the story these figures should be telling.

    University students are not the “general population.” They are a distinct, filtered group. To reach higher education, young people must cross academic, financial, and often social thresholds. Many with the most acute or destabilising mental health challenges never make it to university, or leave when unwell.

    The student body is also not demographically representative. Despite widening participation efforts, it remains disproportionately white and relatively affluent. Comparing suicide rates across groups with such different profiles is not comparing “like with like.”

    In this context, a lower suicide rate is exactly what one would expect. The fact that the rate is not dramatically lower should be a cause for concern, not comfort.

    The dangers of statistical manipulation

    It is easy to play with denominators. For example, students are in teaching and assessment for around 30 weeks of the year, not 52. If suicide risk were confined to term time, the weekly rate among students would exceed that of their peers.

    But this recalculation is no better than the ONS comparison. Not all student deaths occur in term, and not all risks align neatly with the academic calendar.

    You could take the logic further still. We already know there are peak moments in the academic cycle when deaths are disproportionately high – the start of the year, exam and assessment periods, and end-of-year transitions or progressions. If you recalculated suicide rates just for those concentrated stress points, the apparent risk would rise dramatically.

    And that is the problem – once you start adjusting denominators in this way, you can make the statistics say almost anything. Both framings – “lower overall” and “higher in term” – shift attention away from the fundamental issue. Are students adequately protected in higher education?

    Universities are not average society. They are meant to be semi-protected environments, with pastoral care, residential support, student services, and staff trained to spot risks. Institutions advertise themselves as supportive communities. Parents and students reasonably expect that studying at university will be safer than life outside it.

    On that measure, the reality of more than three suicides a week is sobering. Whatever the relative rate, this is not “safe enough.”

    Averages conceal inequalities

    Aggregate rates also obscure critical differences within the student body. The ONS data show that:

    • Male students die by suicide at more than twice the rate of female students.
    • First-year undergraduates face significantly higher risk than later-year students.
    • Part-time students have higher rates than full-time peers.
    • Among 17–20 year-olds, nearly one in five suicides were students.

    Headline averages conceal these inequalities. A “lower than average” message smooths over the very groups that most need targeted intervention.

    Another striking feature is the absence of sector data. Universities do not systematically track student suicides. Instead, families must rely on official statisticians retrospectively linking death certificates with student records, often years later.

    If the sector truly regarded these figures as reassuring, one might expect institutions to record and publish them. The reluctance to do so instead signals avoidance. Without routine monitoring, lessons cannot be learned in real time and accountability is diluted.

    7. The missing legal duty

    These challenges sit within a wider context – universities have no statutory duty of care towards their students. Families bereaved by suicide encounter unclear lines of accountability. Institutions operate on voluntary frameworks, policies, and codes of practice which are not always followed.

    In that vacuum, numbers take on disproportionate weight. If statistics suggest the sector is “doing better than average,” the pressure for reform weakens. Yet the reality is that more than 1,100 students have died in seven years in what is supposed to be a protective environment.

    Other countries offer a different perspective. In Australia, student wellbeing is embedded in national higher education policy frameworks. In the United States, campus suicide rates are monitored more systematically, and institutions are under clearer obligations to respond. The UK’s fragmented, voluntary approach looks increasingly out of step.

    The new ONS dataset is valuable, but its framing risks repeating old mistakes. If we want real progress, three changes are needed:

    1. Better data – universities must keep their own records, enabling faster learning and transparency.
    2. Sharper framing – comparisons should focus on whether students are safe enough in higher education, not whether they are marginally “better than average.”
    3. Clearer accountability – a statutory duty of care would ensure that institutions cannot hide behind averages and voluntary codes.

    The ONS release should not be read as reassurance. Both the official comparison with the general population and alternative recalculations that exaggerate term-time risk are statistical manipulations. They distract from the central point – 160 students a year, more than three every week, are dying by suicide in higher education.

    Universities are meant to be safer than average society. The reality shows otherwise. Until higher education is bound by a legal duty of care and institutions commit to transparency and accountability, statistical debates will continue to obscure systemic failures – while friends and families will continue to bear the consequences.

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  • Exploring a new standard for preparing students for the future of work

    Exploring a new standard for preparing students for the future of work

    Key points:

    According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, nearly 40 percent of workers’ core skills will change in just the next five years. As AI, automation, and global connectivity continue to reshape every industry, today’s students are stepping into a world where lifelong careers in a single field are increasingly rare.

    Rather than following a straight path, the most successful professionals tomorrow will be able to pivot, reinvent, and adapt again and again. That’s why the goal of education must also shift. Instead of preparing students for a fixed destination, we must prepare them to navigate change itself.

    At Rockingham County Schools (RCS), this belief is at the heart of our mission to ensure every student is “choice-ready.” Rather than just asking, “What job will this student have?” we’re asking, “Will they be ready to succeed in whatever path they choose now and 10 years from now?”

