This week on the podcast we look at Wales’ emerging higher education settlement, as Universities Wales publishes its manifesto for the May 2026 Senedd elections amid polling that points to a potential Plaid-led administration.
Plus we discuss new Office for Students’ data on subcontracted (franchised) provision showing weaker continuation, completion and progression outcomes relative to sector averages, and assess the Institute of Student Employers’ latest survey, with graduate hiring down overall but highly variable by sector amid persistently high applications per vacancy.
With Debbie McVitty, Editor at Wonkhe, Sarah Cowan, Head of Policy (Higher Education and Research) at the British Academy, Sarah Stevens, Director of Strategy at the Russell Group and presented by Jim Dickinson, Associate Editor at Wonkhe.
Brazil exited the age of slavery 135 years ago. It remains a multi-racial society today. But for much of the twentieth century, Brazil suffered an enormous bout of amnesia. From being one of the last societies on earth to give up slavery, it immediately began touting itself as a place where colour did not matter, that it was a post-racial society.
But then about 30 years ago, things changed. Race — or more accurately race and inequality — became a much more prominent subject of debate, and various measures were brought in to lessen racial inequality. In higher education, however, Brazil did not however take the path of “affirmative action” as the United States did. Instead: it went the route India did with respect to caste: hard, fixed numerical quotas.
Today we’re going to look at how that this policy has worked out, and joining me to do so is Luiz Augusto Campos: He’s a professor of sociology and Political science at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, and he’s co-editor of a recent book on quotas in Brazilian higher education called O impacto das cotas: Duas decadasde acao affirmativano Ensino superior brasileiro. We had a great discussions about how Brazilian admissions quotas came to be and how they have change higher education. Of particular interest to me is that these quotas were imposed in some of the country’s most elite institutions — and how the arrival of quotas has managed to make policies of free tuition at elite institutions much less regressive.
The World of Higher Education Podcast Episode 4.7 | Access and Aftermath: What Racial Quotas Changed in Brazil’s Universities with Luiz Augusto Campos
Transcript
Alex Usher (AU): Luiz, before we start talking about quotas in higher education, let’s paint a picture of race in Brazil. Like the United States, Brazil was a colonial slave state—one where emancipation didn’t happen until 1888. But for a long time, there was a kind of myth that Brazil had become a post-racial society, one where people didn’t see race. So, what are the politics of race like in Brazil, and what’s changed over, say, the last 50 years?
Luiz Augusto Campos (LAC): That’s true, and I can say that almost everything has changed in recent years. At the beginning, Brazil was portrayed as a racial democracy—the idea that people in Brazil don’t see race and that there’s no racism. It’s complicated to understand how a country that was completely slave-based in the past could create this myth.
The myth was actually quite successful in the sense that most Brazilians used to believe it. It’s connected to how people viewed our history of slavery. In the past, people used to say that Brazilian slavery was a kind of soft slavery compared to other countries. Historians now show that’s not true, but that was how people saw it.
It was also tied to the myth of miscegenation—the idea that every Brazilian was of mixed race. And if everyone was mixed race, there was supposedly no place for racism, because you couldn’t practice racism against someone who was mixed, as everyone was.
But after 50 or 60 years, this national myth started to change—first because of the rise of the Black movement, which began to call out racism in Brazil, and later because of data on racial inequality. We’ve historically had very good data on race in Brazil—it’s a kind of legacy from the 18th century, through censuses and demographic records.
Those numbers began to show that, despite this idea of racial democracy, racial inequality remained deeply entrenched in Brazil, right up until the end of the 1990s. I think those two things—the activism of the Black movement and the hard data—really contributed to changing people’s belief in the myth of racial democracy.
AU: Just to be clear, when you talk about data on race, how is race classified? I don’t think it’s just white and Black, right? How does that work?
LAC: It’s changed over time, but we generally work with five racial categories. Even today, the Brazilian census is quite good. When a census worker comes to your house, they’ll ask you to identify your race using one of five options: Black, Brown, White, Yellow—which refers to Brazilians of Asian descent—and Indigenous.
That last category isn’t meant for people with distant Indigenous ancestry, but rather for those who actually live within Indigenous communities.
AU: Within higher education, how did race historically affect access? How big were the participation gaps between racial groups prior to the introduction of quotas?
LAC: The differences were huge. At the beginning of the 1990s, about 70 percent of students in public higher education were white. And it’s important to note that Brazil has both a public and a private higher education system.
AU: Right—and even though the private system is larger, the public system is the more selective and prestigious one. That’s where people want to go, correct?
LAC: Exactly. The private system is much bigger, but the public system is more selective, higher quality, and more prestigious.
At the start of the 1990s, around 70 percent of enrollments in the public system were white students. That was a real injustice, because the public system is completely tuition-free. So essentially, the government was collecting taxes from the majority of the population—who are largely Brown, Black, and poor—and using that money to fund the education of white students, who mostly came from middle- and upper-class backgrounds.
AU: Let me just ask—if about 70 percent of students in public higher education were white, how did that compare to the population as a whole?
LAC: In Brazil, the population has usually been about half white and half non-white. At the beginning of the 1990s, around 57 percent of people self-identified as white, but they made up about 70 percent of students in public universities.
