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  • Seeing universities as others see us

    Seeing universities as others see us

    As the comparison between spending (per student) in Scottish and English universities comes into my argument later, Robert Burns’ famous lines from To a Louse seems a good place to start.

    O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us

    We are very familiar with how we see ourselves. Higher education is facing an intolerable financial squeeze.

    In England the maximum fee which institutions are allowed to charge has only been been upgraded once, and only marginally, since the switch from state grants to tuition fees as the main source of funding for teaching 13 or more years ago. Its real value is barely 70 per cent of what it was then, although the Labour government has agreed to another – marginal – increase from 2025-26.

    In Scotland, where Scottish domiciled students pay no fees, public expenditure on higher education has similarly failed to keep pace with inflation.

    The substantial increase in full-fee paying international students, which many institutions relied on to fill the gap has ground to a halt because of less generous visa rules imposed as part of the backlash against large-scale immigration. The never-had-it-so-good years when growing your income was easy are over.

    Red ink

    Meanwhile costs have piled up. Higher education faces not only the standard inflationary pressures – higher wage, pension, energy, estates and other costs. As employers institutions must also pay higher rates of higher national insurance, without the possibility of passing on these extra costs (because of frozen fees and frowned-upon international recruitment). They may also face a levy on international students, although the Government has weakly promised that, if imposed, its proceeds would be redistributed within the system.

    As a result an escalating number of institutions are reporting deficits. The talk is all of transformation, a new code for everything from sharing back-office services to full-blown institutional mergers. The prospect of outright institutional failures cannot be excluded. Dundee has already come close, although not perhaps as close as initial alarmist scenarios suggested. Scotland, of course, still has a funding council able to intervene in such situations. In England the Office for Students has only recently begun to focus on financial sustainability, so it is far from clear what the fate of an English Dundee might be.

    That is our story – and we sticking to it. Rightly so, because it is almost entirely true, although it might help to convince others if it was not sometimes expressed in a spirit of aggrieved entitlement.

    The other side

    However, going back to Burns, we also need to think a bit more about how others see us. It is not simply that we are living in a post-truth world, so the marshalling of incontrovertible evidence while still necessary is now far from sufficient. This applies in particular to the toxically tangled issues of international students and immigration. No amount of evidence of the benefits of “soft power”, or economic multiplier effects, or of the way non-UK PhD students and post-docs have allowed us to punch above our weight in science and scholarship (same in the US, of course) will persuade those who fear they will have to live in, in the queasy but presumably deliberate phrase of the Prime Minister, “an island of strangers”.

    But there is no need to go down the post-truth rabbit hole. There are perfectly rational and plausible ways in which others can see us that are radically different from the way we see ourselves, ways that might appeal to politicians set upon from all sides by multiple clamouring claims for increased state support and to their officials focused on delivery and free-lance advisers thrilled by difficult choices.

    For example, these others might highlight the fact that spending per student on higher education, from all sources, is high by international standards. Among OECD countries the UK comes third, really second after the US because Luxembourg in the number-one spot is clearly a special case. In OECD’s book expenditure per student is substantially higher than in every other European country.

    Of course, international comparisons are notoriously unreliable because of the difficulty of making like-for-like comparisons and disentangling higher from wider tertiary education. Even the apparently simpler task of just comparing public expenditure and excluding private expenditure is fraught, as the difficulty of categorising expenditure on student loans in England has demonstrated. But, with all these caveats, it is still fair to conclude that UK expenditure per student is towards the generous end of the international spectrum.

    A counter ability

    The counter-argument is that this higher expenditure pays dividends because there are so many UK institutions among the top universities in global rankings. But there are clearly other factors that explain our stand-out performance, although Switzerland actually has more highly graded institutions in proportion to its population. Also our global eminence is essentially rooted in research not teaching performance, which is only relevant to expenditure-per-student in terms of cross subsidy. A better counter-argument is that, because of shorter course lengths – three-year undergraduate degrees and one-year Masters – and high completion rates, expenditure per graduate is pretty average by international standards.

    The same ‘others’, faced with evidence that funding per student in England is higher than in Scotland (spelt out, for example, in the recent report by London Economics for a Royal Society of Edinburgh conference), might not automatically conclude, as we do, that therefore funding in Scotland should be raised to the English level. On the contrary they might conclude that, because Scottish universities offer the same quality (whether measured by league tables, shares of competitively won research funding or external examiners’ and other reports on teaching) and the incidence of financial distress is not greater north of the Border, perhaps English funding levels may actually be (too?) generous…

    Of course, all Anglo-Scottish unit funding comparisons are compromised by the fact that undergraduate degrees are three-years south and four-years north of the Border. Historically the younger age of university entrants in Scotland, the lower intensity of Highers and persistence of “democratic intellect” general degrees may have justified the different course lengths. But there is now no difference in entry ages, Highers and Advanced Highers are clearly equivalent to A levels (as English universities acknowledge in their admissions criteria) and ordinary degrees have almost disappeared.

    Nor is it immediately obvious why, if an English system were to be adopted (which is not going to happen), Scottish graduates should be burdened with substantially more debt. The pressure for shorter, and less costly, degrees would clearly increase. But that is an argument for another time and place – and an educationally informed outcome could well be that English undergraduate degrees should also be four-year, which after all is the international standard in the rest of Europe, the US and almost everywhere else.

    Shiny new buildings

    The same ‘others’, faced with this prima facie evidence of  “inefficiency”, might also express some concern about the less-than-prudent management of some – English – universities since the high-fees regime was introduced 13 years ago. Was it really reasonable to plan, as the cranes went up on campus, on the basis that the tuition fees windfall would last for ever? Or that in crabby post-Brexit Britain the very considerable expansion in the number of international students would not provoke a populist backlash?

    They might even point back to historical precedents, and argue there is nothing fixed or sacred about any particular level of funding. Back in 1981 the former University Grants Committee bet on protecting the unit of resource – and lost. The student demand displaced by this vain attempt at protection flowed into the then polytechnics, creating the shape of higher education with which we are familiar today. When expansion really took off in the 1990s the unit of resource was further degraded, Better times only returned with the revival of public expenditure under Tony Blair and, crucially, Gordon Brown and, later, for a while, with high tuition fees.

    Finally they might channel, in a much more moderate way of course, Donald Trump’s threat to use the money he is withdrawing from Harvard to fund “trade schools”. There are plenty of influential people who argue higher education, and specifically universities, has been expanded at the expense of further education. This may demonstrate how little they know and understand about what actually happens in universities today, in particular post-1992 universities. But they represent an important strand of political, if not public, opinion which is hardly sympathetic to increased funding for higher education.

    To be clear, I am not endorsing this alternative viewpoint. My absolute preference is for a better funded higher education system, and also for increased public funding and a managed retreat from the narrowly transactional and crassly commodified regime imposed in England (do you really, Scotland, want to go there?). Nevertheless, surely it is important to remember Burns’ “giftie… to see oursels as ithers see us”. It can only only strengthen our arguments.

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  • University spending and cost recovery, 2023-24

    University spending and cost recovery, 2023-24

    If you are the kind of person who sits down to read analysis of the latest available TRAC (officially, Transparent Approach to Costing) data the last thing you would expect would be cautious optimism.

    The sector, after all, is circling the financial drain – and when you can read press releases from unions and sector representative bodies that say fundamentally the same thing you could feel confident that this is the situation.

    Much of what we’ve recently read in the press is about the impacts of measures taken to address this financial peril – course closures, job cuts, changes in terms and conditions, and a retreat from spending plans on everything from maintenance to recruitment.

    And what the latest TRAC tells us is that these measures are working.

    Who turned on the light?

    To be clear, it’s not time to quit lobbying for a better funding settlement.

    Based on 2023-24 submissions from 128 institutions in England and Northern Ireland the sector has an aggregate deficit of £2,003m – down substantially from £2,854m in 2022-23. The sector has made savings of more than £800m between two years – no mean feat where costs are rising and the value of income is falling.

