Education Minister Jason Clare handed down the final report in February 2024. Picture: Martin Ollman
The 408-page Universities Accord document has shaped the past year of university reform discussions. The document includes 47 recommendations that are expected to take up to 25 years to implement.
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If we think about research as a means of driving innovation and by extension economic growth, there is a need to consider the lives of the people who are doing the research.
The UK has a significant strength in the quality and diversity of its higher education system – which trains a large proportion of the staff who end up working in universities (and elsewhere) performing research. We should, in other words, be better than we are at sustaining and shaping research capacity through supporting the people who contribute research throughout their careers.
Certainly, that’s the case that the University and College Union makes in last week’s research staff manifesto – noting that nearly two thirds of research staff are on fixed term contracts, following research funding and strategic decisions around the country at a significant detriment to their personal lives and professional development.
Precarity is not an accident of the system – it is the entire design of the system. Becoming a postdoc is not the final stage of the undergraduate to postgraduate to researcher pipeline: it is a step into a new system where the trial of job-hopping, house moving, city shifting work, may one day lead to a full time post.
The first step after undertaking a doctorate is, unsurprisingly post-doctoral work – the postdoc. The term is confusing as it implies simply the job someone does after being awarded a PhD. Over time the taxonomy has changed to take on a specific meaning. It has become synonymous with precarious employment tied to grant funding. As an example, Imperial College London describes their postdocs as follows
Crucially, in the section which describes what a postdoc is not, it includes being “a permanent member of academic staff.”
This is often the case because postdocs are tied to grant funding and grant funding is limited to a certain period of time to cover a specific project. UKRI, for example, does not fund postdocs directly but funds research organisations directly through a mix of focused studentships and capacity funding. Research organisations then fund postdocs.
This means that the flexible deployment of resources is the very start of the system. It’s not an accident or a quirk, it is that the UK’s research system is built around incentivising human capital to move to the organisations and places that most closely aligns to their research skills. The upside of this is that, in theory, it should mean resources are efficiently deployed to the people and places that can use them most productively. In reality, it means that instability and structural barriers to progressing to full research contracts are the norm.
It’s not that UKRI are not aware of this problem. In a 2023 blog on team research Nik Ogryzko, Talent Programme Manager at UKRI, wrote that
We’ve built a system where research groups sometimes act as their own small business inside an institution. And this leads to a very particular set of weaknesses.
Employment contracts have become linked to individual research grants, with research staff often highly dependent on their principal investigator for career progression, or even their continued employment.
Group leaders are often not equipped to support their staff into anything other than an academic career, and we know most research staff do not end up there.
We also know such precarious employment and power imbalances can in some cases lead to bullying, harassment and discrimination. Such structural factors further compromise the integrity of our research, despite the strong intrinsic motivation of our researchers and innovators.“
A number of institutions are signatories to The Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers. When it comes to the use of fixed-term contracts the concordat states that
[…]some of the areas of most concern to researchers, such as the prevalence of fixed-term contracts and enforced mobility, will require long term systemic changes, which can only be realised through collective action across stakeholders.
Again, should a researcher be lucky enough to pass through their postdoc a permanent role is not guaranteed or even the norm. In reading through the websites of universities the reasons for fixed term contracts are various including; to align with grant-funding, to cover peak demand, to meet uncertain demand, to cover staff absence, to cover time-limited projects, secondments, training, and to bring in specialist skills.
It is not that universities don’t recognise the issue of fixed term contracts, institutions like the University of Exeter has a whole framework on the appropriate use of these contacts, it’s that in a funding system which places a premium on project working it is necessary to have a highly flexible staff force.
However, this does not mean that this system is inevitable or that the number of fixed term contracts is desirable.
According to HESA data, that number is slowly falling – both numerically and proportionally – for research only academic staff. As of the 2023-24 academic year, 63.9 per cent of “research only” academic staff (64,265) are on a fixed term contract. This sounds like a lot, but it is down slightly from a peak of 68 per cent (70,050) in 2019-20.
The proportion of fixed term contracts for teaching only academics (another prominent early career route, often coupled with weekends at the kitchen table writing literature reviews for publication in an attempt to bolster credentials for a research job in an underfunded field) is also on a downward trajectory. Some 44.3 per cent of teaching only contracts (equating to 64,300 people) were fixed term in 2019-20 – by 2023-24 the numbers were 35.7 per cent and 63,425.
If we take this to provider level we can see that a significant research focus is no predictor of a reliance on fixed term contracts. This chart shows the proportion of all academic staff on research only contracts on the y axis, with the proportion of all academic staff on fixed term contracts on the x axis.
What this chart shows is that a strong focus on research (with many research only academic contracts) does not predict a reliance on fixed term contracts – indeed, there are many providers with a significant proportion of fixed term contracts that have no research only academic staff at all. While a fixed term contract is a poor basis on which to plan long term as an individual, for many higher education institutions it is a useful answer to wildly varying income and recruitment. Whereas for more traditional institutions it makes sense to maintain capacity even as prevailing conditions worsen, in smaller and more precarious providers unutilised capacity is a luxury that is no longer as affordable.