It’s interesting, though, because racial classification in Brazil has also shifted over time—the proportions of people identifying as white, Black, or Brown have changed. But to answer your question directly, today less than 50 percent of students in public higher education are white. Black and Brown students now make up the majority in the public system.
AU: Let’s think about how we got there. In the 1980s and 1990s, as you said, racial politics started to change across Brazil. People realized this wasn’t really a racial democracy. How did quotas become the tool for achieving racial justice, rather than affirmative action as practiced in the United States at the time?
LAC: It’s a really complex process—and not one that was carefully planned.
First, we had the earliest proposals coming from the Black movement, mostly from an important Black leader in Brazil who was a congressman at the time. He introduced several bills for affirmative action, most of them based on quotas, though they included other ideas as well—such as direct financial support for Black Brazilians and other measures. But the core idea of quotas was already there in the early 1980s.
After that, we saw the rise of a movement creating preparatory courses for university entrance exams. In Brazil, admission to public universities is based on a standardized test, and these prep courses were designed by Black activists to help Black, Brown, and low-income students prepare for it.
The first actual quota policy began at my own university—the State University of Rio de Janeiro—at the beginning of the 2000s. Interestingly, the counselor who approved the quota system was from a right-wing party. He wasn’t necessarily a racial justice advocate; he was just a politician looking for proposals to champion, and this was one he decided to push through.
From that point onward, other universities began to adopt and replicate the model. Today, Brazil likely has the largest racial quota system in the world.
AU: So, how did we go from a situation in the 1980s and 1990s, where a few institutions were experimenting with quotas, to a point where the federal government actually mandated them for all federal universities in 2012? What led up to that decision, and how does the current quota system work?
LAC: It’s a complex story. In the beginning, there was fierce opposition to quotas in Brazil. Even intellectuals and public figures who had long supported anti-racist efforts criticized the quota system when it was first proposed.
At the same time, there were also important groups supporting these policies, but the federal government initially stayed on the sidelines. During Lula’s first two terms, he was personally supportive of such initiatives, but because the topic was so controversial, his government took a cautious approach. They said, “We need to wait—this is a divisive issue,” and chose not to sponsor a national quota bill for higher education at that stage.
However, during Lula’s broader reform of the higher education system, the government did introduce incentives for universities to adopt diversity policies. And for many institutions, quotas were simply the most practical approach—bureaucratically, they’re straightforward to implement. You just reserve a certain percentage of seats, and that’s it.
The Black movement also played a critical role. Activists developed strategies and frameworks to encourage universities to adopt quotas, and because Brazilian universities enjoy a high degree of autonomy, many were able to introduce these policies on their own.
AU: My understanding is that the quota system is actually a kind of two-level structure. The main rule is that 50 percent of students must come from public secondary schools, and then within that, there are race-based quotas that vary depending on the region—since, I assume, the racial makeup of Brazil isn’t homogenous across the country.
LAC: Exactly. First, it’s important to understand that Brazil’s quota system is primarily socioeconomic. The first criterion is that 50 percent of students admitted to public universities must come from public schools. On average, public schools in Brazil are of lower quality than private schools. You don’t pay to attend them, but the quality is generally weaker.
Within that 50 percent, there’s another socioeconomic division: 25 percent of seats are reserved for students from lower-income backgrounds, and 25 percent for students from higher-income backgrounds who still attended public schools.
Then, inside those categories, there are racial quotas. And as you said, the racial proportions vary by state, depending on the local population.
AU: It’s now been a couple of decades since quotas were first introduced, and 13 years since the federal law came into effect. You mentioned earlier that there’s been a significant narrowing of racial access gaps. How substantial has that change been?
LAC: In terms of access, it’s very significant. Today, we can say that Brazilian universities are truly Black and Brown universities. If you visit a campus in Brazil now, you’ll see far more Black and Brown students than in the past.
That said, there are still limits and challenges. While the public higher education system has changed dramatically in both racial and socioeconomic terms, it remains quite small compared to the private sector. In the 1990s, the public system made up almost half of Brazil’s entire higher education system. Today, it accounts for only about 20 percent.
AU: What about graduation rates? It’s one thing to get into university, but as you mentioned, students from public secondary schools might not have had the same preparation. Has the system been able to adjust to ensure that racial minorities are graduating at the same rate as white students?
LAC: In terms of graduation, the rates are quite similar. Black and Brown students now graduate at roughly the same rate as white students. But there are still differences because, even with quotas, access isn’t evenly distributed across all majors.
AU: So, there’s still stratification within the system.
LAC: Yes, exactly. Because racial quotas exist within the broader socioeconomic quota, the share of seats reserved for Black and Brown students ends up being about half of their proportion in the overall Brazilian population.
As a result, in some programs—especially in the less selective ones—you might see 50 or 60 percent of students identifying as Black or Brown. But in the most selective fields, like law or engineering, that number drops to around 20 percent.
It’s also important to note that not all quota seats are filled. Universities sometimes introduce additional requirements or special exams that can limit how these racial quotas are implemented in practice.
AU: Based on your overview of quotas and their results, is there anything you think could be improved in the system?
