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  • Building collective capacity to defend and celebrate HE

    Building collective capacity to defend and celebrate HE

    Higher education continues to grapple with its complicated reputational issues.

    There’s probably never been a period of history in the UK when higher education enjoyed an uncomplicated relationship with the public and policymakers. From “elite to mass” there’s always been a debate about who should go and what universities’ public contribution should be.

    But the current era does feel especially thorny, navigating populist politics, geopolitical uncertainty and, paradoxically, demand for higher education at a scale and diversity that is genuinely hard to satisfy.

    In June, The Venn brought together leaders from across UK higher education to grapple with the complexities of the sector’s reputation – including an “unconference” exploration of a set of particularly thorny problems. Here, some of the convenors of those conversations consider the reputational and public impact questions that are occupying them and put forward some suggestions for building capacity in the sector to “defend and celebrate” the value higher education creates.

    How can universities and government find the space and time to consider the scale and impact of impending demographic, technological and social change?

    Joan Concannon, director of external relations, University of York

    The UK university sector faces critical challenges driven by four interdependent forces, necessitating urgent collaborative action between the sector and government to prevent adverse impacts on future economic growth and social inclusion. The higher education sector, a significant export revenue generator and innovation instigator, is currently experiencing financial instability that will only worsen without system level evaluation.

    Firstly, projections for the next two decades consistently show an increasing demand for skilled and graduate labor in the UK. This growth stems from both replacing existing workers and expanding graduate professions across public and private sectors. Data from Jisc, for instance, indicates substantial growth in UK labor market demand between 2020 and 2035, with the most significant net growth in roles requiring graduate-level qualifications. The UK already faces longstanding shortages in areas like engineering and health and social care.

    Secondly, a major misalignment exists between the skills projected as necessary by the Industrial Strategy, particularly in eight key Industrial Strategy areas, and current student enrollment in those fields. Forthcoming research from University of York and Public First, supported by QS, aims to quantify this mismatch, highlighting a national skills gap that threatens the UK’s ability to capitalise on future economic opportunities in key industrial areas.

    Thirdly, demographic shifts are leading to a projected decline in the overall supply of UK home undergraduates. HEPI forecasts a potential drop of approximately 7 per cent between 2030 and 2035, with an even steeper decline of up to 20 per cent by 2040. While a potential rise in demand for retraining from older adults in the labor market, exacerbated by generative AI and technological advancements, could partially offset this, the current HE funding model appears ill-equipped to handle these profound demographic and technological shifts. The UK also invests less in training compared to many other advanced economies, further complicating the situation.

    Finally, widespread financial constraints within the university sector are forcing institutions to close courses and rationalise subjects to cut costs. As universities undertake these actions independently, a significant risk arises: neighbouring institutions often make similar changes, leading to an aggregate loss of supply in crucial areas. This inefficiency could result in the regional or even national closure of, or loss of access to, key subject areas for undergraduate study, further exacerbating skills shortages.

    Collectively, these four forces are compelling the UK university sector to engage in individual financial “right-sizing” due to budgetary pressures and forthcoming demographic dips in home students. This reactive approach risks stifling economic growth ambitions by failing to adequately supply the high-level graduate skills demanded by the current economy, let alone the future needs of the IS-8 frontier subsectors. Therefore, a major National Commission involving HE, government, and employers is urgently needed to define what the UK requires from its HE sector to achieve economic and social advancement, with this process starting immediately to preempt further turbulence from demographic and technological changes.

    How should universities respond when the political winds shift?

    Rachel Mills, senior vice president academic, King’s College London

    The sector is increasingly exposed to fast changing policy pressure that is getting harder to predict. It is vital we consider how to assert our public value with confidence rather than simply adapt reactively to halt declines in longstanding contributions to society and communities.

    Universities need to reconnect purposefully with the wider public, not just the politicians, especially voters who may not perceive the direct benefits of higher education. Campuses could be more open and porous, inviting local communities into our spaces, and seeking out groups who don’t normally engage with us. Building these bridges can renew understanding and support, essential in turbulent times.

    We could also be much clearer and more unified in our advocacy, instead of fragmented sector voices. Participants argued for better coordination, perhaps even nominating a single strong advocate or developing sector-wide mechanisms for shaping policy. Acknowledging and addressing our sometimes “flabby inefficiency” through better organisational cohesion will make us more potent in policy debates.

    Importantly, we must always foreground the opportunities universities create, from widening access and advancing social mobility to facilitating economic growth. Reinforcing this message and keeping our communication simple and relatable are essential, especially as complex arguments risk being lost amid hostile narratives.

    There is a tension between seeking partnership with government – aligning with priorities like growth – and standing firm on our mission, even if that risks conflict. It’s about strategic balance, not binary choices, but universities do need to be proactive: setting the agenda, identifying solutions, and ensuring that we are heard in national conversations.

    Ultimately, the sector must renew local and national engagement, strengthen collective advocacy, and keep messages focused. If we do so, UK universities can remain resilient, relevant, and able to shape a positive future, no matter which way the political winds blow.

    Why don’t they like us? How universities can be more effective storytellers with the public

    Rachel Sandison, Vice Principal (External Relations) and Deputy Vice Chancellor (External Engagement), University of Glasgow

    The question “Why don’t they like us?” may sound provocative, but it captures a growing unease within the higher education sector. Universities, long seen as bastions of knowledge and progress, increasingly find themselves misunderstood, mistrusted, or even resented by segments of the public, and this is a predicament faced not just by the sector here in the UK but around the world.

    This disconnect is not just a reputational issue; it is a strategic one. In an era of political polarisation, economic uncertainty, and rapid technological change, universities must reassert their relevance and value. That starts with better storytelling.

    We are organisations that often speak in metrics – research outputs, rankings, graduate outcomes – but these do not always resonate with the public’s lived experience. The sector tends to communicate “at” people, not “with” them. There is a tendency to assume that the value of higher education is self-evident, when in fact, it needs to be continually demonstrated in ways that are real and relevant to the publics that we serve.

    This also means we need to do more to avoid echo chambers. To make our case requires listening to, but also engaging with, harder to reach audiences, including those who are not just apathetic but vociferously anti-academy. We have to tell stories that are local, relatable, and emotionally resonant. In essence, we must tension impact with relevance; it is not enough to simply highlight groundbreaking research, we must show how it improves lives.

    This also requires third party advocacy. Our stories can have greater traction and cut-through if they are told by those who have been positively impacted. As a result, we need to think about how we can best galvanise business leaders, our alumni community, city stakeholders and, most importantly, our own student and colleague community.

    To do this we need to:

    1. Invest in narrative capacity: Communications teams should be empowered not just to promote but to listen, curate, and co-create stories with diverse voices. We must also be intentional about content, channel, language and tone of voice.

    2. Humanise impact: Move beyond abstract benefits to showcase real people – students, researchers, community members – whose lives are changed by university work.

    3. Engage consistently, not just in crisis: Trust is built over time. Universities must be present in public discourse not only when defending themselves but when celebrating shared successes.

    Ultimately, storytelling is not a soft skill, it is a strategic imperative. If universities want to be seen as essential, they must speak in ways that are accessible, authentic, and aligned with the public’s hopes and concerns.

    How can universities strengthen relationships with local residents in their communities?

    James Coe, associate editor, Wonkhe

    Universities have never asked permission for what they do. They radically change the populations of their towns and cities, they build enormous housing that local people rarely have a say in, and they skew economies toward a student market. The only reason they can do what they do is because of an implicit bargain which says in return for supporting our success we will make the local economy stronger, create good jobs, and make places better to live in.

