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  • Universities and the Teachers Pension Scheme: the time for change is now

    Universities and the Teachers Pension Scheme: the time for change is now

    Welcome back. The HEPI blog is now up and running again on a daily basis, landing in your inbox at 6:30am. (The pieces we ran over the break are available here.) If you are not already subscribed, you can sign up at the bottom of this page.

    Spaces are still open for our in-person Symposium with CBDU on Thursday 16th January: you can register here.

    Today’s piece is by Jane Embley, Chief People Officer, Northumbria University and Professor Tom Lawson, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost, Northumbria University.

    The end of the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) pensions dispute in the summer of 2023 was the source of much relief in the sector. University employees in the scheme saw both their pension benefits restored to the levels they had been before the USS valuation of 2017 and a reduction in their contributions (from January 2024) from 9.8% to 6.1%. Employers could reverse the significant liabilities that had previously been skewing their financial statements and their contributions to USS were reduced from 21.6% to 14.5%. The Financial Times declared that ‘the cost to UK universities of providing pensions for employees is poised to fall by hundreds of millions of pounds after the sector’s main retirement plan swung into surplus after more than a decade of being in deficit’.

    But for many institutions the great pensions crisis was not over: indeed it had only just begun. For at least 80 universities, USS is not their main pension scheme, because those that gained university status through the 1992 Higher Education Act are required to offer Teachers Pension Scheme (TPS) to their academic staff. This includes institutions like Northumbria University, which has significantly developed its research intensity over the last decade and seeks to compete with other research intensives. The disparity in the costs of TPS and USS means that competition is no longer on a level playing field.

    Northumbria has more than 200 staff who are members of USS, but all of those have joined the university as existing members of that scheme. All other academic colleagues must be enrolled in TPS and cannot, at present, voluntarily become members of USS. Indeed those who join as members of USS also retain a right to be enrolled in TPS if they wish. Around 50 modern institutions employ some members of USS however the underlying requirement to make TPS available to university-employed academic staff is the same.

    Since 2023 the cost of TPS to both employees and employers has significantly diverged from USS. While employers’ contributions to the two schemes tracked one another closely until October 2019, they then began to diverge radically when TPS employer contributions rose to 23.68% while USS was at 21.1%. But in April 2024 the gulf between the two schemes became a chasm – TPS contributions rose by 5% to 28.68% as USS employer contributions went down to 14.5%.

    The difference in percentage terms is stark. But when you start to think about the financial cost for institutions it is all the more so. The pension cost (to employers) for a typical academic salary of £57,500 is £8,300 per annum for USS. For a TPS employee, it is £16,500. At an institutional level that means that for every 1000 staff earning this salary in TPS, the annual cost is £8.2 million greater than if those same employees were members of USS. For a professor earning £85,000 the difference is as much as £12,000 per full-time colleague. As Northumbria’s experience shows, these are additional costs being carried in one part of the sector for essentially the same staff.

    The situation is compounded by the nature of TPS as a scheme. Unlike USS, employers have no say in how the TPS is run and have no levers to keep employer (and indeed employee) contributions down. This is simply a cost handed down to universities by the Treasury. But unlike schools, to which the Treasury through the Department for Education provides additional funding to cover TPS cost increases, universities receive no relief and simply have to absorb these costs into their already stretched budgets. And unlike schools in the independent sector, which were permitted to stop offering TPS to new staff, universities are obliged to continue to offer TPS – whatever alternatives they can develop for their staff.

    The impact of this is extraordinary. It essentially means that in one part of the sector, it costs employers the same amount in on-costs to employ 503 staff as it costs to employ 1000 staff elsewhere. Quite apart from the burden this places on institutions, it is deeply anti-competitive.

    What then is to be done? The path forward is beset by problems. Unless there is legislative change, modern universities will be required to continue to make TPS available to all academic colleagues and, it bears repeating, will continue to have no say at all in the running of the scheme.  

    Of course, one option is to do nothing, but the finances of the sector mean the status quo is extraordinarily difficult to justify. Doing nothing embeds an unfairness that makes the government’s stated priorities for university reform more difficult to achieve. To put it crudely, it costs more for some institutions than others to employ academic staff, and as that resource is derived (at least in part) from student fee income then those institutions will require more students to fund the salaries of staff. For every 1000 staff earning £57,500 it would require all of the fees from 859 additional UK undergraduate students just to fund the difference in employer pension contributions.

    Institutions can employ new colleagues via subsidiary companies in order to give themselves the freedom to offer more affordable pensions to new employees. But this approach has many potential pitfalls. It would not help to reduce the costs in relation to existing staff, so would be slow to have any impact, and in any case it remains unclear what the status of such employees is according to HESA – which could among other things impact the ability of individuals to make a contribution to future REF exercises with the attendant implications for future funding. Employment through a subsidiary, even with all terms and conditions being the same but being out of scope for recognition within the REF, is also likely to be a less attractive prospect for employees.

    It seems likely that until solutions are found, many institutions might find themselves having to rethink their ability to participate in national collective pay bargaining. With higher pension costs and higher National Insurance contributions, it may be necessary, for now at least, for institutions to take control of salary increases to contain the total costs of employment. This is not an attractive option, but it is hard to think of any others that would be as swift and effective in containing cost increases, although of course it would come with its own industrial relations challenges.  

    Ultimately all institutions value their academic staff immensely and we want to provide access to attractive pension schemes. However, the lack of institutional control over which pension scheme can be offered, and the high, fixed nature of the employer contribution to TPS (which is not directly linked to any improvement in benefits for the individual) cannot be sustained. The timing of the current challenge could also not be worse. Institutions are grappling with a whole range of financial pressures, and as a consequence dealing with TPS remains in the ‘too hard’ box for many, not least because we genuinely cannot find the solutions without some form of intervention. But as the sustainability of institutions becomes all the more scrutinised, and as the sector needs to find financial efficiencies to address the concerns expressed by the Secretary of State for Education earlier in 2024, we do urgently need to find a way forward.