LAC: Yes, there’s quite a lot that could be improved. We have a new law from 2023 that made some small but important updates to the 2012 legislation. It’s a good law—I think it corrected several issues—but there are still many areas that need attention.
First, data access. In Brazil, getting access to racial data is actually harder today than it used to be. This is partly due to new data protection laws that were meant to regulate big tech companies, but in practice they’ve ended up restricting academic research instead. So, access to race-related data for research is now much worse than before.
Second, the admissions system itself is extremely complicated. Students take a national standardized exam—the ENEM—to apply for higher education. Through this unified system, they can choose from roughly 6,000 different programs across the country.
Within that, there are multiple overlapping quota categories. Besides the main racial and socioeconomic quotas, there are additional ones—like for students with disabilities—which exist inside the broader categories. Altogether, there are around 16 groups, and combining all of them within a single national admissions platform makes it very difficult to fill every quota properly.
So, while the policy framework is strong, the system still has a lot of complexity and operational challenges that need to be addressed.
AU: And what do you think the future holds for quotas in Brazilian higher education? Is there a limit to how far quotas can help narrow the access gap? And can you imagine a future in which quotas wouldn’t be needed anymore?
LAC: I can imagine that future—and I hope for it. I think we’re all working toward a world where quotas are no longer necessary. But for now, they’re still very much needed.
At the moment, the quota system itself isn’t under serious attack. What is under pressure, though, is public higher education—and really the higher education system as a whole. There’s a growing discourse, mostly from the far right, claiming that higher education isn’t necessary, that people should simply “work hard” instead.
Public universities, in particular, have become targets. Critics accuse them of being useless or of being dominated by the far left, which simply isn’t true.
To answer your question directly, I’d say the quota system in Brazil is quite stable right now. But the institutions that sustain it—especially public universities—are facing challenges. Looking ahead, I think the next step is to expand affirmative action beyond higher education, into other areas like the labor market and public institutions, where access for Black and Brown Brazilians remains limited.
AU: Luiz, thank you so much for being with us today.
LAC: Thank you. It’s my pleasure.
AU: And it just remains for me to thank our excellent producers, Sam Pufek and Tiffany MacLennan, and you, our readers and listeners, for joining us. If you have any questions about today’s episode or suggestions for future ones, don’t hesitate to contact us at [email protected]. Next week is a break week—but after that, we’ll be back with another fascinating conversation. Bye for now.
*This podcast transcript was generated using an AI transcription service with limited editing. Please forgive any errors made through this service.Please note, the views and opinions expressed in each episode are those of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host and team, or our sponsors.
Your job now requires a new level of transparency that you are reluctant to provide. This media crisis will burn for several more days if we sit silent. We are in a true leadership moment and I need you to listen to your communications expert. I can make your job easier and more successful.
Signed,
Your Communications Director
As superintendents come under more political fire and frequent negative news stories about their school districts circulate, it is easy to see where the instinct to not comment and just focus on the work might kick in. However, the path forward requires a new level of transparency and truth-telling in communications. In fact, the work requires you to get out in front so that your teachers and staff can focus on their work.
I recently spoke with a school district facing multiple PR crises. The superintendent was reluctant to address the issues publicly, preferring one-on-one meetings with parents over engaging with the media or holding town hall-style parent meetings. But when serious allegations of employee misconduct and the resulting community concerns arise, it’s crucial for superintendents to step forward and take control of the narrative.
While the details of ongoing human resources or police investigations cannot be discussed, it’s vital to inform the community about actions being taken to prevent future incidents, the safeguards being implemented, and your unwavering commitment to student and staff safety. All of that is far more reassuring than the media reporting, “The district was not available for comment,” “The district cannot comment due to an ongoing investigation,” or even worse, the dreaded, “The school district said it has no comment.”
Building trust with proactive communication
A district statement or email doesn’t carry the same weight as a media interview or an in-house video message sent directly to community members. True leadership means standing up and accepting the difficult interviews, answering the tough questions, and conveying with authentic emotion that these incidents are unacceptable. What a community needs to hear is the “why” behind a decision so that trust is built, even if that decision is to hold back on key information. A lack of public statement can be perceived as indifference or a leadership void, which can quickly threaten a superintendent’s career.
Superintendents should always engage with the media during true leadership moments, such as district-wide safety issues, school board meetings, or when the public needs reassurance. “Who Speaks For Your Brand?” looks at a survey of 1,600 school staff who resoundingly stated that the superintendent is the primary person responsible for promoting and defending a school district’s brand. A majority of the superintendents surveyed agreed as well. Promoting and defending the district’s brand includes the negative–but also the positive–opportunities like the first day of school, graduation, school and district grade releases, and district awards.
However, not every media request requires the superintendent’s direct involvement. If it doesn’t rise to the severity level worthy of the superintendent’s office, an interview with a department head or communications chief is a better option. The superintendent interview is reserved for the stories we decide require it, not just because a reporter asks for it. Reporters ask for you far more than your communications chief ever tells you.
It is essential to communicate directly and regularly with parents through video and email using your district’s mass communication tools. You control the message you want to deliver, and you don’t have to rely on the media getting it right. This is an amazing opportunity to humanize the office. Infuse your video scripts with more personality and emotion to connect on a personal level with your community. It is far harder to attack the person than the office. Proactive communications help build trust for when you need it later.
