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  • In Los Angeles, 45 Elementary Schools Beat the Odds in Teaching Kids to Read – The 74

    In Los Angeles, 45 Elementary Schools Beat the Odds in Teaching Kids to Read – The 74

    This article is part of Bright Spots, a series highlighting schools where every child learns to read, no matter their zip code. Explore the Bright Spots map to find out which schools are beating the odds in terms of literacy versus poverty rates.

    This story is part of The 74’s special coverage marking the 65th anniversary of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Read all our stories here.

    When The 74 started looking for schools that were doing a good job teaching kids to read, we began with the data. We crunched the numbers for nearly 42,000 schools across all 50 states and Washington, D.C. and identified 2,158 that were beating the odds by significantly outperforming what would be expected given their student demographics. 

    Seeing all that data was interesting. But they were just numbers in a spreadsheet until we decided to map out the results. And that geographic analysis revealed some surprising findings. 

    For example, we found that, based on our metrics, two of the three highest-performing schools in California happened to be less than 5 miles apart from each other in Los Angeles. 

    The PUC Milagro Charter School came out No. 1 in the state of California. With 91% of its students in poverty, our calculations projected it would have a third grade reading rate of 27%. Instead, 92% of its students scored proficient or above. Despite serving a high-poverty student population, the school’s literacy scores were practically off the charts.  

    PUC Milagro is a charter school, and charters tended to do well in our rankings. Nationally, they made up 7% of all schools in our sample but 11% of those that we identified as exceptional. 

    But some district schools are also beating the odds. Just miles away from PUC Milagro is our No. 3-rated school in California, Hoover Street Elementary. It is a traditional public school run by the Los Angeles Unified School District. With 92% of its students qualifying for free- or reduced-price lunch, our calculations suggest that only 23% of its third graders would likely be proficient in reading. Instead, its actual score was 78%. 

    For this project, we used data from 2024, and Hoover Street didn’t do quite as well in 2025. (Milagro continued to perform admirably.)

    Still, as Linda Jacobson reported last month, the district as a whole has been making impressive gains in reading and math over the last few years. In 2025, it reported its highest-ever performance on California’s state test. Moreover, those gains were broadly shared across the district’s most challenging, high-poverty schools. 

    Our data showed that the district as a whole slightly overperformed expectations, based purely on the economic challenges of its students. We also found that, while Los Angeles is a large, high-poverty school district, it had a disproportionately large share of what we identified as the state’s “bright spot” schools. L.A. accounted for 8% of all California schools in our sample but 16% of those that are the most exceptional. 

    All told, we found 45 L.A. district schools that were beating the odds and helping low-income students read proficiently. Some of these were selective magnet schools, but many were not. 

    INTERACTIVE

    Map of Los Angeles Area Bright Spots

    

    Some of the schools on the map may not meet most people’s definition of a good school, let alone a great one. For example, at Stanford Avenue Elementary, 47% of its third graders scored proficient in reading in 2024. That may not sound like very many, but 97% of its students are low-income, and yet it still managed to outperform the rest of the state by 4 percentage points. (It did even a bit better in 2025.)
    

    Schools like Stanford Avenue Elementary don’t have the highest scores in California. On the surface, they don’t look like they’re doing anything special. But that’s why it’s important for analyses like ours to consider a school’s demographics. High-poverty elementary schools that are doing a good job of helping their students learn to read deserve to be celebrated for their results.
    

                    
    
                                    
    

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  • Epstein, Dershowitz, Summers, and the Long Arc of Elite Impunity

    Epstein, Dershowitz, Summers, and the Long Arc of Elite Impunity

    For many observers, Jeffrey Epstein, Alan Dershowitz, and Larry Summers appear as separate figures orbiting the world of elite academia, finance, and politics. But together—and through the long lens of history—they represent something far more revealing: the modern expression of a centuries-old system in which elite institutions protect powerful men while sacrificing the vulnerable.

    The Epstein-Dershowitz-Summers triangle is not a scandal of individuals gone astray. It is the predictable result of structures that make such abuses almost inevitable.

    The Modern Version of an Old System

    Jeffrey Epstein built his influence not through scholarship or scientific discovery—he had no advanced degrees—but by inserting himself into the financial bloodstream of the Ivy League. Harvard and MIT accepted his money, his introductions, and his promises of access to ultra-wealthy networks. Epstein did not need credibility; he purchased it.

    Larry Summers, as president of Harvard from 2001 to 2006, continued to engage with Epstein after the financier’s first arrest and plea deal. Summers’ administration accepted substantial Epstein donations, including funds channeled into the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics. Summers and his wife dined at Epstein’s Manhattan home. After leaving Harvard, Summers stayed in touch with Epstein even as the financier’s abuses became increasingly public. Summers used the same revolving door that has long connected elite universities, Wall Street, and presidential administrations—moving freely and comfortably across all three.

    Alan Dershowitz, Epstein’s close associate and legal strategist, exemplifies another pillar of this system: elite legal protection. Dershowitz defended Epstein vigorously, attacked survivors publicly, and remains embroiled in litigation connected to the case. Whether one believes Dershowitz’s claims of innocence is secondary to the structural fact: elite institutions reliably shield their own.

    Together, Epstein offered money and connections; Summers offered institutional prestige and political access; Dershowitz offered legal insulation. Harvard, meanwhile, offered a platform through which all three profited.

    Knowledge as a Shield—Not a Light

    For centuries, elite universities have served as both engines of knowledge and fortresses of power. They are not neutral institutions.

    They defended slavery and eugenics, supplying “scientific” justification for racial hierarchies.

    They exploited labor—from enslaved workers who built campuses to adjuncts living in poverty today.

    They marginalized survivors of sexual violence while protecting benefactors and faculty.

    They accepted fortunes derived from war profiteering, colonial extraction, hedge-fund predation, and private-equity devastation.

    Epstein did not invent the model of the toxic patron. He merely perfected it in the neoliberal era.

    A Four-Step Pattern of Elite Impunity

    The scandal surrounding Epstein, Dershowitz, and Summers follows a trajectory that dates back centuries:

    1. Wealth accumulation through exploitation

      From slave plantations to private equity, concentrated wealth is generated through systems that harm the many to benefit the few.

    2. The purchase of academic legitimacy

      Endowed chairs, laboratories, fellowships, and advisory roles allow dubious benefactors to launder reputations through universities.

    3. Legal and cultural shielding

      Elite lawyers, confidential settlements, non-disclosure agreements, and institutional silence create protective armor.

    4. Silencing of survivors and critics

      Reputational attacks, threats of litigation, and internal pressure discourage transparency and accountability.

    Epstein operated within this system. Dershowitz defended it. Summers benefited from it. Harvard reinforced it.

    Larry Summers: An Anatomy of Power

    Summers’ career illuminates the deeper structure behind the scandal. His trajectory—Harvard president, U.S. Treasury Secretary, World Bank chief economist, adviser to hedge funds, consultant to Big Tech—mirrors the seamless circulation of elite power between universities, finance, and government.

    During his presidency, Harvard publicly embraced Epstein’s donations. After Epstein’s first sex-offense conviction, Summers continued to meet with him socially and professionally. Summers leveraged networks that Epstein also sought to cultivate. And even after the Epstein scandal fully broke open, Summers faced no meaningful institutional repercussions.

    The message was clear: individual wrongdoing matters less than maintaining elite continuity.

    Higher Education’s Structural Complicity

    Elite universities were not “duped.” They were beneficiaries.

    Harvard returned only a fraction of Epstein’s donations, and only after the press exposed the relationship. MIT hid Epstein’s gifts behind false donor names. Faculty traveled to his island and penthouse without demanding transparency.

    Meanwhile:

    Adjuncts qualify for food assistance

    Students carry life-crippling debt

    Administrators earn CEO-level pay

    Donors dictate priorities behind closed doors

    This is not hypocrisy—it is hierarchy. A system built to serve wealth does exactly that.