    Choice-ready is a mindset, not just a pathway

    Let’s start with a quick analogy: Not long ago, the NBA underwent a major transformation. For decades, basketball was largely a two-point game with teams focused on scoring inside the arc. But over time, the strategy shifted to where it is today: a three-point league, where teams that invest in long-range shooters open up the floor, score more efficiently, and consistently outperform those stuck in old models. The teams that adapted reshaped the game. The ones that didn’t have fallen behind.

    Education is facing a similar moment. If we prepare students for a narrow, outdated version of success that prepares them for one track, one career, or one outcome, we risk leaving them unprepared for a world that rewards agility, range, and innovation.

    At RCS, we take a global approach to education to avoid this. Being “choice-ready” means equipping students with the mindset and flexibility to pursue many possible futures, and a global approach expands that readiness by exposing them to a broader range of competencies and real-world situations. This exposure prepares them to navigate the variety of contexts they will encounter as professionals. Rather than locking them into a specific plan, it helps them develop the ability to shift when industries, interests, and opportunities change.

    The core competencies to embrace this mindset and flexibility include:

    • Creative and analytical thinking, which help solve new problems in new contexts
    • Empathy and collaboration, which are essential for dynamic teams and cross-sector work
    • Confidence and communication, which are built through student-led projects and real-world learning

    RCS also brings students into the conversation. They’re invited to shape their learning environment by giving their input on district policies around AI, cell phone use, and dress codes. This encourages engagement and ownership that helps them build the soft skills and self-direction that today’s workforce demands.

    The 4 E’s: A vision for holistic student readiness and flexibility

    To turn this philosophy into action, we developed a four-part framework to support every student’s readiness:

    1. Enlisted: Prepared for military service
    2. Enrolled: Ready for college or higher education
    3. Educated: Grounded in academic and life skills
    4. Entrepreneur: Equipped to create, innovate, and take initiative

    That fourth “E”–entrepreneur–is unique to RCS and especially powerful. It signals that students can create their opportunities rather than waiting for them. In one standout example, a student who began producing and selling digital sound files online explored both creative and commercial skill sets.

    These categories aren’t silos. A student might enlist, then enroll in college, then start a business. That’s the whole point: Choice-ready students can move fluidly from one path to another as their interests–and the world–evolve.

    The role of global education

    Global education is a framework that prepares students to understand the world, appreciate different perspectives, and engage with real-world issues across local and global contexts. It emphasizes transferable skills—such as adaptability, empathy, and critical thinking—that students need to thrive in an unpredictable future.

    At RCS, global education strengthens student readiness through:

    • Dual language immersion, which gives students a competitive edge in a multilingual, interconnected workforce
    • Cultural exposure, which builds resilience, empathy, and cross-cultural competence
    • Real-world learning, which connects academic content to relevant, global challenges

    These experiences prepare students to shift between roles, industries, and even countries with confidence.

    Redesigning career exploration: Early exposure and real skills

    Because we don’t know what future careers will be, we embed career exploration across K-12 to ensure students develop self-awareness and transferable skills early on.

    One of our best examples is the Paxton Patterson Labs in middle schools, where students explore real-world roles, such as practicing dental procedures on models rather than just watching videos.

    Through our career and technical education and innovation program at the high school level, students can:

    • Earn industry-recognized credentials.
    • Collaborate with local small business owners.
    • Graduate workforce-ready with the option to pursue higher education later.

    For students who need immediate income after graduation, RCS offers meaningful preparation that doesn’t close off future opportunities, keeping those doors open.

    And across the system, RCS tracks success by student engagement and ownership, both indicators that a learner is building confidence, agency, and readiness to adapt. This focus on student engagement and preparing students for the world postgraduation is already paying dividends. During the 2024-25 school year, RCS was able to increase the percentage of students scoring proficient on the ACT by more than 20 points to 44 percent. Additionally, RCS increased both the number of students who took AP exams and the number who received a passing score by 12 points to 48 percent.

    Preparing students for a moving target

    RCS knows that workforce readiness is a moving target. That’s why the district continues to evolve with it. Our ongoing focus areas include:

    • Helping graduates become lifelong learners who can retrain and reskill as needed
    • Raising awareness of AI’s influence on learning, creativity, and work
    • Expanding career exploration opportunities that prioritize transferable, human-centered skills

    We don’t know exactly what the future holds. We do know that students who can adapt, pivot, and move confidently from one career path to another will be the most prepared–because the most important outcome isn’t fitting students into today’s job market but preparing them to create value in tomorrow’s.

    At Rockingham County Schools, that’s what being “choice-ready” really means. It’s not about predicting the future. It’s about preparing students to thrive within it wherever it leads.

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  • 4 tips to create an engaging digital syllabus

    4 tips to create an engaging digital syllabus

    Key points:

    Back-to-school season arrives every year with a mixed bag of emotions for most educators, including anticipation and excitement, but also anxiety. The opportunity to catch up with friendly colleagues and the reward of helping students connect with material also comes with concern about how best to present and communicate that material in a way that resonates with a new classroom.