    What’s going on under the hood is that institutions are getting better at recovering the costs of things they are funded to do – 95.7 per cent of costs were recovered in 2023-24, up from 93.6 per cent in 2022-23. Costs still exceed income (they have done since the pandemic) but the direction of travel is promising – providers are generating more income (up 5.8 per cent to £44,508m) while limiting increases in costs (up 3.5 per cent to £46,511m).

    This is good news, but counterintuitive. We know that staff costs are rising (there was an annual pay uplift, and pensions spending has increased substantially for those providers involved in TPS), we know that the cost of doing business (everything from maintenance to logistics to consumables is rising). And TRAC confirms this – staff costs are up 6.4 per cent, other operating costs are up 4.7 per cent, on last year.

    There are savings in the costs of finance (such as interest payments) – these have fallen 13.3 per cent over last year, though this does not make a huge contribution to overall spending.

    MSI (coming on like a seventh sense)

    We do, however, need to talk about the margin for sustainability and investment (MSI). It’s the most controversial part of the TRAC specification, and when you tell people that universities need to have at least some money for non-income generating fripperies like student support and estates maintenance within any calculation of the cost of doing business they will lose their minds.

    The calculation is done by institution and is based on an average of three years of data and three years of projections (the nerd in me wants to be clear that these are based on Earnings Before Interest Taxation Depreciation and Amortisation – EBITDA) expressed as a proportion of full economic costs. In 2022-23 this was £3,770m (8.4 per cent of FEC), in 2023-24 this was £3,548 (7.6 per cent of FEC) for the sector as a whole.

    The effect here is that the total costs of running a university (FEC plus MSI) looks lower than it did last year. This is more evidence of savings over multiple years – cutting spending on maintenance, sustainability, and student services. This will make cost recovery and the deficit look better: it doesn’t explain all of the improvements this year but it explains some of them.

    The document provides a fuller list of institutional decisions that would have an impact on the MOS calculation – inflationary pressures, a (regulator advocated) caution in recruitment income growth and research activity growth, variability in forecasts as more institutions design in large changes of focus to plans for future spending, and the usual weirdnesses around pension provisions.

    Spend less, earn more

    So institutions are making cuts, and look financially healthier for it. But there is still an overall deficit, and if cuts and efficiencies are the only answer to financial constraints there is a long and painful road left to walk.

    Within the overall £2,003m deficit, the £1,693m deficit on publicly funded teaching is a major contributing factor: for every £100 a university spends on teaching home students, it receives £89.20 from the public purse. This varies, as we will see, by the type of institution in question and what else it gets up to. In real terms income is actually up slightly (a slight rise in the number of students), but it costs more to pay staff and to do all the other things that teaching requires.

    Conversely non-publicly funded teaching (all overseas students, and some self-funded home students) has a 143.1 per cent recovery rate, generating at a £3,232m surplus. The recovery rate is actually down marginally on last year, but the overall income from this source is up by 7.8 per cent (to £10,727m).

    Research has never had a good recovery rate – we’re now down to 66 per cent for 2023-24, from 68.5 per cent the previous year, and again there’s substantial differences by provider type. Again we can point to staff costs and operating costs rising as the reason, but we should also recall that most publicly funded research returns 80 per cent, and some research has no income attached at all.

    We should also note that other (income generating) activities like catering and accommodation run a small deficit, while other non-commercial activity (investments, donations, endowments) have an on-paper surplus.

    Peer pressure

    While the sector level figures are useful, they disguise a lot of diversity in the sector. We still – in 2025 – do not get institutional TRAC data, which would genuinely be useful for understanding where providers have costs that are substantially higher than comparators.

    Instead, we are back with groups A-F:

    • Group A: Institutions with a medical school that get 20 per cent or more of their total income from research (pretty much the Russell Group)
    • Group B: Other institutions with research income constituting 15 per cent or more of all income (largely the big, research intensive, traditional universities that sit outside of the Russell Group).
    • Group C: Research income between 5 and 15 per cent of all income (larger and research focused post-92 providers with some pre-92s mixed in)
    • Group D: Research income less than 5 per cent of a total income greater than £150m (Other big post-92 providers)
    • Group E: Research income less than 5 per cent of a total income less than £150m (the rest of the traditional universities, plus specialist providers)
    • Group F: Specialist music and arts institutions (as you might expect)

    Here’s what they all spend money on, as a proportion of total expenditure:

    [Full screen]

    And here’s the proportion of costs they recover on each kind of spending:

    [Full screen]

    And here’s what happens when you drill down into research:

    [Full screen]

    It’s not usually a good idea to make blanket statements about sector finances – what’s true for one university is generally not true for another. But in this case the generality is valuable – it highlights that the problems facing the sector are less to do with autonomous decisions and more to do with the overall financial settlement. Individual, provider action is clearly helping the situation. But it won’t be enough.

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  • From crisis to community: engaging students in post-pandemic classrooms

    From crisis to community: engaging students in post-pandemic classrooms

    School and other learning environments are often a safe place for students who have difficult home lives.

    I know, I was one of those students. I take that knowledge into every classroom that I enter, and my understanding of student engagement and student experience are woven into my pedagogy of care and teaching to transgress.

    I cannot, (and do not wish to!) separate my lived experience from my teaching. As someone who dropped out of the university that I now work at, I do have an interesting insight into building community and belonging into the curriculum.

    As I wrote here with Lisa Anderson, we require a radical shift in how we consider the needs of students. I want every student in my classroom to experience it as a safe and welcoming space.

    These are not buzzwords or trends, it is how I ensure that students are able to learn – I want them to be in the room. Teaching is a relational activity that requires commitment, experience, honing our craft and being willing to adapt.

    The university sector is not in a good place, and as committed as I am to my research, it is teaching that brings me joy and new ideas every single time I enter the classroom. When we teach to transgress, it is for us as much as it is for the students.

    The classroom reminds me of what is possible. Engaging strongly with the literature of the UK’s leading emergency and disaster planner, Lucy Easthope, I recognise the education will be impacted forever by the pandemic, and I want to play my part in the recovery.

    Crime, justice and the sex industry

    I lead the largest optional final year module in my department, with 215 registered students, based on my 23 years’ experience of the sex industry. It was a community of care that got me here, with colleagues from around the country (and globe!) sharing material and ideas with me when I launched this module in 2020. Collaboration and teaching go hand-in-hand and we must allow time for this.

    The module is underpinned by my nonlinear pedagogy which I write about here. The design empowers students to have control over the direction and pace of their learning. All content is uploaded to our virtual learning environment Canvas in week one. There are weekly recorded lecture summaries, and 2-hour weekly workshops.

    The content also includes a comprehensive library reading list, weekly reading folders, watch folder and collaborative tools.

    This year the module is celebrating its fifth birthday and the student engagement is better than ever before. Here are some things that I have learned and that I am reflecting on.

    A welcoming classroom and learning names

    Where possible, I always enter the classroom ten minutes before class begins (this is definitely not always possible in a large and busy campus with extreme demands on estates and our time) to provide a prepared and calm setting for students to arrive. This is also helpful for me as a neurodiverse teacher.

    I like to greet students as they arrive, and learn names wherever possible (photo class lists are your friend).This sets the tone for our warm and welcoming teaching community. It demonstrates the way in which we will invite peers to contribute and talk through the content. It may seem a small thing, but it makes a huge difference to teaching and learning.

    Front-loaded prep

    As a dyslexic I need to be prepared. This is a large module, and a busy teaching load. I spend the weeks before semester begins frontloading my prep so that I am ready to go. This involved re-recording the summary E lectures, updating workshop materials, sheets, reading folders, module guides, etc.

    Visitors to my office are surprised to see a row of 12 piles along the floor- with each week’s content printed out, highlighted, and ready to go. I am always very grateful once semester starts that I took the time to do this. It creates a calm tone to classes that students explicitly comment on.

    Lesson plans

    This year I went old-school in multiple ways, including buying a hardback lesson planner, in which I mapped out the learning objectives for every workshop – mapping against learning outcomes for the module.

    Physically mapping these out, with prompts, links to the readings and case studies, was something that students positively picked up on. This also ensured adaptability and that I was reflecting upon and updating my material. Students need calm and expert guidance; experienced teachers are key.