    In making this implicit social contract real universities have launched compelling GVA reports, shown their impact through their civic university agreements, and composed the crispest press releases on exports, access, and skills. All of these measures are impactful but ultimately they are not stories for local residents. They are stories for policy makers and politicians already interested in what universities do.

    The challenge in making what universities do feel real is obviously about intent. Fundamentally, is what a university is doing actually make a place better. However, it is also about communicating that intent in a way that reaches local audiences.

    A communications strategy which is about leaders meeting residents where they are. Sending the vice chancellor to the local residents association, making representations at planning committees, talking on the local radio about issues of the day so they get a flavour of the university leadership, and working with civic leaders on the events, festivals, cultural celebrations, and the things that bring communities together, to remind people that an education institution in on their doorstep.

    In the end most people do not care about the impact their university has on the country. They care about the impact it has on their lives, their family, and their place. Do not tell them about the university but tell them what it is doing for them in the places they are already listening. This moves the social contract from a fragile agreement to a rich dialogue deepened by all of those who understand its purpose.

    Following the science: just how much do universities and government really want research impacting policy?

    Sarah Chaytor, Director of Research Strategy & Policy, University College London

    Universities are facing increasing pressure in terms of public perceptions of their value. Simply restating our usual “lines” on economic growth, innovation, and the graduate premium is not going to cut it, especially with the government making it clear that it wants universities to demonstrate explicitly and tangible value for citizens.

    An often-overlooked but crucial way in which universities can deliver societal contributions is through academic-policy engagement – connecting research to policymakers in order to inform public policy development and decisions. As policy challenges faced by government across the UK become increasingly complex, access to high-quality evidence and external expertise becomes more important for a policy system which faces ever-greater burdens.

    For many universities, policy engagement is seen in terms of a public affairs agenda which is about advancing individual institutional interest, rather than creating institutional capacity to support evidence use. Operational and cultural barriers, ranging from funding and contractual processes which are insufficiently agile to respond to a faster-paced policy environment to a lack of incentives to spend time on academic-policy engagement rather than grant applications or research publications, persist. Alongside this, uncertain and unpredictable outcomes require a “loss leader” approach – investing time and resource in advance of the “payoff” – and a strong commitment to supporting activity on the basis of public good rather than institutional ROI.

    Academic-policy engagement seems to function on a model that requires a willingness to keep turning the kaleidoscope to adjust the picture and find sufficient levers and incentives to justify activity. At different points in time there may be incentives arising from the public policy system (eg government department areas of research interest or parliamentary thematic research leads) or from research funders (over the past five years, I estimate we’ve seen cumulative funding of at least £100 million for policy-focused research activities such as UKRI policy fellowships, ESRC Local Policy Innovation Partnerships, NIHR Policy Research Units and Health Determinant Research Collaborations, and the Research England Policy Support Fund). But there has not yet been a breakthrough intervention which has established academic-policy engagement as core to university missions.

    So what could be done to shift the dial? There are three possible areas where more action is needed on the part of universities, government and funders:

    • Capacity: institutional structures in both universities and government and policy organisations need to better support the mobilisation and use of research knowledge in public policymaking (for example enhancing structures for engagement and rewarding it as part of the day job).
    • Capabilities: universities need to recognise and support academic-policy capabilities as part of broader research skills programmes, and work with funders and government around co-creating effective training for academic researchers and policymakers
    • Collaboration: universities need to get much better at working together to address policy evidence needs. The necessary expertise for most policy challenges will not be found in only one institution, nor do we look particularly efficient as a sector if individual institutions replicate interactions which could be undertaken collectively

    Registration is now open for The Venn 2026 – find out more here. 

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  • Enhancing higher education governance will require agility and accountability

    Enhancing higher education governance will require agility and accountability

    Today Advance HE is publishing Shaping the future of HE governance, the findings of our “big conversation” on higher education governance.

    The report draws from wide-ranging engagement with governors, chairs, institutional leaders, board secretaries and others, conducted in partnership with the Committee of University Chairs (CUC), Association of Heads of University Administration (AHUA), Universities UK, GuildHE and Independent HE. The research examined the effectiveness of current governance arrangements, considered good practice from other sectors and identified what needs to improve or change.

    The big conversation explored the diversity of provider types, missions and individual contexts across UK higher education. Diversity and differences exist in governance arrangements, and this is appropriate to reflect the diversity of missions and scales which need differing governance arrangements.

    The findings from this research will feed into the CUC’s current review of higher education governance, of which I’m a steering group member. I will also share the findings with the Office for Students and Department for Education – both are showing a growing interest in how higher education institutions are governed.

    Here are some of the factors that should be priorities when considering governance reform.

    A question of culture

    At the heart of good governance is culture – and this should be central to efforts to enhance governance. The research found that culture is the biggest factor in determining the difference between a highly effective and a less effective board.

    This can be hard to measure, takes time to get right, and is a constant work in progress. This includes the culture of getting the right balance of challenge and support – and where the right level of information is supplied to governors, but equally where governors themselves have a sufficient degree of expertise and curiosity to ask the right questions and know when to probe and challenge.

    The right culture requires a sophisticated relationship between executive and board and specifically the head of institution, the chair and the secretary to the board. An open relationship, with no surprises, and a healthy tension of constructive challenge. Clear schemes of delegated authority, clarifying the difference between accountability and responsibility, can help to support this.

    As the context and issues change, higher education governance also needs to adapt to meet new challenges.

    Just because governance arrangements were suitable and effective in the past shouldn’t lead to the conclusion that no change is needed. There are examples of excellent practice in the sector. There are also weaknesses which should be the focus for improvement. It is necessary for institutions to regularly review, evolve and improve their governance arrangements.

    Agility and accountability

    To meet current challenges, agility is needed to support effective transformation and change. How can governing bodies be supported to get the right balance between the speed of decision-making and ensuring good governance oversight? Is the size and composition of the governing body helping or hindering effective decision-making?

    Consideration should be given to what can be done to maximise the time that governing bodies spend on discussion of strategy, strategic issues and oversight of major risk – and minimise time spent on processing bureaucracy. This may require ruthlessness about focussing on matters which are strategic, a regulatory or statutory requirement or of material significance (financially, reputationally, or otherwise). If an item does not meet these three tests, there should be challenge as to why it is taking up board time.

    The quality of strategic decision making can be enhanced by ensuring that the board contributes to formative thinking, giving governors the opportunity to challenge and scrutinise effectively, ensuring time to properly examine information to allow for evidence-based decisions in the context of the strategy.

    Are there examples – perhaps from other sectors – that can better enable governing bodies to support change, effectively balancing the need to manage risk with the desire to be agile, innovative and entrepreneurial?

    Institutions should also consider how they can better communicate their governance story – openly and creatively – to staff, students, partners and the public. There’s an opportunity to demonstrating how institutions are governed in the public interest. This can include more proactive and transparent approaches to showing adherence to codes and compliance to regulations.

    A developing story

    Given the risks (financial, international) and changes (digital, regulatory) facing the sector it has never been more important to support governors appropriately – and this should include proactively identifying and supporting development opportunities.

    This could include both HE-specific regulatory issues and learning about good governance best practice from other sectors. Beyond initial governor induction, institutions should support continuous professional development for non-executive board members throughout terms of service and ensure structured training opportunities for governance support professionals.