    An annual challenge for K-12 educators is creating a syllabus that engages students and will be used throughout the year to mutual benefit rather than tucked in a folder and forgotten about. Today’s digital transformation can be a means for educators to create a more dynamic and engaging syllabus that meets students’ and parents’ needs.

    While it can be overwhelming to think about learning any new education technology, the good news about a digital syllabi is that anyone who’s sent a digital calendar invite has already done most of the technical-learning legwork. The more prescient task will be learning the best practices that engage students and enable deeper learning throughout the year. 

    Step one: Ditch the PDFs and print-outs

    Creating a syllabus that works begins with educators stepping into the shoes of their students. K-12 classrooms are full of students who are oriented around the digital world. Where textbooks and binders were once the tools of the trade for students, laptops and iPads have largely taken over. This creates an opportunity for teachers to create more dynamic syllabi via digital calendars, rather than printed off or static PDFs with lists of dates, deadlines, and relevant details that will surely change as the year progresses. In fact, many learning management systems (LMS) already have useful calendar features for this reason. Again, teachers need only know the best way to use them. The digital format offers flexibility and connectivity that old-school syllabi simply can’t hold a candle to.

    Tips for creating an effective digital syllabus

    Classroom settings and imperatives can vary wildly, and so can the preferences of individual educators. Optimization in this case is in the eye of the beholder, but consider a few ideas that may wind up on your personal best practices list for building out your digital syllabus every year around this time:

    Make accessing the most up-to-date version of the syllabus as frictionless as possible for students and parents. Don’t attach your syllabus as a static PDF buried in an LMS. Instead, opt-in to the calendar most LMS platforms offer for the mutual benefit of educators, students, and parents. To maximize engagement and efficiency, teachers can create a subscription calendar in addition or as an alternative to the LMS calendar. Subscription calendars create a live link between the course syllabus and students’ and/or parents’ own digital calendar ecosystem, such as Google Calendar or Outlook. Instead of logging into the LMS to check upcoming dates, assignments, or project deadlines, the information becomes more accessible as it integrates into their monthly, weekly, and daily schedules, mitigating the chance of a missed assignment or even parent-teacher conference. Students and parents only have to opt-in to these calendars once at the beginning of the academic year, but any of the inevitable changes and updates to the syllabus throughout the year are reflected immediately in their personal calendar, making it simpler and easier for educators to ensure no important date is ever missed. While few LMS offer this option within the platform, subscription calendar links are like any hyperlink–easy to share in emails, LMS message notifications, and more.

    Leverage the calendar description feature. Virtually every digital calendar provides an option to include a description. This is where educators should include assignment details, such as which textbook pages to read, links to videos or course material, grading rubrics, or more. 

    Color-code calendar invitations for visual information processors. Support different types of information processors in the classroom by taking the time to color-code the syllabus. For example, purple for project deadlines, red for big exams, yellow for homework assignment due dates. Consistency and routine are key, especially for younger students and busy parents. Color-coding, or even the consistent naming and formatting of events and deadlines, can make a large impact on students meeting deadlines.

    Encourage further classroom engagement by integrating digital syllabus “Easter eggs.” Analog syllabi often contain Easter eggs that reward students who read it all the way through. Digital syllabi can include similar engaging surprises, but they’re easy to add throughout the year. Hide extra-credit opportunities in the description of an assignment deadline or add an invitation for last-minute office hours ahead of a big quiz or exam. It could be as simple as a prompt for students to draw their favorite animal at the bottom of an assignment for an extra credit point. If students are aware that these opportunities could creep up in the calendar, it keeps them engaged and perhaps strengthens the habit of checking their classroom syllabus.

    While the start of the new school year is the perfect time to introduce a digital syllabus into the classroom, it’s important for educators to keep their own bandwidth and comfortability in mind. Commit to one semester with a digital syllabus and spend time learning the basic features and note how the classroom responds. From there, layer in more advanced features or functionality that helps students without being cumbersome to manage. Over time, educators will learn what works best for them, their students and parents, and the digital syllabus will be a classroom tool that simplifies classroom management and drives more engagement year-round. 

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  • One-third of U.S. public schools screen students for mental health

    One-third of U.S. public schools screen students for mental health

    This press release originally appeared on the RAND site.

    Key points:

    Nearly one-third of the nation’s K-12 U.S. public schools mandate mental health screening for students, with most offering in-person treatment or referral to a community mental health professional if a student is identified as having depression or anxiety, according to a new study.

    About 40 percent of principals surveyed said it was very hard or somewhat hard to ensure that students receive appropriate care, while 38 percent said it was easy or very easy to find adequate care for students. The findings are published in the journal JAMA Network Open.