I have had superintendents tell me that they prefer to make their comments at school board meetings. School board meeting comments are often insufficient, as analytics often indicate low viewership for school board meeting live streams or recordings. In my experience, a message sent to parents through district alert channels far outperforms the YouTube views of school board meetings.
Humanizing the superintendent’s role
Superintendents should maintain a consistent communications presence via social media, newsletters, the website, and so on to demonstrate their engagement within schools. Short videos featuring interactions with staff and students create powerful engagement opportunities. Develop content to create touch points that celebrate the contributions of nurses, teachers, and bus drivers, especially on their national days of recognition. These proactive moments of engagement show the community that positive moments happen hourly, daily, and weekly within your schools.
If you are not comfortable posting your own content, have your communications team ghostwrite posts for you. You never want a community member asking, “What does the superintendent do all day? We never see them.” If you are posting content from all of the school visits and community meetings you attend, that accusation can never be made again. You now have social proof of your engagement efforts and evidence for your annual contract review.
Effective communication is a superintendent’s superpower. Those who can connect authentically and show their personality can truly shine. Many superintendents mistakenly believe that hard work alone will speak for itself, but in today’s politically charged landscape, a certain amount of “campaigning” is necessary while in office. We all know the job of the superintendent has never been harder, tenure has never been shorter, and the chance of being fired is higher than ever.
Embrace the opportunity to engage and showcase the great things happening in your district. It’s worth promoting positive and proactive communications so that you’re a seasoned pro when the challenging moments come. There might just be less of them if you get ahead.
Greg Turchetta, Apptegy
Greg Turchetta is the Strategic Communications Advisor at Apptegy and was the Senior Chief Communications Officer for the Richland School District in Columbia, South Carolina.
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A federal judgeon Tuesday temporarily blocked University of Texas System officials from enforcing a state law that bans free speech and expression on public campuses between the hours of 10 p.m. and 8 a.m.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression sued leaders of the UT system in Septemberon behalf of student groups who argued the law violated their First Amendment rights.
U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra, a Reagan appointee,found that plaintiffs raised “significant First Amendment issues” with the law and its application, and he granted a preliminary injunction on enforcement while the case plays out.
Dive Insight:
Texas passed SB 2972, earlier this year in the wake of 2024’s wave of pro-Palestinian protests on U.S. campuses.
“In April 2024, universities across the nation saw massive disruption on their campus,” state Sen. Brandon Creighton, the primary author of the bill, wrote in a statement of intent. “Protesters erected encampments in common areas, intimidated other students through the use of bullhorns and speakers, and lowered American flags with the intent of raising the flag of another nation.”
Along with specifically prohibiting First Amendment-protected activityovernight, the law also bars the campus community from inviting speakers to campus, using devices to amplify speech and playing drums or other percussive instruments during the last two weeks of any term.
In its complaint, FIRE called the law “blatantly unconstitutional.”
“The First Amendment doesn’t set when the sun goes down,” FIRE senior supervising attorney JT Morris said in a September statement. “University students have expressive freedom whether it’s midnight or midday, and Texas can’t just legislate those constitutional protections out of existence.”
Ezra agreed in his ruling.
“The First Amendment does not have a bedtime of 10:00 p.m.,” the judge wrote. “The burden is on the government to prove that its actions are narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling governmental interest. It has not done so.”
In his ruling, Ezra wrote that the law’s free speech restrictions were not content-neutral and so must survive a strict legal test for the government to show that the law is the least restrictive possible to achieve a “compelling” goal.
The judge pointed to public posts by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the bill’s statement of intent, both decrying the pro-Palestinian protests. Abbott described the protests as antisemitic and called for the arrest and expulsion of protestors.
“The statute is content-based both on its face and by looking to the purpose and justification for the law,” Ezra wrote.
Ezra also highlighted that the statute carved out an exception for commercial speech in his ruling.
“Defendants betray the stated goal of preventing disruption and ensuring community safety by failing to expand the Bans to commercial speech,” he wrote. “Students can engage in commercial speech that would otherwise violate the Bans simply because it is not ‘expressive activities,’ no matter how disruptive.”
In response to the law, the University of Texas at Austin adopted a more limited version of the policy that only banned overnight expressive activities in its common outdoor area that generate sound to be heard from a university residence.
However, Ezra concluded the pared-down policy wasn’t enough to protect students’ constitutional speech rights, as UT-Austin could change it or enforce it subjectively.
“The threat of prosecution arises not only from UT’s adopted policy but also from the legislative statute,” the judge wrote. “As adopted, UT Austin is not currently in compliance with the statute, and at any point could change or be instructed to change its policies to comply with the law.”
FIRE cheered the injunction on Tuesday.
“We’re thankful that the court stepped in and halted a speech ban that inevitably would’ve been weaponized to censor speech that administrators disagreed with,” FIRE Senior Attorney Adam Steinbaugh said in a statement.
In its lawsuit, the free speech group has asked the judge to permanently block the law’s enforcement.
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More than three dozen higher education organizations, led by the American Council on Education,are urging the Trump administrationto reconsider its plan to require colleges to submit years of new data on applicants and enrolled students, disaggregated by race and sex.