    The insights from our big conversation will provide a foundation and stimulus for meaningful change and continuous improvement in HE sector governance. The priorities identified will shape how Advance HE evolves its approach to governance support, board effectiveness reviews and development programmes.

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

    For student leaders, it’s been a Cruel Summer

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

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

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

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

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

    Make me feel fine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Fever dream high in the quiet of the night

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Devils roll the dice, angels roll their eyes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    No rules in breakable heaven

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Hang your head low in the glow of the vending machine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

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  • Collaboration must be at the heart of regional growth

    Collaboration must be at the heart of regional growth

    The importance of place in public policy has rarely been more visible.

    From the UK Government’s growth missions and industrial strategy to devolution deals and innovation funding, there’s now a tangible recognition that universities must be seen as more than providers of education and research, but as strategic and proactive partners to drive regional and national growth.

    Place is about people, relationships, and shared futures. Universities have a unique role to play, as civic institutions rooted in their communities and connected to the world.

    When we speak about partnering for place, I believe we’re really talking about reimagining the social contract between universities and the places they serve. This goes beyond outreach or impact metrics. It’s about embedding collaboration into how we plan, how we invest, and how we think about our institutional purpose. It’s about taking time to understand our places – what is important to local leaders and communities, and to articulate clearly how we as universities can contribute. This is what I’m proud to say we’ve embodied at Newcastle University, in what is being increasingly described as a fourth generation university.

    Fourth generation universities

    Throughout history, universities have continually redefined their purpose. The first generation devoted itself to teaching, shaping minds for the future. The second generation advanced this mission, placing research at its core and unlocking new realms of knowledge. The third generation pushed further, embracing innovation and knowledge exchange to bridge academia with society.

    Now, we stand at the dawn of fourth generation universities – institutions that unite all these strengths under one bold vision: working hand in hand with communities to create lasting, meaningful change. These universities don’t just educate – they inspire and empower. They nurture talent to prepare the workforce for the future in line with jobs needs, they spark innovation, and cultivate thriving local ecosystems that lift everyone.

    Think of fourth-generation universities as catalysts for transformation – driving solutions, forging powerful partnerships, and delivering real impact that shapes a brighter, better future for us all.

    She may not have used the same terminology, but this is effectively what the Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, was driving at in her letter to all vice chancellors following the Autumn Budget last year. In it, she made it clear that government expects universities to collaborate more, support economic growth, widen opportunities and deliver efficiencies, presenting a clear quid pro quo if the sector is to argue for further investment.

    UNEE

    It is timely then, that Universities UK has launched a new working group dedicated to Civic and Local Growth, of which I am a member and is chaired by our Vice Chancellor Chris Day. The enthusiasm across the sector for working with and for the places and communities we call home is manifest. Our challenge, however, is to move beyond showcasing individual success stories and toward articulating a coherent, collective offer from the sector: a vision for how universities, working together and with others, can shape the places they serve.

    We must also do more to evidence the value we offer to policymakers and the public. This includes showing how all of us, regardless of the kind of university, or the different context, can collectively deliver greater economic and social impact.

    Regional consortia are already starting to deliver this. Through Universities for North East England (UNEE) we are providing a unified voice for higher education and working with our mayoral authorities to make an even greater contribution towards shaping a more prosperous and resilient future for our region. Our strength lies in the diversity of each institution and our extensive global, national and regional networks. It is this collaboration, not competition, that will drive the economic, educational, social and cultural success of our cities, towns and wider region.

    I am encouraged to hear similar examples from across the country, including Yorkshire Universities and Midlands Innovation. I believe we must build on this to ensure that voices are heard from all parts of the country if we are to establish resilient local economies.

    People, communities, and their future

    It would be remiss not to acknowledge the financial challenges facing our sector at the moment, and the reasons for this are well rehearsed. At such times, it is tempting to focus on our own needs ahead of prioritising partnership working. I would argue that now is exactly the time we should be partnering in place, not least because there is much we can learn from other local partners when it comes to dealing with, and adapting to, funding challenges. But also because it becomes much easier to make the case for further investment when taxpayers can see the value of higher education for their communities and feel the wider benefits that universities bring.

    Ultimately, I maintain place is not just a policy priority. It’s personal. It’s about our people, our communities, and our futures. Collaboration is the key to unlocking our full potential and ensuring a sustainable future.

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  • LGBTQ+ Rural Teens Find More Support Online Than in Their Communities – The 74

    LGBTQ+ Rural Teens Find More Support Online Than in Their Communities – The 74


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    New research has found that rural LGBTQ+ teens experience significant challenges in their communities and turn to the internet for support.

    The research from Hopelab and the Born This Way Foundation looked at what more than 1,200 LGBTQ+ teens faced and compared the experiences of those in rural communities with those of teens in suburban and urban communities. The research found that rural teens are more likely to give and receive support through their online communities and friends than via their in-person relationships.

    “The rural young people we’re seeing were reporting having a lot less support in their homes, in their communities, and their schools,” Mike Parent, a principal researcher at Hopelab, said in an interview with the Daily Yonder. “They weren’t doing too well in terms of feeling supported in the places they were living, though they were feeling supported online.”

    However, the research found that rural LGBTQ+ teens had the same sense of pride in who they were as suburban and urban teens.

    “The parallel, interesting finding was that we didn’t see differences in their internal sense of pride, which you might kind of expect if they feel all less supported,” he said. “What was surprising, in a very good way, was that indication of resilience or being able to feel a strong sense of their internal selves despite this kind of harsh environment they might be in.”

    Researchers recruited young people between the ages of 15 and 24 who identified as LGBTQ+ through targeted ads on social media. After surveying the respondents during August and September of last year, the researchers also followed up some of the surveys with interviews, Parent said.

    According to the study, rural teens were more likely than their urban and suburban counterparts to find support online. Of the rural respondents, 56% of rural young people reported receiving support from others online several times a month compared to 51% of urban and suburban respondents, and 76% reported giving support online, compared to 70% of urban and suburban respondents.

    Conversely, only 28% of rural respondents reported feeling supported by their schools, compared to 49% of urban and suburban respondents, the study found, and 13% of rural respondents felt supported by their communities, compared to 35% of urban and suburban respondents.

    Rural LGBTQ+ young people are significantly more likely to suffer mental health issues because of the lack of support where they live, researchers said. Rural LGBTQ+ young people were more likely to meet the threshold for depression (57% compared to 45%), and more likely to report less flourishing than their suburban/urban counterparts (43% to 52%).

    The study found that those LGBTQ+ young people who received support from those they lived with, regardless of where they live, are more likely to report flourishing (50% compared to 35%) and less likely to meet the threshold for depression (52% compared to 63%).

    One respondent said the impact of lack of support impacted every aspect of their lives.

    “Not being able to be who you truly are around the people that you love most or the communities that you’re in is going to make somebody depressed or give them mental issues,” they said in survey interviews, according to Hopelab. “Because if you can’t be who you are around the people that you love most and people who surround you, you’re not gonna be able to feel the best about your well-being.”

    Respondents said connecting with those online communities saved their lives.

    “Throughout my entire life, I have been bullied relentlessly. However, when I’m online, I find that it is easier to make friends… I met my best friend through role play [games],” one teen told researchers. “Without it, I wouldn’t be here today. So, in the long run, it’s the friendships I’ve made online that have kept me alive all these years.”

    Having support in rural areas, especially, can provide rural LGBTQ+ teens with a feeling of belonging, researchers said.