    Workbooks

    Acting on student feedback from the previous year, I designed a workbook that students can print out or use digitally. Students always make a lot of notes on this module, and the workbook helps them with organising those thoughts. In class, I was very pleased to see rows of pink workbooks looking back at me.

    The workbook also includes space for questions, and learners can bring this to my student support hours. I have been learning a lot from school teachers, and recognising how much extra structure students need post-pandemic.

    Learning through tempo

    I made an active decision this year to experiment with the tempo of each workshop class, with differences even between some workshop groups. This was in response to student feedback who wanted some slower sessions in order to read in class, and more time to talk with their groups/peers.

    This was music to my ears (pun absolutely intended) and it made me reflect on the pace and rhythm of my classes. I am a high-energy teacher and I like to pack a lot into classes, but stripping (pun not intended!) some of this back to create quieter time (for class reading) and slower sessions with more time for groups to talk, has been a game-changer. Students actively requesting some slower workshops so they could read together in class, was amazing to witness. Students reacted overwhelmingly positively to my ability to respond and adapt.

    Learning through play

    It is interesting in this post-disaster period of the pandemic to witness students enjoying, and requesting, playful activities in class. As I argue here, we need to build community into the curriculum to boost attendance.

    Poster paper and felt tip pens might have attracted horrified faces a few years ago and a low uptake, but this year, every single “play” activity that I have offered has been taken up by almost every student. I always offer a range of engagement tools, with non-verbal options such as our collaborative google doc, padlet, and other online tools, and I offer the option for sheets, paper, pens etc.

    A welcoming, hospitable classroom where students know they are being considered, pays dividends in engagement and mutual respect. Once students feel safe and able to take risks, no matter how low-stakes, they open up, and engage in difficult and complex debates.

    One group activity looked at sexual entertainment venue closures using five different pieces of coloured card to map out key findings from two different journal articles, identify and apply concepts from earlier weeks in the module, examples of venue closures, and examples of campaign group discourse.

    A “fun” activity that involves deep critical thinking and the ability to successfully weave together multiple forms of evidence to formulate a convincing argument. I then took a photo of the giant map we all created across the module. Every single student wanted to take part; students are actively seeking community and togetherness within the classroom.

    As Treasa Kearney and I argue here, campus should be a treasured space that offers valuable connections to students.

    The activity with foam stickers, which I thought students would resist, was the most popular activity of the semester (after the guided walk, below). Through the mechanism of light-hearted play, students successfully navigated a tricky and sensitive topic examining the harms, dangers and exploitation associated with online sex work. We ended up with students stickering their laptops, phones, their workbooks, and themselves! We cannot forget that these are all students of the pandemic, they missed out on so many opportunities to interact with peers. They are embracing every opportunity to connect with each other within timetabled sessions.

    Guided walk

    Another activity on the module (and the one that students most favourably comment on) is our guided walk of sexual entertainment venues in Liverpool city centre. I provide online material for accessibility purposes recognising that not all students can walk around the city, or may not wish to.

    For students who attend, we map out the city in terms of gendered harm and risk, and I give a lecture inside of a sexual entertainment venue that opens exclusively for our class. This brings the Policing and Crime Act 2009 to life, and gives students a unique insight into what the key texts are discussing. It is also very much a community building exercise, with a large proportion of our module cohort in attendance. Learning outside of the classroom is very important for student engagement.

    Scaffolding learning

    I intentionally choose to layer texts: curating texts of various complexity, using tools such as padlet. Students choose what texts to access based on their own areas of interests and confidence, as they progressively build up skill and academic knowledge of the area. This ensures that the module is accessible to all students, with learners challenged at a point which feels appropriate for them.

    It also means that students always have supported content to work with. In week ten, we looked at the media, and we returned to a key text from week eight, to apply three media myths from a journal article to three documentary clips. Using worksheets, the students demonstrated a sophisticated ability to apply a criminological concept to media sources.

    Responding to ongoing feedback

    Building a rapport with students through modelling a pedagogy of care and inclusion, equips students with the ability to provide feedback throughout the semester. Students appreciate the wealth of resources available from the beginning of semester, but others may feel overwhelmed with choice.

    In rapid response to student feedback, I started to provide recommended readings in addition to the large selection. Students appreciated this speedy closing of the feedback loop, and being valued co-producers of the module approach. The student feedback for the module was the best yet.

    Accessible assessment as the default position

    With growing numbers of students experiencing health issues, it is good practice to think of accessibility as the default position, not an additional bolt-on. I am in favour of different modes of assessment that students can choose from, or developing an assessment that can be approached in different ways. I have written here about my letter assessment, inspired by the work of Katie Tonkiss. Students often feel worried about “academic writing”, and this assessment allows students to use the first person, and to use a more colloquial writing tone if desired. The students develop a nuanced, convincing and influential writing style, with the ability to hold conflicting and competing harms in tension.

    Ultimately, it is about remembering that teaching is a huge privilege and blessing. We get to have an impact on so many people and play a part in shaping ideas and innovations of the future. I will never lose the gratitude for getting to do this job and remembering where I come from.

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  • HR and the Courts — June 2025 – CUPA-HR

    HR and the Courts — June 2025 – CUPA-HR

    by CUPA-HR | June 10, 2025

    Each month, CUPA-HR General Counsel Ira Shepard provides an overview of several labor and employment law cases and regulatory actions with implications for the higher ed workplace. Here’s the latest from Ira.

    Federal Court Allows Nationwide Class Action Alleging AI Age Discrimination To Proceed

    A federal court recently ruled that Workday’s artificial intelligence scoring algorithm for screening job applicants meets the standard to conclude that it may violate the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) in discriminating against older job applicants. The court ruled that the nationwide class action may proceed (Mobley v. Workday (N.D. Cal. 3:23-cv-00770, 5/16/25)).

    While the court has not yet ruled on other allegations, the lawsuit also alleged that the algorithm has an unlawful disparate impact based on race and disability. President Trump has instructed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Justice not to prosecute disparate impact cases, but this executive order does not apply to private lawsuits or state equal employment opportunity laws.

    Conflicting Federal Court Decisions on President Trump’s Executive Order Involving Mass Layoffs and Office Closings at the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights

    On May 22, 2025, a federal court judge in Massachusetts issued a broad injunction prohibiting the mass layoffs and office closings at the Department of Education. The judge ordered the administration to reinstate all laid-off employees, and carry out all duties mandated by U.S. law, including managing student loans, aiding state educational programs and enforcing civil rights laws. The judge ruled that the personnel cuts would likely “cripple the department.” The judge concluded that the president lacked the power to effectively dissolve a federal agency created by Congress by getting rid of employees, closing offices and transferring duties to other agencies (Somerville Public Schools v. Trump (D. Mass. 25-cv-10667, 5/22/25)). The Trump administration will appeal the decision. Learn more.

    The day before, on May 21, 2025, a federal court judge in Washington, D.C. denied a private lawsuit to enjoin President Trump’s executive order, which resulted in placing nearly half of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) staff on administrative leave and closing seven of the OCR’s 12 regional offices. The lawsuit was brought by a group of parents and students and the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates. The judge denied the request for a temporary injunction, holding that the plaintiffs lacked appropriate standing to sue and were unlikely to prevail on the merits (Carter v. United States Department of Education (D.D.C. No. 1:25-cv-007044, 5/21/25)).

    Presidential Executive Order Disfavors Criminal Enforcement of Federal Agency Rules

    An executive order signed by President Trump on May 9, 2025, advised all federal agencies that they should consider civil rather than criminal enforcement of their regulations. This could have a significant impact on the enforcement of federal laws and regulations in the HR field. The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) all have an optional criminal enforcement capability, which is in addition to the standard civil enforcement typically pursued by the Department of Labor. The executive order also stated that agencies should avoid imposing a “strict liability” standard to their rules. Strict liability allows the government to pursue a person or entity in a situation regardless of intent.

    The executive order also requires all agencies to, within one year, provide the Department of Justice with a list of criminal regulatory offenses they are enforcing and the range of the criminal penalties for violation.