    Obliging institutions to continue to offer TPS places greater financial constraints on precisely those universities that might do the most to widen access and give greater opportunity to those from disadvantaged backgrounds as per the government’s priorities. It is an obvious unfairness that some of students will go to institutions where it is substantially more expensive to employ staff than in other institutions that are more traditionally regarded as elite. The time is now to remove this inbuilt, and presumably unintended, unfairness and end the obligation upon modern universities to offer TPS. If that happens individual institutions and the sector as a whole can begin to chart a path to a more sustainable position in the future.

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  • Unveiling the gatekeepers in PGR admissions

    Unveiling the gatekeepers in PGR admissions

    The journey to postgraduate research (PGR) remains cloaked in ambiguity.

    For many students, gaining access to PGR programmes is less about merit and more about chance encounters and privilege. The perceived casual tap on the shoulder culture — an informal recommendation by a supervisor or academic insider — can often play a significant role in greasing the wheels for a fortunate few but risks perpetuating systemic inequities that disproportionately affect those from a non-research-intensive (NRI) institution, where there is a greater focus on teaching and vocational practice rather than research.

    While Wellcome and UKRI have done significant work in mandating equitable admissions practices into their programmes over the past five years with reasonable success, there remain significant barriers and structural biases that prevent talented students from progressing. The reality is that the landscape is murky at best and for those students who are trying to navigate the space without the right support network and background, postgraduate study remains inaccessible and opaque.

    Our recent report, delivered as a partnership between the Martingale Foundation and Public First, shines a stark light on these challenges, revealing how admissions to research-intensive (RI) universities frequently sidestep fairness in favour of tradition and unconscious bias. While undergraduate admissions strive toward equity – for example the recent removal of the UCAS personal statement – PGR selections often rest on unspoken networks, opaque criteria, and subjective judgment, exacerbating inequalities in the academic pipeline.

    Funding remains one of the most significant barriers to supporting more talented PhD students, with the situation getting increasingly competitive. However, this only exacerbates the importance of ensuring that the funded places available are awarded fairly through a transparent process, not just to those privileged people with the right networks and ‘know how’.

    The power of privilege in the pipeline

    In PGR admissions, luck and proximity can outweigh potential and merit. Informal processes, such as a direct supervisor’s recommendation, can act as a decisive factor, leaving out candidates unfamiliar with academic norms or lacking the cultural capital to navigate these unspoken rules. This is especially evident for students who attend NRI universities, where exposure to PGR pathways is limited, and interactions with research-focused mentors are less frequent.

    Students from NRI institutions are not only underrepresented in RI postgraduate programmes but face significant barriers even when they are academically qualified. These barriers are not associated with a candidate’s potential but more to do with their prior training that will enable them to thrive in RI postgraduate research. However, it should be noted that the impact of these barriers varies by subject with some subjects like mathematics relying heavily on the building blocks of the knowledge gained in prior years, while other disciplines are more flexible to learning and upskilling during PGR study.

    Transparency: The missing link

    The Equity in Doctoral Education through Partnership and Innovation (EDEPI) project underscores the opaque nature of the admissions process with only 47 per cent of admissions tutors believing current selection criteria are effective indicators of a candidate’s potential as an independent researcher. This lack of consensus results in admissions practices that reward familiarity over talent, further marginalising students without access to insider knowledge.

    The opacity of these systems reinforces privilege, creating a hidden curriculum that rewards those who already know how to play the game. Without explicit guidelines, students from underrepresented backgrounds are left guessing what is expected. On the other hand, their more advantaged peers often benefit from UG degrees in a RI institution, and family knowledge of the HE sector and professional networks to help navigate the process into PGR.

    Undermatching and the domino effect

    For many students from NRI backgrounds, their educational trajectory is shaped long before postgraduate study becomes a consideration. The report identifies undermatching as a critical barrier — a phenomenon where students, often due to financial or geographical constraints, attend institutions below their academic attainment. These decisions, made as early as age 17 or 18, have far-reaching consequences. NRI universities, while excelling in teaching and certain research areas, typically lack the resources and networks that RI institutions possess to guide students into PGR pathways.

    This mismatch compounds inequities. When these students attempt to transition to RI universities for postgraduate study, they are not only underprepared for the research culture but also more likely to face feelings of isolation and imposter syndrome. According to a survey understanding the mental health of doctoral researchers by McPhearson et al, these challenges significantly impact mental health for those who feel like outsiders in elite academic spaces.

    Supervisor bias: A double-edged sword

    The role of the supervisor is another critical factor in perpetuating inequities. Supervisors often act as gatekeepers to PGR opportunities, and their personal biases—whether conscious or unconscious—can shape admissions outcomes. The report highlights that some disciplines depend heavily on supervisors for admissions decisions, creating a single point of failure in the system. This affinity bias can exacerbate inequities, as supervisors may prefer candidates who resemble their own academic profiles or fit traditional moulds of excellence.

    Moreover, supervisors may hesitate to take on students perceived as requiring additional support, especially in resource-constrained environments where time and funding are limited – something that is increasingly a factor with further demands on academic time. This disproportionately affects candidates from NRI backgrounds, who may need additional guidance to bridge gaps in their academic preparation.