    “Our findings highlight the urgent need for safe, affirming in-person spaces and the importance of including young people in shaping the solutions,” Claudia-Santi F. Fernandes, vice president of research and evaluation at Born This Way Foundation, said in a statement. “If we want to improve outcomes, especially for LGBTQ+ young people in rural communities, their voices–and scientific evidence–must guide the work.”

    Parent said the survey respondents stressed the importance of having safe spaces for LGBTQ+ young people to gather in their own communities.

    “I think most of the participants recognize that you can’t do a lot to change your family if they’re not supportive,” he said. “What they were saying was that finding ways for schools to be supportive and for communities to be supportive in terms of physical spaces (that allowed them) to express themselves safely (and) having places where they can gather and feel safe, uh, were really important to them.”

    Hopelab seeks to address mental health in young people through evidence-based innovation, according to its organizers. The Born This Way Foundation was co-founded by Lady Gaga and her mother, West Virginia native Cynthia Bisset Germanotta.

    The organization is focused on ending bullying and building up communities, while using research, programming, grants, and partnerships to engage young people and connect them to mental health resources, according to the foundation’s website.

    This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.


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  • Indianapolis Public Schools to Transfer Two Closed School Buildings to Settle Legal Battle – The 74

    Indianapolis Public Schools to Transfer Two Closed School Buildings to Settle Legal Battle – The 74


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    Indianapolis Public Schools will put one closed school building up for lease or sale to charter schools for $1 and will sell another to a local nonprofit, the district announced Friday.

    The transfer of the buildings that used to house Raymond Brandes School 65 and Francis Bellamy School 102 stems from an Indiana Court of Appeals ruling in a lengthy battle over the state’s so-called $1 law, which requires districts to transfer unused school buildings to charter schools for the sale or lease price of $1. The court ruled in May that IPS must sell School 65.

    The announcement also comes as the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance ponders how to solve facility challenges for both IPS, which continues to lose students in its traditional schools every year, and charters, which frequently struggle to acquire school buildings.

    The district said in a statement that Damar Charter Academy, a school for students with developmental and behavioral challenges in Decatur Township, had reached out to IPS to express interest in School 65 — which is located on the southeast side of IPS. The district does not have the power to pick which charter school it will sell a building to — if more than one charter school is interested, state law requires a committee to decide.

    On Monday, Damar confirmed to Chalkbeat that it is interested in School 65.

    In the statement, the district said it would prefer to “move forward with disposition” of School 65 through a collaborative community process.

    “But, we respect the court’s decision and will proceed in full compliance with that order,” IPS Superintendent Aleesia Johnson said. “If the building is claimed by a charter school, we think Damar has a strong record of serving some of the most vulnerable and underserved students in our city and I have confidence that acquiring Raymond Brandes will allow them to expand their operations to serve even more students.”

    Meanwhile, the district will sell School 102 to Voices, a nonprofit that works with youth, for $550,000. The district had already leased the school on the Far Eastside to Voices, which also shares the space with two other youth programs.

    “Indianapolis Public Schools is committed to continuing to engage with our community on thoughtful re-use of our facilities and to being good stewards of our public assets,” Johnson said in a statement. “We are excited to move forward with our planned sale of the Francis Bellamy 102 building to VOICES and to see their impact in serving our community continue for many years into the future.”

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


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  • A largely invisible role of international students: Fueling the innovation economy

    A largely invisible role of international students: Fueling the innovation economy

    PITTSBURGH — Saisri Akondi had already started a company in her native India when she came to Carnegie Mellon University to get a master’s degree in biomedical engineering, business and design.

    Before she graduated, she had co-founded another: D.Sole, for which Akondi, who is 28, used the skills she’d learned to create a high-tech insole that can help detect foot complications from diabetes, which results in 6.8 million amputations a year.

    D.Sole is among technology companies in Pittsburgh that collectively employ a quarter of the local workforce at wages much higher than those in the city’s traditional steel and other metals industries. That’s according to the business development nonprofit the Pittsburgh Technology Council, which says these companies pay out an annual $27.5 billion in salaries alone.

    A “significant portion” of Pittsburgh’s transformation into a tech hub has been driven by international students like Akondi, said Sean Luther, head of InnovatePGH, a coalition of civic groups and government agencies promoting innovation businesses.

    The Pittsburgh Innovation District along Forbes Avenue in Pittsburgh’s Oakland section, near the campuses of the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report

    “Next Happens Here,” reads the sign above the entrance to the co-working space where Luther works and technology companies are incubated, in an area near Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh dubbed the Pittsburgh Innovation District. The neighborhood is filled with people of various ethnicities speaking a variety of languages over lunch and coffee.

    What might happen next to the international students and graduates who have helped fuel this tech economy has become an anxiety-inducing subject of those conversations, as the second presidential administration of Donald Trump brings visa crackdowns, funding cuts and other attacks on higher education — including here, in a state that voted for Trump.

    Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter.

    Inside the bubble of the universities and the tech sector, “there’s so much support you get,” Akondi observed, in a gleaming conference room at Carnegie Mellon. “But there still is a part of the population that asks, ‘What are you doing here?’ ”

    Much of the ongoing conversation about international students has focused on undergraduates and their importance to university revenues and enrollment. Many of these students — especially in graduate schools — fill a less visible role in the economy, however. They conduct research that can lead to commercial applications, have skills employers need and start a surprising number of their own companies in the United States.

    Sean Luther, head of InnovatePGH, at one of the organization’s co-working spaces. One reason tech companies have come to Pittsburgh “is because of those non-native-born workers,” Luther says. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report

    “The high-tech engineering and computer science activities that are central to regional economic development today are hugely dependent on these students,” said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies technology and innovation. “If you go into a lab, it will be full of non-American people doing the crucial research work that leads to intellectual property, technology partnerships and startups.”

    Some 143 U.S. companies valued at $1 billion or more were started by people who came to the country as international students, according to the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonprofit that conducts research on immigration and trade. These companies have an average of 860 employees each and include SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania.

    Whether or not they invent new products or found businesses of their own, international graduates are “a vital source” of workers for U.S.-based tech companies, the National Science Foundation reported last year in an annual survey on the state of American science and engineering. 

    Dave Mawhinney, founding executive director of the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University, with Saisri Akondi, an international graduate and co-founder of the startup D.Sole. “There still is a part of the population that asks, ‘What are you doing here?’ ” says Akondi. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report

    It’s supply and demand, said Dave Mawhinney, a professor of entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon and founding executive director of its Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, which helps many of that school’s students do research that can lead to products and startups. “And the demand for people with those skills exceeds the supply.”

    States with the most international students

    California: 140,858

    New York: 135,813

    Texas: 89,546

    Massachusetts: 82,306

    Illinois: 62,299

    Pennsylvania: 50,514

    Florida: 44,767

    Source: NAFSA: Association of International Educators. Figures are from the 2023-24 academic year, the most recent available.

    Related: So much for saving the planet. Climate careers, and many others, evaporate for class of 2025

    That’s in part because comparatively few Americans are going into fields including science, technology, engineering and math. Even before the pandemic disrupted their educations, only 20 percent of college-bound American high school students were prepared for college-level courses in these subjects. U.S. students scored lower in math than their counterparts in 21 of the 37 participating nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on an international assessment test in 2022, the most recent year for which the outcomes are available.

    One result is that international students make up more than a third of master’s and doctoral degree recipients in science and engineering at American universities. Two-thirds of U.S. university graduate students and more than half of workers in AI and AI-related fields are foreign born, according to Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. 