    “Our results suggest that there are multiple barriers to mental health screening in schools, including a lack of resources and knowledge of screening mechanics, as well as concerns about increased workload of identifying students,” said Jonathan Cantor, the study’s lead author and a policy researcher at RAND, a nonprofit research organization.

    In 2021, the U.S. Surgeon General declared a youth mental health emergency. Researchers say that public schools are strategic resources for screening, treatment, and referral for mental health services for young people who face barriers in other settings.

    Researchers wanted to understand screening for mental health at U.S. public schools, given increased concerns about youth mental health following the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

    In October 2024, the RAND study surveyed 1,019 principals who participate in the RAND American School Leader panel, a nationally representative sample of K–12 public school principals.

    They were asked whether their school mandated screening for mental health issues, what steps are taken if a student is identified as having depression or anxiety, and how easy or difficult it is to ensure that such students received adequate services.

    Researchers found that 30.5 percent of responding principals said their school required screening of students with mental health problems, with nearly 80 percent reporting that parents typically are notified if students screen positive for depression or anxiety.

    More than 70 percent of principals reported that their school offers in-person treatment for students who screen positive, while 53 percent of principals said they may refer a student to a community mental health care professional.

    The study found higher rates of mental health screenings in schools with 450 or more students and in districts with mostly racial and ethnic minority groups as the student populations.

    “Policies that promote federal and state funding for school mental health, reimbursement for school-based mental health screening, and adequate school mental health staff ratios may increase screening rates and increase the likelihood of successfully connecting the student to treatment,” Cantor said.

    Support for the study was provided by the National Institute of Mental Health.

    Other authors of the study are Ryan K. McBain, Aaron Kofner, Joshua Breslau, and Bradley D. Stein, all of RAND; Jacquelin Rankine of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine; Fang Zhang, Hao Yu, and Alyssa Burnett, all of the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute; and Ateev Mehrotra of the Brown University School of Public Health.

    RAND Health Care promotes healthier societies by improving health care systems in the United States and other countries.

    eSchool News Staff
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  • Sarah Bendall on good governance – Campus Review

    Sarah Bendall on good governance – Campus Review

    NSO First Assistant Ombudsman Sarah Bendall spoke to Campus Review editor Erin Morley about how student complaints reflect current sector issues, like governance, and how it will work with the Australian Tertiary Education Commission (ATEC).

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  • For student leaders, it’s been a Cruel Summer

    For student leaders, it’s been a Cruel Summer

    From where we sit – or, more accurately when on a Cross Country train over the summer, from where we stand – there are some things coming for students that it’s possible to metaphorically see from metaphorical space.

    Food price inflation will distort the “average” basket of goods for those on low incomes so significantly that a fresh cost of living crisis is obviously coming.

    The failure to consult meaningfully on the hundreds of micro-decisions to be made on toilets, changing rooms and anything else currently gendered in a university has the capacity to cause chaos the very second that the EHRC publishes what we can already guess it will say on the Supreme Court ruling.

    In England, the Renter’s Rights Bill will see absolute chaos once everyone realises that landlords will be evicting students on or near June 1st next year. Assessment reform in an age of AI is really moving in some parts of some universities – in others, it’s as if the OHP is still being PAT tested.

    And the signals from the labour market and the surveys published over the summer hold out a real prospect that student part-time work will all but dry up in several cities in the year ahead – once that way of plugging the growing hole in the student finance system is no longer available, what exactly is the plan?

    Make me feel fine

    Every summer, while you’re on a beach protecting yourself with factor 50, we’re out on the rail network for three months or so meeting, briefing and training the new batch of students’ union officers who won in last Spring’s SU elections.

    In part, that involves thinking through the policy headwinds and identifying the ways in which SUs and their universities have factored in their own protections for the dangers that are coming. This year the dangers feel particularly real; the scenarios particularly prescient; the forward plans systematically absent.

    As part of almost every visit, we’ll explore the journeys that have led student leaders from welcome week to the un-air-conditioned seminar room of flipchart paper and post-it notes that prefaces their year in office.

    And this year, not only do the dangers feel most alarming, and the mitigations most miniscule, but the experiences that have led students into leadership almost too awful to explain.

    Along with everything else, this has felt like a year of extremes. Outright lies from recruitment agents. Shocking stories of disabled students having their rights crudely brushed aside. Teaching that is poor and perfunctory, supervision that is awful or absent, part-time jobs that are as exploitative as they are normalised. Tales of safety and quality in the private rented sector that are just too awful to imagine.

    On one visit, we learned of rats living in a wall. On another we were told of a lecturer that “everyone knew” was a “lothario” but nobody knew how to report. International students whose visas were late, admitted weeks after the start of their course only to miss the induction, then be accused of assessment offences they didn’t know were offences, only to have their visa run out before their final work could be marked. No graduate route for them.

    We’ve heard of students working below the minimum wage for weeks on end, while being bullied and harassed in the process. We’ve heard of students taking to gambling and gig work to pay fees and rent.