    Teacher Loses First Amendment Case Against School District After Firing

    A federal court recently ruled that the Unified Oakland School Board was immune from a lawsuit by a kindergarten teacher who refused to call a student by the pronouns they use, despite the student’s and parents’ wishes. The teacher claimed that to do so was inconsistent with her religious beliefs and to require her to do so violated her First Amendment right to freedom of religion. The school district had offered the plaintiff several accommodations before termination, including the option to call the student by their first name. The plaintiff refused and was ultimately terminated.

    The court dismissed the claim against the school district on sovereign immunity grounds and against individual officials on qualified immunity grounds (Ramirez v. Oakland Unified School District et al. (2025 BL 181443 N.D. Cal., No. 24-cv-09223, LB, 5/27/25)). The plaintiff was given 28 days to file an amended complaint against individual defendants.

    The judge also dismissed the teacher’s First Amendment free speech claim, holding that her refusal to use the pronoun the student uses was not protected free speech.

    Harvard Wins Temporary Reprieve From Presidential Executive Order Banning Its International Students From Entering the United States

    A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) barring the government from enforcing a presidential executive order which would have banned Harvard from continuing to enroll foreign students. The judge ruled that it would cause Harvard irreparable harm and issued the TRO barring enforcement of the executive order and ordering that a hearing be held on the issue on June 16, 2025 (Harvard v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (25-cv-11472, U.S. D Ct. Maa. (Boston) 6/5/25)).

    The TRO will be in effect until the June 16, 2025, hearing when the court will hear arguments over whether to extend the injunction. Learn more.

    NCAA and Power Five Conferences $2.8 Billion Settlement Proposal of Antitrust, NIL Suit Approved by Federal Judge

    On June 7, 2025, Judge Claudia Wilkens of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California approved the proposed NCAA and Power Five conferences (the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12, and SEC) settlement of the antitrust lawsuit brought against them for not allowing college athletes to receive payments for name, image and likeness (NIL) related to their college sports status. The judge approved a $2.8 billion settlement proposal to be distributed among student-athletes playing during the 2016-2024 seasons. In addition, the colleges are allowed to share up to 22% of revenue received annually from athletic programs with college athletes — capped at $20.5 million a year — going forward for 10 years. The cap will be adjusted upward by 4% during the first two years of the agreement.

    It is estimated that, of the $20.5 million annual cap, about 90% will go to football players and about 10% will go to male basketball players. In addition, NIL payments made by boosters and other sports-related entities are subject to outside review by the accounting firm Deloitte.

    Because of the unprecedented and fast-changing pronouncements of the new presidential administration and the intervening court challenges, the developments contained in this blog post are subject to change. Before acting on the legal issues discussed here, please consult your college or university counsel and, as always, act with caution.



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  • Marketing Can’t Lead If It’s Shackled by Structure 

    Marketing Can’t Lead If It’s Shackled by Structure 

    Over the past few years, I’ve had the opportunity to conduct organizational assessments for a range of colleges and universities, from small private institutions to large public campuses. Despite the wide variety in size, mission, and complexity, one core issue continues to surface: 

    The greatest threat to effective integrated marketing communications in higher education isn’t a lack of creativity, talent, or ambition; it’s internal misalignment. We have to get out of our own way. 

    This misalignment isn’t just a problem with processes or a cause of inefficiencies. It directly impacts a university’s ability to generate revenue, build and protect its reputation, and, ultimately, secure its long-term viability. 

    Below are five consistent themes I’ve observed across the institutions I’ve worked with, including those I personally worked for before consulting. I have found patterns that emerge regardless of structure, budget or institutional type. They’re internal challenges that severely undermine the very work marketing and communications professionals are tasked to deliver. 

    1. Decentralized Chaos 

    Most institutions operate under some form of distributed marketing where individual colleges, divisions, and programs employ their own communications and/or marketing staff. That’s not inherently problematic. The issue arises when these teams operate independently without shared planning cycles, coordinated messaging, or a central strategy to anchor their work. 

    At best, this results in duplicate efforts, inconsistent voice, and campaign overlap. At worst, it results in undertrained and underresourced staff holding the institution’s reputation and revenue in their hands with anchor to a central strategy.  

    2. Roles That Don’t Match Reality 

    Job descriptions across campuses are often written for tactical support roles: social media posting, event promotion, basic writing. In practice, many of these individuals are leading strategic initiatives, advising campus leaders, coordinating major campaigns, and serving as the face of their departments. 

    This gap between expectation and reality leads to chronic role strain, under-recognition, and burnout. Institutions end up relying on strategic thinking that they haven’t resourced or defined. Additionally, these roles tend to live in isolation, left to their own devices to prioritize their time and resources and even improve their own skillsets, while any connection to the central marcom unit is deemed optional. 

    3. Data Without Direction 

    Marketing technology is everywhere (CRMs, CMSs, project management tools, calendars, analytics platforms). However, the ability to extract meaningful, coordinated insight from those systems is rare. This may be the most critical issue I have seen uniformly across campuses.  

    Too often, teams track different metrics (if they track at all), interpret success in different ways, and lack access to integrated dashboards or audience journey data. There’s no central hub for marketing intelligence, and no unified approach to campaign evaluation. And in most cases, there are no connections between data sources to see if efforts are working. 

    4. Strategy Without Governance 

    Even when a university-wide marketing strategy exists, it often lacks enforcement mechanisms. Central communications teams may offer brand guidelines, campaign frameworks, or shared messaging, but unit-level teams aren’t always required or even incentivized to use them. 

    This results in fragmentation of messaging and a reactive culture in which strategy is optional and consistency is left to chance. 

    5. The Forgotten Internal Audience 

    Internal communications are frequently overlooked in the broader marketing ecosystem. Staff often describe a culture of “self-navigation,” where onboarding is informal, institutional goals are unclear, and team alignment is hit-or-miss. 

    Without strong internal communication, even the most ambitious marketing strategies falter. People can’t execute on what they don’t understand or weren’t invited into. 

    The Cost of Misalignment 

    These internal barriers are often invisible to the public but have real consequences: 

    • Missed enrollment targets 
    • Ineffective or underperforming campaigns
    • Brand inconsistency 
    • Lack of alumni engagement 
    • Delayed crisis responses 
    • Low morale and high turnover 
    • Internal resentment and lack of respect 
    • Risk to institutional reputation 

    In short, when internal teams aren’t set up to succeed, the institution’s ability to drive revenue and protect its reputation is compromised.

    What Institutions Must Do Now 

    If colleges and universities want to compete, marketing and communications cannot be treated as a service unit or support function. They must be positioned as strategic leaders with the authority and infrastructure to drive outcomes that directly influence institutional viability. 

    This means moving beyond collaboration and into accountability, with clear decision rights, cross-campus responsibility, and presidential endorsement. Just as individual units cannot hire a person without HR, they should not be able to advertise on behalf of the institution without central authority. 

    Here’s what that requires: 

    Elevate Marcom to a Strategic Leadership Function 

    Marketing and communications must sit at the strategy table, not just in times of crisis or campaign launches, but as a permanent fixture in institutional planning. That includes having a seat on executive leadership teams. While a reporting line to the president or chancellor is ideal, it isn’t necessary if access and support exist.  

    No major initiative—enrollment, advancement, academic innovation—should move forward without Marcom’s leadership embedded from the beginning. 

    Centralize Authority, Decentralize Execution 

    Establish a clear governance structure that defines who owns the brand, who approves campaigns, and how messaging is prioritized. Marcom should lead the strategy, planning cycles, audience research, and brand integrity, while colleges and units execute within those frameworks. 

    This approach balances institutional consistency with local relevance and eliminates duplicative, misaligned marketing efforts. 

    Redefine Roles to Match Reality 

    Audit all marketing and communications roles across the institution. Rewrite job descriptions to reflect the actual strategic, analytical, and leadership work staff are doing. Then, align titles, compensation, and reporting structures accordingly, building accountability to the central Marcom strategy. 