    A Timeline Much Longer Than Epstein

    To understand the present, we must zoom out:

    Oxford and Cambridge accepted slave-trade wealth as institutional lifeblood.

    Gilded Age robber barons endowed libraries while crushing labor movements.

    Cold War intelligence agencies quietly funded research centers.

    Today’s oligarchs, tech billionaires, and private-equity titans buy influence through endowments and think tanks.

    The tools change. The pattern does not.

    Universities help legitimate the powerful—even when those powerful figures harm the public.

    Why This Still Matters

    The Epstein scandal is not resolved. Court documents continue to emerge. Survivors continue to speak. Elite institutions continue to stall and deflect. Harvard still resists meaningful transparency, even as its endowment approaches national GDP levels.

    The danger is not simply that another Epstein will emerge. It is that elite universities will continue to provide the conditions that make another Epstein inevitable.

    What Breaking the Pattern Requires

    Ending this system demands more than symbolic gestures or public-relations apologies. Real reform requires:

    Radical donor transparency—with all gifts, advisory roles, and meetings disclosed

    Worker and student representation on governing boards

    Strong whistleblower protections and the abolition of secret NDAs

    Robust public funding to reduce reliance on elite philanthropy

    Independent journalism committed to exposing institutional power

    Ida B. Wells, Jessica Mitford, Upton Sinclair, and other muckrakers understood what universities still deny: scandals are symptoms. The disease is structural.

    Epstein was not an anomaly.

    Dershowitz is not an anomaly.

    Summers is not an anomaly.

    They are products of a system in which universities serve power first—and truth, only if convenient.

    If higher education wants to reclaim public trust, it must finally decide which side of history it is on.

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  • Finally Learned My Limits (Heidi Weber)

    Finally Learned My Limits (Heidi Weber)

    [Editors note: “No Stop” Heidi Weber has been a hero of ours for several years. Her courage fighting corruption at Globe University was documented on an episode of

    First, I would like to thank Dahn, and all the other truth tellers who work tirelessly every day and sacrifice so much to elevate truth. Without them, any whistleblower efforts would not have half the positive impact that they do.

    For years, I really struggled with the title of whistleblower. I thought if I could distance myself from it, all the resulting traumas would just disappear, and life would be “normal” again.

    However, I underestimated how much a landmark whistleblower case, especially in higher education, would affect and continually haunt me. I’m glad now, that it did, because it forced me to see how much of an impact it has had on an entire for-profit sector. I learned it’s ok to allow myself to feel a sense of pride. After all, it was the most painful, stressful thing I imagined I’d ever go through.

    Unfortunately, life didn’t get that memo and still had lessons for me about the depth of pain adversity, and struggle, in ways that I never imagined.

    In the middle of the pandemic, my husband’s sudden unexpected stroke forced us into a reality we weren’t prepared for. Overnight, I became his nurse, advocate, cheerleader, and his sole rehabilitation task master, simultaneously trying to maintain and hold our home together and make ends meet.

    At the same time, our once close, beautiful, adult daughters estranged from us without explanation, treating us as if we do not exist, and are of no value to them… *

    All I knew, was that it resulted in leaving a pain and heartache so profound that has reshaped the way I understand love, loss, and resilience.

    In the midst of these personal storms, I rediscovered a purpose in educating and helping others as an advocate. So, I added two post graduate certificates and learned how to support and even the field for families who feel powerless in a biased system financially incentivized to separate families and little accountability or oversight.

    Injustice and unfairness still stir a fire in me, just as it had when I made that fateful decision to become a whistleblower, and it still inspires me to be relentless in seeking truth and fairness.

    Only now, I have the unique experience and knowledge to inspire/teach others.

    Currently, I’ve been writing curricula and developing an online training program for a Certificate as a Justice Support Advocate. It focuses on some basic foundations of civics, (no longer taught in school), finding your own resilience and purpose, the various types of advocates, incorporating it into your personal and professional life, and protecting yourself and the public at the same time.

    My wish is for learners to find their own fire and realize that courage is easier found when you are fighting for what you know is true and just for everyone, no matter what that is.

    I’ve also been doing family advocacy consulting work, as an affordable option for parents, alone or as a partner to their attorney to provide non legal support, evaluation, investigation, and provide fair, logical solutions:

    1. For parents facing or concerned about unethical practices in the Child Protective Services (CPS) system to audit, teach and ensure that parents are being portrayed truthfully with reasonable realistic goals to reunite the family, if indicated.

    2. In high conflict custody, providing evaluation and screening for signs of parental alienation, and support, education, and resources (to both parents) on how to navigate being a divorced family, as well as providing recommendations to the Court (if indicated) centered around the best interests of the child and importance of both parents to healthy development.

    If you would like to discuss either of those services or more info on the advocacy certificate course, please contact me at [email protected]. I’m shooting for February or March 2026 to have the website, and course available online.

    These years have been painful, transformative, and defining, but with pain comes growth and wisdom. Life still had more lessons…. to show me there is no limit to how much I can carry and keep positively moving forward.

    *Adult children from “normal” average parents have become an almost celebrated (unhealthy) trend over the last ten years especially, for many adult children who have been influenced, poisoned, or alienated against one or both parents by undertrained therapists, peers, and social media influencers, allowing avoidance of responsibility, self-discipline, or concern for others.

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  • The Shutdown Is Over, But Thousands of Kids Are Still Locked Out of Head Start – The 74

    The Shutdown Is Over, But Thousands of Kids Are Still Locked Out of Head Start – The 74


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    Nearly 9,000 children across 16 states and Puerto Rico remained locked out of Head Start programming as of Friday evening, according to the National Head Start Association, despite the federal government’s reopening on Wednesday night.

    For some programs, the promise of incoming funding will be enough to restart operations. But many won’t be able to open their doors until they receive their federal dollars, which could take up to two weeks, said Tommy Sheridan, deputy director at the NHSA. 

    Sheridan said the Trump administration understands the urgency and is “moving as fast as they possibly can.”

    That said, this interruption had an opportunity cost, and it’s led to instability for families and providers, he said, adding that the shutdown caused staff to focus on issues they “should not be worried about,” such as fundraising and contingency planning.

    Some providers fear greater delays since the Trump administration shuttered half of the Head Start regional offices earlier this year. 

    “They’re going to be working as hard as they can, but they’re going to be doing it with half the capacity,” said Katie Hamm, former deputy assistant secretary for early childhood development under President Joe Biden.

    And even once the funding comes through, closed centers will need to go through a series of logistical hurdles, including reaching out to families who may have found alternative child care arrangements and calling back furloughed staff, some of whom have found employment elsewhere. 

    “Head Start is not a light switch,” Hamm said. “You can’t just turn it back on.”

    This interruption has also further eroded trust between grantees and the federal government that was already shaky, she added.

    The Administration for Children and Families did not respond to a request for comment on when programs can anticipate communication from the office or their funding.

    Since Nov. 1, approximately 65,000 kids and their families — close to 10% of all of those served by Head Start — have been at risk of losing their seats because their programs had not received their awarded funding during the longest government shutdown in history. The early care and education program delivers a range of resources to low-income families including medical screenings, parenting courses and connections to community resources for job, food and housing assistance. 

    At the peak of the Head Start closures, roughly 10,000 kids across 22 programs lost access to services, according to Sheridan. A number of the remaining programs were able to stay open through private donations, loans, alternative funding streams and staff’s willingness to go without pay.

    Valerie Williams, who runs a Head Start program with two facilities in Appalachian Ohio, was excited to tell parents that classrooms would be reopening soon. Her centers have been closed since Nov. 3, impacting 177 kids and 45 staff, many of whom already live paycheck to paycheck, she said.

    Valerie Williams runs two Head Start centers in Appalachian Ohio, serving 177 kids. (Valerie Williams)

    A number of families were doubly impacted, losing access to Head Start’s resources as well as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP, simultaneously. In the days leading up to the closure, Williams and her staff prepared families as best they could, sharing information about resources for food, assistance for utilities and heating and guidance on child care options. 