    We’ve heard of students struggling with late and inflexible timetables, personal tutor systems that exist only on paper, late and inadequate feedback, and courses that were so stripped down and reorganised by the time they hit their third year that they were unrecognisable from that which was promised.

    Fever dream high in the quiet of the night

    Some of what we’ve heard will be of no surprise to regular readers. Students’ lives are now dominated by juggling – work, study, housing, travel, and survival in a way that makes “full-time” higher education feel like a misnomer. Their new leaders describe the contortions that students must go through to piece together rent payments, jobs, study hours and social life – and how universities often fail to see the whole picture.

    Complaints about patchy personal tutoring, email response times, and lack of flexible timetabling all stem from the same place – a sense that systems are designed for an imagined student who doesn’t exist anymore. The result is exhaustion, anxiety, and an education experience that feels compromised rather than enriched. But they also feel like systems that neither can change nor will change as a result of their advocacy.

    Cost dominates – not just for tuition, but every part of life that sits around it. Student leaders tell stories of universities insisting the cost of living crisis has passed because hardship fund applications have dipped, while on the ground students are launching swap schemes, food banks, budgeting workshops, and recipe exchanges just to survive.

    International postgraduates in particular speak of being “milked” – with extortionate accommodation, opaque fees, and casual gaslighting when asking for support or flexibility. These are not isolated grumbles but systemic failures, and officers are weary of institutions that seem keener to manage perception than engage with the reality of what it takes to participate in HE.

    Another set of concerns centres on space, belonging, and wellbeing. Campuses are crowded yet inaccessible – coffee queues too long, study spaces too few, and neurodivergent students locked out of the quiet they need. Student leaders are angry at the dissonance between glossy atriums and the absence of somewhere to heat up food. They’re also clear that wellbeing is not “extra” – but the way staff understand their role in relation to student mental health varies wildly, from proud detachment to amateur counselling.

    Add in the “engagement collapse” – anxiety, imposter syndrome, and an erosion of confidence – and it’s no wonder that participation in both classrooms and communities feels fragile.

    Student leaders want something deeper – a recognition that employability, citizenship, and belonging are not bolt-ons, but core to the experience. They want placements, volunteering and democratic activity to be credit-bearing, not just because they deserve recognition, but because participation costs time and money they don’t have. But they don’t really think they can have it.

    They want universities to stop pretending belonging can be conjured through branding, and to grapple instead with consistency, delivery and equity. And they want honesty – not just reassurances that budgets are fine, but genuine partnership in facing the future. Without that, the visions of sector leaders – blueprints, reviews, strategies – risk being hollow. University survival will be pointless if students don’t.

    Devils roll the dice, angels roll their eyes

    There’s always – especially for Jim – a touch of plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Perhaps some of what’s experienced as a problem or barrier is just a rite of HE passage, a part of growing up, a component of joining a large and diverse community that involves setbacks and coping and developing resilience in the face of adversity.

    But as the flipchart sheets describing the journeys are pinned to the wall mid-each morning, we have wondered whether there’s something else going on.

    The year before Jim began spending his summers like this, a couple of early career social psychologists from Yale had published a paper that ended up having quite the impact on some of his psychology student colleagues in the mid 1990s.

    Josta and Banajia’s “The role of stereotyping in system-justification and the production of false consciousness” doesn’t sound like the most fun a Media and Cultural Studies student can be having over a photocopier, but his accidentally interdisciplinary first-year had meant Jim was able to get into all sorts of things that were never originally on the curriculum.

    The paper illustrates the idea that people, including the disadvantaged, often internalise stereotypes or explanations that legitimise their own oppression. It shows experimentally how individuals and groups can end up rationalising harmful arrangements – believing the powerful are more competent, attributing failure to themselves, or normalising unequal roles.

    It has helped to shape exercise design and training approaches for new student leaders ever since. Change isn’t just about better evidence arguments or slicker campaigns – it’s about creating the conditions for awareness and solidarity, surfacing the arbitrariness of rules and hierarchies, and showing that misery is not inevitable but manufactured.

    When students see that struggles with housing, finance, or assessment aren’t personal failings but systemic outcomes, the pressure to internalise blame weakens – and the potential for collective action grows.

    That matters because normalisation is the enemy of change. If students “learn to love their limitations,” policymakers have little incentive to do better. The lesson has always been that sometimes the most powerful intervention isn’t a tidy solution or a polished set of recommendations, but the act of refusing to let the intolerable become invisible.

    Consciousness-raising, storytelling, and solidarity are not soft tactics – they’re the preconditions for breaking the cycle of silence that otherwise guarantees next summer’s flipchart sheets look the same as this year’s.

    No rules in breakable heaven

    Yet this year more than most, we have at times felt like we’re swimming against a tide that is too strong to mount a defence against. Because the truth is, even though the stories are well beyond the mild irritations and petty bureaucracy of the past, they almost all sound like secrets. They are, to put it another way, below the iceberg’s surface.