    “A real point of strength, and a reason our robotics companies especially have been able to grow their head counts, is because of those non-native-born workers,” said Luther, in Pittsburgh. “Those companies are here specifically because of that talent.”

    International students are more than just contributors to this city’s success in tech. “They have been drivers” of it, Mawhinney said, in his workspace overlooking the studio where the iconic children’s television program “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” was taped. 

    Jake Mohin, director of solution engineering at a company that uses AI to predict how chemicals will synthesize, uses a co-working space at InnovatePGH in Pittsburgh’s Innovation District. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report

    “Every year, 3,000 of the smartest people in the world come here, and a large proportion of those are international,” he said of Carnegie Mellon’s graduate students. “Some of them go into the research laboratories and work on new ideas, and some come having ideas already. You have fantastic students who are here to help you build your company or to be entrepreneurs themselves.”

    Boosters of the city’s tech-driven turnaround say what’s been happening in Pittsburgh is largely unappreciated elsewhere. It followed the effective collapse of the steel industry in the 1980s, when unemployment hit 18 percent.

    In 2006, Google opened a small office at Carnegie Mellon to take advantage of the faculty and student expertise in computer science and other fields there and at neighboring higher education institutions; the company later moved to a nearby former Nabisco factory and expanded its Pittsburgh workforce to 800 employees. Apple, software and AI giant SAP and other tech firms followed.

    “It was the talent that brought them here, and so much of that talent is international,” said Audrey Russo, CEO of the Pittsburgh Technology Council. 

    Sixty-one percent of the master’s and doctoral students at Carnegie Mellon come from abroad, according to the university. So do 23 percent of those at Pitt, an analysis of federal data shows.

    Related: International students are rethinking coming to the US. That’s a problem for colleges

    The city has become a world center for self-driving car technology. Uber opened an advanced research center here. The autonomous vehicle company Motional — a joint venture between Hyundai and the auto parts supplier Aptiv — moved in. So did the Ford- and Volkswagen-backed Argo AI, which eventually dissolved, but whose founders went on to create the Pittsburgh-based self-driving truck developer Stack AV. The Ford subsidiary Latitude AI and the autonomous flight company Near Earth Autonomy also are headquartered in Pittsburgh.

    Among other tech firms with homes here: Duolingo, which has 830 employees and is worth an estimated $22 billion. It was co-founded by a professor at Carnegie Mellon and a graduate of the university who both came to the United States as international students, from Guatemala and Switzerland, respectively.

    InnovatePGH tracks 654 startups that are smaller than those big conglomerates but together employ an estimated 25,000 workers. Unemployment in Pittsburgh (3.5 percent in April) is below the national average (3.9 percent). Now Pitt and others are developing Hazelwood Green, which includes a former steel mill that closed in 1999, into a new district housing life sciences, robotics and other technology companies. 

    In a series of webinars about starting businesses, offered jointly to students at Pitt and Carnegie Mellon, the most popular installment is about how to found a startup on a student visa, said Rhonda Schuldt, director of Pitt’s Big Idea Center, in a storefront on Forbes Avenue in the Innovation District.

    One of the co-working spaces operated by InnovatePHG in the Pittsburgh Innovation District. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report

    Some international undergraduates continue into graduate school or take jobs with companies that sponsor them so they can keep working on their ideas, Schuldt said.

    “They want to stay in Pittsburgh and build businesses here,” she said.

    There are clear worries that this momentum could come to a halt if the supply of international students continues a slowdown that began even before the new Trump term, thanks to visa processing delays and competition from other countries. 

    The number of international graduate students dropped in the fall by 2 percent, before the presidential election, according to the Institute of International Education. Further declines are expected following the government’s pause on student visa interviews, publicity surrounding visa revocations and arrests and cuts to federal research funding.

    Rhonda Schuldt, director of the Big Idea Center at the University of Pittsburgh. International students “want to stay in Pittsburgh and build businesses here,” Schuldt says. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report

    It’s too early to know what will happen this fall. But D. Sole co-founder Saisri Akondi has heard from friends who planned to come to the United States that they can’t get visas. “Most of these students wanted to start companies,” she said. 

    “I would be lying if I said nothing has changed,” said Akondi, who has been accepted into a master’s degree program in business administration at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business under her existing student visa, though she said her company will stay in Pittsburgh. “The fear has increased.”

    Related: Colleges partnered with an EV battery factory to train students and ignite the economy. Trump’s clean energy war complicates their plans

    This could affect whether tech companies continue to come to Pittsburgh, said Russo, at least unless and until more Americans are better prepared for and recruited into tech-related graduate programs. That’s something universities have not yet begun to do, since the unanticipated threat to their international students erupted only in March, and that would likely take years.

    Audrey Russo, CEO of the Pittsburgh Technology Council. If the number of international students declines, “Who’s going to do the research? Who’s going to be in these teams?” she asks. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report

    “Who’s going to do the research? Who’s going to be in these teams?” asked Russo. “We’re hurting ourselves deeply.”

    The impact could transcend the research and development ecosystem. “I think we’ll see almost immediate ramifications in Pittsburgh in terms of higher-skilled, higher-wage companies hiring here,” said Sean Luther, at InnovatePGH. “And that affects the grocery shops, the barbershops, the real estate.”

    There are other, more nuanced impacts. 

    Mike Madden, left, vice president of InnovatePGH and director of the Pittsburgh Innovation District, talks with University of Pittsburgh graduate student Jayden Serenari in one of InnovatePGH’s co-working spaces. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report

    “Whether we like it or not, it’s a global world. It’s a global economy. The problems that these students want to solve are global problems,” Schuldt said. “And one of the things that is really important in solving the world’s problems is to have a robust mix of countries, of cultures — that opportunity to learn how others see the world. That is one of the most valuable things students tell us they get here.”

    Pittsburgh is a prime example of a place whose economy is vulnerable to a decline in the number of international students, said Brookings’ Muro. But it’s not unique.

    “These scholars become entrepreneurs. They’re adding to the U.S. economy new ideas and new companies,” he said. Without them, “the economy would be smaller. Research wouldn’t get done. Journal articles wouldn’t be written. Patents wouldn’t be filed. Fewer startups would occur.”

    The United States, said Muro, “has cleaned up by being the absolute central place for this. The system has been incredibly beneficial to the United States. The hottest technologies are inordinately reliant on these excellent minds from around the world. And their being here is critical to American leadership.”

    Contact writer Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556, [email protected] or jpm.82 on Signal.

    This story about international students was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • The University of Phoenix IPO

    The University of Phoenix IPO

    Apollo Global Management and Vistria have an offer only a pig would consider: the Phoenix Education Partners IPO.

    Touted by Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Bank of Montreal, Jefferies, and Apollo Global Securities, the offering of Phoenix Education Partners brings the University of Phoenix (UoPX) back to public markets—but few fans remain in the audience.

    A Decade of Decline: From Expansion to Erosion

    In the early 2000s, UoPX was hailed as a pioneering force in adult education—cozy campuses near freeway exits and an advanced online infrastructure for working learners earned praise. Its founder John Sperling was seen as visionary.

    But by 2010 enrollment had already begun plummeting after reaching nearly 470,000 students, and the school’s academic quality and recruiting ethics were under the microscope. Critics decried “The Matrix,” a perverse scheme where recruiters were aggressively incentivized to push enrollments—no matter the cost.

    By 2018, more than 450 locations had shuttered, enrollment was down by approximately 80%, and half the remaining sites were no longer accepting new students. Even Hawaii, Jersey City, Detroit, and other major cities were on the closure list.