    On Thursday, Williams wrote to parents via an online portal that she hopes to restart the normal school schedule sometime next week. The post was quickly flooded with comments. 

    “This is super exciting!!” wrote one parent. “Best news in a long time. Carter has been asking every day. Hope to see u guys very soon.”

    “Yayyy,” wrote another. “The kids miss you guys so much!”

    Valerie Williams, who runs a Head Start program in Appalachian Ohio, was excited to tell parents that classrooms would be reopening soon. (Valerie Williams)

    Still, Williams knows reopening won’t be seamless. Along with program leaders across the country, she’ll need to call back furloughed staff, place food orders and handle a number of other operational challenges.

    And despite the excitement, the transition back may also prove tricky for some kids.

    “I do think that it will feel like starting school again for a lot of our classrooms,” Williams said. “They’ve been out for two weeks … You’re going to work on separation anxiety issues, you’re going to have to get into that routine again and the structure of a classroom environment. So I think that will be a big issue for a lot of our teachers.” 

    As of Friday afternoon, Williams was still awaiting communication from the federal Office of Head Start with information about the anticipated timeline for next steps. 

    “As soon as we get that notice of award, [I want to] start our staff and kids back immediately,” she said. “The very next day.”

    Now that the shutdown has ended, what’s next for Head Start?

    Funding for Head Start is complex. Some 80% comes from federal grants that are released to local providers on a staggered schedule throughout the year. This year, grant recipients with funding deadlines on the first of October and November were left scrambling, as the federal shutdown dragged on.

    The government began to resume operations late Wednesday night after President Donald Trump signed a bill, funding most federal agencies through Jan. 30 and allowing programs that didn’t receive their funding on time, including Head Start, to use forthcoming dollars to backpay expenses incurred over the past month and a half.

    Here’s what Hamm predicts will happen next: The Office of Head Start will recall all staff to resume, including those who were furloughed during the shutdown. The employees will review grant applications, a process which now requires them to flag any language that might be reflective of diversity, equity and inclusion practices. Next, money will be sent along to the remaining regional offices, and eventually dispersed to individual grantees. The NHSA is hopeful that this process will be completed by Thanksgiving for all grantees.

    There are two things the federal government can do to help centers open faster, according to Hamm. First, they could waive a typical protocol that leads to a period of seven days between when a member of Congress is notified that their state will be receiving funding and when the funding actually goes out, Hamm explained. 

    Officials could also notify grantees, in writing, about how much money they’ll get and when it’s expected to come through, so they can begin planning. 

    Unlike SNAP, which received guaranteed funding through the budget year, money for Head Start remains uncertain beyond Jan. 30. While the fear of another shutdown has caused “quite a bit of worry” among the Head Start community, Sheridan said it would likely lead to fewer program disruptions, since it wouldn’t fall at the start of the fiscal year.

    Tommy Sheridan, deputy director of the National Head Start Association. (Tommy Sheridan)

    To prevent similar chaos moving forward, Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin introduced a bill in the final days of the shutdown that would guarantee uninterrupted service for fiscal year 2026. 

    “The 750,000 children and their families who use Head Start shouldn’t pay the price for Washington dysfunction,” Baldwin, the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, wrote in a statement to The 74.

    Multiple funding threats and deep staffing cuts by the Trump administration over the past year have plunged programs across the country into uncertainty. In the wake of that recent upheaval, a leadership change is also underway. The acting director of the Office of Head Start, Tala Hooban, accepted a new role within the Office of Administration for Children and Families and will be replaced by political appointee Laurie Todd-Smith, according to an email statement from ACF. Todd-Smith currently leads the Office of Early Childhood Development, which oversees the Office of Head Start. 

    Sheridan described this move as anticipated and not particularly concerning, though others were less sure. Joel Ryan, the executive director of the Washington State Association of Head Start, noted that Hooban was a longtime civil servant and strong supporter of the Head Start program. Without her, he fears “there’s nobody internally with any kind of power that will push back,” on future threats to the program.

    Another worry plaguing providers: current funding for Head Start has remained stagnant since the end of 2024, meaning that through at least Jan. 30, programs will be operating under the same budget amid rising costs across the board.

    In previous years, the program’s grant recipients typically got a cost-of-living adjustment, such as the 2.35% bump ($275 million) for fiscal year 2024. In May, a group of almost 200 members of Congress signed a letter to a House Appropriations subcommittee, requesting an adjustment of 3.2% for 2026. A recent statement from NHSA suggested that instead, the proposed Senate bill for next year includes a jump of just 0.6%, or $77 million.

    “If we don’t see a funding increase in line with inflation, that means that Head Start will be facing a cut of that degree,” said Sheridan. “It’s just kind of a quiet cut, or a silent cut.”

    “I think what will end up happening,” said Ryan, “is you’ll end up seeing a massive reduction in the number of kids being served.”


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  • Trump Can’t “Blanket” Deny UC Grants or Demand Payout

    Trump Can’t “Blanket” Deny UC Grants or Demand Payout

    A judge ordered federal agencies Friday to end their “blanket policy of denying any future grants” to the University of California, Los Angeles, and further ruled that the Trump administration can’t seek payouts from any UC campus “in connection with any civil rights investigation” under Titles VI or IX of federal law.

    The ruling also prohibits the Department of Justice and federal funding agencies from withholding funds, “or threatening to do so, to coerce the UC in violation of the First Amendment or Tenth Amendment.” In all, the order, if not overturned on appeal, stops the administration’s attempt to pressure UCLA to pay $1.2 billion and make multiple other concessions, including to stop enrolling “foreign students likely to engage in anti-Western, anti-American, or antisemitic disruptions or harassment” and stop “performing hormonal interventions and ‘transgender’ surgeries” on anyone under 18 at its medical school and affiliated hospitals.

    The administration’s targeting of the UC system came to the fore on July 29. That’s when the DOJ said its months-long investigations across the system had so far concluded that UCLA violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in its response to alleged antisemitism at a spring 2024 pro-Palestinian protest encampment.

    Federal agencies—including the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and Department of Energy—quickly began freezing funding; UC estimated it lost $584 million. But UC researchers sued and, even before Friday’s ruling, U.S. District Court judge Rita F. Lin of the Northern District of California ordered the restoration of almost all of the frozen funding.

    Friday’s ruling came in a case filed this fall by the American Association of University Professors, the affiliated American Federation of Teachers and other unions. Lin again was the judge.

    “Defendants did not engage in the required notice and hearing processes under Title VI for cutting off funds for alleged discrimination,” she wrote.

    “With every day that passes, UCLA continues to be denied the chance to win new grants, ratchetting [sic] up Defendants’ pressure campaign,” she wrote. “And numerous UC faculty and staff have submitted declarations describing how Defendants’ actions have already chilled speech throughout the UC system. They describe how they have stopped teaching or researching topics they are afraid are too ‘left’ or ‘woke,’ in order to avoid triggering further funding cancellations by Defendants. They also give examples of projects the UC has stopped due to fear of the same reprisals. These are classic, predictable First Amendment harms, and exactly what Defendants publicly said that they intended.”

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  • 1.1 Million College Students – The 74

    1.1 Million College Students – The 74


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    Maia Jackson should have been cranking out a research paper for her communications class. Instead, she found herself queuing up at a food pantry to secure groceries for her household amid the nation’s longest government shutdown. 

    “I walked out with a shopping cart full of food,” the 25-year-old college senior said. “I could barely carry it all. I got cereal. I got some frozen meat, hamburger buns. I got a bag of black beans, and then I got a bag of rice.”

    Finding a package of chicken strips, a dish she knew her picky 2-year-old daughter would actually eat, almost made her cry, Jackson said. She expects the combination of perishable, bagged and canned foods to last them a month. By then, she hopes her Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) payments — widely known as food stamps — will have resumed.