    Pathways to change

    Addressing entrenched inequities in PGR admissions requires decisive action across multiple fronts. Developing a standardised admissions framework, akin to UCAS but tailored for the diverse needs of PGR programmes, could enhance transparency and accountability while reducing reliance on subjective criteria. Though creating a universal system for all disciplines may not be feasible, unifying processes within institutions would be a significant step forward.

    Bridging knowledge gaps through initiatives like summer research internships and pre-doctoral courses can equip students from NRI institutions with vital skills and cultural capital. Established programmes like UNIQ+ and In2research highlight the effectiveness of such interventions, which require sustained support from both institutions and funders to expand their reach.

    Collaborative models, exemplified by partnerships like the London Interdisciplinary Doctoral Programme (LIDo), foster inclusivity by sharing resources and expertise between research-intensive and NRI institutions. Similarly, enhancing supervisor training on inclusive practices and unconscious bias, along with encouraging co-supervision models, ensures a broader support network for students and reduces over-reliance on individual supervisors.

    Regulatory oversight is crucial in setting standards and incentivising equitable practices in PGR admissions. Bodies such as the Office for Students and UKRI must actively enforce diversity and transparency measures. Furthermore, funders, including smaller charitable organisations, should adopt structural initiatives to support equitable access to postgraduate study, building on the progress made by UKRI and Wellcome. These combined efforts can create a more inclusive and equitable PGR landscape.

    Toward a more equitable future

    The hidden hierarchies in PGR admissions are not insurmountable. By acknowledging the biases embedded in current practices and committing to systemic reforms, the sector can unlock the potential of a more diverse pool of talent. As the Martingale Foundation and Public First report makes clear, this is not just a moral imperative but a practical necessity. The challenges of the 21st century demand innovative, inclusive research cultures capable of harnessing the full spectrum of human potential.

    The lingering “tap on the shoulder” recruitment pathways need to be replaced with a fair and transparent system, where every student, regardless of their background, has an equal opportunity to thrive. Only then can we build a truly meritocratic academic landscape—one that recognises talent over tradition and potential over privilege.

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  • The rubbish bin theory of the student experience

    The rubbish bin theory of the student experience

    Students have two kinds of problems.

    There are the big, systemic, institutional policy failures that make their lives miserable. These might be social ills of discrimination and prejudice rendered into the classroom experience. These might be reasonable adjustment policies that turn out to be entirely unreasonable. Or it might be the pecuniary architecture that collapses the student experience into unending part-time work and just about squeezing study in.

    In general students’ unions and universities are set up to address these kinds of challenges. There are committees, policies, liaison groups, central budgets, and a power and decision making architecture which faces these problems. This doesn’t mean they can always solve these issues, if they ever can be solved, but it does mean they are at least positioned to have a go at doing so.

    Power

    In the realm of the fundamentally bad and wrong a senior executive often can make things better. After all, they set institutional budgets, strategies, policies, contracts, and rules that impact every student. However, there is another kind of problem that impacts students where they just have less proximity to the issue.

    Imagine the student where things are basically ok. Life is tough, as it is for many students, but as far as they can tell they do not believe they are being treated unfairly, they seem to be broadly getting the big things they were promised when they turned up, and all available evidence suggests their lecturers are working within a set of policies that seem to be pretty fair. In other words, things aren’t too bad.

    However, as time goes on things don’t go badly wrong but they do go a little awry. The common room they went to before lectures doesn’t open until 09:30 in the winter. Their feedback has gone from arriving in six weeks to seven which adds a little bit more pressure on their exams. The library is suddenly much busier as the cold nights have set it. The buses are now much less frequent after a timetable change. The kit they need for their programmes is now more booked up as a new term has brought a new set of modules. And onward and onwards on the ever more bits of bad experience ephemera that clog up students’ lives.

    This is the rubbish bin theory of the student experience. Nobody is doing anything terribly wrong, in fact many people will be doing the right thing in some context and doing the best with the time they have, but the little bit of bad experience builds up and up until the whole student experience stinks. Some of these bits of rubbish are bigger than others, some might even amount to breaches of OfS’s ongoing conditions, but nobody is doing anything which is intentionally malicious.

    The rubbish bin theory of the student experience posits that everyone within a students’ ecosystem can make perfectly reasonable decisions within their own domains, turning down the heating to save on budgets, reconfiguring communal meeting space for staff offices, and changing opening hours of the reception desks might make sense in the context of the university more generally and even for some students some of the time. It is that the university is too big, too bureaucratic, and does not always operate on a small enough level to always take the rubbish out.

    The rubbish bin

    The problem with the smelly rubbish bin is that it’s often only noticed when it’s full. For example, the classic students’ union response is to bring together lots of information from course reps, school reps, committees, and other sources, to then feedback for subsequent years about a different bin, different ways to take out the rubbish, new bin liners (you get it I have tortured the metaphor now). The challenge is that even if you really push down the rubbish in one place it will only pop out in another (ok I am really done this time).

    This is because the issues are often too small-scale to warrant institutional intervention, which the union is well set up to advocate for, and often too local, emerging in programmes or departments, to be wholly made visible to the union or to be wholly made to work with university policy. The bin is able to get more and more full because everyone just flings their bit of rubbish in and it’s not anybody’s job to take it out from time to time (ok, sorry).

    The university incentive is to deal with the regulatory challenges in front of them. And while these are ongoing conditions the information the university can rely on, publish, and collate, is often a retrospective indicator. To take only two examples. NSS reporting encourages universities to deal with the issues of students no longer at the insitution. Graduate Outcomes measure student performance at a point in time in an ever changing labour market.

    This isn’t to say students’ unions don’t do lots of things for individuals, it’s not to say that universities only care about the big issues, that isn’t true, it’s a question of how these two institutions keep an eye on both the structural problems and the emerging challenges.