    The reality is that many professionals are already acting as strategists but without the recognition, decision-making authority, or organizational support to do so effectively. This should include much-needed professional development for those typically forced to self-teach. 

    Build the Infrastructure for Insight and Alignment 

    Invest in integrated systems (integrated CRMs, content management platforms, campaign dashboards, and persona libraries) but pair those tools with processes. This means shared campaign calendars, institution-wide planning cycles, and a unified set of performance indicators. 

    Without alignment on audiences, channels, timing, and outcomes, even the best content will underdeliver. 

    Use a Marketing Maturity Model to Drive Progress 

    Adopt a clear roadmap to measure and grow marketing capabilities across six key domains: brand management, audience journey integration, insights infrastructure, strategic alignment, risk management, and organizational culture. 

    Then give Marcom the responsibility (and the resources) to lead that transformation. Not just participate in it. Own it. 

    This is not about creative polish or tactical execution. It’s about institutional sustainability. The higher education market is louder, more competitive, and less forgiving than ever. 

    Institutions that continue to treat marketing and communications as a support function will struggle to adapt. Those that empower it as a core leadership discipline, with the needed structure, authority, and resources, will build stronger brands, increase revenue, and secure their relevance for the future. 

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  • Top Hat Named Courseware Solution Provider of the Year

    Top Hat Named Courseware Solution Provider of the Year

    Prestigious EdTech Breakthrough award highlights Top Hat’s leadership in delivering flexible, AI-powered courseware to support faculty and students.

    TORONTO – June 6, 2025  – Top Hat, the leader in student engagement solutions for higher education, has been named the 2025 Courseware Solution Provider of the Year. The annual EdTech Breakthrough Awards honor organizations that push the boundaries of educational technology—benefiting students, educators, and institutions across North America and around the world. In a global field of over 2,700 nominations, Top Hat stood out for its efforts to empower faculty to create and deliver engaging, connected, and affordable learning experiences for students.

    “Receiving this award is an honor and supports our belief that better student outcomes begin with the course itself,” said Maggie Leen, CEO of Top Hat. “We’re proud to support thousands of faculty with tools that make it easier to adopt proven teaching practices, and grateful to our team for the creativity and care they show everyday in making great learning experiences a reality for more students.”

    Now in its seventh year, the EdTech Breakthrough Awards have become a benchmark for excellence in educational technology. The program celebrates the industry’s most visionary companies—those dreaming bigger, innovating further, and setting new standards for enhancing the practice of teaching and learning. Top Hat’s selection reflects its track record of building solutions that drive measurable academic outcomes and dramatic improvements in student engagement, inside and outside the classroom. 

    Top Hat’s courseware platform gives instructors unprecedented flexibility to tailor content to their teaching goals. The platform integrates interactive assessments, multimedia, and AI-powered tools that allow educators to instantly create in-class questions and reflection prompts. This makes it easier than ever for instructors to apply evidence-based practices like active learning and low-stakes assessment. Students also benefit from AI-powered on-demand study support and unlimited practice questions rooted directly in course content. 

    Top Hat has a long-standing commitment to helping faculty adopt, adapt, or create modern, interactive course materials that improve engagement and comprehension while advancing institutional goals around student affordability and equity. By supporting the use of low- or no-cost learning materials—including customizable OpenStax and OER titles enriched with interactive features—Top Hat empowers educators to design meaningful learning experiences that reflect their unique pedagogical goals while reducing costs for students.

    About Top Hat

    As the leader in student engagement solutions for higher education, Top Hat enables educators to employ evidence-based teaching practices through interactive content, tools, and activities in in-person, online, and hybrid classroom environments. Thousands of faculty at 900 leading North American colleges and universities use Top Hat to create meaningful, engaging and accessible learning experiences for students before, during, and after class. To learn more, please visit tophat.com.

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  • Elevate Your Higher Education YouTube Channel with Proven SEO Tactics

    Elevate Your Higher Education YouTube Channel with Proven SEO Tactics

    In today’s competitive digital landscape, higher education institutions must continually evolve to reach and engage prospective students. YouTube has evolved from a video-sharing platform into a dynamic search engine where students explore campus life, academic programs, and authentic student experiences. That’s why developing and optimizing a higher education YouTube channel is more important than ever.

    Smart video SEO strategies can significantly improve visibility, build brand authority, and support enrollment goals for institutions. A well-crafted YouTube strategy plays a crucial role in this effort, ensuring that content reaches and resonates with prospective students.

    Why YouTube SEO matters for higher ed video marketing

    YouTube SEO goes beyond views. It positions your institution within one of the most influential search engines in the world. YouTube has become the second-largest search engine after Google, and for today’s prospective students — many of whom are digital natives — video is a primary method of discovery and research.

    Whether exploring campus life, comparing academic programs, or seeking authentic student voices, prospective learners turn to YouTube to gather insights that influence their decisions. A well-optimized higher education YouTube channel offers a range of benefits, including:

    • Builds credibility and trust by providing authentic, engaging content.
    • Expands visibility on a platform used heavily by prospective students.
    • Drives enrollment by surfacing at key moments in the decision-making journey.
    • Strengthens your digital footprint through content that aligns with search behavior.
    • Supports multi-channel strategies by integrating with websites, email, and social media.
    • Improves AI-driven search visibility as AI-powered search results increasingly prioritize video content. (Tools like YouTube’s auto-transcription and AI tagging can further enhance discoverability.)

    Optimizing your channel ensures your content appears when it matters most and positions your institution as a leader in digital engagement.

    “Video content is the future of marketing—it’s authentic, engaging, and capable of building trust with your audience faster than any other medium.”

    — Neil Patel, digital marketing expert

    Build a strong SEO foundation for your higher education YouTube channel

    Every video your institution shares is more than just content — it’s an opportunity to shape perceptions, highlight your strengths, and connect with your audience. Before diving into more advanced strategies, it’s essential to ensure that each video is built on a solid SEO foundation.

    When executed consistently, these foundational elements can make the difference between content that gets buried and content that drives meaningful engagement. Foundational elements include:

    • Accurate video transcripts: Ensure transcripts are complete and error-free. This enhances accessibility and helps search engines understand your content. Also, include captions and alt text to enhance accessibility and meet ADA standards.
    • Optimized video settings: Configure each video correctly (e.g., mark as “not for children”, assign relevant categories, add strategic tags) to improve discoverability.
    • Robust video descriptions: Use keyword-rich, detailed descriptions aligned with your academic offerings. Think like a prospective student searching for programs or campus life.
    • SEO-friendly video titles: Titles should be compelling, clear, and keyword-focused. Avoid jargon — focus on what the viewer will gain.

    Apply advanced channel strategies to stand out

    Once the foundational elements are in place, it’s time to move beyond the basics. Elevating your higher education YouTube channel requires thoughtful planning and strategic segmentation. This is especially important for institutions with diverse academic offerings and multiple audiences, such as prospective undergraduate and graduate students.

    Taking a more advanced approach can help differentiate your content, make navigation easier for users, and deliver tailored experiences that align with varied student needs. To elevate your channel’s performance and support segmented marketing goals:

    • Create dedicated channels: Maintaining separate channels for different audiences (like graduate versus undergrad) allows for more targeted messaging and cleaner audience segmentation.
    • Use playlists strategically: Group videos by topic or series and apply consistent naming conventions. This improves navigation, boosts engagement, and supports channel SEO.
    • Optimize thumbnails and preview content: High-quality thumbnails and concise preview text boost click-through rates, especially on mobile devices.

    Ready for a Smarter Way Forward?

    Higher ed is hard — but you don’t have to figure it out alone. We can help you transform challenges into opportunities.

    Enhance viewer engagement

    Even if your department isn’t directly producing every video, there’s still an opportunity to influence engagement and performance. By implementing a few proven tactics, institutions can increase viewer interaction and strengthen their presence on YouTube.

    These strategies work in tandem with foundational SEO practices to extend the reach and impact of your video content:

    Include clear calls-to-action (CTAs): Ask viewers to like, comment, subscribe, or visit your website. These actions signal relevance to YouTube’s algorithm.

    Leverage end screens and cards: Use these to direct viewers to related content, encouraging longer sessions and deeper engagement.