    On November 1, SNAP benefits ground to a halt during the federal budget impasse that began a month earlier, with President Donald Trump’s administration refusing to fully fund these payments, a matter now tied up in court. Even as the Senate has reached a framework deal that leaves lawmakers and the White House a step closer to ending the shutdown, the disruption in benefits has revealed how fragile the social safety net is for vulnerable Americans. That includes single parents and young adults experiencing food insecurity, a problem that occurs when people lack regular access to the nourishment needed to sustain their health. 

    An estimated 1.1 million college students rely on SNAP, including parents like Jackson, who attends North Dakota State University (NDSU) in Fargo. For such students, a delayed SNAP payment isn’t a mere hiccup, but a serious setback that can imperil their education, their health and stability for their children, experts contend.

    “It’s such a distraction for me as a single mom in school,” Jackson said. “I don’t have any bandwidth to give to trying to find food at pantries.”

    She tried to minimize the time she spent at the food pantry last week by making an appointment first, but she was still one of a couple of dozen people in line. The visit prevented her from completing her research paper by its due date, which will likely result in her grade being docked. Jackson, who has so far maintained a 4.0 grade point average, isn’t happy about that prospect, but with her family members an hour away and her child’s father mostly out of the picture, she had to prioritize food over her education.

    No college student should have to choose between a basic need and school, said Deborah Martin, a senior policy associate for The Institute for College Access & Success, a nonprofit that advocates for college access and affordability. 

    “A lot of students have to make these daily tough decisions where they’re wondering, ‘Where am I going to get my next meal from?’ instead of focusing on homework, on classwork,” Martin said. “We know that when students have these unmet basic needs such as food insecurity, they’re more likely to struggle academically, less likely to persist from semester to semester, and in some cases, may even drop out of college altogether.”

    Roughly 60 percent of college students are women. For the most marginalized students, the risk of quitting school due to food insecurity may be even greater. The Government Accountability Office (GAO), a nonpartisan federal agency that provides fact-based information to Congress, reported last year that about 80 percent of food-insecure students are nontraditional — meaning their parents don’t financially support them, they didn’t begin college immediately after high school or they are caring for dependents. Moreover, the 2023-2024 Student Basic Needs Survey Report from the Hope Center, a research center at Temple University focused on the food, housing and health of college students, found that around three-quarters of parenting, Black and Indigenous students experience insecurity related to a basic need. 

    Most of these students, the GAO discovered, do not sign up for services like SNAP, and those who do may hesitate to discuss their food insecurity. As a mom and a slightly older student who works part-time, Jackson has felt largely alone on campus as SNAP benefits have paused. Her classmates don’t appear to share her anxiety over the shutdown, if they know about it at all. 

    A woman shops at the Feeding South Florida food pantry on October 27, 2025 in Pembroke Park, Florida.
    (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

    “A lot of the kids that I’m in class with, they’re not in the same circumstance,” Jackson said. “It’s weird to see a lot of people just carrying on as usual.”

    Since most of her classmates — about an even percentage of NDSU students are women and men — are childfree and on the school meal plan, she doesn’t want to be a “downer” by bringing up her difficulties. For the same reason, she didn’t explain to her professor why her paper was late. “I didn’t want to tell him, ‘Oh, I couldn’t write it because I was standing in the food pantry line’ because it just sounds so sad,” she said. “What’s he supposed to say? I don’t want him to feel bad for me. I don’t want to be pitied.”

    But faking normal could come at a high cost for college students who don’t reach out for help. Martin fears these young adults will resort to using high-interest payment plans or acquire credit card debt just to afford groceries.

    “The longer that students and other SNAP participants don’t receive their funds, this is just more days that students are going to have to make these difficult decisions,” she said.

    Some college administrators are taking action. When the shutdown began, Compton College President and CEO Keith Curry contacted Everytable, a food company that offers inexpensive made-from-scratch meals via carryout storefronts and a delivery service. The college, about 18 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, has partnered with Everytable for seven years to provide all students — approximately 6,000 of whom attend full time — with one nutritious free meal on weekdays. 

    The federal government crisis prompted Curry and Everytable CEO Sam Polk to scale up that program so SNAP-recipient and economically disadvantaged students didn’t suffer during the shutdown.

    “We need to do something. Can we split the cost?” Curry recalled asking Polk. “I think if we double the meals, at least they get another meal for the day.”

    On November 5, Compton College’s most underprivileged students began getting two free meals per day, or 10 per week. The need for such an intervention there is substantial: A 2025 basic needs survey of students found that 81 percent of them experience at least one form of insecurity related to a basic need. That includes signs of food insecurity such as skipping meals, reducing meal sizes or fearing they will run out of food. Most Compton College students are moderately food insecure, the survey revealed, indicating persistent hardship. Women make up 61 percent of the student body.

    “Right now, students have other stress, and what we’re doing to them is adding more stress,” Curry said of the shutdown. “They still want to do well in classes, but now they don’t have food.” 

    Together, Compton College and Everytable have the resources to supply students with 10 weekly meals for a month, Curry said. The students are deeply grateful for the additional provisions, according to Dee Garrett, who oversees Everytable’s operation at the college.

    “What better way to start your studies than with a stomach that’s full?” Garrett asked. “You don’t have to think about, ‘Oh, my God, my stomach. I can’t concentrate or focus.’”

    Asked what impact he hopes the scaled-up program makes, Curry said he’s more interested in letting students know they’re not alone.  

    “It’s not about the impact. It’s about our students knowing that we were there for them during this time,” he said. “In our community, when students need us most, we have to step up and be there for them, and they’re never going to forget that.”

    Martin applauds the efforts of colleges and K-12 schools, which have connected students and their families to food banks, to curb food insecurity during the shutdown. But she also advocates for long-term policies to ensure students have enough food to eat. That includes the Enhance Access to SNAP Act, proposed legislation to remove the barriers that prevent economically disadvantaged college students from utilizing benefits generally — not just during the current crisis. 

    However, Martin continued, “the most important thing that we can do right now in this moment is for these SNAP benefits to be fully funded and for them to go out to students as soon as possible.”

    Back in Fargo, Jackson has refocused her attention on her coursework now that she has a month’s worth of food. Still, she worries about the people who couldn’t make it to a pantry or that the government will cut other social services she needs. She currently earns $400 monthly working part time as an academic journal editor. The job, which she performs remotely, allows her to attend school and be her daughter’s primary caretaker when the toddler is not in day care. 

    “If they cut child care, if they cut these programs I rely on, I would have to drop out of school,” Jackson said. “But I’m trying to give my daughter a better life than that.”

    Jackson is majoring in university studies with a pre-law emphasis, a dramatic shift from her life before motherhood when she dropped out of school and struggled with addiction. Getting pregnant inspired her to undergo a transformation, which she largely credits to the Jeremiah Program. The national nonprofit provides single mothers with support for college, child care and housing, and it recently started a campaign to raise $190,000 to cover essential needs for families who have lost SNAP and other benefits because of the shutdown. The organization estimates that single-parent families represent nearly a third of families in the United States, with 80 percent of those headed by mothers.  

    Jackson has been deeply disturbed to see the misperceptions that abound about mothers like herself. She’s encountered online commenters who have characterized SNAP recipients as “welfare queens.”

    If she could confront such individuals in person, Jackson would emphasize how much value mothers add to society. “And on top of it… we are all in school and working, too,” she said. “The insinuation is that we’re just scammers, freeloaders, when, in reality, I’m working very hard every day to hopefully not need these supports.”

    This story was originally reported by Nadra Nittle of The 19th. Meet Nadra and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.


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  • WEEKEND ESSAY: Summarising and responding to the post-16 white paper

    WEEKEND ESSAY: Summarising and responding to the post-16 white paper

    This blog was kindly authored by Professor Roger Brown, the former Vice Chancellor of Southampton Solent University and Dr Helen Carasso, Honorary Norham Fellow of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Their previous book, Everything for Sale? The Marketisation of UK Higher Education was published by Routledge in 2013.