    Regulatory Fallout: Lawsuits, Settlements, and Borrower Defenses

    From the early 2010s onward, UoPX saw an avalanche of legal scrutiny. In 2019, the FTC leveled a $191 million settlement against it for misleading advertising, including deceptive claims about job placement and corporate partnerships.

    By late 2023, 73,740 borrower-defense claims had been filed by former students under federal programs. Many of these were settled under the Sweet v. Cardona class action, with estimates of the university’s potential liability ranging from $200 million to over $1 billion. Meanwhile, nearly one million debtors owed a combined $21.6 billion in student loans—about $22,000 per borrower on average.

    Another flashpoint: UoPX agreed to pay $4.5 million in 2024 to settle investigations by California’s Attorney General over military-targeted recruiting tactics.

    The Ownership Unicorn: Apollo, Vistria, and Political Backing

    After Apollo Global Management and the Vistria Group acquired UoPX in 2016, the school became a commodified unit in a larger private equity portfolio. The deal brought in figures like Marty Nesbitt, a political insider, as chairman—signaling strategic power play as much as financial management.

    Vistria’s broader stable included Risepoint (previously Academic Partnerships), meaning both UoPX and OPM entities were controlled by one private-equity firm—drawing criticism for creating a “for-profit, online-education industrial complex.”

    The IPO Circus: “Pigs on Parade”

    Enter the Phoenix Education Partners IPO, steered onto the market with all the pomp of a carnival but none of the substance. The front-line banks—Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, BMO, Jefferies, Apollo Global Securities—are being paid handsomely to dress up this distressed asset as a growth opportunity.

    But here’s what those colorful floats hide:

    • Collapse, not comeback. Enrollment and campus infrastructure have withered.

    • Debt, not opportunity. Nearly a million debt-laden alumni owe $21.6 billion.

    • Liability, not credibility. Borrower defense claims and state investigations continue to mount.

    • Profit, not public good. Ownership is consolidated in private equity with political access, not academic mission.

    This is a pig in parade attire. Investors are being asked to cheer for ribbon-cutting and banners, while the mud-stained hooves of exploitative business models trudge behind.

    The HEI Verdict

    This IPO isn’t a pivot toward better education—it’s a rebrand of an exploitative legacy. From aggressive recruitment of vulnerable populations (“sandwich moms,” military servicemembers) to mounting legal liabilities, the University of Phoenix remains the same broken system.

    Investors, regulators, and the public must not be dazzled by slick packaging. The real story is one of failed promises, students carrying lifelong debt, and private equity cashing out. In education, as in livestock, parades are meant to show off—just make sure you’re not cheering at the wrong spectacle.

    Sources

    • Higher Education Inquirer. Search: University of Phoenix

    • Higher Education Inquirer. “The Slow-Motion Collapse of America’s Largest University” (2018)

    • Higher Education Inquirer. “University of Phoenix Collapse Kept Quiet” (2019)

    • Higher Education Inquirer. “Fraud Claims Against University of Phoenix” (2023)

    • Higher Education Inquirer. “University of Phoenix Uses ‘Sandwich Moms’ in Recruiting” (2025)

    • Higher Education Inquirer. “What Do the University of Phoenix and Risepoint Have in Common?” (2025)

    • Federal Trade Commission. “FTC Obtains $191 Million Settlement from University of Phoenix” (2019)

    • Sweet v. Cardona Settlement Documents (2022–2023)

    • California Attorney General. “University of Phoenix to Pay $4.5 Million Over Deceptive Military Recruiting” (2024)

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  • 2025 Top Tools for Learning Votes – Teaching in Higher Ed

    2025 Top Tools for Learning Votes – Teaching in Higher Ed

    Drat. I missed getting to officially contribute to the votes for this year’s Top 100 Tools for Learning, collected and analyzed by Jane Hart. I’m still going to write mine up, as I do like to reflect on the tools I’m relying on for my own and others’ learning, but I’ll need to wait until 2026 to get back into the mix of having my votes reflected in the grand total.

    I used to be more regular with my votes, but did miss a few along the way. Here are my past Top 100 Tools for Learning: 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, and 2024. I avoid looking at the prior year’s lists until I have identified my votes for current year.

    This year, given that I missed the deadline for submitting my top ten list, I’m using a longer format than normal and structuring this reflection on Harold Jarche’s personal knowledge (PKM) framework, since so much of my learning is centered on it:

    Seek > Sense > Share

    Throughout all of my days, I’m plugged into intentional ways of seeking knowledge, wisdom, and sources of curiosity. In a way, sense-making is a part of my way of being, especially on those days when I allow myself to slow down enough for the deeper insights. Finally, I’m someone who delights in fueling my curiosity and imagination even further by sharing what I’m learning and inviting others to do the same.

    Curious to learn more about personal knowledge mastery? My absolute favorite source for more than a decade now is Harold Jarche, who defines PKM as:

    Personal knowledge mastery (PKM) is a set of processes, individually constructed, to help each of us make sense of our world and work more effectively. PKM keeps us afloat in a sea of information — guided by professional communities and buoyed by social networks. – Harold Jarche

    Those who want to dig even deeper should consider joining Jarche’s Personal Knowledge Mastery cohort, starting in October 2025. Me: Going to look at my schedule and seeing if I’ve got the time to dive in at that time this year. Good stuff.

    Seek

    Seeking is finding things out and keeping up to date. Building a network of colleagues is helpful in this regard. It not only allows us to “pull” information, but also have it “pushed” to us by trusted sources. Good curators are valued members of knowledge networks. – Harold Jarche

    Overcast

    Not a day goes by that I don’t use Overcast, my preferred podcast catcher. On my iPhone, it is always my most used app on any given week.

    Get ready to celebrate International Podcast Day on September 30. I’ve already got an episode queued up featuring Dominic Conroy & Warren Kidd to commemorate the event. Get your ears on and subscribe to Teaching in Higher Ed, if you haven’t already, using your favorite podcast app (search for Teaching in Higher Ed and hit subscribe/follow), YouTube, or Spotify.

    While my backlog of episodes yet to be listened to is ridiculously long, Overcast’s playlists feature means I can tailor my audio consumption according to genre (news, technology, teaching, etc.), to my incoming priority/preferred podcasts, or to the queue list I have saved for the good stuff I want to get to when I have long drives or alone time.

    Unread

    While Overcast is for the spoken word, Unread is primarily for written pieces. Powered by real simple syndication (RSS), Unread presents me headlines of unread stories across all sorts of categories, which I can tap (on my iPad) to read, or scroll past to automatically mark as read. I use Unread in conjunction with Inoreader, which is a robust RSS aggregator that can either be used as an RSS reader, as well, or can be used in conjunction with an RSS reader, such as Unread. – From my 2024 Top 10 blog post (note: I only copied this text over after identifying what tools would be on this year’s list, as in I didn’t “cheat”).

    One of the things I love about Unread is that I an perform the entire reading process with two thumbs (insert that joke/about “who has two thumbs and can…” and then add “operate Unread” at the end of it). I can browse the different folders/collections I have set up to skim headlines. When I want to read one of the stories associated with a given headline, I can go into it and read with just a tap. To get back out to the headlines, again, I just swipe right.

    One big update that Unread 4.5 gave us is support for reading paywalled articles within the app. As of me writing this, I haven’t had a chance to experiment with that feature, but am excited to do so over this long, holiday weekend in the U.S. Anything I can do to reduce friction in my PKM system helps me be able to expand my possibilities for deeper learning.