As proposed, the reporting requirements would begin on Dec. 3., giving colleges just 17 weeks to provide extensive new admissions data, ACE President Ted Mitchell wrote in an Oct. 7 public comment. Mitchell argued that isn’t enough time for most colleges to effectively comply and would lead to significant errors.
ACE’s comment came as part of a chorus of higher education groups and colleges panning the proposal. The plan’s public comment period ended Tuesday, drawing over 3,000 responses.
A survey conducted by ACE and the Association for Institutional Research found that 91% of polled college leaders expressed concern about the proposed timeline,and 84% said they didn’t have the resources and staff necessary to collect and process the data.
Delaying new reporting requirements would leave time for necessary trainings and support services to be created, Mitchell said. The Education Department — which has cut about half its staff under President Donald Trump — should also ensure that its help desk is fully crewed to assist colleges during implementation, Mitchell said.
Unreliable and misleading data?
In August, Trumpissued a memo requiring colleges to annually report significantly more admissions data to the National Center for Education Statistics, which oversees the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.
The Education Department’s resulting proposal would require colleges to submit six years’ worth of undergraduate and graduate data in the first year of the IPEDS reporting cycle, including information on standardized test scores, parental education level and GPA.
In a Federal Register notice, the Education Department said this information would increase transparency and “help to expose unlawful practices″ at colleges. The initial multi-year data requirement would “establish a baseline of admissions practices” before the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling against race-conscious admissions, it said.
But the department’s proposal and comments have caused unease among colleges, higher ed systems and advocacy groups in the sector.
“While we support better data collection that will help students and families make informed decisions regarding postsecondary education, we fear that the new survey component will instead result in unreliable and misleading data that is intended to be used against institutions of higher education,” Mitchell said in the coalition’s public comment.
The wording of the data collection survey — or lack thereof — also raised some red flags.
Mitchell criticized the Trump administration for introducing the plan without including the text of the proposed questions. Without having the actual survey to examine, “determining whether the Department is using ‘effective and efficient’ statistical survey methodology seems unachievable,” he said.
The Education Department said in the Federal Register notice that the additional reporting requirements will likely apply to four-year colleges with selective admissions processes,contending their admissions and scholarships “have an elevated risk of noncompliance with the civil rights laws.”
During the public comment period, the department specifically sought feedback on which types of colleges should be required to submit the new data.
The strain on institutions ‘cannot be overstated’
Several religious colleges voiced concerns about the feasibility of completing the Education Department’s proposed request without additional manpower.
“Meeting the new requirements would necessitate developing new data extracts, coding structures, validation routines, and quality assurance checks — all while maintaining existing reporting obligations,”Ryon Kaopuiki, vice president for enrollment management at the University of Indianapolis, said in a submitted comment.
The religious college’s Office of Institutional Research has just two staff members, Kaopuiki said. The Education Department would not provide additional funding and did not suggest it would offer technical support.
Vanguard University of Southern California, another religious institution, said in a public comment that the new work would fall on just one staff member.
A majority of the college leaders surveyed by ACE and AIR said it would take their institution between 250 to 499 hours of work to comply with the new reporting requirements.The federal proposal estimated that the changes will create over 740,000 hours of additional work across the higher ed sector.
But the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities said required labor will be much worse.
“The strain this collection will place on institutions cannot be overstated,” NAICU, which signed on to ACE’s letter, said in a separately submitted comment. “The proposal greatly underestimates both the burden and timeframe, particularly for colleges with limited staff, infrastructure, and resources already stretched thin” by other new reporting requirements.
Vanguard and the University of Indianapolis urged the department to delay implementing the new requirements until the 2027–28 collection cycleand to test them via a pilot with volunteer institutions before rolling them out nationally.
The institutions also proposed an exemption for small colleges, though they suggested different enrollment cut-offs — the University of Indianapolis suggested fewer than 750 full-time students, while Vanguard pitched fewer than 3,000.
Other concerns from colleges
The University of Texas System, along with the University of Alabama System and the ACE coalition, raised concerns about student privacy and the feasibility of collecting graduate-level data.
“Graduate admissions are inherently decentralized and vary by program,” Archie Holmes, the Texas system’s executive vice chancellor for academic affairs, wrote in a public comment. “Required data elements such as program-level GPA and test scores are not uniformly collected and may not be directly comparable.”
He recommended that the Education Department focus on undergraduate data until the process has been standardized.
Holmes also flagged that colleges risk inadvertently sharing private student data by disaggregating it so significantly, especially in smaller programs.
The University of Alabama System likewise warned of “significant legal and privacy risks” if the Education Department did not provide “clear federal guidance” on privacy protections.
The presidents of Capella and Strayer universities, two for-profit institutions owned by the same company, asked that the Education Department exclude noncompetitive scholarships from its reporting requirements for colleges that accept all or a “vast majority” of their applicants.
For example, a scholarship “whose only eligibility requirement is student persistence” does not “bear any connection to race” and reporting data on its recipients “would not advance the Department’s goal of detecting or preventing racial discrimination,” they said in a joint comment. But it would add an unnecessary administrative burden for colleges, they said.