    It is eighth blog in HEPI’s series responding to the post-16 education and skills white paper. You can find the others in the series here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

    We need a reset to ensure the system can play its critical role in delivering provision aligned to the government’s growth and Industrial Strategy ambitions, support training at scale, deliver opportunity and outcomes for all, and reduce the persistent gaps in outcomes for the most advantaged students.

    (HM Government, 2025, p.46).

    As this statement of intent shows, the post-16 Education and Skills White Paper published last month has ambitious aims for the higher education sector in England. These are framed in the context of a wide range of proposals covering not only higher education but also further education and what used to be called ‘industrial training’. So far as higher education is concerned, the main proposals are:

    • To promote greater provider specialisation, including through greater collaboration
    • To increase financial sustainability and efficiency
    • To improve access and participation
    • To strengthen the incentives on providers to promote growth
    • To improve quality

    Specialisation and collaboration

    The Government wants to see greater specialisation: ‘over time there will be fewer broad generalist providers and more specialists’ (p.49). The White Paper seems to envisage two types of specialisation (a) by broad orientation, ‘teaching only’, ‘research’ and ‘teaching with applied research in specific disciplines’ (p.49) and (b) by discipline ‘a provider may decide to specialise across multiple disciplines or to focus on one or two where they are strongest’ (p.49). It is not clear how this will be achieved, but the White Paper speaks of ‘incentivising a more strategic distribution of research activity across the sector’ (p.50). This would be done through reforms to research funding. There will be a more permissive approach to collaboration on the part of the regulators. The Government declares that it will work with the Office for Students ‘to ensure there is a more robust process for market entry’ (p.50) but nothing is said about market exit.

    Financial sustainability and efficiency

    The White Paper confirms the earlier announcement by the Secretary of State that the undergraduate tuition fee cap for all providers will be increased in line with forecast inflation in the academic years 2026-27 and 2027-28. These ad hoc increases are intended to support the financial sustainability of institutions until legislation can be put in place to make such increases automatic. The Government will work with the sector to improve research cost recovery, with measures including improvements to TRAC (Transparent Approach to Costing) and support for collaboration and sharing of infrastructure. The White Paper also notes the potential of AI for dramatic improvements in research productivity. However, future Government support for research will be tied to ‘three distinct priorities’:

    Protecting and promoting curiosity-driven research; supporting the delivery of government priorities, missions and the Industrial Strategy; and providing targeted innovation, commercialisation and scale-up support to drive growth.

    (p.50)

    Moreover, improving cost recovery may ‘result in funding a lower volume of research [but] at a more sustainable level’ (p.52) and the research assessment system will be reformed ‘to better incentivise excellence and support the Government’s vision for the sector’ (p.53).

    Improving access and participation

    There are signs that the Government has registered the scale of the financial pressures on students with maintenance loans increasing with forecast inflation each year. Means-tested maintenance grants for students from the lowest income households (funded by the new International Student Levy) will be introduced. However these will be confined to those who are studying courses that support the Government’s missions and Industrial Strategy. The long-awaited introduction of modular teaching funding through the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) will also be focused on ‘key subjects for the economy, informed by the Industrial Strategy’ (p.56). However, given that the LLE model is to be used to operate loans for all eligible home undergraduates, it is unclear what this will mean in practice.

    To reduce administrative burdens, the regulation of Access and Participation Plans will be refined to focus on those parts of the sector where there is the greatest room for improvement. The Government will ‘develop options to address cold spots in under-served regions and tackle the most systemic barriers to access’ (p.57). It will also explore the reasons for the declining proportion of UK doctoral applicants in some fields. This could include reducing the financial barriers for those from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

    Incentives for growth

    The Strategic Priorities Grant will be reformed so as to align with the priority sectors that support the Industrial Strategy, the Government’s Plan for Change and future skills needs. Providers will be expected to review their curricula to increase flexibility and strengthen progression. Student support (i.e. eligibility for SLC loans) for Level 6 courses may be made conditional on the inclusion of accredited break points in degree programmes. Universities will be required to engage with Local Skills Improvement Plans. There will be ‘a new market monitoring function, drawing together key datasets to provide a clear, single picture of higher education supply and demand’ (p.61).

    The Government has protected the overall funding of UKRI (at £8.8bn). It will continue to ensure that there is ‘the right balance’ between the three research funding priorities. Some of UKRI’s funding will be ‘pivoted to align to areas of strategic importance as described in the Industrial Strategy sector plans’ (p. 62).

    The country’s ‘global leaders’ will be placed on a more sustainable footing through the linking of fee cap increases to quality (as discussed below) and the projected improvements in research cost recovery. The Government will work with the sector ‘to maintain a welcoming environment for high-quality international students’ (p.63). However, there will be tighter enforcement of visa approvals and monitoring of international students’ course enrolments and completions. Finally, providers will be encouraged to develop ‘civic plans’ that fit with their strengths and priorities.

    Improving quality

    Even though three-quarters of providers received Gold or Silver ratings in the last (2023) TEF, ‘we need to raise the bar across the system…with pockets of poor provision undermining the reputation of the sector’ (p.64). On the REF, the White Paper acknowledges the risk that research funding and assessment frameworks can incentivise ‘perverse behaviours’ with publication becoming ‘the main aim’ (p.65) (why did it take them so long?).

    There will be an increase in the OfS’s capacity to conduct ‘quality investigations’. Ultimately, the Government will legislate to ensure that the Office is able to impose recruitment limits where growth risks poor quality and future fee uplifts will become conditional on providers achieving a higher threshold through the Office’s quality regime.

    The Government will work with UCAS, the OfS and the sector to improve the quality of information for individuals ‘informed by the best evidence on the factors that influence the choices people make as they consider their higher education options’(p.66). An OfS review of its approach to degree awarding powers will include the role of external examiners and ‘the extent to which recent patterns of improving grades can be explained by an erosion of standards, rather than improved teaching and assessment practices’ (p.67). Employers will be consulted on whether the academic system is giving graduates the skills and knowledge they need for the workplace (p.67). Using the model of Progress 8 in the schools, the Government will work with the OfS to develop options for measuring and comparing progress in higher education.

    The Government will also consider its approach to research assessment ‘to ensure it meets our needs and ambition for research and innovation’ (p.68). There will be a pilot ‘to seek better information on how our strategic institutional research funding is used’ (p.68).

    The White Paper in its historical context

    In our forthcoming book Every Student Has Their Price: The Neoliberal Remaking of English Higher Education,to be published by Policy Press next year, we identify the progression of reforms that have enable the marketisation of English higher education. These reforms to funding, regulation and market entry have enabled a significant growth in the number of competing higher education providers to more than 400 (see the December 2023 HEPI Debate Paper Neoliberal or not? English higher education in recent years Roger Brown and Nick Hillman).

    The White Paper vigorously reaffirms the official view, evident in the 1985 Green Paper The Development of Higher Education into the 1990s (Department for Education and Science, 1985) that the role of higher education is first and foremost about meeting the needs of the economy: what Salter and Tapper many years ago termed ‘the economic ideology of higher education’ (The State and Higher Education, 1994). But whereas most previous White Papers have at least paid lip service to the wider functions of higher education this one doesn’t even bother. It is, in fact, the most wide-ranging attempt yet to tie the future development of the sector to the Government’s perceptions of the present and future requirements of the economy, and specifically the presumed requirements of the labour market.

    The White Paper’s impacts can be expected to mostly reinforce those of the earlier reforms in at least six areas: demand and equity, supply, funding, the higher education workforce and the system.