If you look back to the first chart, you may notice a “salary source” filter. One of the prevailing narratives around fixed term contracts is that these necessarily link to the “fixed term” nature of funded research projects – the argument being that once the money is finished, the staff need to find new jobs. In fact, this is less of a factor than you might imagine: the proportions of research only academic staff on fixed term contracts is higher for externally funded than those funded internally, but the difference isn’t huge.
Plotting the same data another way shows us that around a quarter of research only salaries are funded entirely by the higher education provider, with a further five per cent or so partially supported by the host institution – these figures are slightly lower for fixed-term research only staff, but only very slightly.
So we can be clear that fixed term salaries are (broadly) a research thing, but there’s not really evidence to suggest that short term external funding is the whole reason for this.
As a quick reminder, the research councils represent about a quarter of all external research funding, with the UK government (in various forms) and the NHS representing about another (swiftly growing)fifth. That’s a hefty chunk of research income that comes from sources that the government has some degree of control over – and some of the language used by Labour before the election about making this more reliable (the ten year settlements of legend) was seen as a recognition of the way funding could be reprofiled to allow for more “livable” research careers and an expansion of research capacity.
This chart also allows you to examine the way these proportions land differently by provider and subject area (expressed here as HESA cost code). The volatility is higher at smaller providers, as you might expect – while research in the arts and humanities is more likely to be funded by research councils than in STEM or social sciences. But it is really the volume, rather than the source, of research funding that determines how researcher salaries are paid.
Although the established pathway from research postgraduate to research is by no means the only one available (many postgraduate research students do not become academics) it is an established maxim – dating back to the post-war Percy and Barlow reviews – that to produce the researchers we need requires training in the form of postgraduate research provision.
Although it’s not really the purpose of this article, it is worth considering the subject and provider level distribution of postgraduate research students in the light of how funding and capacity for research is distributed. As the early research career is often dominated by the need to move to take on a fixed term contract, one way to address this might be to have research career opportunities and research students in the same place from the start.
Research capacity, and – for that matter – research training capacity, can’t be turned off and on at a whim. Departments and research centres need more than one short-term funded project to begin delivering for the UK at their full potential, because developing capacity and expertise takes time and experience. That’s a part of the reason why we have non-ringfenced funding: streams like those associated with QR in England – to keep research viable between projects, and to nurture developing expertise so it can contribute meaningfully to national, regional, and industrial research priorities. It’s funds like these that support researcher training and supervision, and the infrastructure and support staff and components that make research possible.
But what the data suggests is that while the short-term nature of project funding does have an impact, especially at smaller providers and emerging research centres, there are many universities that are able to sustain research employment between projects. A part of this is bound to be sheer scale, but it doesn’t happen at all large research performing organisations by any stretch of the imagination. A part of the answer then, must be the strategic decisions and staffing priorities that makes sustaining researcher employment possible.
That’s not to let the funding side of the equation off the hook either. There is a sense that the Labour party was moving in the right direction in considering longer term research funding settlements – but we have yet to learn how this will work in practice. By its very nature, research is discovery and opportunity led: a few years ago artificial intelligence research was a minor academic curiosity, currently it is big money – but will it be a priority in 2035? Could there be some areas – medical and healthcare research, large scale physics, engineering – where we can be more sure than others?
You’ll note we didn’t mention the arts, humanities, and social sciences in that list – but these may be some of the most valuable areas of human activity, and government-supported research plays a more prominent role in sustaining not just discovery and innovation but the actual practice of such activity. Such is the paucity of money available in the arts that many practitioners subsidise their practice with research and teaching – and it feels like arts funding more generally needs consideration.
Sure, the UK punches above its weight in the sciences and in health care – but in arts, heritage, and social policy the work of the UK is genuinely world leading. It has a significant economic impact (second only to financial services) too. Research funding is a part of the picture here, but a long term commitment to these industries would be one of the most valuable decisions a government can make.
The fundamental challenge is maintaining a system which is dynamic, where the dynamism is not solely reliant on a highly transient workforce. A simple, albeit extremely limited, conclusion from the data would be that there is too great a supply of researchers to meet the demand for their skills.
The more important question is what is the value of such a highly educated workforce and how can society make the most of their talents. This is not to say the UK should operate a supply led model. A world where funding is allocated based purely on the academic interests of researchers might be good for placing emphasis on intellectual curiosity but it would not allow funders to match social and economic priorities with researcher’s work. Put another way, it isn’t sufficient to tackle climate change by hoping enough researchers are interested in doing so. It would also not necessarily create more permanent jobs – just different ones.
Conversely, a system which is largely demand led loses talent in other ways. The sheer exhaustion of moving between jobs and tacking research skills to different projects in the same field means stamina, not just research ability, is a key criterion for success. This means researchers whose abilities are needed are not deployed because their personal incentive for a more stable life trumps their career aspirations.