Employers say they want students to have experience using artificial intelligence tools, but most students in the Class of 2025 are not using such tools for the job hunt, according to a new survey.
The study, conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, included data from 1,400 recent graduates.
Students who do use AI tools for their job search most commonly apply them to writing cover letters (65 percent), preparing for interviews (64 percent) and tailoring their résumés to specific positions (62 percent). In an Oct. 14 webinar hosted by NACE, students explained the benefits of using AI when searching for career opportunities.
Among student job seekers who don’t employ AI, nearly 30 percent of respondents said they had ethical concerns about using the tools, and 25 percent said they lacked the expertise to apply them to their job search. An additional 16 percent worried about an employer’s reaction to AI-assisted applications, and 15 percent expressed concern about personal data collection.
“If you listen to the media hype, it’s that everybody’s using AI and all of these students who are graduating are flooding the market with applications because of AI, et cetera,” NACE CEO Shawn Van Derziel said during the webinar. “What we’re finding in our data is that’s just not the case.”
About one in five employers use AI in recruiting efforts, according to a separate NACE study.
Students say: Brandon Poplar, a senior at Delaware State University studying finance and prelaw, said during the webinar that he uses AI for internship searches.
“It has been pretty successful for me; I’ve been able to use it to tailor my résumé, which I think is almost the cliché thing to do now,” Poplar said. “Even to respond to emails from employers, it’s allowed me to go through as many applications as I can and find things that fit my niche.”
Through his AI-assisted searches, Poplar learned he’s interested in management consulting roles and then determined how to best align his cover letters to communicate that to an employer.
Morgan Miles, a senior at Spelman College majoring in economics, said she used a large language model to create a résumé that fits an insurance role, despite not having experience in the insurance industry. “I ended up actually getting a full-time offer,” Miles said.
She prefers to use an AI-powered chatbot rather than engage with career center staff because it’s convenient and provides her with a visual checklist of her next steps, she said, whether that’s prepping for interview questions or figuring out what skills she needs to add to application materials.
Panelists at the webinar didn’t think using ChatGPT was “cheating” the system but rather required human creativity and input. “It can be a tool to align with your values and what you’re marketing to the employers and still being yourself,” said Dandrea Oestricher, a recent graduate of the City College of New York.
Maria Wroblewska, a junior at the University of California, Irvine, where she works as a career center intern, said she was shocked by how few students said they use AI. “I use it pretty much every time I search for a job,” to investigate the company, past internship offerings and application deadlines, she said.
Other student trends: NACE leaders also shared results from the organization’s 2025 Student Survey, which included responses from 13,000 students across the U.S.
The job market continues to present challenges for students, with the average senior submitting 30 job applications before landing a role, according to the survey. In recent years that number has skyrocketed, said Josh Kahn, associate director of research and public policy at NACE. “It was about 16 or 17, if I remember correctly, two years ago. That is quite large growth in just two years,” he said during the webinar.
Students who met with an employer representative or attended a job fair were more likely to apply for additional jobs, but they were also more likely to report that the role they were hired in is related to their major program.
Students who used an AI search engine (approximately 15 percent of all respondents) were more likely to apply for jobs—averaging about 60 applications—and less likely to say the job they landed matched their major. “That was a little surprising,” Kahn said. “It does line up anecdotally with what we’re hearing about AI’s impact on the number of applications that employers are receiving.”
Two in five students said they’d heard the term “skills-based hiring” and understood what it meant, while one-third had never heard the term and one-quarter weren’t sure.
Student panelists at the webinar said they experienced skills-based hiring practices during their internship applications, when employers would instruct them to complete a work exercise to demonstrate technical skills.
NACE’s survey respondents completed 1.26 internships on average and received 0.78 job offers. A majority of internships took place in person (79 percent) or in a hybrid format (16 percent). Almost two-thirds of interns were paid (62 percent), which is the highest rate NACE has seen in the past seven years, Kahn said. Seven in 10 students said they did not receive a job offer from their internship employer.
Do you have a career-focused intervention that might help others promote student success? Tell us about it.
SB 2972 was passed after students at several public Texas universities protested the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Jon Shapley/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images
A Texas district court judge on Tuesday ordered the University of Texas system to hold off on enforcing new, sweeping limits on student expression that would prohibit any “expressive activity” protected by the First Amendment between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m.
“The First Amendment does not have a bedtime of 10 p.m.,” wrote U.S. district court judge David Alan Ezra in his order granting the plaintiff’s request for a preliminary injunction. “Giving administrators discretion to decide what is prohibited ‘disruptive’ speech gives the school the ability to weaponize the policy against speech it disagrees with. As an example, the Overnight Expression Ban would, by its terms, prohibit a sunrise Easter service. While the university may not find this disruptive, the story may change if it’s a Muslim or Jewish sunrise ceremony. The songs and prayer of the Muslim and Jewish ceremonies, while entirely harmless, may be considered ‘disruptive’ by some.”
A coalition of student groups—including the student-run Retrograde Newspaper, the Fellowship of Christian University Students at the University of Texas at Dallas and the student music group Strings Attached—sued to challenge the restrictions, which, in addition to prohibiting expression overnight, also sought to ban campus public speakers, the use of drums and amplified noise during the last two weeks of the semester. The restrictive policies align with Texas Senate Bill 2972, called the Campus Protection Act, which requires public universities to adopt restrictions on student speech and expression. The bill took effect on Sept. 1.