    YouTube

    Once I found out that I could subscribe to new YouTube videos on my RSS reader, Inoreader, it changed how often I watch YouTube videos. That, plus subscribing to YouTube Premium, which means we get ad-free viewing as a family, makes me spending a lot more time with YouTube. I even have my own YouTube channel, which I occasionally post videos on. – From 2024 Top ten post

    YouTube Premium continues to be a way of life for our entire family. If you watch a lot of YouTube and don’t have a means for watching ad-free, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

    This past year, we added a Teaching in Higher Ed YouTube Channel. Each time an audio podcast episode gets posted on our hosting platform, Blubrry, it automatically gets shared on the channel. They used to not allow audio-only podcasts on the platform but made changes their rules such that now it is encouraged. In addition to listening to Teaching in Higher Ed, or watching an episode with Dr. Stephenie Cawthon accompanied by two ASL interpreters, you can also see other videos I’ve made this past year, such as:

    Kindle App

    I primarily read digitally and find the Kindle iPad app to be the easiest route for reading. I read more, in total, when I am disciplined about using the Kindle hardware, but wind up grabbing my iPad most nights. – 2024 Top 10 Post

    Audible

    New on the list for this year is Audible. I was attempting for a few months to better balance my daily news reading with sources that would give me a longer-term view of the world. As I write these words, I feel like I’m back to failing at this, but it was a good pursuit there for a while. Part of this attempt at balancing was made possible through listening to audio books in addition to podcast episodes.

    Sometimes audio is better because it allows us to get more reading into our days. Other times, audio does something that the written word could never do. In the list below of some favorite audio boos from this past year, I’ll indicate with (best via audio book) at the end of the line if the audio book was particularly geared toward the audio medium.

    Sense

    Sensing is how we personalize information and use it. Sensing includes reflection and putting into practice what we have learned. Often it requires experimentation, as we learn best by doing. – Harold Jarche

    StoryGraph

    I decided to move off of Amazon’s Goodreads for my reading tracking this year and have been loving StoryGraph so far. I just wish more people were there to be friends with and share reading ideas. What I mostly use StoryGraph for is setting an annual reading goal and tracking my progress toward that. I also have quite a large queue of books I would like to read someday.

    I understand that some people have a hard time finding something to read. This is not my problem. Trust me. I’ve got the what to possibly read thing down pat. But for those who are looking for suggestions, StoryGraph has that feature nailed, too. If anyone is on StoryGraph and wants to connect, my StoryGraph username is Bonni208 (as it is across most social networks that I’m on). Those curious about why the number 208 is significant to me, check out Teaching in Higher Ed Episode 208, where Dave helps me tell the 208 origin story.

    Obsidian

    Dave has been using Obsidian for years now and long-heralded the way that these types of note apps don’t lock you in, long-term. Using plain text (Markdown) documents that are stored where you want to keep them (not locked within the note service/subscription/app) means that Obsidian gets used as a way of viewing and adding to your plain text documents. That’s an oversimplification and one that meant I took longer than others to get to the party that is Obsidian.

    One thing to know about Obsidian is that there is a learning curve. I would suggest not trying to go your own way on it, but instead to invest in some tools to help with your onboarding. I have three recommendations:

    • The MacSparky Obsidian Field Guide – This course takes you through how to get started with Obsidian and set up systems to use this note-taking powerhouse to fuel your capacity for learning and teaching.
    • Obsidian Starter Vault from Mike Schmitz – It can be hard starting from an entirely blank slate in Obsidian, so this starter vault can give you some content to work from and some tips for how to: “get more out of your notes and ideas effortlessly.”
    • LifeHQ from Mike Schmitz – If you want to go even further with a system built by someone else, you can check out this extensive, customizable vault. I purchased it and over time have found ways to combine how Mike uses Obsidian to something that works better for me, most notably to incorporate my own custom version of Johnny Decimal (which I call Bonni Decimal; Let’s just say it has some emojis in the mix, in addition to the decimals/numbers, which I find quite satisfying) and doesn’t attempt to incorporate task management the way Mike has, instead relying on my beloved OmniFocus Pro.

    ChatGPT

    Ok. Here goes. I use artificial intelligence, despite knowing that there are plenty of ethical reasons that people may choose not to use AI. I encourage anyone thinking about shaming me or others who use it to read Maha Bali’s post suggesting that we not jump straight to that binary way of thinking about peoples’ use of these technologies. I don’t use it without continually refining my knowledge of what it is and isn’t capable of… but I do find that to be effective in my job, I am required to use it. Additionally, to enable us to cost-effectively offer transcripts for our podcasts and otherwise make our materials more accessible, AI is a must there, too.

    I list ChatGPT here, since that is my most frequently-used AI tool, as it relates to learning. I pay for the $20/month paid service and occasionally find myself needing to use the separate pay-as-you-go API key for nichè use-cases. I asked ChatGPT to use what it knows about me to list off the ways that I use it in my learning (seeking, sensing, and sharing), and here is an edited version of it’s bulleted output:

    • Seeking: exploring big questions about teaching, learning, and AI; summarizing complex articles or reports.
    • Sensing: refining my “messy”/“chicken scratch” notes into themes, comparing frameworks, and generating questions that deepen reflection and conversation (with colleagues, students, or even my own family).
    • Sharing: drafting polished communications – everything from faculty emails and strategic planning documents to podcast show notes and library fundraising blurbs.
    • Iterating: co-creating interactive materials (like Twine games, PollEverywhere prompts, or Canva copy) where I can ask ChatGPT to generate multiple versions until it “clicks.”
    • Blending Personal + Professional Contexts: whether it’s planning a weekly meal prep strategy, crafting conference questions, or designing playful activities for faculty, ChatGPT helps me weave learning into both my work and life.

    It didn’t mention this, but I have been closely following Mike Caulfield‘s experimentation and research on what it can do using argumentation theory to come alongside us in our fact checking with his Deep Background GPT. There’s so much more I could say here, but I’ll save it for future posts.

    Readwise

    It is so easy to highlight sections of what I’m reading on the Kindle app and have those highlights sync over to a service called Readwise. The service “makes it easy to revisit and learn from your ebook and article highlights. – 2024 Top 10 post

    I saw a video the other night which made mention of the ability to sync Readwise highlights with Obsidian (note taking tool) and that got me excited about that possibility. For now, I’ll be disciplined about placing that idea on my someday/maybe list and not going down the rabbit hole at this exact moment. Another thing on my someday/maybe list to look into more is Lance Eaton’s AI Practice: Building My Quote Collection.

    Share

    Sharing includes exchanging resources, ideas, and experiences with our networks as well as collaborating with our colleagues. – Harold Jarche

    Raindrop

    Much of my digital life revolves around digital bookmarking. I could have easily placed Raindrop in with sense making, as on an almost hourly basis, I find myself saving links and placing them in all the various collections (which are like folders) I have on Raindrop and applying tags. Whether I’m reading on my web browser, or via my smartphone or tablet, I can easily save bookmarks and have them accessible to me anytime in the future.

    Just the other day, I was talking with a friend who is doing a lot of reflection and reading about loneliness and I asked if he had ever watched Andrea Dorfman’s How To Be Alone. He hadn’t and it was such a delight to be able to resurface that masterpiece and share it with him. I had an insight while watching it this time that since I have been spending more time working in our library lately that it seems like it may be the one place students feel more comfortable being alone than in other spots.