    Demand and equity

    The White Paper is silent on the future size of the sector. So far, the neoliberal reforms have done little to check the huge increases in numbers and participation rates that we have seen. Nor have they made much difference to the continuing gaps in participation by different social groups or the tendency for students from wealthier backgrounds to go to better-resourced institutions. This is because – as nearly every independent analysis has shown – the major barriers to wider participation lie much further back in the education system and these in turn largely reflect the structure of our society and economy. So it is very hard to see the White Paper proposals making much difference to access or demand. But there are one or two warning signs. The stipulation that maintenance grants will be restricted to students on courses closer to the Industrial Strategy will not only constrain student choice but perhaps also reinforce the divisions between higher and lower tariff providers that were exacerbated by the abolition of the numbers limits in 2015. Is there perhaps another potential binary line here, with better off students free to pay to study humanities and social science at wealthier and more prestigious institutions and go on to well-paid jobs in the City or the professions, while poorer students are obliged to study ‘practical and applied’ subjects at less well resourced and less prestigious ones?

    Supply

    It is striking that there are no proposals for expanding the number of providers, indeed the White Paper envisages toughening the rules for market entry, as we have seen. The Government appears to assume that it will be existing providers that will cater for the cold spots in under-served regions, rather than new ones. This will at least mean some greater stability.

    Funding

    It seems highly unlikely that the proposals for fee indexation will be sufficient to redress the post-2016 funding squeeze, wean universities off of their reliance on international student fees (even without the tax represented by the International Student Levy) or restore the unit of resource in real terms. UUK analysis suggests that there will be an overall £2.5bn reduction in sector funding across the academic years 2024-25 to 2026-27 compared to 2023-24. Whilst the intention to improve research cost recovery is welcome, it will almost certainly be insufficient to reverse the long-term decline in research funding since 1980, and indeed the Government partially accepts this.

    This combination of some additional funding, together with a strong drive towards increasing efficiency and encouragement for institutions to consider specialisation, collaboration and restructuring as options, is placed within the context of recognition that ‘the higher education sector is rightly and proudly autonomous’(p.53). This freedom, the Government states, has its consequences, so ‘the leadership of the sector must take responsibility for managing their institutions robustly and in the public interest’ (p.53). The OfS will therefore be supported to tighten the management and governance requirements of institutional registration. Indeed, there will be a ‘….focus on targeting sharp regulation where it is most needed, to drive the positive change required to maintain our world-leading higher education system.’ (p48)

    Quality

    The White Paper notes some of the quality issues that have arisen over the period, including grade inflation and (some) sub-contracting (franchising), most of which are in fact due to the combination of increased competition and reduced funding that has characterised the period of the reforms. The proposal that future fee increases should be linked to quality raises as many questions as it answers. Whilst this idea has often been floated in the past, it has not been seriously applied in the UK since the days of the Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council when sector committees advised the funding council on the allocation of additional funded student numbers to ‘deserving’ institutions on a broadly disciplinary basis.

    The proposal that the OfS should be able to confine future fee uplifts to ‘providers achieving a higher quality threshold through the OfS’s quality regime’ is also par for the neoliberal course. The potential weight that this places on TEF outcomes makes the current review of the exercise even more crucial, including the importance of designing a process that acknowledges the role of a variety of institutions offering forms of education that might be different but not automatically ‘better’ or ‘worse’.

    The proposal that the OfS should review the degree awarding powers process and the role of external examiners in protecting standards also raises many questions.  But the issue is the same, namely, how and to what extent can the traditional ways in which the academic community has, generally, successfully guarded its standards resist the combined pressures of competition, consumerism and inadequate funding.

    The proposals on information for students continue with the hopeless – in the authors’ view – quest for the Holy Grail of information that will quickly and cheaply enable students and other ‘users’ of the system to make reasonable choices about subjects, courses and providers, the insuperable difficulties of which were explained at length in the HEPI Debate Paper referred to earlier. Similarly hopeless is the idea of a progress measure for higher education along the lines of Progress 8 in the schools. We can only sympathise with the hapless individuals who will be tasked with taking these ideas forward.

    The proposal to review research assessment raises concerns that future exercises could be tilted, like research funding, towards greater emphasis on (a) impact, and (b) subjects considered most relevant to the Industrial Strategy. Haven’t the reforms to increase the role of impact in research assessment over the years already gone far enough?

    Staff

    The White Paper breaks new ground in one respect at least, in that the position of staff, and in particular the precarity of many early career researchers, is mentioned. However, what will happen here will depend very much on how much of a financial recovery there will be (if any), on how much system restructuring takes place and on what form any increased collaboration takes. If this takes the form of institutional mergers, we can expect more redundancies and potentially worsening of terms and conditions. The experience of mergers in HE indicates that the only significant, permanent savings come from disposing of assets: any savings on things like shared services are offset by the greater costs of the managerial coordination required.

    The system

    The Government clearly hankers after a more streamlined system that is both more efficient in its use of resources and offers a wider, or at least clearer, set of choices for students, employers and other ‘users’. As with so many other aspects of the White Paper we have been here before. In the early 1980s the old University Grants Committee consulted on designating the existing universities as ‘R’, ‘X’ or ‘T’, depending on their research intensity. The proposals were universally rejected. In the early 2000s, HEFCE toyed with the notion of dividing institutions into separate and distinctive groups depending on their overall orientation, but this also foundered. The institutions were almost all strongly opposed, the criteria and data for selection were insufficiently robust to be a basis for policy and the Funding Council anyway lacked the necessary powers. The same seems likely to be the case here, especially given the renewed emphasis on institutional autonomy built into HERA(2017).

    Where does the sector go next?

    In our forthcoming book, we argue that the post-80s reforms of higher education in England are a reflection of the key planks of neoliberalism: privatisation, marketisation and reduced claims on the taxpayer. The press release accompanying the White Paper speaks of it being a ‘landmark statement’. This it certainly is, if not in the sense seemingly meant by its authors. If the essence of neoliberalism is the subordination of all social and cultural activities to the needs of the economy, then this is indeed a ‘landmark’ document of which the authors of neoliberalism would have been justly proud.

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  • Honoring Giving Day Excellence | The 2025 RNL Givey Winners

    Honoring Giving Day Excellence | The 2025 RNL Givey Winners

    Giving days have become a foundation for fundraising, helping institutions energize their donor base and create an incredible burst of philanthropic passion. As these days have evolved, so have the strategies institutions have used to amplify their efforts, rally donors around a theme, and gamify giving to take the results to the next level.

    To recognize the creativity and strategy of these programs, RNL created the Giveys, and annual award celebrating the most innovative and successful Giving Day campaigns. This year we are pleased to announce 28 winners among our ScaleFunder partners.

    The Giveys showcase a sampling of the outstanding work and unique approaches RNL’s many partners take to engage their communities and maximize their fundraising efforts. This year’s winners used pop culture-inspired themes and high-tech ambassador toolkits to bolster strategic support from the ScaleFunder and use of our easy-to-build platform to generate record-breaking fundraising events. Read about the winners and see their giving pages below, or watch our recent webinar where we unveiled the winning institutions.

    2025 RNL Giveys Winners & Highlights

    Category: Creative Giving Day Theme

    Missouri State Giving Day
    • Winner: University of Texas at Dallas
      • University of Texas at Dallas launched a fully integrated Taylor Swift-inspired campaign that spanned their logo, site text, graphics, and ambassador toolkit. The theme culminated in a fun, on-campus concert featuring a Taylor Swift impersonator and a selfie station.
    • Winner: Missouri State University
      • Missouri State won for their Taylor Swift-inspired theme that carried across their site’s banner image and ambassador materials, demonstrating a high-energy approach that resonated with their community

    Category: Omnichannel Engagement

    • Winner: Michigan Tech University
      • Michigan Tech University was recognized for their professional and unified omnichannel strategy. They utilized high-quality branding, student photos, and front-and-center dates across postcards, digital ads, and email to ensure the campaign was seen everywhere.

    Category: Creative Social Media

    • Winner: West Virginia University (WVU)
      • West Virginia University was celebrated for its use of creative social media challenges and contests, leveraging the Walls.io social media aggregator. Our favorites included a “Day of Giving Social Prop Challenge” tied to their save-the-date postcard, a “Country Roads Challenge” asking people to sing the John Denver song, and a “Pet Photo Challenge.”