“Texas’ law is so overbroad that any public university student chatting in the dorms past 10 p.m. would have been in violation,” said Adam Steinbaugh, a senior attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, in a press release. “We’re thankful that the court stepped in and halted a speech ban that inevitably would’ve been weaponized to censor speech that administrators disagreed with.”
Last year, Brown University announced that Mary Wright was embarking on a new adventure in early 2025.
If you are anywhere near or around the CTL world, you likely know (or know about) Mary Wright. Her 2023 JHU Press publication, Centers for Teaching and Learning: The New Landscape in Higher Education, is a must-read for every university leader. Mary—along with Tracie Addy, Bret Eynon and Jaclyn Rivard—also has a forthcoming book with Johns Hopkins (2026), which will provide a 20-plus-year look at continuities and changes in the field of educational development.
Therefore, it was big news earlier this year when Mary moved from her role as associate provost for teaching and learning and executive director of Sheridan Center at Brown to a new position as a professor of education scholarship at the University of Sydney. With Mary now more than six months in her new role, this was a good time to catch up with how things are going.
Q: Tell us about your new role at the University of Sydney. What does a faculty appointment in Australia constitute in terms of teaching, research and administrative responsibilities?
A: As in the U.S., a faculty appointment (here, called an academic appointment) varies greatly across and even within Australian institutions. In my role, I serve as a Horizon Educator, an education-focused academic role, which carries a heuristic of 70 percent time to education, 20 percent to scholarship and 10 percent to leadership or service-related activities. Like my prior 20-plus years of experience in the U.S., I am still an academic developer (called an educational developer in the U.S.), which means that education most frequently involves teaching and mentoring other academics as learners.
I am a level-E academic, which is akin to a full professor role in the U.S. (The trajectory starts at level A, which encompasses associate lecturer and postdoctoral fellows and goes through level B [lecturer], level C [senior lecturer], level D [associate professor] and level E [professor].)
There are many differences between U.S. and Australian higher education, but I’ll highlight two here in relation to those who work in CTLs. The first and most significant is that, in the U.S., educational developers are often positioned as professional staff. In Australia, many universities treat this work with parity to other academics. I feel that this substantially raises the credibility and value of academic development.
Second, professional learning around teaching is a required part of many academics’ contracts, initially or for “confirmation,” and it is structured into their workloads. I first worried that this would prompt a good deal of reactance, but I have not found this to be the case. I now find this to be a more equitable system for students (and academic success), compared to the U.S.’s (primarily) voluntary approach.
Q: Moving from Rhode Island to Australia is a big move. What is it about the University of Sydney that attracted you to the institution, and why did you make this big move at this point in your career?
A: Three factors attracted me to the University of Sydney. First, I was attracted to what I will call their organizational honesty. The institution was very open that they were not where they wanted to be in regard to teaching and the student experience; they wanted to be a different kind of institution. They also had a very clear theory of change, mapping very much onto metaphors I write about elsewhere: requiring convening and community building (hub); support of individual career advancement (incubator); development of evidence-based practice, such as the scholarship of teaching and learning (sieve); and advancing the value of teaching and learning through recognition and reward (temple).
Specifically, USyd was investing in over 200 new Horizon Educator positions, education-focused academics charged to be educational leaders. One part of my role is to work with this amazing group of academics to advance their own careers, as well as to realize the institution’s ambitions for enhanced teaching effectiveness. To anchor this work at a macro level, USyd also had been working very hard on developing and rolling out a new Academic Excellence Framework, which provides a clear pathway to the recognition and reward of education—in addition to other aspects of the academic role
The University of Sydney is also making a significant investment in grants to foster the scholarship of teaching and learning, which has been a long-standing interest of mine but was often done “off the side of the desk.” My role involves working with people, programs and practices to facilitate SoTL.
In addition to university strategy, I was attracted by the opportunity to work with Adam Bridgeman and colleagues in the university’s central teaching and learning unit. Educational Innovation has been engaged in very interesting high-level work around AI and assessment, as well as holistic professional learning to support academics, but like many CTLs, it has been stretched since COVID to advance a growing number of institutional aims. Because of my prior leadership in CTLs, I felt like I could also contribute in this space.
Q: Pivoting from a university leadership staff role to a faculty role is appealing to many of us in the nonfaculty educator world. (Although I know you also had a faculty position at Brown). Can you share any advice for those who might want to follow in your footsteps?
A: For some context, I started my career in the early 2000s in a professional staff role in a CTL and also occasionally adjuncted. I became a research scientist in the CTL, then moved to direct a CTL in 2016 and had an affiliate faculty position (with the staff/administrative role as primary). In 2020, I then moved to a senior administration role (again, my primary role was professional staff). So, I have worn a number of hats.
Three factors have been helpful in transitioning across roles. First, I love to write, and while the scholarly work rarely “counted” for anything in these series of positions, I think it helped me advance to the next step. Second, it’s important to read a lot to stay current with the vast literature on teaching and learning. I think this can add value to my work with individual academics—to help them publish—as well as my work on committees, where there is often some literature to cite on the topic at hand.