The current system does penalise those who cannot work flexibly for extended periods of time, but more fundamentally the incentives in the system are misaligned to what it hopes to achieve. There can be no dynamism without some flexibility, but flexibility should be demonstrable not permanently designed. Flexibility of employment should be used to achieve a research benefit not only an administrative one.
This is not wholly in the gift of universities. A careful consideration by government, funders, institutions, and researchers, of how flexibility should be used is the key to balance in the system. There are times where the research system requires stability. For example, the repeated use of fixed term contracts on the same topic is a clear market signal for more stable employment. Furthermore, it is undesirable to have a forever changing workforce in areas governments have singularly failed to make progress on for decades. Nobody is arguing that if only research into productivity was a bit more transient the UK’s economies woes could be fixed.
The need is coordinated action. And unlike in Australia there is no single review of what the research ecosystem is for. Until then as priorities change, funders work on short time horizons, and institutions respond to ever changing incentives, the downstream effect is a workforce that will be treated as entirely changeable too.
At a time when resources within research organisations are stretched, the PGR experience, and the role doctoral supervisors play in supporting that experience, needs closer attention.
The release of the pilot indicators for the REF People Culture and Environment (PCE) has promoted a flurry of conversations across UK universities as to what ‘counts’. For the first time, institutions may evidence that “infrastructure, processes and mechanisms in place to support the training and supervision of research students are working effectively” and are invited to consider the inclusion of “pre and post training assessments” for supervisors.
This signals to institutions that research supervision needs to be taken seriously– both in terms of quality and consistency of PGR experience, as well as the support and recognition for supervisors themselves. In doing so it validates the contribution of doctoral research to the research ecosystem.
Accelerated prioritisation of research supervision shouldn’t come as a complete surprise. This lack of consistency in PGR experience was recognised less than a year ago in the UKRI New Deal for Postgraduate Research, which stated that “All PGR students should have access to high quality supervision and Research Organisations should ensure that everyone in the supervisory team is well supported, including through induction for new supervisors and Continuous Professional Development (CPD)”. That messaging has been repeated in the UKRI Revised Statement of Expectations for Doctoral Training (2024), alongside a call to research organisations to “build supervisor awareness of PGR mental health, wellbeing, bullying and harassment, and equality, diversity and inclusion issues.”
Data from the UK Research Supervision Survey 2024 (UKRSS) confirms that, overwhelmingly, research supervision is considered valuable, rewarding and enjoyable by those who undertake it. Supervision also positively impacts upon their own research. However, a third of respondents reported feeling anxious about supervision and reported their main challenge was fostering student confidence and focus, followed by offering compassionate support to students facing difficult issues ranging from mental health and wellbeing, to finances and funding.
Lack of time continues to be a barrier to high quality supervision practice, and rising supervisor-to-candidate ratios complicate this further. While early career supervisors were likely to be allocated one to two candidates, those later in their career could be supervising five to ten– only 30 per cent of UKRSS respondents reported that their institution had a policy on maximum candidate numbers. Respondents also made it clear that doctoral research supervision is not being adequately calculated into workload allocations, with a typically described workload model allocating 42 hours per candidate, per year, but supervisors reporting investing an average of 62 hours.
Time constraints like these contribute greatly to the ability of supervisors to participate in CPD opportunities. This itself is a barrier to good supervision practice, as the UKRSS revealed that supervisors who engage in regular, mandatory CPD reported higher levels of confidence in all areas of supervisory practice. A staggering 91 per cent of respondents who had experienced mandatory induction reported they felt able to enact their institutions’ procedures around supervision– compared to 66 per cent of those for whom induction was not mandatory and 55 per cent who reported no mandatory requirements..
The data illustrates that supervisors care about and take satisfaction from supporting the next generation of researchers, but they are getting a raw deal from their institutions in terms of time, reward, recognition and opportunities to develop and enhance their own practice. Underscoring this point, just 56 per cent of supervisors reported feeling valued by their institution, compared to 90 per cent who felt valued by their students. Until now this has gone under the radar, making the inclusion of the PCE indicators a welcome sign for those of us working to make changes within the sector.
Focus groups conducted with supervisors at five UK universities as part of the Research England funded Next Generation Research SuperVision Project (RSVP), have provided insight into what CPD is considered useful, meaningful and relevant. Supervisors were well aware of the need to develop and improve their practice, with one participant reflecting “… there isn’t sufficient training for supervision, you have a huge responsibility to another person’s career. So I think the idea that we ‘wing it’ perhaps shouldn’t be acceptable.”
An overwhelming majority of participants reported that the most important aspects of their supervision practice and development come from interactions with, and support from, their peers and more experienced colleagues. The idea that supervision practice is best developed by watching other supervisors on the job and through communities of practice was repeated by participants across experience levels, genders, disciplines, and institutions– with some even claiming this to be the only way to become a truly good supervisor.
Far from being reluctant to engage in professional development, many supervisors welcomed the idea of having the space and time to reflect on their practice. What they were less keen on was anything perceived as a ‘tick-box’ exercise– examples given included short courses without time for discussion, and self-directed online modules. There was a recognition by some that these approaches can be useful, but should form part of a more varied approach to CPD.