    Part of the problem is that the UK has an increasingly old electorate. Older voters are less likely to have direct contact with universities, less likely to hear unvarnished student stories, and more likely to see the sector through the prism of cost rather than value.

    If the most shocking aspects of student life remain whispered rather than shouted, they never cut through to those who wield electoral influence – meaning the ballot box skews policy towards pensioner bus passes rather than student housing reform. The silence isn’t just cultural, it is political.

    There’s the country’s economic climate – higher education is operating in a state that is literally running out of money. Public finances are squeezed, universities are struggling with deficits, and the instinct everywhere is to protect what you have rather than admit to new liabilities.

    When uncomfortable truths about student experience are not voiced, it becomes easier for managers, ministers and mandarins to avert their gaze, telling themselves that problems can be absorbed rather than addressed. Silence functions as an accidental subsidy – by not surfacing the costs borne by students, the state and the sector get away with shifting more burden onto them.

    Universities themselves are complicit, albeit we suspect unintentionally. A manager at any level who admits that their students are hungry, homeless, or harassed risks reputational damage, league-table drops, and hostile headlines. Better to stress resilience, opportunity, and the odd bursary scheme than to admit systemic failure.

    But the reputation-management reflex actively undermines the case for investment. If every institution projects that all is broadly fine, why should Treasury officials prioritise a bailout? Silence, again, becomes a strategy – but one that entrenches scarcity rather than securing resources.

    The cumulative effect is a system where student misery remains invisible to those with power, not because the evidence is lacking, but because the incentives to reveal it are weak. Students stay silent for fear of stigma, SUs temper their tone to keep the block grant flowing, universities bury problems beneath polished prospectuses, and policymakers hear only satisfaction scores.

    The loop feeds itself – and in a democracy where older voters decide priorities, absence of noise is all too easily interpreted as absence of need.

    Hang your head low in the glow of the vending machine

    For student leaders, the pressures are especially acute. Their role is ostensibly to represent the unvarnished experiences of their peers, but they operate in an environment shaped by the logic of LinkedIn – an arena where polished professionalism is prized, and the temptation to smooth away awkward truths is ever-present.

    To admit publicly that your students are hungry, unsafe, or disillusioned can feel incompatible with the personal brand of competence and leadership that young people are told they must cultivate if they want graduate opportunities. The very platforms officers use to communicate are biased towards optimism, progress, and positivity – which makes surfacing struggle feel like self-sabotage.

    Even when they’ve tried, they’ve been hit by the devious frames – denialism (it is not a problem), normalisation (it is normal and expected) and victim blaming (it is a problem because of the individual mistakes), all of which become “how we operate around here” and thus hard to even start to tackle.

    And that takes us right back to Jost and Banaji’s arguments about system justification and false consciousness. If social media teaches student leaders to internalise the idea that problems are personal weaknesses rather than systemic failures, their capacity to challenge those failures is blunted.

    When representation becomes curation, the cycle of silence is reinforced – not because officers lack courage, but because the psychological and cultural currents around them steer towards self-preservation over truth-telling. Breaking the cycle means supporting officers to resist the currents, to value solidarity over self-presentation, and to recognise that authentic voice is more powerful than polished image.

    It’s why the conspiracy of silence that surrounds the contemporary student experience is so dangerous. It erodes the sector’s long-term sustainability by masking the very crises that could galvanise public support. In an ageing nation with empty coffers, the only way to win investment is to make the case that students’ struggles are real, systemic, and intolerable – and to do so loudly.

    If higher education keeps choosing discretion over disclosure, it will discover that in the competition for scarce resources, quiet constituencies get ignored first. Maybe it’s discovered it already. But it’s never too late to tell the truth.

     

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  • Partnership? Students in Scotland need protection

    Partnership? Students in Scotland need protection

    It’s easy to trace differences in culture back much further – arguably right back to Bologna in 1088, and the Rectors of the Ancients in the 15th Century.

    But at the very least since 2003, students’ unions in England have looked North of the border jealously at a country so committed to student partnership that it created a statutory agency to drive it.

    Partnership at all levels thrives when there’s will, time, and frankly, money. It’s tougher to reflect the principles of students having power when times are tight – when the excel sheets no longer add up, when restructures have to be planned, and when cuts have to be crafted to the facilities and services that students have been inputting on for years.

    Beyond the potentially apocryphal stories of truly student-led institutions in ancient times, students in any system are bound to be treated as, and regard themselves as, at best junior partners – with, both at individual and collective levels, a significant power asymmetry.

    In such scenarios, when leaders spend their days choosing between any number of awful options, it’s often going to be the least institutionally risky path that’s taken. And the danger is that students – who previously might have relied on partnership to secure their interests – now really need protection instead.