    Maintain consistent branding: Ensure videos reflect your institution’s visual identity and messaging tone to reinforce brand equity.

    Integrate video into your broader strategy

    YouTube content shouldn’t exist in a silo. When part of a cohesive higher ed video marketing approach, your higher education YouTube channel becomes a versatile asset that supports communication and engagement across platforms.

    To truly maximize its value, it must be woven into your institution’s broader marketing and communication ecosystem. When aligned with your website, email campaigns, and social media channels, your YouTube strategy reinforces key messages and creates a cohesive experience for prospective students.

    YouTube videos can be a powerful asset across multiple marketing channels:

    • Website integration: Embed program overviews, testimonials, and campus tours to enrich landing pages and drive engagement.
    • Email campaigns: Incorporate personalized video content into outreach and drip campaigns to boost open and click-through rates.
    • Social media amplification: Repurpose YouTube content into short clips for Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and LinkedIn to reach broader audiences.
    • Virtual events and webinars: Leverage recorded content as follow-up resources or promotional teasers.
    • Advertising and paid media: Use high-performing videos in YouTube ads or across PPC campaigns to increase reach and ROI.

    Stay agile and stay ahead

    YouTube SEO isn’t a one-time effort — it’s a continuous process. Use YouTube Studio to track key performance metrics such as watch time, engagement, and search impressions. These insights help guide your strategy and identify opportunities to improve content.

    Monitor analytics regularly, refresh metadata, and adapt to changing viewer behaviors. Institutions that stay agile will be better positioned to engage digital-native audiences.

    Take your higher ed video marketing to the next level

    YouTube remains a powerful tool to build institutional visibility and connect with prospective students. At Collegis Education, our expansive marketing services are backed by deep expertise in higher ed SEO, digital strategy, and content performance. Whether you’re refining your current efforts or starting fresh, a smart, scalable strategy can turn your YouTube channel into a powerful tool for student engagement.

    Let’s connect and start building a smarter strategy today.

    Innovation Starts Here

    Higher ed is evolving — don’t get left behind. Explore how Collegis can help your institution thrive.

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  • That Was the Quarter That Was

    That Was the Quarter That Was

    What’s been going on around the world since the end of March, you ask? 

    Well, unsurprisingly, the biggest stories have come from the United States.  There are in effect four fronts to the Trump administration’s attacks on the world of higher education.  First of all, the government’s new budget is going to reduce student eligibility for student loans and grants, meaning there will be less opportunity available to American students.  Second, the budget also proposes to radically slash the budgets of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (the cuts you heard about in the early months of the Trump administration were cuts to existing and in-progress grants – the new budget is about slashing expenditures going forward).   Third, it had decided to get itself into an enormous spat with Harvard, starting with issuing a bizarre set of demands on April 11th, followed by an admission that the letter had been sent in error, followed by enraged bellicosity that Harvard wasn’t submitting to a letter the administration had not meant to send.  Things escalated: the Trump administration impounded more billions of dollars, Harvard responded by shrugging and raising a few hundred million on the bond market, and Trump escalated by, eventually, banning Harvard from accepting or hosting any international students.  And fourth, shortly after a court granted Harvard an injunction on the international students matter, the Trump administration began delaying all student visas and aggressively cancelling Chinese student visas.

    (Whew.)

    This is of course a massive own goal with dangerous implications, as commentators such as Holden Thorp and William Kirby have pointed out.  But it is not simply about Americans losing scientific/technological supremacy.  As the Economist has pointed out, the entire world has a stake in what happens to American science; its hobbling will have consequences not just for global science but for the global economy as well.

    It has been fascinating over the past few weeks watching how the American debacle had grabbed the attention of the rest of the world as well.  It has been very difficult this past month or so to be somewhere where the papers weren’t obsessing about what was happening to students at Harvard (check out a representative smattering from Ethiopia, Iceland, Vietnam, Malaysia, India and Kazakhstan).   At the policy level, almost every OECD government is revving up plans to poach US-based researchers even in places which genuinely don’t have the scientific infrastructure to poach anyone (Ireland?  Czechia?  C’mon).  In other words, you have basically the entire world looking at how the American debacle in a massively self-centred way.  Basically, it’s all: “Yeah, yeah, death of the American research university, how does this affect me/how can I profit?”

    But the world has yet to grapple in any kind of serious way is how to maintain growth and innovation in a world where the largest spender on research is reducing expenditures by 50%.  This has implications for absolutely everybody and at the moment there are no serious discussions about how the world gets by without it.  Obviously, other countries can’t replace what used to come out of NSF and NIH.  But they can, as Billy Beane from Moneyball might say, recreate it “in the aggregate” by working together.  Unfortunately, that’s not quite what they are doing.  That would require Australia, Canada, Japan and Korea to be working actively with the European Union; not only is that not happening, but these days the EU can’t even get it’s own act together on research.

    Meanwhile, in large parts of the world, the main higher education story we hear about is one of “cutbacks”, “austerity” and the like.  But there are, I think, some fundamentally different issues at work in different countries.  In the rich Anglosphere, which happens to be where most of the big producers of higher education are located, mature higher education systems highly reliant on market fees are being forced into big cuts as governments remove their ability to attract funds, usually by changing their student visa regimes.  (An aside here: many people ask: where will international students go if not Canada/US/Australia/wherever?  To which the answer is usually: to a great extent, they will just stay home. But a few countries do seem to be doing better on international students as of late, mostly in Asia.  Turkey, Dubai and Uzbekistan in particular seem to be the big winners, though the growth in their intakes is lower than the drop in the intakes of the big anglophone countries).

    But in other countries, the fundamental financial tension is that demand for higher education is far outstripping the ability of either public or private funding to keep the system afloat (government could choose not to meet so much demand, but political needs must).   Kenya, with its widespread university financial problems comes into this category, and Nigeria, where funding new universities seems to come at the expense of funding existing ones clearly come under this category. Intermediate cases here include France (increasing demand, flat funding), Brazil (which has done a series of policy U-turns on transfers to federal universities and whose overall policy might best be described as “confused”), and perhaps Colombia (promises of money co-existing with widespread institutional precarity, even in the public sector).  What is common here is that a lot of countries seem to have built systems which are too big/expensive for what the public – collectively or individually – is willing to pay. 

    A common response to the problem of inadequate public funding is the expansion of private higher education.  Almost unbelievably, private higher education now makes up about 20% of total provision in Spain, France and Germany (in two of those countries, tuition is free, and in the third it is minimal – under 1000 euros per year in most cases).  In many cases, the expansion is in relatively cheap classroom-heavy courses (often in business) but in many cases these universities are moving into other areas such health care provision.  This explosion has led to a significant tightening of regulations on private universities in Spain and a “tri” (meaning triage”) on France’s Parcoursup system, meaning that certain types of private college will have a harder time advertising themselves to prospective students.  This phenomenon is not constrained to Europe: Tunisia is also currently pre-occupied with how to regulate private institutions.  An alternative to letting domestic private universities rip is to invite foreign institutions into the country.  India is the country most in the news for attempting this at the moment but places like Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan and Vietnam are also eagerly heading down this route.

    Tuition fees are always an issue, and at public universities we see evidence both for and against the idea that fees are rising.  On the one hand, we have Namibia introducing free tuition (though – note – without fully announcing its operational details), and a Labor government in Australian winning on a promise to – in effect – shorten graduate repayment periods by cancelling debt.  On the other hand, Korea and Russia – both countries with abysmal youth demographics – are allowing their institutions to raise fees after years of both falling enrolments and largely frozen tuition.  Finland may be introducing fees for certain forms of continuing education.  But higher tuition isn’t the only way governments deal with crashing demographics; in Pennsylvania, the solution is outright campus closures.

    In terms of student activism, the main story so far this year is Serbia, which is now in the seventh month of student-led anti-government protests. At this point, it’s very hard to see how the students obtain their maximalist demands of regiment change.  After six months of protests, students are starting to go back to school and finish their academic year.  Recent evidence from North America suggests the movement will have trouble maintaining itself over the summer months and into next year.