    Public administration

    There are three interesting public administration and organising theories that might help conceptualise this challenge. Henry Mintzberg, one of the most important public administration theorists of the 20th century, imagines organisation strategy like a potter at a wheel. The raw ingredients exist (staff, committees, students’ unions, money, representatives, and so on), but the shape of the pot only comes into focus when hands are applied to it. This is strategy by doing says that strategic intent only becomes apparent through patterns in retrospect.

    This would mean that students’ unions would have much looser resource allocations and move across departments, programmes, central university structures, representative groups, and ways of working, where the challenges and insight led them. It would mean that universities find the means to have more hands at the wheel. Giving school, departmental, and faculty committees more power, allocating budgets for taking out the rubbish bin, and challenging central structures so they spend more time focussing on emerging problems, not the retrospective ones encouraged by the regulatory reporting cycle.

    Community organising, which is a direction of travel across students’ unions, is slightly different to Mintzberg’s theory of emergent strategy. As imagined by the likes of Saul Alinsky community organising assumes that communities have the solutions but not the positional power to address issues. Emergent strategy places a greater emphasis on cross-organisational actions that can both exist within and between sites of local organising. They are both about allowing ideas to emerge with greater flexibility; it is that ideas of emergent strategy places greater emphasis on the initiation of those ideas and the provision of the materials to affect change within an organisational context. This would hold that rather than having a committee of people to take the rubbish bin out let students do it themselves through helping them organise and giving them budgets and responsibilities.

    The other important theorists here are Denhardt and Denhardt and their idea of New Public Service which sets out organisations to serve rather than steer their stakeholders. In this model universities and students’ unions would spend much less time trying to fix the problems of their students but instead provide the spaces through which students could learn from each other, provide resources through which students could advocate for themselves, and provide insights that would allow students to more effectively make the case for change to the people in power. In this model the emphasis would be on how universities and students’ unions open up bureaucratic spaces to allow a greater plurality of student voices to come forward.

    These are just three models amongst many but they raise the question of the best means of keeping an eye on the accumulation of student issues that lead to generally bad experiences. It comes down to a set of trade-offs which could be brought into sharper relief. The extent to which the universities, students’ unions, and their partners, ultimately develop policy and ways of working to support people to solve their own problems and they extent to which they are better served putting the organisational bureaucracy behind these bigger issues.

    The rubbish bin theory although a metaphor brings into focus the literal problem of how universities value maintenance. The accumulation of student issues are partially addressed by the ongoing commitment to keeping stuff open, working, reliable, and functioning. In general, reward often follows doing a good new thing rather than keeping the good old thing working. The issue of the student experience is intrinsically tied to the recognition and reward of those who take the rubbish out.

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  • Balancing Structure and Emergence in Teaching – Teaching in Higher Ed

    Balancing Structure and Emergence in Teaching – Teaching in Higher Ed

    Throughout my teaching career, I’ve often swung between two extremes when it comes to structure and flow. At times, I’ve been highly structured and organized—a good thing, but one that can become limiting when I miss what’s emerging in the moment. On the other end of the spectrum, if I lose track of the overall goals of a session or workshop, I risk not meeting my commitments or aligning with participants’ expectations. It also creates challenges for the broader structure of the course or event—whether it’s a class within a degree program or a workshop designed to support a university’s teaching and learning goals.

    Mia Zamora discusses this tension on Episode 475 of Teaching in Higher Ed: Making Space for Emergence. In the interview, she describes how we can create “buckets” to hold topics that we can explore together, which is especially helpful for the kind of class content that will be responding to what’s happening in an internal or external context, for example. In my business ethics class, we analyze news stories weekly, and there’s a “bucket” where our reflections and analysis can be placed.

    Alan Levine has co-taught with Mia previously and they both talk about courses having “spines” to keep the needed structure. You can see an example of their #NetNarratives class spine mid-way through Alan’s blog post: My #NetNar Reflection. On Episode 218, Alan discusses the importance of giving people opportunities to explore, as part of their learning. He shares:

    You get better by just practicing. Not rote practicing, but stuff where you’re free to explore.

    Speaking of exploring… I just went to visit Alan’s CogDogBlog – and discovered a recent post with “one more thing about podcasts” where he talks about a cool podcast directory that I wasn’t aware of… and ways of sharing one’s podcast feed with others. Now it is taking every ounce of discipline not to go down the rabbit trail of discovering more. But I leave for Louisiana in three days, the semester starts tomorrow, and I have a 5:30 AM keynote on Tuesday morning. All this to say, I had better behave myself and share a few more things about facilitiation I’ve been thinking about, as I prepare for those adventures.

    Two Additional Approaches for Managing the Tension Between Structure and Flow

    Over time, I’ve discovered two other helpful strategies for balancing structure and in-the-moment flexibility. These tools and insights have transformed how I prepare for and facilitate learning experiences.

    1. SessionLab: Visualizing and Adjusting the Flow

    A while back, I discovered a tool called SessionLab, and it’s become a game-changer, especially when preparing workshops. It helps me create a “run of show” document—something Kevin Kelly has discussed both on Episode 406: How to Create Flexibility for Students and Ourselves, as well as in his book on flexibility in teaching: Making College Courses Flexible Supporting Student Success Across Multiple Learning Modalities. A run of show outlines the timing, activity titles, descriptions, and any additional information for a session, helping me stay on track while leaving space for flexibility.

    SessionLab allows me to break down a workshop or class into blocks of time and activities. Though it includes a library of standard activities, I mostly use it to map out my own. One of my favorite features is the ability to highlight sections in the “additional information” column. This has been a game-changer for virtual facilitation. For example, when sharing resources or instructions during a Zoom session, I pre-highlight key content so I can easily copy and paste it into the chat in real time.