Finally, I think professional associations can be very helpful in building bridges and networks, especially for those considering an international transition. In the U.S., the POD Network was a key source of support. Now, before even applying to my current role, I subscribed to the newsletter of HERDSA (Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia) and I participated in one of their mentoring programs. I also serve as a co-editor of the International Journal for Academic Development, which exposed me to articles about Australian academic development, and I got some generous and wise advice from Australian and New Zealand IJAD colleagues about the job search.
This blog was kindly authored by Dr. Ismini Vasileiou, Associate Professor at De Montfort University.
The UK Higher Education sector is at a crossroads. With the government’s skills agenda being reshaped, institutions under growing financial pressure, and the first-ever merger between two English universities announced, the landscape is shifting faster than many had anticipated. Into this mix comes Ofsted’s new Report Card for Further Education & Skills (September 2025), which introduces a sharper accountability framework for further education providers.
The report card grades institutions across areas such as Leadership & Governance, Inclusion, Safeguarding, and Contribution to Meeting Skills Needs. At programme level, it assesses Curriculum, Teaching & Training, Achievement, and Participation & Development against a tiered scale ranging from Exceptional to Urgent Improvement.
While this is designed for further education and skills providers, its arrival raises an uncomfortable but necessary question for universities: what if higher education were graded in the same way?
By contrast, the further education report card is direct. A parent, student, or employer can understand at a glance whether a provider is exceptional, strong, or in urgent need of improvement. Were higher education to adopt a similar model, judgments might cover:
Safeguarding/Wellbeing: provision for student welfare, mental health, harassment and misconduct.
Skills Contribution: alignment with regional economic needs, national priorities in AI and cybersecurity, and graduate employment outcomes.
At the programme level, Achievement and Participation could map onto retention, progression, and graduate success, offering students and employers a clear view of performance.
Risks and rewards for higher education
Of course, importing a schools-style accountability regime into higher education carries risks. Universities are not homogeneous, and reducing their diverse missions to a traffic-light system risks oversimplification. A specialist arts institution and a research-intensive university might both be rated ‘Needs Attention’ on skills contribution, despite playing very different roles in the national ecosystem.
There is also the danger of gaming the system: universities optimising for ratings rather than long-term innovation. And autonomy, long a cornerstone of higher education, would be at stake.
Yet there are potential rewards. Public trust in higher education has been under strain, with questions over value for money and financial viability dominating the narrative. Transparent, comprehensible reporting could rebuild confidence and demonstrate sector-wide commitment to accountability. It could also strengthen alignment with further education at a time when government is explicitly seeking a joined-up skills system.
A shifting policy landscape
The September 2025 government reshuffle underscores why this debate matters. The resignation of Angela Rayner triggered a wide Cabinet reorganisation, with skills responsibilities moving out of the Department for Education and into a new ‘growth’ portfolio under the Department for Work and Pensions, led by Pat McFadden. This shift signals that some elements of skills policy are now seen primarily through an economic and labour market lens.
For Higher Education, this presents both challenges and opportunities. As argued in Bridging the Skills Divide: Higher Education’s Role in Delivering the UK’s Plan for Change, universities must demonstrate that they are not just centres of academic excellence but engines of workforce development, innovation, and regional growth. A report-card style framework could make these contributions more visible, but only if universities are part of its design.
Structural Change: The Kent–Greenwich merger
The announcement that the Universities of Kent and Greenwich will merge in autumn 2026 to form the London and South East University Group is a watershed moment for the sector. It is the first merger of its kind in England, driven by financial pressures from declining international student enrolments, static domestic fees, and mounting operational costs.
The merged entity will serve around 28,000 undergraduates, retain the identities of both institutions, and be led by Greenwich Vice-Chancellor Professor Jane Harrington. Yet concerns remain. The University and College Union (UCU) has warned that ‘this isn’t a merger; it is a takeover’ and called for urgent reassurance on staff jobs and student provision.
In a system with Ofsted-style ratings, such a merger would be scrutinised not just for its financial logic but also for its impact on governance, inclusion, and skills contribution. A transparent rating system might reassure stakeholders that the merged institution is not only viable but also delivering quality and meeting regional needs.
Building on skills agendas
National initiatives like Skills England, the Digital Skills Partnership, and programmes such as CyberLocal demonstrate how higher education can contribute to workforce resilience at scale. The Ofsted report card reinforces this agenda. Its emphasis on contribution to meeting skills needs aligns directly with the notion that higher education must play a central role in the UK’s skills ecosystem, not only through degree provision but through continuous upskilling, regional collaboration, and adaptive curricula.
Shaping the framework before it shapes us
Ofsted’s further education report card is not just an accountability mechanism; it is a signal of where education policy is heading, toward clarity, comparability, and alignment with skills needs.
For higher education, the choice is stark. Resist the model and risk having it imposed in ways that do not fit the sector’s diversity. Or lead the design, shaping a framework that balances accountability with autonomy, and skills with scholarship.
As Universities confront financial pressures, policy reshuffles, and structural change, one thing is clear: the sector cannot afford to sit this debate out. The real question is not whether Higher Education should be graded, but what kind of grading system we would design if given the chance.