    Another fun discovery, found within the deep crevasses of Raindrop was The Gap, by Ira Glass. “Your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you… Most everybody I know who does interesting, creative work, went through this phase for a few years…” Ira normalizes this gap of knowing what you’re doing could be better and being able to “fight your way through the gap.”

    While most of my saved bookmarks (tags and collections) are private, I did decide recently to make an RSS feed and page with my saved links within an AI collection from Raindrop. This means that each time I save something related to AI on Raindrop, that anyone subscribed to that feed will have it show up in their RSS aggregator. Additionally, anyone who visits the page will see everything I’ve saved about AI within Raindrop. Candidly, as public as I am with the podcast and many other things, sharing this feed makes me a bit nervous, as I wouldn’t want people to think that I’m necessarily endorsing everything I’m saving. I’m pretty sure people would know that but given how polarizing the topic of AI can be, I still feel a bit nervous about this aspect of my sharing.

    Your Turn

    Would you like to submit a vote with your Top Tools for Learning? Unfortunately, you’re in the same boat as me and will need to wait until 2026. In the meantime, watch out for the 2025 Top Tools for Learning results to be posted by Monday, September 1, 2025.

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  • Veronica Alvarez’s Journey in Arts Education – The 74

    Veronica Alvarez’s Journey in Arts Education – The 74


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    Veronica Alvarez was 4 when her family came to the U.S. from Cotija in Michoacán, Mexico, a small town famed for its cheese. Her father picked avocados amid the scorching heat in the San Fernando Valley, while her mother cleaned houses. One of nine children, she learned how to scrimp and save, how to work hard and how to dream big.

    “We were so poor, I knew not to ask for much,” said Alvarez, 52, now executive director of Los Angeles-based Create CA, one of the state’s leading arts education advocacy organizations. “Looking back on those years now, I don’t know how my parents did it. I have a white-color job and two sons, and I can barely afford it.”

    Her sunny disposition belies a steely resolve. She remembers well the sting of being an undocumented immigrant in the age of Gov. Pete Wilson, an era when some felt ashamed to even speak Spanish in public. She brings that fire to her arts education mission. 

    “I believe access to the arts is a social justice issue,” as she puts it.

    “Unfortunately, students that have the most need do not get equal access and opportunities.”

    Her chops as a fighter, someone who doesn’t give up on a cause, are part of what makes her special, arts advocates say.

    “Veronica is an inspiring and dedicated arts education advocate and leader,” said Merryl Goldberg, a veteran music and arts professor at Cal State San Marcos, who also serves on the Create CA board. “Her commitment to equity and lifting student voices is front and center.”

    Alvarez didn’t become fluent in English until about the fourth grade, but she instinctively understood that education was the key to escaping poverty. 

    Education was my path out of poverty. That was always my thing. I loved school.

    Veronica Alvarez

    The only one in her family to graduate from high school, for her, school was always a matter of sink or swim. She chose to dive deep. She paid her way through college working at Chuck E. Cheese, where she honed her chops in engaging children.

    “I’ve always been pretty driven,” said Alvarez, a mother of two boys with a doctorate in education and a master’s in ancient history. “Education was my path out of poverty. That was always my thing. I loved school.”

    She also loved to walk to the library. It conjured an oasis of calm amid her raucous household.

    “I’d come home with bags of books and sit in a corner to read and immerse myself in the world created by the author,” she remembers. “That love of reading has lasted to this day.”

    At first, she wanted to be an artist, but her fourth grade teacher said she lacked talent. 

    “I loved making art as a child,” said Alvarez. “But I had always been taught to respect your elders. I didn’t think it was my place to question it.”

    So, she stopped trying to make art, channeling her drive into academics. Determined to graduate early, she took every AP class she could in high school and found her happy place in art history. A self-professed nerd, she always felt drawn to the world of books and ideas.

    “To be able to sit and read and learn always seemed like a luxury to me,” she said. 

    As a child, she was first entranced by Caravaggio and Bernini, and later became beguiled by the works of Frida Kahlo and Graciela Iturbide. 

    Making sure everyone can participate in the arts is what drives Veronica Alvarez, now head of Create CA. (Courtesy of Veronica Alvarez)

    “I loved Bernini’s ‘David’ because of his teeth biting his lip; he looked vulnerable and intense — along with the fact that he was mid-motion as he threw the rock at Goliath,” she remembers. “The ‘Barberini Faun’ made me blush. A big piece of marble made me blush.”

    She’s a full-fledged museum addict and a politics junkie with a passion for the place of women in antiquity, particularly Greek and Roman history. That expertise is what led her to the Getty Museum, where she helped launch the Getty Villa. 

    “My parents would’ve never dreamed of taking us to museums; that was not a place for us,” said Alvarez, who later became the director of school and teacher programs at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. “My passion has always been about access and equity, making a place for everyone.”

    While at the Getty, she worked on an English learners program with migrant workers who often start work at 4 a.m., which means language classes happened at all hours of the day and night. It was a struggle to convey the meanings of words until she landed on using the visual realm. 

    “When you learn a new language, you learn ‘manzana’ means apple, and then you see a picture of an apple,” she recalls. “I thought, why don’t we use Cézanne’s ‘Still Life with Apples’? And the conversations suddenly got so much more interesting. We got the students to really engage, centered around the artwork.” 

    That obsession with making sure everyone, not just the lucky few, can feel the transformative power of the arts is why she feels right at home at Create CA, which has been helping schools navigate the rules around Proposition 28, the state’s arts education mandate. 

    The organization has long fought for expanding access to arts education and helped advocate for arts educators and teaching artists in the classroom. One of the biggest challenges facing the organization now is making sure Prop. 28 funds are spent as they were intended, as well as pushing for more funding.

    “With the passage of Prop. 28 and dedicated funds for arts education, people may think we have solved arts education,” she said. “However, while a billion dollars may sound like a lot of money, we have 6 million students in CA. When we parcel out what that means to individual school districts, especially in rural areas, sometimes the funds aren’t sufficient to hire one art teacher.”

    Alvarez is known for her poise and her ability to keep the peace amid intense personalities.

    “I’ve been struck by her powerfully calm demeanor and her openness to advocacy as a ground-up endeavor versus a top-down activity,” said Goldberg. “Being an arts leader can be challenging in so much as there are many voices in the mix and they don’t all agree.”

    Alvarez has the polish to be diplomatic in a deeply divided world, partly because she puts the cause first. 

    “She brings a worldly and positive energy to the discussions, and she strikes me as very much always in the problem-solving and equity-centered mode,” said Letty Kraus, director of the California County Superintendents Statewide Arts Initiative. “I also have experienced her as hands-on, participatory, and collegial in her approach.” 

    For Alvarez, art is the tether that connects us to our shared human heritage. It’s a bridge to the past that all should be encouraged to cross. 

    “Human beings are unique,” she said. “Out of all the animals, we have the ability to create art, to connect across time and culture. That’s why I love the arts so much. The craftsmanship of the human hand, the human eye, is so important to me.”

    As an educator, the elusive nature of cognition — why the human mind absorbs some concepts while discarding others — also fascinates her. 

    “To me, what you have to teach is the love of learning,” she said. “How does the mind retain information? It’s all about making connections. You learn something in history, and then you apply it in English. It’s about providing the full context; that’s how you retain information.”

    If something truly moves us, she suggests, we may remember it forever. That’s why the arts can push us to transcend boundaries and grasp universal truths. 

    “The arts are essential to students’ creativity,” she said. “When students can’t access the traditional curriculum, the arts allow them to express themselves, their feelings, and tell their stories. The arts are essential to our well-being.” 


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