    Beyond that, the tool allows you to color-code blocks to visually assess the balance between different types of learning activities—like how much time you’re spending on lecture versus active learning. It even lets you generate a PDF version for offline reference.

    This morning, I was preparing for Tuesday morning’s keynote and realized (yet again) I’d tried to squeeze too much into my allotted time. SessionLab helped me get realistic about pacing, build in breathing room, and ensure space for those organic moments that make these moments of learning in community so powerful. After all, if everything were going to be rigidly planned, why not just record a video and skip live interaction altogether?

    If you’re looking for a tool to help you balance structure with flexibility, I highly recommend giving SessionLab a try.

    2. Padlet: Unlocking a Hidden Feature for Better Facilitation

    The second resource I want to highlight is in an upcoming book by Tolu Noah on facilitation: Designing and Facilitating Workshops with Intentionality: A Guide to Crafting Engaging Professional Learning Experiences in Higher Education. I had the privilege of reading an advance copy, and it felt like every page introduced me to a new tool or a fresh way of thinking.

    One of many insights that stood out was a feature I hadn’t realized existed in Padlet, a virtual corkboard I already use often for collaborative activities. Tolu explained that you can create breakout links to share just a single column from a Padlet board rather than the entire board.

    This has been incredibly helpful for making my Padlet boards more user-friendly. Before, when I shared an entire board, participants sometimes found it visually overwhelming—unsure where to post their contributions. Now, if I’m running an activity with multiple columns (e.g., ideas related to sustainability in one, corporate social responsibility in another), I can send a direct link to the specific column where I want participants to share. It simplifies the process and improves clarity for everyone.

    When Tolu Noah’s book comes out, I can’t recommend it enough—it’s packed with facilitation wisdom and practical strategies for creating more engaging learning environments.

    Resources

    Here’s a summary of the tools and people mentioned in this post:

    • Episode 475 with Mia Zamora
    • Episode 218 with Alan Levine
    • SessionLab – A tool for creating run-of-show plans, structuring workshops, and balancing structure with flexibility.
    • Kevin Kelly – Educator and author who explores flexibility in teaching and learning; referenced for his insights on “run of show” documents.
    • Making College Courses Flexible Supporting Student Success Across Multiple Learning Modalities – Kevin Kelly’s book: “Addressing students’ increasing demand for flexibility in how they complete college courses, this book prepares practitioners to create equivalent learning experiences for students in the classroom and those learning from home, synchronously or asynchronously.”
    • Padlet – A virtual corkboard tool for collaborative activities, with a feature for sharing breakout links to individual columns.
    • Tolu Noah – Educator and author of a forthcoming book on facilitation, emphasizing practical strategies for inclusive teaching.
    • Designing and Facilitating Workshops with Intentionality: A Guide to Crafting Engaging Professional Learning Experiences in Higher Education – Tolu Noah’s forthcoming book: “Workshops are one of the most frequently used forms of professional learning programming in higher education and beyond. However, in order for them to have a meaningful impact, they must be crafted with intentionality. Designing and Facilitating Workshops with Intentionality_ offers practical guidance, tools, and resources that can help you create more engaging, enriching, and effective workshops for adult learners.”

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  • When will the reasonable adjustments merry-go-round get fixed?

    When will the reasonable adjustments merry-go-round get fixed?

    You may have missed it, but just before Christmas some new survey results emerged on the experience of disabled students that ought to be the subject of several sector-wide new year’s resolutions.

    Only 39 per cent of those who had support agreed reported having all of it implemented. 62 per cent said they had gone without some adjustments because the process of chasing them up consumed too much time and energy. And 43 per cent of disabled students reported that a staff member had treated their agreed support as a mere suggestion.

    Almost half – 48 per cent – of disabled students believed they have received lower marks on their course because an assessment was not accessible, 73 per cent had to repeatedly explain the same aspects of their disability or access needs to different staff members, and 59 per cent needed to chase up support that has already been agreed.

    And meanwhile if they’re trying to access Disabled Students Allowance(s), email turnaround times are now down to 37 days – or half a semester, as it’s more commonly known.

    It’s just not worth it

    In theory, Disabled Students UK’s now annual survey – which this year gathered 1,200 self-selecting responses from disabled students across over 80 UK higher education institutions (weighted for gender) – ought to represent a national scandal.

    While there were some small signs of improvement over issues like lecture capture, as well as the reasonable adjustments issues above, only 21 per cent of disabled students felt that their modules had been designed with accessibility in mind – a key “anticipatory” duty.

    Of those who encountered access issues, only a quarter reported having raised all of them – three in four hold back from raising because they don’t want to be seen as difficult, don’t think it will help, fear not being understood or believed by staff, or are concerned about taking resources away from other students.

    Half reported that the adjustments provided were insufficient to put them on an equal footing with peers, 43 per cent experienced staff treating agreed support as optional, and a third felt pushed from one person to the next because it was unclear who was responsible for addressing their access needs. And only 40 per cent agree that the “majority” of staff outside of Disability Services understood their legal responsibility to make reasonable adjustments.

    And over 6 in 10 of those who had adjustments agreed reported having gone without some of those adjustments because it takes too much time and energy to chase them up.

    As well as the teaching and learning experience, just 38 per cent of in-person students with physical or sensory needs found their campus environment accessible, and some 44 per cent reported having been unable to attend a teaching session or supervision in person due to an inaccessible location.

    And nearly half (46 per cent) of disabled students needing accessible student housing reported having had to pay extra to do so.

    That all takes its toll. As well as the 48 per cent that believe they received a lower mark on their course due to an assessment not being accessible, 53 per cent reported their physical health suffering at some point during their degree, and 78 per cent reported their mental health suffering.