    I spend quite a bit of time here lamenting the implementation of protection measures for students in England. But in conversations with students and their leaders in Scotland, I’m now finding myself repeatedly reflecting on the fact that at least, in England, there are some.

    3 months to open your email

    Take complaints. The Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA) doesn’t always generate the answer that student complainants would like – it often feels too distant, and at least temporally, hard to access.

    It also has a tendency to seek resolution when it’s sometimes justice that should prevail – and increasingly feels like providers are paying students off (often with NDAs for non-harassment complaints) before they get there.

    But in Scotland, students have to use the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman (SPSO). As I type, “due to an increase in the volume of cases” it is currently receiving, there is a delay of 12 weeks in allocating complaints to a reviewer.

    Some comfort that will be to the international PGT who has cause to complain in month 10 of their studies, only to have to encounter a complaint, an appeal, and then a further 12 weeks just to get the SPSO to open their letter. UKVI will have ensured they’re long gone.

    It’s clear that few get as far as the SPSO. When it investigates a complaint, it usually reports its findings and conclusions in what it calls a decision letter – and these findings are published as decision reports. Since May 2021, just ten have been published.

    Either students in Scotland have much less to complain about than their counterparts in England and Wales, or universities in Scotland are much better at resolving complaints, or this is a system that obviously isn’t working.

    Never OK

    Then there’s harassment and sexual misconduct. Just under a year ago Universities Scotland’s update on anti-harassment work suggested a system of protection that’s patchy at best.

    37 per cent of institutions weren’t working with survivors to inform their approach, 21 per cent didn’t have policies allowing for preventative suspension where necessary, and only 71 per cent of institutions had “updated their policies” following guidance from UUK on staff-student relationships – which could still mean all 19 universities are permitting staff to pursue students.

    Universities Scotland acknowledges that most identify funding as a barrier, but England’s regulator makes clear that providers “must” deploy necessary resources, with higher-risk institutions expected to invest more. If you can’t fund student safety properly, perhaps you shouldn’t be operating is the message in England.

    And there’s no sign that Scotland will be taking part in the prevalence research that’s been piloted in England.

    Cabinet Secretary Jenny Gilruth’s praise for Scotland’s “partnership approach” suggested either complacency or a failure to grasp that Scotland is sliding toward being significantly less robust than England in protecting students. When partnership fails to deliver safety, protection becomes essential – and on harassment, it feels like Scotland is failing to provide either adequately.

    Best practice should not be voluntary

    Or take mental health. While Wales has responded to parliamentary concerns about consistency by accepting recommendations for a “common framework for mental health support” backed by registration and funding conditions, Scotland continues to rely on voluntary approaches that deliver patchy outcomes.

    The Welsh government’s response to its Children, Young People and Education Committee shows what serious commitment looks like. New MEDR registration conditions will require clear expectations for student wellbeing, supported by data collection requirements, evaluation frameworks, and crucially, funding considerations built into budget allocations.

    There’s partnership rhetoric – but it’s partnership backed by regulatory teeth. Wales has grasped what Scotland appears to miss – that “best practice should not be voluntary” when student lives are at stake, as one bereaved parent told Westminster’s Petitions Committee.

    The Welsh approach is set to recognise that students need “parity of approach” and “consistency between departments, institutions, and academic teams” – something that purely voluntary frameworks cannot deliver.

    Scotland’s reliance on institutional goodwill for mental health provision increasingly looks naive. Maintaining flexibility for institutions to design services suited to their contexts, is one thing – but Wales will ensure baseline standards that students can depend on regardless of which university they attend.

    The contrast is stark – Wales will treat student mental health as a regulatory priority requiring systematic oversight, while Scotland appears content to hope that partnership alone in a context of dwindling funding will somehow deliver consistency. When partnership fails to protect the most vulnerable students, Wales will have built backup systems – Scotland has built excuses about funding pressures that Welsh universities face too.

    Promises promises

    Then there’s consumer protection – or, as I like to rebrand it, delivering on the promises made to students. It’s easy to assume that students in Scotland aren’t covered – but plenty do pay fees, and those that don’t are supposed to be protected too.

    But over two and a half years since the Competition and Markets Authority revised its guidance to universities on compliance, there seems to be a nationwide problem. Of the 16 universities I’ve looked at in Scotland, 15 still include contractual terms limiting liability in the event of a strike involving their own staff – something CMA has advised is unlawful, and which OfS is effectively enforcing in cases like Newcastle.

    In a year when strikes are more likely, why should students in Scotland not be afforded the same rights to the education they’ve signed up for than their English counterparts?

    The CMA also bans clauses that limit compensation for breach of contract to the total paid in fees – something that would be very attractive in Scotland for obvious reasons. Yet 14 of the country’s universities continue to publish contractual terms that apparently allow them to with impunity. Several have highly problematic clauses on in-contract fee increases too.

    And CMA’s guidance on “variation clauses” – that should not result in too wide an ability to vary the course or services that were offered when students signed up – looks like it’s been flouted too.