Generally speaking, supervisors with less experience were more likely to engage in facilitated workshops and other interventions that help them understand their role and the doctoral journey. Those with more experience expressed a strong preference for discussion-based CPD, including peer reading groups, opportunities for facilitated reflection and mentoring.
Whatever the final version of the PCE metrics look like, there is now a growing body of empirical evidence to suggest that a revision in the way we manage, reward and recognise research supervision is needed. When government enabled universities to introduce fees for undergraduates the issue of quality assurance quickly surfaced. It was recognised that students should be taught by properly trained staff with a knowledge and understanding of pedagogy and approaches to learning and teaching. Arguably that moment has now come for research supervision.
If the UK HE sector wishes to attract capable, committed, creative doctoral candidates from a range of backgrounds then those supervising them need to be treated, and trained, as professional practitioners. This means creating the time and space to enable supervisors at all levels of experience to engage in meaningful exchanges about their practice and to refresh their knowledge of policies and new areas as they arise.
For institutions looking for ways to bolster their supervision support there are some empirically grounded ways to improve practice
Firstly, tap into existing levers for change. The Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers outlines the need for PIs (many of whom are supervisors) to engage in professional development. Postdoctoral researchers are also required to engage in “10 days of professional development.” Since postdoctoral researchers are often informally involved in doctoral supervision (15% of the UKRSS respondents identified themselves as ‘early career researchers’) their engagement in CPD could also be counted. Actively recognising and celebrating the diversity of doctoral researchers and their supervisors also aligns with Athena Swan.
Secondly, increase the visibility of provision. Many supervisors in the UKRSS and focus groups didn’t know what CPD was available in their institution. Very few knew about routes to recognition of supervisory practice (e.g.through the UKCGE Research Supervision Recognition Programme). There is little to be lost in an institution showcasing themselves to prospective researchers and funders as one which takes the quality of supervision seriously and actively invests, rewards and recognises supervisors.
Thirdly, actively enable conversations about supervision. Aside from the formal training it is the time spent together which is often valuable. This may include offering simple opportunities for new and experienced supervisors to come together to talk about their experiences on topics that matter to them. It may mean enlisting a few champions who will speak about their experience. If there is already a mentoring scheme research supervision could be added to the list of topics that can be discussed as part of that relationship. It is also helpful to encourage supervisors to engage with the UKCGE Supervisor’s Network which offers cross-disciplinary and national level value as a community of practice.
Finally, use existing PGR and supervisor networks and expert spaces to find out what works well and where the gaps are. Including working with RSVP which is designing, with 58 partners, CPD interventions for new and more experienced supervisors around the topics identified above. Following pilots and evaluation these will be made freely available to the sector. Specific resources to support supervisors to engender a *neurodiversity-affirmative culture will be available later this year. Webpages to support mentoring will be available very soon. Join the RSVP mailing list to be kept up to date.
*with thanks to Professor Debi Riby at the centre for Neurodiversity & Development at Durham University
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Chicago Public Schools unveiled a five-year plan Thursday to improve the outcomes of the district’s Black students — at a time of unprecedented backlash against efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in education.
The release of the Black Student Success Plan, during Black History Month, is part of CPS’s broader five-year strategic plan and aims to address long-standing disparities in graduation, discipline, and other metrics faced by its Black students, who make up roughly a third of the student body.
The district set out to create the Black Student Success Plan in the fall of 2023, but its quiet posting on Thursday comes as both conservative advocacy groups and the Trump administration are taking aim at race-based initiatives in school districts and on college campuses.
Late last week, the U.S. Department of Education’s top acting civil rights official warned districts and universities that they could lose federal funding if they don’t scrap all diversity initiatives, even those that use criteria other than race to meet their goals. He cited the 2023 Supreme Court Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decision that banned the use of race as a college admissions factor.
CPS — in a progressive city in a Democratic state — has largely been insulated from standoffs over diversity and inclusion in recent years, when districts in other parts of the country have come under intense scrutiny over how they teach race and how they take it into account in hiring, selective program admissions, and other decisions. Increasingly, though, deep blue cities like Chicago are finding themselves in the crosshairs.
Last year, a Virginia-based advocacy group challenged a Los Angeles Unified School District initiative aimed at boosting outcomes for its Black students, which CPS said inspired its own plan. At the urging of the Biden administration, Los Angeles made changes to downplay the role of race, causing an outcry from some of its initiative’s supporters.
Chicago’s plan vows to increase the number of Black teachers, slash suspensions and other discipline for Black students, and embrace more culturally responsive curriculums and professional development to “combat anti-Blackness” — goals some of which could run afoul of the Department of Education’s interpretation of the Students for Fair Admissions decision.
Still, some district and community leaders in Chicago say CPS’s plan might be better-positioned to withstand challenges than Los Angeles’ initiative — and they said the district must forge ahead with the effort even as it braces for pushback.