    Maximums and minimums

    So what is to be done, and who by? One option is aspirational charter marks of the sort embodied in the Disabled Students’ Commitment – but my guess is that will never catch on as an optional because of the lack of commercial benefit to having the gong.

    Or we default back to the idea that this isn’t an aspiration, it’s a minimum – but in a fiscally tight environment characterised partly by culture wars over equality and partly over shedding already stretched staff, just as local authorities ration Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCP) for children with parents that can take them to court, it has to be at least possible that higher education providers are doing something similar.

    That’s a situation designed for regulators – but in reality, if UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) was on the phone about to put a provider into special measures over immigration compliance, I know the panic and urgency with which previously seemingly intractable problems either in a central service or across academic departments can be fixed.

    But there is no equivalent risk, and so no equivalent urgency. And anyway, in England the Office for Students (OfS) does “minimums” regulation on outcomes – stats on getting in, on and out – and facilitates aspirations on quality experience via the TEF.

    It’s been pretty clear over the past few rounds of announced “boots on the ground” inspections that it’s only red flashing lights on the outcomes dashboard that trigger a look at experience – and even then through the optic of subject and/or partnerships, rather than the obvious differentials in experience between students with different characteristics.

    Notwithstanding some fairly shocking numbers inside some of the disability categories over graduate outcomes, the sector really isn’t too bad on disabled students outcomes.

    And so it does beg the question – what if disabled students aren’t getting the education they deserve (and have paid for), but battle on and get the outcomes anyway?

    Pillar to post

    As DK pointed out on the site back in October, OfS’ 2024 national student survey results split by student characteristics were not even accompanied by a commentary.

    Every year the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIAHE)’s annual report reminds us about the volume of complaints it sees from disabled students – but there’s no evidence at all that there’s a loop back into regulatory action either in England or Wales.

    The courts – including in the Abrahart case – don’t seem to be able to make their mind up about whether a failure to deliver reasonable adjustments represents a consumer protection law issue or an Equality Act 2010 issue.

    If it’s the former, regular readers won’t need a reminder here about how hard it is for students to know their rights and enforce them, in an environment where OfS has been promising improvements since its inception.

    And if it’s the latter, it’s really the Equality and Human Rights Commission that ought to be intervening – or is it?

    When it took the opportunity to clarify its interpretation of the law around reasonable adjustments following the conclusion of the appeal in the Abrahart case, the EHRC said that:

    …regulators like the OIA, and student bodies such as NUS and OfS will benefit from a clear statement of the law.

    But OfS is pretty clear that its key tool is access and participation plans – and that A&P dashboard on its website is all about outcomes, not experience.

    And anyway, the experience data that OfS does have is about disabled students being less satisfied in general – not on specific failures over the legal duties.

    And so the issue feels like it gets passed around without resolution in the same way that disabled students often experience locally, and never with strategic-level resolution or grip, either locally or nationally.

    Yes but sample size

    Of course, a self-selecting sample from a survey explicitly about being a disabled student – and promoted in that way – may not be nationally representative.

    And that’s a potential problem with the local results too. One of the things DSUK attempts to do with the results is to construct league table-able stats by provider – which this year has seen Cambridge University come out as the worst in the country.

    In a statement, a university spokesperson said:

    We take the views of our disabled students seriously. The sample size of 138 people for this survey represents just 2% of Cambridge’s disabled students. We regularly conduct higher-participation surveys and continually review our provision for disabled students.

    I can argue that as it’s a legal duty, one student credibly reporting an issue should be a scandal, but if anything, the Cambridge response highlights the wider problem – of both how much and how little we know about the scale of the issue.

    Over in the Netherlands, NSS results also highlight differentials in disabled student experience in general. But because there’s a set of extra questions that kick in on reasonable adjustments if a student is disabled, there’s also a raft of rich data on that issue too.

    That set of splits and adjustments findings is published by a body that used to just focus on disabled students – but now also works more broadly on inclusivity. With funding from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, ECIO supports universities in a national approach to studying with a disability and support needs and student well-being.

    It also handles what England would still call “premium funding” for disabled students, carries out customised assignments for individual providers, publishes wider research and advice on stuff like Universal Design for Learning, and generally works as an integrated enabler of the accessible education agenda.

    It is still the case that individual disabled students need to know their rights and be able to enforce them. But the emerging question is whether the Office for Students, the OIA and the EHRC are the right bodies to be passing the parcel on reasonable adjustments.

    I don’t know which of sticks, carrots or a mix of the two would be the most effective, and I don’t know whether OfS (and its emerging equivalents in Scotland and Wales) or a separate body is the right one to be driving the agenda.

    Nor do I know enough about why there’s been a sharp increase in disabled students, and the extent to which that is treated as a success inside the culture of HE, or treated with “you wouldn’t get all this in the real world” suspicion. I’ve come across both anecdotally – frequently in the same institution.

    What is clear is that universities are stretched, their staff are stretched and even (in England) OfS is stretched – and is making sure providers survive rather than highlighting the corners being cut to enable that survival.

    What is also clear is that as it stands and without a defendable dataset or a proper plan, it’s not just locally where students are needing to explain the same information about disability over and over again. Disabled students deserve better.

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  • From Gogglebox sofa to a degree via Go Higher – ALL @ Liverpool Blog

    From Gogglebox sofa to a degree via Go Higher – ALL @ Liverpool Blog

    Photo by Andrew Teebay, Liverpool Echo.