    War continues to re-shape universities around the world.  Ukraine has announced changes to its system of conscription which will lower its university attendance rate (particularly for graduate studies).  Something similar has happened in Ethiopia, where new rules have been introduced requiring students to do a year of national service before graduation.  Russian universities continue to atrophy in different ways, partly due to government policy but also due to the exodus of many scholars who have fled the regime.

    Among other things from this quarter that bear watching going forward: Greece is continuing the modification of its university system at a furious pace both in terms of altering curricula and in terms of changing the post-dictatorship convention that campuses are police-free zones.  Algeria is moving its entire university system from French to English instruction, which may not have a huge effect in higher education, but certainly tells you which way global linguistic politics are going.  Hong Kong is experimenting with a new institutional type, and a billionaire in China is putting some serious coin behind a new university. 

    My tip for the story this summer?  Watch graduate unemployment rates around the world, particularly in India and China (where the situation is so bad the government has just announced a kind of emergency blitz on graduate hiring which sure seems like it is set up for failure).  I think the push to align higher education more with the labour market is about to go into overdrive.

    All caught up now!  See you back here in September.

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  • The Society for Research into Higher Education in 1975

    The Society for Research into Higher Education in 1975

    by Rob Cuthbert

    Only yesterday

    I’ve been walking these streets so long: in the SRHE Blog a series of posts is chronicling, decade by decade, the progress of SRHE since its foundation 60 years ago in 1965. As always, our memories are supported by some music of the times, however bad it might have been[1].

    Is this the real life?

    Some parts of the world, like some parts of higher education, were drawing breath after momentous years. The oil crisis of 1973-74 sent economic shocks around the world. In 1975 the Vietnam war finally ended, and the USA also saw the conviction of President Richard Nixon’s most senior staff John Mitchell, Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, found guilty of the Watergate cover-up. Those were the days when the Washington Post nailed its colours to the mast rather than not choosing sides, and in the days when the judicial system and the fourth estate could still expose and unseat corrupt behaviour at the highest levels. Washington Post editor Katharine Graham supported her journalists Woodward and Bernstein against huge establishment pressure, as Tammy Wynette sangStand by your man. How times change.

    Higher education in the UK had seen a flurry of new universities in the 1960s: Aston, Brunel, Bath, Bradford, City, Dundee, Heriot-Watt, Loughborough, Salford, Stirling, Surrey, the New University of Ulster, and perhaps most significant of all, the Open University. All the new UK universities were created before 1970; there were no more in the period to 1975, but the late 60s and early 1970s saw the even more significant creation of the polytechnics, following the influential 1966 White Paper A Plan for Polytechnics and Other Colleges. The Times Higher Education Supplement, established in 1971 under editor Brian Macarthur, had immediately become the definitive trade paper for HE with an outstanding journalistic team including Peter (now Lord) Hennessy, David Hencke and (now Sir) Peter Scott (an SRHE Fellow), later to become the THES editor and then VC at Kingston. THES coverage of the polytechnic expansion in the 1970s was dominated by North East London Polytechnic (NELP, now the University of East London), with its management team of George Brosan and Eric Robinson. They were using a blueprint created in their tenure at Enfield College, and fully developed in Robinson’s influential book, The New Polytechnics – the People’s Universities. NELP became “a byword for innovation”, as Tyrrell Burgess’s obituary of George Brosan said, developing an astonishing 80 new undergraduate programmes validated by the Council for National Academic Awards, created like SRHE in 1965. Burgess himself had been central to NELP’s radical school for independent study and founded the journal, Higher Education Review, working with its long-time editor John Pratt (an SRHE Fellow), later the definitive chronicler of The Polytechnic Experiment. In Sheffield one of the best of the polytechnic directors, the Reverend Canon Dr George Tolley, was overseeing the expansion of Sheffield Polytechnic as it merged with two colleges of education to become Sheffield City Polytechnic.

    As in so many parts of the world the HE system was increasingly diverse and rapidly expanding. In Australia nine universities had been established between 1964 and 1975: Deakin, Flinders, Griffith, James Cook, La Trobe, Macquarie, Murdoch, Newcastle, and Wollongong. The Australian government had taken on full responsibility for HE funding as Breen (Monash) explained, and had even abolished university fees in 1974, which Mangan’s (Queensland) later review regarded as not necessarily a good thing. How times change.

    In the USA the University of California model established under president Clark Kerr in the 1960s dominated strategic thinking about HE. Berkeley’s Martin Trow had already written The British Academics with AH Halsey (Oxford) and was about to become the Director of the Centre for Studies of Higher Education at Berkeley, where his elite-mass-universal model of how HE systems developed would hold sway for decades.

    In the UK two new laws, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and the Equal Pay Act 1970, came into force on 29 December, aiming to end unequal pay of men and women in the workplace. In the USA the Higher Education Act 1972 with its Title IX had been a hugely influential piece of legislation which prohibited sex discrimination in educational institutions receiving federal aid. How times change. Steve Harley’s 1975 lyrics would work now with President Trump: You’ve done it all, you’ve broken every code.

    You ain’t seen nothing yet

    Some things began in 1975 which would become significant later. In HE, institutions that had mostly been around for years or even centuries but started in a new form included Buckinghamshire College of Higher Education (later Buckinghamshire New University), Nene College of Higher Education (University of Northampton), Bath Spa University College, Roehampton, and Dublin City University. Control of Glasgow College of Technology (Glasgow Caledonian University) transferred from Glasgow Corporation to the newly formed Strathclyde Regional Council. Nigeria had its own flurry of new universities in Calabar, Jos, Maiduguri and Port Harcourt.

    Everyone knew that “you’re gonna need a bigger higher education system” as the blockbuster hit Jaws was released. 1975 was the year when Ernő Rubik applied for a patent for his invention the Magic Cube, Microsoft was founded as a partnership between Bill Gates and Paul Allen, and Margaret Thatcher defeated Edward Heath to become leader of the Conservative Party. Bruce Springsteen was already ‘The Boss’ when Liz Truss was Born to run on 26 July; she would later briefly become a THES journalist and briefly Shadow Minister for Higher Education, before ultimately the job briefly as boss. 1970s terrorism saw a bomb explode in the Paris offices of Springer publishers: the March 6 Group (connected to the Red Army Faction) demanded amnesty for the Baader-Meinhof Group.

    Higher education approaching a period of consolidation

    Guy Neave, then perhaps the leading continental European academic in research into HE, later characterised 1975-1985 as a period of consolidation. In the UK the government was planning for (reduced) expansion and Labour HE minister Reg Prentice was still quoting the 1963 Robbins Report in Parliament: “The planning figure of 640,000 full-time and sandwich course students in Great Britain in 1981 which I announced in November is estimated to make courses of higher education available for all those who are qualified by ability and attainment to pursue them and who wish to do so. It allows for the number of home students under 21 entering higher education in Great Britain, expressed as a proportion of the population aged 18, to rise from 14% in 1973 to 17% in 1981. … the reductions in forecast higher education expenditure in the recent Public Expenditure White Paper are almost entirely attributable to the lower estimate of prospective student demand.” Government projections of student numbers were always wrong, as Maurice Kogan (Brunel) might have helped to explain – I thought by now you’d realise. 1975 was the year when Kogan, a former senior civil servant in the Department of Education and Science, published his hugely influential Educational Policy-making: A Study of Interest Groups and Parliament.

    In the US the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, founded ten years earlier under Clark Kerr, was in full pomp and published Demand and Supply in United States Higher Education. Two giants of sociology, Seymour Martin Lipset and David Riesman, wrote essays on ‘Education and Politics at Harvard’. How times change.

    Research into higher education

    Academics were much in evidence in novels; 1975 saw Malcolm Bradbury’s The History Man, David Lodge’s Changing Places, and Colin Dexter‘s first Inspector Morse novel Last Bus to Woodstock, and higher education was becoming established as a field of study. Dressel and Mayhew’s 1974 US-focused book reviewed by Kellams (Virginia) in the Journal of Higher Education, and published by the then-ubiquitous HE publishers Jossey-Bass in San Francisco saw ‘the emergence of a profession’. Nevertheless much research into HE was still appearing in mainstream education rather than HE journals, even in the USA. Tinto (Columbia) reported his synthesis of research on ‘dropout’ (as it was called then) in HE in the Review of Educational Research, and DI Chambers wrote about a major debate in China about higher education policy in an article in Comparative Education.