“Now is not the time for anticipatory obedience and preemptive acquiescence,” said Elizabeth Todd-Breland, a University of Illinois Chicago professor of African American history and a former Chicago school board member who served on a working group that helped craft the plan. “This is not the time to shrink but to live out our values.”
The new plan says Illinois law mandates this work and cites a state statute that requires the Chicago Board of Education to have a Black Student Achievement Committee. That committee has not yet been formed.
CPS declined Chalkbeat’s interview request and did not answer questions before publication. The district is hosting a celebration at Chicago State University at 3 p.m. Friday to mark the plan’s release.
CPS convened a working group made up of 60 district employees, parents, students, and community members that started meeting in December of 2023 to begin creating its Black Student Success Plan.
The following spring, it hosted nine forums to discuss the plan with residents across the city — what the plan’s supporters describe as one of the district’s most extensive and genuine efforts to get community input.
The working group in May released a list of recommendations that included stepping up efforts to recruit and retain Black educators, promote restorative justice practices, ensure culturally responsive curriculums that teach Black history, and offer more mental health and other support for Black students through partnerships with community-based organizations.
The district adopted many of these recommendations in its plan. It sets some concrete five-year goals, including doubling the number of male Black teachers, increasing the number of classrooms where Black history is taught, and decreasing how many Black students get out-of-school suspensions by 40%.
“The Black Student Success Plan is much more than simply a document,” the plan said. “It represents a firm commitment by the district, a roadmap, and a call to action for Chicago’s educational ecosystem to ensure equitable educational experiences and outcomes for Black students across our district.”
The effort built on equity work to help “students furthest from opportunity” that started five years ago under former CEO Janice Jackson, said Dominique McKoy, the executive director of the University of Chicago’s To & Through Project. In CPS, by a range of metrics, those students have historically been Black children.
McKoy, whose work focuses on college access, points out that the district has made major strides in increasing the number of students who go to college. But more students than ever drop out before earning a college degree — an issue that has disproportionately affected Black CPS graduates.
“There’s evidence and data that we haven’t been meeting the needs of Black students,” he said. “This plan is about responding to the data. Being clear about that is one of the best ways to insulate and defend that process.”
But McKoy acknowledges that now is a challenging time to kick off the district’s plan.
“Undoubtedly there will be critics who will think it’s racial preference to help students who need help and will attack the district for doing so,” said Pedro Noguera, the dean of the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education.
Last year’s challenge against a $120 million Los Angeles program aimed at addressing disparities for Black students offers a case study, Noguera notes. Parents Defending Education, which opposes school district diversity and inclusion programs, filed a complaint with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. The group has also challenged programs to recruit more Black male teachers and form affinity student groups based on race in other districts.
Ultimately, Los Angeles overhauled the program to steer additional staffing and other resources to entire schools serving high-needs students, rather than more narrowly to Black students. The Los Angeles Times reported that to some critics, those changes watered down the program, which was beginning to show some early results. But Noguera says he feels the program is still helping Black students.
However, it is clear that the Trump administration plans to go much further in interpreting the Students for Fair Admissions decision and seeking to root out DEI initiatives. In a “Dear Colleague” letter to school leaders Friday, Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights in the Education Department, said efforts to diversify the teaching force or the student bodies of selective enrollment programs could trigger investigations and the loss of federal funding. About 20% of CPS’s operating revenue comes from the federal government.
“The Department will no longer tolerate the overt and covert racial discrimination that has become widespread in this Nation’s educational institutions,” Trainor wrote. “The law is clear: treating students differently on the basis of race to achieve nebulous goals such as diversity, racial balancing, social justice, or equity is illegal under controlling Supreme Court precedent.”
Chicago, like Los Angeles, might consider a focus on schools — chosen based on metrics such as graduation rates, test scores and others — where the plan would help Black students and their peers, Noguera said. Maybe it doesn’t even have to refer to Black students in its name, he said.
“The main thing is to get the help to the kids who need it,” he said. But, he added, “In this environment, who knows what’s challenge-proof.”
He said what helped in Los Angeles was deep community engagement that lent that district’s initiative credibility and good will; the changes that the district made in response to the legal challenge did not erode those.
Darlene O’Banner, a CPS great-grandmother who served on the working group, said CPS got the community engagement piece right. She thinks the plan will offer a detailed roadmap for improving Black students’ achievement and experience.
“I am not going to think of the unknowns and what’s going on in the world,” O’Banner said. “We’re just going to hope for the best. We can’t put the plan on hold for four years.”
The working group issued its recommendation in early fall and stopped meeting following the September resignation of all school board members, who stepped down amid pressure from the mayor’s office to fire CPS CEO Pedro Martinez over budget disagreements.
Valerie Leonard, a longtime community advocate who also served on the working group, said during the community meetings for the Black Student Success Plan last year, there was no discussion of possible legal pushback to the plan.
“Illinois is a liberal state,” she said. “It never really occurred to us a year ago that this plan would be in danger.”
But more recently, as she heard Trump assail DEI initiatives, Leonard said she wondered if the plan would survive.