    At the University of Liverpool December graduations this year, 2024, the traditional student speech was given by Gogglebox and Go Higher star Viv Woedenweber. Viv came to Go Higher at the age of 56 after leaving the Goggle box show in 2020 to seek a change in her career and a route into university. Her love of history saw her excel on the Go Higher access programme and go on to achieve a Bachelor degree and then a Master’s degree in Archaeology.

    In her Graduation speech at the Philharmonic Hall, Viv said: “I came along with slight trepidation at first, as perhaps we all did, but was soon overwhelmed by the sense of belonging I experienced. I have made so many good friends, gained a passion for my discipline, climbed hillforts, laughed, cried and had many adventures..’.

    Alongside her studies, Viv works as a disability coach at the University of Liverpool to support students to fulfil their full potential, including Go Higher students and those on other courses in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.

    You can read more about Viv’s reflections on completing a degree as a mature student in the Liverpool Echo. Her story is yet another illustration that no matter your age or background, university is for you if you want it.

    And, of course, mature people make the very best students….

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  • The Myth That Made Us (Jeff Fuhrer)

    The Myth That Made Us (Jeff Fuhrer)

    From MIT Press: 

    “The Myth That Made Us exposes how false narratives—of a
    supposedly post-racist nation, of the self-made man, of the primacy of
    profit- and shareholder value-maximizing for businesses, and of minimal
    government interference—have been used to excuse gross inequities and to
    shape and sustain the US economic system that delivers them. Jeff Fuhrer argues that systemic racism continues to produce vastly disparate
    outcomes and that our brand of capitalism favors doing little to reduce
    disparities. Evidence from other developed capitalist economies shows
    it doesn’t have to be that way. We broke this (mean-spirited) economy.
    We can fix it.” 

    “Rather than merely laying blame at the feet of both conservatives and
    liberals for aiding and abetting an unjust system, Fuhrer charts a way
    forward. He supplements evidence from data with insights from community
    voices and outlines a system that provides more equal opportunity to
    accumulate both human and financial capital. His key areas of focus
    include universal access to high-quality early childhood education; more
    effective use of our community college system as a pathway to stable
    employment; restructuring key aspects of the low-wage workplace;
    providing affordable housing and transit links; supporting people of
    color by serving as mentors, coaches, and allies; and implementing Baby
    Bonds and Reparations programs to address the accumulated loss of wealth
    among Black people due to the legacy of enslavement and institutional
    discrimination. Fuhrer emphasizes embracing humility, research-based
    approaches, and community involvement as ways to improve economic
    opportunity.”

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  • Engagement and wellbeing analytics: the whole is greater than the sum of the parts

    Engagement and wellbeing analytics: the whole is greater than the sum of the parts

    By Rachel Maxwell, Principal Advisor at Kortext.

    Data at the heart of student support

    A successful and integrated framework for academic support that is built around students comprises three core elements: data, theory and people. The university ‘ethos’ around student support frames the collection and use of data that in turn are both interpreted and used by staff to collaboratively design meaningful interventions with students to support engagement, wellbeing and academic development. The data proxies used to support academic engagement are proven and well-established (see Foster and Siddle, 2019; Rimmington, 2024; University of Essex, 2023). Data proxies for wellbeing are more embryonic in nature and it is less clear how to effectively use both data sets effectively to maximise the overall impact on student success.

    Mental health matters

    That the sector, if not the country, is facing an unprecedented crisis in the mental health of young people is well established. Underreporting or non-disclosure of issues masks the true scale of the picture, and the increasing severity of those issues imposes an additional layer of complexity and resource for higher education providers to address.

    Ways to address the crisis, using student data, are therefore logical and essential, but also unclear. The Jisc Core Specification for Student Engagement Analytics identifies five wellbeing data points that indicate risks to retention and continuation alongside six more traditional student engagement data points. The inclusion of wellbeing analytics is an essential part of a whole provider approach to supporting student success alongside access and participation activity or the embedding of the University Mental Health Charter from Student Minds. Successful initiatives can now be shared via TASO’s Student Mental Health Evidence Hub.

    The evaluation of an Office for Students mental health and analytics project at Northumbria University concluded that student wellbeing can be accurately predicted and can provide operational value to intervention models within student support in addition to students requiring academic support identified through engagement or learning/learner analytics. And while poor mental health is likely to evidence itself in non-engagement, not all non-engagement is indicative of a wellbeing risk.

    … but it’s complex

    Universities grappling with the thorny issue of accurately identifying students who are struggling and need support with their mental health will naturally be considering whether the Northumbria approach can be successfully transferred and scaled up within their own settings. Answering this question is particularly important in the case of initial non-disclosure or subsequent development of mental health issues, particularly given the fairly significant caveats associated with the project:

    • Data cleanliness, accuracy and availability is essential – but it was only possible following a decade-long data and digital transformation project at the university
    • Over 800 data variables were reviewed alongside dynamic data from relevant systems and associated student support facilities
    • Human decision-making by mental health and wellbeing experts remains central, to ‘see’ the person behind the risk rating, avoid potential ‘blind spots’, false positives and ‘misses’, and, crucially, to understand how an individual’s mental health is actually impacting their university experience
    • Although deemed successful, the Northumbria project has not (yet) resulted in a deliverable service.

    The whole is greater than the sum of the parts

    The Kortext student engagement analytics product, StREAM, provides an effective comparison point with early work to turn wellbeing indicators into effective data proxies suitable for risk determination.

    One critical difference is that StREAM can effectively identify risk with an average of 90% accuracy based on data drawn from just 2 core systems – the VLE and the student record. However, identification of the causes of disengagement comes only through meaningful conversations with students, based both on their data and on contextual information about personal and demographic circumstances. It is important that the significance of those circumstances is explored collaboratively with the student at a relevant time to determine subjective impact, rather than presuming risk in advance.