    Michael Shattock’s history of the SRHE in its earlier years pulled no punches about the limited achievements and reach of the Society:

    “By 1973, when the university system was in crisis with the collapse of the quinquennial funding system, it was clear that the Society was significantly failing to meet the ambitious targets it had started out with: it held annual conferences but attendance at 100 to 120 ensured that any surplus was low. It had successfully launched the valuable Research into Higher Education Abstracts but its … monographs, … while influential among specialists did not command a wide readership. The Society appeared to be at a crossroads as to its future: so far it had succeeded in expanding its membership, both corporate and individual, but this could easily be reversed if it failed to generate sufficient activity to retain it. Early in 1973 the Governing Council agreed to hold a special meeting … and commissioned a paper from Leo Evans, one of its members, and Harriet Greenaway, the Society’s Administrator … The “Discussion Paper on the Objectives of  the Society” … quoted the aims set out in the Articles of Association “to promote and encourage research in higher education and related fields” and argued that the Society’s objectives needed to be broadened.  … The implied thrust of the paper was that the Society had become too narrow in its research interests and that it should be more willing to address issues related to the development of the higher education system.”

    In the end the objectives were expanded to include concern for the development of the HE sector, but the Society’s direction was not wholly settled, according to Shattock. Moreover: “Both in 1973-74 and 1974-75 there was great concern about the Society’s continued financial viability, and in 1976 the Society moved its premises out of London to the University of Surrey where it was offered favourable terms.” (Someone Saved My Life Tonight). In 1976 Lewis Elton of Surrey, one of SRHE’s founders, would become Chair of the Society when the incumbent Roy Niblett suffered ill health. It was the same year that the principal inspiration for the foundation of SRHE (as Shattock put it), Nicholas Malleson, died at only 52. SRHE’s finances were soon back on an even keel but It would be more than 25 years before they achieved long-term stability.

    Rob Cuthbert is editor of SRHE News and the SRHE Blog, Emeritus Professor of Higher Education Management, University of the West of England and Joint Managing Partner, Practical Academics. Email [email protected]. Twitter/X @RobCuthbert.

    [1] The top selling single of 1975 was Bye Bye Baby by the Bay City Rollers, and the Eurovision Song Contest was won by Ding-a-Dong. The album charts were dominated by greatest hit albums from Elton John, Tom Jones, The Stylistics, Perry Como, Engelbert Humperdinck and Jim Reeves. I rest my case. As always, there were some exceptions.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

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  • Colleges Support Student Financial Literacy Education

    Colleges Support Student Financial Literacy Education

    Students often consider the return on investment of their degree when deciding whether and where to enroll in college, but not every student receives financial education from their institution on how to turn a college education into a life-sustaining career. A 2022 survey by Inside Higher Ed found that 67 percent of students are not sure if their college or university offers personal financial education; an additional 9 percent said no programs or classes are offered regarding financial literacy.

    To rectify that, colleges and universities are implementing programs that promote students’ money management skills, increase their awareness of financial planning and help them understand the debts they may acquire while in school.

    What’s the need: Student debt has skyrocketed over the past 20 years, with 42.7 million student borrowers holding nearly $1.7 trillion in federal loans. The average student who takes out loans to attend a public university borrows $31,960 to attain a bachelor’s degree, and over half of graduates use federal loans at some point. Loan debt can limit students’ earnings after college and hinder their socioeconomic advancement.

    Even while students are in college, financial challenges can impact their persistence and outcomes. A 2024 survey by Trellis Research found that 71 percent of students experienced financial trouble while enrolled, and nearly half said their current financial situation made it difficult to concentrate on schoolwork.

    A lack of financial education can also exacerbate equity concerns. An April 2025 report from Education Northwest found that only 25 percent of students were able to answer three financial questions correctly, with students from low-income families and those younger than 21 even less likely to answer correctly. Similarly, Black, American Indian or Alaska Native, Hispanic or Latino, and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander students were less likely to answer financial literacy questions correctly.

    Inside Higher Ed highlights six institutions that have introduced innovative programs to combat financial illiteracy.

    1. Florida State University: Unconquered by Debt

    Housed within the university’s Gus. A Stavros Center for Advancement of Free Enterprise and Economic Education, FSU’s Unconquered by Debt program enhances student financial literacy to ensure graduates leave with the ability to advance their socioeconomic standing.

    The program walks students through crucial areas of financial planning including selecting a career, establishing healthy spending habits, investing, managing credit, ensuring assets and planning for retirement.

    Students can attend workshops on campus and enjoy free food and drinks while they learn more about money management and how to plan for their futures beyond college.

    The center recently hired an assistant director as part of a program expansion funded by the Office of the Provost.

    1. University of Miami: Money Management

    In 2019, the University of Miami created the Money Management Program to help build students’ short- and long-term financial well-being. The program has proven so successful in increasing student persistence that it has also received external grant funding, a university spokesperson said.

    Through workshops called Money Talks, the program addresses budgeting, credit and credit cards, loans, and debt repayment, as well as saving and investing. Students can also participate in half-day personal finance workshops on Saturdays throughout the academic year. The university hires peer coaches to provide confidential one-on-one coaching, to help prepare students for future careers in the finance world as well as bridge knowledge gaps for those who may need support.

    During the 2022–23 academic year, the university hosted over 240 Money Management events for more than 2,500 attendees, according to the spokesperson.

    1. East Carolina University: Financial Wellness Hub

    The Financial Wellness Hub at East Carolina University offers regular workshops on how to mitigate financial challenges while enrolled and helps students understand credit reports, debt management and student loan repayment strategies. The Hub caters services to various seasonal holidays, hosting a “Falling in Love With Credit” workshop for Valentine’s Day and “Spooky Credit Scores” for Halloween, as well as a budgeting workshop for gift giving during the winter holiday season.

    The Hub relies on relationship building and partnerships across the university to generate an audience for programs, director Kevin Sutton told Inside Higher Ed. Services are also available to alumni and staff, who in turn can better advise students or elect to contribute financially to the program’s budget.

    1. Penn State: Sokolov-Miller Family Financial and Life Skills Center

    Penn State established a center dedicated to managing financial wellness in college and beyond, which offers one-on-one coaching and workshops. In addition, the center provides students with access to a course on Canvas called MoneyCounts, which gives them a self-paced opportunity to engage in 28 modules on financial wellness.

    Other resources include live webinars, offered on the first and third Tuesday of each month at noon, which are recorded for those who can’t make it synchronously, and a free bookshelf stocked with financial wellness books— topics range from simple money skills to insurance—that is supported by Barnes & Noble.

    1. Babson College: The Babson Financial Literacy Project

    In addition to supporting current students, the BFLP is a nonprofit organization the ensures all community members can receive quality financial education. The program was developed by faculty at Babson and coaches lead online and in-person workshops, as well as train staff to deliver content on their own.

    Between its launch in fall 2018 and March of this year, the program has supported 418 workshops with 17,189 participants, according to the program webpage.

    In addition, participants can engage with various student organizations on campus to learn more about the world of finance, including the Babson Finance Association, Babson Scholars of Finance and Women in Finance.

    1. Western Washington University: Financial Wellness Badges

    At WWU, students can engage with the Merriman Financial Literacy program through workshops, online courses delivered via iGrad, peer mentorship and digital badging.

    Students can earn badges in such areas as financial mindfulness, investment, savings and credit, as well as budgeting and spending.

    To earn the financial mindfulness starter badge, for example, students must complete a financial wellness checkup and a money meditation on iGrad, then write a financial wellness journal entry. Each badge has three levels, from foundations to expert, building on students’ knowledge and signaling deep understanding of the topic.

    If your student success program has a unique feature or twist, we’d like to know about it. Click here to submit.

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