Leonard pushed Illinois lawmakers last year to mandate the Board of Education appoint a Black Student Achievement Committee as part of the state law that cleared the way for an elected school board in Chicago. The district’s plan invokes that committee though it hasn’t been formed yet. The board formed a more generic student success committee earlier this month.
“We believe that the problem with Black children in public schools is so dire that it needs to be elevated to its own committee,” she said. “When our children get lumped into something that’s for all, they inevitably fall between the cracks.”
McKoy at the University of Chicago said he feels “cautious optimism” and hopes the city and state rally around CPS as it pushes to improve outcomes for Black students.
“The plan itself isn’t going to do the work,” he said.
This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.
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February 23, 2025, by Dean Hoke: This profile of Hendrix College is the third in a series presenting small colleges throughout the United States.
Background
Hendrix College, founded in 1876, is a private liberal arts institution located in Conway, Arkansas. Its 175-acre campus has been affiliated with the United Methodist Church since 1884 and is nationally recognized for its academic excellence, student engagement, and commitment to innovation. Dr. Karen K. Petersen, the 13th President of Hendrix College, began her tenure in June 2023.
The student-to-faculty ratio is 11:1, fostering close interactions between students and the 91 full-time faculty members, 89% of whom hold a Ph.D. or equivalent degree. For the 2025-2026 academic year, the total cost of attendance, including tuition, fees, room, and board, is $55,080. The average net price, according to the College Board, is $22,626. More than 90% of students live in college-owned housing.
Curricula
Hendrix offers 30 majors and 33 minors, encompassing a wide range of disciplines in the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences. Notable programs include Psychology, Health Science, Biology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Computer Science, and Economics & Business. A cornerstone of the Hendrix educational experience is the Odyssey Program, which encourages students to engage in hands-on learning through projects, internships, and global experiences, thereby fostering both personal and academic growth.
Strengths
Weaknesses
Economic Impact
Situated in Conway, Arkansas, a city with a population of approximately 66,000 and part of the Little Rock metropolitan area, Hendrix College contributes significantly to the local economy. In a report by the Conway city government, they state: “Over 100 years ago, Conway made the strategic decision to pursue institutions of higher learning as a means of growing the Conway economy. That choice has paid countless dividends ever since. As the colleges have grown, so has their economic impact. Perhaps more importantly, over time, they have laid the foundation for Conway’s modern workforce.”
The presence of Hendrix College, the University of Central Arkansas, and Central Baptist College is, without a doubt, the reason Conway has such a remarkably young (median age 27.3) and educated (almost 40 percent with at least a bachelor’s degree) population. Those two qualities stand out nationally as the city competes for jobs in today’s economy. The result is a regional economy that has been recognized as one of the most diverse in the nation. Conway is among the nation’s top 20 percent of fastest growing cities with populations over 50,000.
Enrollment Trends
As of Fall 2023, Hendrix College has enrolled 1,120 students from 39 states and 17 countries. The student population is evenly split between male and female students, and more than 90% reside in college-owned housing, including residence halls, houses, and apartments. Approximately 44% of students are from Arkansas, while 56% come from out of state.
Like many private colleges, Hendrix has experienced a slow, steady enrollment decline of 23% over the past decade
Degrees Awarded by Major
In the 2023-2024 academic year, Hendrix College awarded 227 Bachelor of Arts degrees in 28 different majors and eight Master of Arts degrees in Accounting.
Alumni
LinkedIn data shows that the college has nearly 9,000 alums. 60% live outside of Arkansas, 3,575 reside in Arkansas, 2,600 in the Little Rock Region, and 851 in the Conway area.
Graduation Rates are 67.3% in four years and 68.5% in six years. Approximately 75% of graduates who apply to medical or dental school are accepted, and the law school acceptance rate is 78%.
Notable Alumni:
Dr. Margaret Pittman (Class of 1923): A pioneering bacteriologist, Dr. Pittman was the first woman to lead a National Institutes of Health (NIH) laboratory. Her groundbreaking research on vaccines for diseases such as typhoid, cholera, and whooping cough has had a lasting impact on public health.
Craig Leipold (Class of 1974): A prominent businessman best known as the owner of the National Hockey League’s (NHL) Minnesota Wild.
Douglas A. Blackmon (Class of 1986): A journalist and author, Blackmon won the Pulitzer Prize for his book “Slavery by Another Name,” which explores the re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II.
Trenton Lee Stewart (Class of 1992): An author best known for the “Mysterious Benedict Society” series, Stewart’s work has captivated readers worldwide.
Dr. Arthur Thomason (Class of 1997): Working at NASA’s Johnson Space Center with Barrios Technology, Dr. Thomason is an Extravehicular Activities (a.k.a. space walk) flight controller and instructor for NASA.
Ashlie Atkinson (Class of 2001): An actress recognized for her work in film, television, and theater, Atkinson has appeared in productions like BlacKkKlansman, The Gilded Age, and Mr. Robot.”
Endowment and Financial Standing
As of June 30, 2024, Hendrix College’s endowment stands at $206 million, bolstered by a successful $150 million fundraising campaign. The campaign, titled A Time to Lead, added $84 million to its endowment. These funds support scholarships, faculty positions, and institutional initiatives.