    I’m no lawyer, but most universities in Scotland seem to be affording themselves the right to pretty much change anything and everything – and when finances are as tight as they are, that means students and their complaints about cuts can be bottom of the risk register, if they feature at all.

    You’re the voice

    Or take student voice itself. The mandatory Learner Engagement Code required by the Tertiary Education and Research (Wales) Act 2022 could be transformative – moving from “should” to “must” with genuine comply-or-explain mechanisms, protected status for student representatives, and mandatory training on rights and responsibilities for all students. Or it could emerge as something weak and vague, disappointing everyone who fought to get student engagement into primary legislation.

    But at least there is one. At minimum, Wales recognises that student partnership requires legal backing, not just goodwill that evaporates when finances get tight. Scotland’s partnership model, for all its historical reputation, increasingly looks like an expensive way of avoiding the hard work of building systems that actually protect students when partnership fails.

    However flawed, students in England now have new rights over freedom of speech – including a right to not be stopped from speaking on the basis of “reputational impact” on the provider. Several Scottish universities seem to have extraordinarily wide exemptions for “disrepute” and “reputation” that are almost certainly in breach of the Human Rights Act.

    You could even, at a stretch, look at cuts and closures. For all the poor implementation and enforcement of a system designed to protect students when their campus, course, university or pathway is closed in England, at least the principle is in place. Student Protection Plans are required in Scotland by SAAS for private providers – but not of universities. Why?

    We voted against Brexit

    I could go on. Scotland regularly positions itself as more European than England, particularly in higher education where the “partnership approach” is often presented as evidence of continental-style governance. Scottish politicians invoke European models when defending their policies, suggesting Scotland’s collaborative approach mirrors sophisticated systems across the continent.

    Yet European student rights frameworks put Scotland to shame. In Serbia, students have the legal right to nutrition, rest and cultural activities. In Sweden, students enjoy the same workplace protections as employees under the Work Environment Act. In Lithuania, there’s a minimum amount of campus space allocated per student by law, and student representatives hold veto power over university senate decisions – if they use it, a special committee reviews the issue and a two-thirds majority is required to override.

    In Latvia, students’ unions receive at least 0.05% of the annual university budget by law, with legal rights to request information from any department on matters affecting students. In Poland, students have guaranteed rights to study programmes where at least 30 per cent of credits are elective, and universities must consult student governments when appointing managers with student affairs responsibilities. Student protests and strikes are specifically protected, with mediation rights.

    In the Netherlands, universities must inform the national confidential inspector whenever staff may have engaged in harassment involving students – and any staff hearing about allegations must report them to management. Spain mandates every university has an independent ombudsperson with statutory reporting duties. In Croatia, universities are legally obliged to provide students’ unions workspace, co-finance their activities, and offer administrative support. And Austrian students make up significant proportions of curriculum committees by statute, ensuring programmes remain flexible and career-relevant.

    Can I get the Bill

    It’s not as if there isn’t a legal vehicle that could improve things. The Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill is weaving its way through the Scottish Parliament as we speak – but it couldn’t be weaker in protections for students if it tried.

    • Section 8 allows the new Council, when conducting efficiency studies, to consider “the extent to which the needs and interests of students are being met” and then issue recommendations to universities and colleges. But recommendations are not binding.
    • Section 11 amends the 2005 Act to require the Council, in exercising its functions, to “have regard to the desirability of protecting and promoting the interests of current and prospective learners.” Again, this is a duty on the Council, not directly on universities, and is about regard rather than enforceable standards.
    • Section 18 allows Scottish Ministers to designate private providers so that their students can access public student support. That’s a consumer-style protection, but it’s about access to funding rather than quality or rights.
    • Section 19–20 updates the rules around how student support is administered and delegated — but again, that’s more about machinery than protections.

    There’s no new regulatory framework for how universities behave towards students (on contracts, teaching quality, complaints handling, etc.). There are no rights conferred directly on students — no duty of fair treatment, no consumer protection-style obligations, no statutory complaints rights.

    Universities themselves are not made subject to enforceable duties in the Bill, beyond existing general oversight via the Funding Council. And while the Council can give guidance (section 10) and issue recommendations (section 8), institutions are only required to “have regard” rather than comply.

    Cakeism in Scotland

    Models of student partnership have served Scotland well over the decades – and should continue to. After all, learning outcomes take two to tango – and that’s true from the classroom right up the boardroom.

    But right now here in 2025, partnership often feels like a luxury for when rivers of money start flowing back in – and even the most well meaning and moral SMT or Court has a duty to protect the institution before it protects its students.

    Ultimately, partnership and protection should not feel like mutual exclusives, or something a country should choose. It’s perfectly possible, and in the current funding climate, deeply desirable, for students to have both.

    Scottish ministers – through a new section of the Funding and Governance Bill – should legislate to make it so.

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