    Category: Gamification Excellence

    RPI Giving DayRPI Giving Day
    • Winner: The University of Mississippi
      • The University of Mississippi team was honored for leaning into what makes them unique! They tied their campaign to the hearts of their donors by offering unique and personalized rewards such as a manufacturing excellence fire pit and a signed, personalized print from artist Marshall Ramsey.
    • Winner: Indiana State University
      • Indiana State was recognized for an excellent display of matches and challenges on their site, particularly the “New Donor Challenge.” This challenge targeted first-time donors, successfully using a major gift to be unlocked once a specific number of new donors gave.
    • Winner: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)
      • We applaud RPI for tying their gamification directly into their giving day date, March 14th (Pi Day). Challenges included goals like 3,142 laps around the armory and gifts of $3.14 or $31.42, along with highlighting pet posts for their president’s dog’s birthday party.
    • Winner: Montclair State University
      • Montclair State University was highlighted for their fun, relatable challenge that asked young alumni to “give up a coffee” and make a modest gift, then rewarded them with a coupon for a free coffee, encouraging repeat engagement.

    Category: Ambassador + Donor Engagement

    University of Oregon Giving DayUniversity of Oregon Giving Day
    • Winner: University of Oregon
      • The University of Oregon won for their “Ducks Give Day” campaign. They offered a free sticker pack for signing up as an ambassador and motivated participation in their “You+2” campaign, where ambassadors made a gift and secured two others to make a gift, then they earned an exclusive Oregon pin and pair of socks.
    • Winner: The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
      • UT Health Houston put together a Giving Day campaign toolkit to engage the ambassadors by providing professional, easy-to-use graphics and copy-and-paste sample messaging. The success of their campaign stemmed from understanding of their audience and a commitment to making it simple for people to spread the word and help them meet their goals.

    Category: On-Campus Engagement

    • Winner: University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
      • Celebrated for an excellent on-campus promotion strategy to generate awareness and engagement, which included free T-shirt giveaways, a kickoff pep rally, a voting contest for campus areas to receive funding, and a “Class Cab” golf cart.

    Category: Awesome Greek Organization

    • Winner: Kappa Alpha Theta
      • Kappa Alpha Theta was recognized for their well-designed and welcoming ScaleFunder site design, which featured animated graphics and powerful donor testimonials directly on the page, leaning into their core message of sisterhood and connection.

    Category: New Giving Day Partner

    University of DelawareUniversity of Delaware
    • Winner: University of Delaware
      • The University of Delaware was honored for their successful first “iHeartUD Giving Day,” demonstrating excellent branding and execution, especially after needing to change their Giving Day date. Their quick, professional communication and successful campaign showed great promise, and they were true experts at keeping their community in the loop about iHUD happenings.
    • Winner: California State University, Stanislaus
      • California State University, Stanislaus was recognized for a very strong entry, leveraging years of success with RNL’s crowdfunding platform for their first Giving Day. They created a unique theme, “1960 Minutes of Giving” (based on their founding year), and used a unique domain label: “stanforacause.”

    Category: Fall Giving Day

    • Winner: The University of Alabama
      • Featured for their recent “Clash of the Capstone” campaign, which pitted students against alumni in a competition to see who could bring in the greatest number of gifts, creating a fun, engaging way to host a second, focused giving day in the fall.
    • Winner: UC Berkeley
      • Recognized for the success of their second annual fall giving day, the “Oski’s Bearathon.” The campaign, which focuses on driving donations to student organizations, uses a fun, quirky theme and is a top example of how to successfully run multiple, distinct Giving Day campaigns in one year.

    Category: Frictionless Giving Experience

    • Winner: Butler University
      • Butler University was celebrated for proactively adding custom questions to their donation form to collect information vital for advancement services and athletics, streamlining the gift processing workflow for their campus partners.

    Category: Giving Day Video

    • Winner: University of Houston
      • The University of Houston created an engaging Giving Day campaign, which featured a video game theme. This included a fun, well-done video and the development of an actual playable game called “Shasta’s Birthday Dash,” accessible right on their Giving Day site. This gamified approach allowed participants to play, collect points by passing virtual campus landmarks, and track their scores on a visible leaderboard, making the celebration of their “years of excellence” a memorable and interactive experience.

    Category: Incentivized Giving

    • Winner: Northern Kentucky University
      • Northern Kentucky University developed highly effective donor incentives as part of their annual Giving Day campaign. These incentives included offering a choice of a long-sleeve T-shirt for any gift of $68 or more (honoring their founding year) and leveraging a partnership with AAA to enter all donors of any gift size into a drawing to win two round-trip Delta Airline ticket vouchers anywhere in the continental United States.

    Ready for a record-breaking giving day?

    RNL Giving Day Powered by ScaleFunder combines the most powerful giving day platform with strategic assessments, omnichannel marketing, and stewardship to make your giving day a major success and increase future giving.

    RNL Giving Day Powered by ScaleFunderRNL Giving Day Powered by ScaleFunder

    Category: Site Design

    • Winner: The University of Mary Washington
      • The University of Mary Washington earned recognition for their successful site refresh, which featured a custom-drawn campus wallpaper design for their Giving Day platform. Additionally, they leveraged a unique campus tradition, the “Devil Goat Challenge,” which pits even and odd class years against each other for additional challenge funds.
    • Winner: Ivy Tech Community College
      • Ivy Tech Community College Giving Day campaign prioritized team alignment across the entire organization and featured a visually fantastic site design. Their platform created a positive, celebratory atmosphere through its use of dynamic graphics and animation, including a banner with confetti dropping.
    • Winner: Tarleton State University
      • Tarleton State University created a professional and engaging Giving Day site that effectively showcased their branding, especially for the Texan Excellence Fund. Their use of vibrant giving area tiles that instantly captured attention and encouraged visitors to scroll and click through to learn about the different campus areas needing support.
    • Winner: Washington State University
      • Washington State University reached the outstanding milestone of their 10th annual Giving Day this year with their, “Cougs Give,” campaign. The university Giving Day site is well designed, featuring a “film noir” theme that used black and white imagery with a bold pop of red in their tile graphics, creating a memorable and visually sophisticated look that was carried throughout the entire campaign.

    Category: Multi-Campus Showcase

    • Winner: The University of Alaska
      • The University of Alaska leveraged an exceptional multi-campus showcase feature, which unified its various campus identities through the creative use of their mascots. Their campaign stood out with engaging features like mascots animating in and out of the banner images and a fun “hide and seek” challenge that visually highlighted each campus’s unique identity.

    Category: Athletics Giving Day

    • Winner: Virginia Tech University
      • Virginia Tech successfully hosted a second Giving Day specifically dedicated to their athletics, branded with the strong theme “Triumph Together.” This initiative united the university’s annual giving and athletics teams, serving as a powerful tool to generate engagement, secure great donor numbers, and cultivate loyal, all-around Virginia Tech fans.

    Category: Giving Tuesday

    • Winner: Northern Arizona University
      • Northern Arizona University was recognized for their cohesive and successful Giving Tuesday campaign that featured a fall theme and their “Lumberjacks” identity. Their strategy featured a beautiful site design and creative, engaging messaging, such as substituting “gifts” with “axe of kindness” and playful puns to reinforce the thematic branding and celebrate who they are.

    Category: Early Giving

    • Winner: Marshall University
      • Marshall University was recognized for their creative and effective use of early giving functionality on the ScaleFunder platform, which streamlined the donation process for both donors and staff. They simplified the experience by allowing gifts directly on the campaign site, customizing the donation button to say “Give Early,” and easily hiding the total aggregator and donor wall until the official launch to generate excitement.

    Category: Wild Card

    • Winner: Salem State University
      • Salem State University was recognized for enhancing their Giving Day with creative, multi-media engagement features promoted directly on their homepage, offering fun ways for their community to participate beyond just donating. These features included a high-energy “Viking Warrior Day hype up” Spotify playlist and a curated YouTube playlist offering various pre-recorded activities, such as an alumni-led morning yoga session and an evening meditation.