Hendrix holds a 2.705 rating and a B- grade in the 2023 Forbes financial report.
Why Hendrix Remains Relevant
Hendrix College stands out in the following areas:
With its commitment to liberal arts education, hands-on learning, and student success, Hendrix College remains a vital institution in higher education.
Dean Hoke is Managing Partner of Edu Alliance Group, a higher education consultancy, and formerly served as President/CEO of the American Association of University Administrators (AAUA). With decades of experience in higher education leadership, consulting, and institutional strategy, he brings a wealth of knowledge on small colleges’ challenges and opportunities. Dean, along with Kent Barnds, are co-hosts for the podcast series Small College America. Season two begins February. 25, 2025
The Higher Education Inquirer (HEI) is in solidarity with nonviolent protests against the Trump administration. Two upcoming events include a 24-hour boycott of Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy (February 28th) and a 10-day General Strike. We hope enough people join these and other nonviolent protests to make our messages heard loudly enough. To our readers, if you know of any public protests and other nonviolent acts of civil disobedience that we can highlight, please contact us.
Related links:
Protests Under Trump 207-2021 (Pressman, et al, 2022)
Timeline of protests against Donald Trump (Wikipedia)
List of incidents of civil unrest in the United States (Wikipedia)
Gil Scott Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” (1971) urges us to critically engage with the world, empower communities, and move beyond passive learning to active, transformative action. His work was born in the context of the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power movement, and it serves as a reminder of how history and sociology can inform contemporary struggles. Will we heed the message?
The American Bar Association is suspending diversity, equity, and inclusion standards for the law schools it accredits amid President Donald Trump’s crackdown on DEI efforts, Reuters reported.
An ABA council reportedly voted on the change Friday, suspending DEI standards through August as the organization—which accredits nearly 200 law schools—considers permanent changes.
ABA officials did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.
The change comes as the ABA has clashed with the Trump administration in recent weeks, accusing the president of “wide-scale affronts to the rule of law itself” in issuing rapid-fire executive orders that have targeted DEI and birthright citizenship, and sought to shrink the federal government through mass firings and other actions that some legal scholars have deemed unlawful.
In the aftermath, the Trump administration barred political appointees to the Federal Trade Commission from holding ABA leadership posts, participating in ABA events, or renewing their memberships. FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson accused the ABA of a “long history of leftist advocacy” and said “recent attacks” on the administration made the relationship “untenable.”
State officials have also pressured ABA to drop its DEI standards. In January a group of 21 attorneys general, all from red states, sent a letter to the ABA urging it to drop DEI standards.
The ABA has reportedly been reviewing its standards on DEI since 2023, when the U.S. Supreme Court upended affirmative action with its ruling in favor of Students for Fair Admissions against Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Some Republican officials have celebrated the ABA’s move. “This is a victory for common sense! We are bringing meritocracy back to the legal system,” U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote on X.
ABA’s suspension of DEI standards comes after the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology dropped diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility from its accreditation criteria.
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Nearly 5,000 Detroit high school students have earned at least one $200 incentive for perfect attendance since early January.
High school students in the Detroit Public Schools Community District can earn $200 gift cards for each two-week period in which they have perfect attendance, from Jan. 6 through March 21.
There have been two cycles so far for which students have received the gift cards and, in addition to the 4,936 students who had perfect attendance in at least one of two-week periods, 2,028 have had perfect attendance in both cycles, according to data Superintendent Nikolai Vitti shared with Chalkbeat this week.
The attendance incentive is aimed at improving attendance in the district, where two-thirds of nearly 49,999 students were considered chronically absent during the 2023-24 school year. The incentive is among a number of efforts the district has employed over the years to create an attendance-going culture among students. The district has invested heavily into attendance agents to improve attendance and this school year announced that students with extremely high rates of chronic absenteeism will be held back a grade at the K-8 level and required to repeat classes at the high school level.
The number of students earning the perfect attendance incentive is a fraction of the nearly 15,000 high school students in the district, leading one school board member to question last week whether the incentive is working. But Vitti said he is encouraged that the program is getting more high school students to class and resulting in a small decrease in the chronic absenteeism rate for high school students. He said the district and board will have to evaluate the program’s success at the end of the school year.
Chronic absenteeism has been one of the district’s biggest challenges for years. The chronic absenteeism rate has declined, from a high of nearly 80% at the height of the pandemic, when quarantining rules meant many students missed school because of COVID exposure. But last school year’s much lower chronic absenteeism rate of 66% still means it is difficult to have consistency in the classroom and improve academic achievement.
Students in Michigan are chronically absent when they miss 10%, or 18 days in a 180-day school year. Statewide, 30% of students are considered chronically absent, compared to 23% nationally. A recent education scorecard cited the state’s rate as being a factor in students’ slow academic recovery from the pandemic.
Here are some of the highlights of the students who’ve received the incentive so far::
At a Detroit school board meeting last week, Vitti said the statistic showing that just 10% of the students who earned the incentive already had perfect attendance is an indication that “this is not just rewarding those that have already been going to school.”