    In light of the mental health crisis, effective, holistic student support requires the use of analytics based on both engagement and wellbeing to provide frontline staff with a richer picture of their students. This approach will also enable universities to demonstrate that they have discharged their legal responsibilities to their students as fully as possible. Waiting until a possible mental health situation is starting to manifest in a student’s engagement data may be seen as too late and potentially too risky, being reliant upon all staff members to identify and act upon risk at the precise moment the student starts to disengage with their learning. While the need to provide ongoing information, advice and guidance to all students has long been identified as good practice, tailoring that messaging based on predictive and unsubstantiated subjective risk requires handling with care.

    What next for health and wellbeing analytics?

    Deploying engagement and wellbeing analytics together across an institution is complex. One size will not fit all in terms of using one approach to achieve dual objectives (retention/continuation and wellbeing), nor will the approach be the same across all institutions. More research is required to explore a range of questions, including:

    1. How many of the students identified as being ‘at risk’ by an engagement analytics system require mental health support?
    2. How many of those who don’t (at least initially) disclose a mental health condition, were subsequently identified as having low or no engagement by an engagement analytics system?
    3. Would the use of the wellbeing analytics proxies identify the same group of students as having mental health concerns as those picked up by an engagement analytics system and, following a conversation, be appropriately categorised as having a mental health concern?
    4. What level of confidence can be placed in each data set in terms of identifying the right students and, critically, doing so at the right time?
    5. Can the wellbeing data points inform the development of a mental health algorithm, when such data points are not easily reduced to a 1 or 0?
    6. What are the policy implications of a combined approach – both across the sector and within institutions – to demonstrate that a university has actively and meaningfully met their legal responsibilities for all students?
    7. How can ‘prior knowledge of a possible risk’ be combined with near real-time data in a student analytics platform to pinpoint an acute mental health situation and support early intervention?

    Here at Kortext, we are interested in undertaking in-depth research with universities and others to explore these questions and find ways to use both data sets to support successful academic outcomes and a healthy student population. If you’re interested, please let us know here: www.kortext.com/stream/contact

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  • College Students Guide to Mental Health (ABC News)

    College Students Guide to Mental Health (ABC News)

    According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, nearly one in three young adults 18 to 25 have experienced a mental illness. Psychologist Mia Nosanow joins “GMA” for more.

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  • The Evolution of the Traditional Admissions Funnel: Adapting to a New Era

    The Evolution of the Traditional Admissions Funnel: Adapting to a New Era

    The traditional admissions funnel has long served as a trusty blueprint for ushering prospective students from initial interest to enrollment. But times, they are a-changin’. Technological leaps, shifting student expectations, and newfangled marketing strategies have all conspired to transform this once-straightforward model. So, let’s dive into how the admissions funnel has evolved and what these changes spell out for colleges and universities.

    From Linear to Non-Linear Journeys

    Gone are the days of the straight-line path from prospect to enrollment. The old funnel—prospect, inquiry, application, admission, acceptance, enrollment—was neat and tidy. Today, the student journey is a lot more like a hopscotch game. Prospective students zigzag through stages, start an application, go back to gathering info, and flip-flop on decisions multiple times before finally enrolling. This behavior calls for admissions teams to be nimble and ready to pivot at a moment’s notice.

    The Digital Revolution

    The rise of digital tech has turned the admissions process on its head. Now, online platforms, social media, and virtual tours are the main highways for students discovering and engaging with colleges. Virtual events, webinars, and interactive content are must-haves to grab the attention of today’s digital-savvy students. To keep up, institutions need to master digital marketing and create a seamless online experience.

    Personalization and Data Analytics

    Today’s students expect nothing less than personalized communication and experiences. With advanced data analytics, colleges can track student interactions and preferences, tailoring their outreach and engagement efforts. This means sending targeted messages, recommending specific programs, and offering personalized content that hits home with individual students. Such a personalized approach strengthens connections and boosts conversion rates.

    Increased Emphasis on Early Engagement

    Early engagement is now a cornerstone of the modern admissions funnel. Building relationships with prospective students well before the application stage is critical. This involves nurturing leads through meaningful interactions from as early as middle school. Colleges are investing in long-term outreach programs, summer camps, and pre-college initiatives to establish and maintain connections throughout the student journey.

    Focus on the Student Experience

    The student experience has become a pivotal factor in the admissions process. Prospective students are seeking more than academic offerings; they want institutions that align with their values, offer a supportive community, and provide opportunities for personal growth. Colleges need to showcase their unique campus cultures, highlight student success stories, and emphasize holistic support services to attract and retain students.

    Adapting to Changing Demographics

    Demographic shifts, like increasing diversity and the rise of non-traditional students, demand that colleges adapt their recruitment strategies. Institutions are developing more wide-ranging marketing campaigns and creating pathways for adult learners, transfer students, and international applicants. Understanding and addressing the unique needs of these diverse populations is crucial for staying competitive in today’s landscape.

    There you have it—the modern admissions funnel is a dynamic, digital, and personalized journey. Colleges and universities that embrace these changes and adapt their strategies will be the ones that thrive in this new era.

    We do NOT recruit and retain students when they understand us (the institution). We recruit and retain when students see we understand who they are.

    Mondy Brewer, Ph.D., brings over 30 years of diverse experience in higher education, having held key leadership positions in admissions, marketing communications, and student success. He has also served as an Assistant Professor of Leadership in Business. In addition to his consulting work specializing in enrollment management, he currently serves as AVP – Enrollment Strategy at Liaison. Dr. Brewer holds a Doctorate in Leadership with a focus on higher education administration. His doctoral research explored the engagement of first-generation college students, offering insights into the institutional support mechanisms that promote their success.

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