    Ready to have your award-winning Giving Day?

    These stories of record growth, community engagement, and frictionless giving celebrated at RNL’s 2025 Giveys highlights that with the right tools, consulting support, and strategic planning, any institution can host a successful and engaging digital fundraising campaign.

    Whether you’re looking to launch your first Giving Day, elevate your annual campaign, or start a new crowdfunding initiative, RNL’s ScaleFunder platform provides the technology, insights, and support to turn your vision into a fundraising victory.

    Contact us today to explore how RNL’s ScaleFunder can help you engage your donors, mobilize your ambassadors, and build a tradition of giving day excellence.

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  • Sterling College in Vermont to close

    Sterling College in Vermont to close

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    Dive Brief:

    • Sterling College, in Vermont, plans to close after its spring 2026 semester in response to enrollment declines and financial pressure, the private institution announced Wednesday. 
    • The environmental studies-focused college will end its associate and bachelor’s programs following the spring semester, after which it plans to operate its summer internship program, depending on student need.
    • In its announcement, Sterling said that its governing board’s decision to close “reflects the College’s commitment to transparency, responsibility, and care in the face of persistent financial and enrollment challenges.”

    Dive Insight:

    Fewer than 40 students are at Sterling for the current semester, with about 30 faculty and staff members running the college, the institution’s president, Scott Thomas, told a local media outlet this week.

    Closing now “allows us to responsibly support students through their continuing time at Sterling and assist with transitions to partner institutions,” the college said in a FAQ about its closing.

    Sterling is finalizing several teach-out agreements with regional peers College of the Atlantic, Community College of Vermont and Champlain College, all of which will require the approval of its accreditor, the New England Commission of Higher Education. The college will hold its final commencement in May, it said. 

    Just between 2021 and 2023, the small college’s enrollment fell by just over 38% to 78 students, according to federal data. 

    Sterling’s tuition revenue declined with the shrinking student body. Between fiscal years 2021 and 2024, net tuition and fee revenue dipped 10.3% to about $835,700. 

    The college was also heavily dependent on private grants to sustain it. In 2024, for example, it logged $4.9 million in grant revenue, most of it restricted. However, the college’s endowment was relatively paltry. Its total investment assets amounted to $1.2 million in 2024. 

    Founded over 65 years ago, Sterling offers bachelor’s and associate degrees only in environmental studies. Bachelor’s students have the option to pursue self-directed concentrations in topics under the environmental umbrella, such as ecology, natural resource management and social justice. 

    The college touts outdoor learning and its experiential approach. Along with NECHE, it is accredited by the Association for Experiential Education, and it is one of a handful of federally recognized work colleges, which require students have work at least 80 hours per semester as part of their educational program. 

    Based in Craftsbury, Vermont, Sterling owns forest, wetlands, a farm, a yurt, a climbing wall and 307 acres in nearby Bear Swamp. The college encourages students to camp for short periods on campus property and allows them to hunt, fish and trap during designated seasons outside the campus center. 

    The college’s property was valued at $3.4 million in fiscal 2024. Sterling said the board will later decide “how to steward the College’s remaining resources in a manner consistent with its mission and all applicable legal requirements.”

    Given the possibility of running its internship program through August “if needed,” the college noted that “it is, as yet, unknown if and when College operations will cease entirely.”

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  • New Jersey Weighs Biggest Update of Charter School Rules in 30 Years – The 74

    New Jersey Weighs Biggest Update of Charter School Rules in 30 Years – The 74


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    Senate lawmakers on Monday advanced legislation that would launch the most comprehensive overhaul of New Jersey’s regulation of charter schools in 30 years.

    The bill advanced by the Senate Education Committee on Monday would outright ban for-profit charter schools, require them to post a range of documents online, and impose residency requirements for some charter school trustees.

    “We have not looked at charter schools as a whole legislatively in this committee since the 1990s, so this is an opportunity where we’re trying to do that,” said Sen. Vin Gopal (D-Monmouth), the panel’s chair and the bill’s prime sponsor.

    The bill comes as New Jersey charter schools have faced scrutiny after reporting revealed top officials were paid far more than their counterparts at traditional public schools, including, among others, a Newark charter school CEO who was paid nearly $800,000 in 2024.

    The proposal, which Gopal said was the product of a year of negotiations, would require charter schools to post user-friendly budgets that include the compensation paid to charter school leaders and school business administrators. They must also post existing contracts.

    Charters would be required to post meeting notices, annual reports, board members’ identities, and facility locations online. Some critics have charged that charter schools routinely fail to provide notice of their public meetings.

    The legislation would also require the state to create a dedicated charter school transparency website to host plain language budgets, 990 disclosure forms filed with the IRS, contracts with charter management organizations, and a list of charter schools on probation, among other things.

    It would also ban fully virtual charter schools.

    “We support the bills as a step forward in holding all public schools in our state accountable for fiscal and transparency requirements that will ultimately best serve our students,” said Debbie Bradley, director of government relations for the New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association.

    The two sides remained at odds over the membership of charter school boards.

    Charter critics argued residency for those positions — which, unlike traditional public school boards, are largely appointed rather than elected — should mirror those imposed on regular public schools.

    In New Jersey, school board members must live in the district they serve. That’s not the case for charter schools, whose trustees face no residency or qualification limits under existing law.

    The bill would only impose a residency requirement on one-third of a charter school’s trustees, and rather than forcing them to live in the district, the bill would require charter trustees to live in the school’s county or within 30 miles of the school.

    That language was criticized by statewide teachers union the New Jersey Education Association, which has called existing law governing charter schools outdated and flawed.

    “School board representation should remain primarily local, and when we mean local, we don’t mean within a 30-mile radius. A 30-mile radius of Newark could include Maplewood, South Orange, communities that don’t necessarily represent what Newark looks like as a community,” said Deb Cornavaca, the union’s director of government relations.

    Charter school supporters said their boards need flexibility because their leadership has broader responsibilities than counterparts in traditional public schools.

    “Running a charter is a little different than running a traditional district. You need experience in school finance. You need to fundraise a bunch of money on the front end because you’re not getting paid on the front end,” said New Jersey Charter School Association President Harry Lee, adding they also needed familiarity with real estate and community experience.

    Amendments removed provisions that would have required charter school board members to be approved by the state commissioner of education, though the commissioner retains sole power over whether to allow the formation of a new charter, a power that gives the commissioner some veto power over a charter’s board.

    Gopal acknowledged the 30-mile residency rule was a sticking point and said legislators would discuss it before the measure comes before the Senate Budget Committee. Earlier, he warned the bill was likely to see more changes as it moved through the Legislature.

    Some argued enrollment in charter schools should be more limited by geography, arguing that out-of-district enrollments that are common at New Jersey charters could place financial strain on the students’ former district.

    Most per-pupil state and local funding follows students who enroll in charter schools, even if their departure does not actually decrease the original district’s expenses because, for example, those schools still require the same number of teachers and administrators.

    Charter operators said that would make New Jersey a national outlier and argued that a separate provision that would bar new charter schools when there are empty seats in existing area charters should come out of the bill.

    “It could be read as a moratorium on charters, so we want to revisit that provision,” Lee said.

    Such vacancies could exist for various reasons, they argued, including student age distributions.

    Alongside that measure, the panel approved separate legislation that would bar charter schools from setting criteria to enroll students, ban them from imposing other requirements on a student randomly selected to attend, and place new limits on how such schools can enroll children from outside their district.

    That bill would also bar charter schools from encouraging students to break with the district. Some opponents have charged that charter schools push out low-performing students to boost their metrics.

    The committee approved the bills in unanimous votes, though Sens. Owen Henry (R-Ocean) and Kristin Corrado (R-Passaic) abstained from votes on both bills, saying they are broadly supportive but need more time to review amendments.

    New Jersey Monitor is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Jersey Monitor maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Terrence T. McDonald for questions: [email protected].


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