Board member Monique Bryant questioned what school leaders are doing to promote the incentive to students who haven’t earned it.
Bryant suggested that data Vitti shared at the meeting showing that chronic absenteeism is down by 5 percentage points for high school students since the incentive began is an illustration that most students aren’t rising to the goal of the incentive.
Vitti responded that it depends on how you look at the data.
“Right now, chronic absenteeism at the high school levels improved by five percentage points,” Vitti said. “That means that 700 high school students are not chronically absent where they were last year. I’d also say that at least on the 97th day, our chronic absenteeism at the high school levels is the lowest it’s been since the pandemic.”
The question for board members to decide at the end of the school year is whether the incentive “is the right investment with other challenges that we have districtwide,” Vitti said. “But I think the data is suggesting it’s working for many students … but not all.”
Board member Ida Simmons Short urged the district to survey students to learn more about what is preventing them from coming to school.
The causes of chronic absenteeism are numerous and include physical and mental health reasons, lack of transportation,and lack of affordable housing. Most of them tie back to poverty. Vitti specifically cited transportation, because half of the students in the district don’t attend their neighborhood school and the district doesn’t provide school bus transportation for high school students, who must take city buses to get to school.
“Sometimes they’re unreliable, they’re late, they’re too far away from where the child lives,” Vitti said.
Vitti said traditional school bus transportation for high school students “was decimated” under emergency management and it could cost between $50 million and $100 million to bring that level of transportation back.
Another factor, Vitti said, is that for some students, school isn’t relevant. Middle and high school students, in particular, “struggle to understand, ‘why am I going to school every day? How is this connected to what I’m going to I need to know for life.’”
Mi’Kah West, a Cass Technical High School student who serves as a student representative on the board, said that when talking to other members of the District Executive Youth Council last week, many said students overall are excited about the incentive.
One thing that stuck out, she said, was council members saying they heard students in the hallways or on social media saying they were coming to school because they want the money.
“And, while we don’t want to just say we want to come to school for the money,” West said, “I think it’s important to see that students … may have stayed home because they don’t want to come to school, but they’re willing to come to school now.”
Lori Higgins is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at [email protected].
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
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Highlighting excellence in community college education, Achieving the Dream (ATD) has named 23 institutions as either Leader Colleges or Leader Colleges of
Among the honorees is Bellevue College, which earned its first Leader College designation since joining the ATD Network in 2017.
The honor recognizes institutions that have demonstrated measurable gains in student outcomes and fostered meaningful institutional change. Eight colleges achieved the prestigious Leader College of Distinction status, including three first-time recipients: College of Lake County (Illinois), Little Priest Tribal College (Nebraska), and Southwestern Oregon Community College.
Bellevue College’s recognition as one of ten new Leader Colleges reflects its successful efforts to transform the student experience.
“We are honored Achieving the Dream selected our institution as a Leader College,” said Bellevue College Provost Dr. Jess Clark. “Since joining ATD, Bellevue College has seen increased markers of student success and retention. We look forward to continuing our commitment to transforming the student experience so that all students will find success at Bellevue College.”
The designation as a Leader College is particularly significant as these institutions play a crucial role in accelerating the adoption of effective practices across higher education. Leader Colleges are recognized for their work in whole-college reform and their innovative approaches to sharing knowledge about evidence-based reform strategies with other institutions.
Dr. Karen A. Stout, president and CEO of Achieving the Dream, noted the importance of these recognitions.
“These colleges exemplify excellence within the ATD Network, achieving measurable gains in student outcomes and fostering impactful change within their institutions and communities,” she said. “Their dedication to using data-informed approaches to create meaningful opportunities for students and their communities serves as a powerful example for all institutions of higher education.”
The 2025 cohort also includes five colleges that have recertified their Leader College status: Community College of Beaver County (Pennsylvania), Highline College (Washington), Lone Star College System (Texas), Passaic County Community College (New Jersey), and Wallace State Community College (Alabama).
ATD’s Leader College of Distinction award, created in 2018, sets an even higher bar for institutional achievement. Recipients must demonstrate improvement in three or more student outcome metrics, including completion or transfer rates, and show reduced equity gaps for at least two student groups. This year’s five returning Leader Colleges of Distinction include Chattanooga State Community College (Tennessee), Lemoore College (California), North Central State College (Ohio), Odessa College (Texas), and Pierce College (Washington).
As a partner to more than 300 community colleges nationwide, Achieving the Dream focuses on what it calls “Whole College Transformation,” providing integrated support for everything from leadership and data analysis to equity initiatives and student support strategies. The organization’s vision centers on helping colleges become catalysts for equitable and economically vibrant communities, driving improvements in access, completion rates, and employment outcomes for all students.
For institutions like Bellevue College, this recognition validates their ongoing commitment to student success and institutional improvement. As part of the ATD Network, these colleges continue to work toward creating meaningful opportunities that transform not just individual students’ lives, but entire communities through the power of education.
