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Trump Administration Reverses Course on International Student Status Terminations

In a significant policy reversal, the Trump administration has begun restoring the legal status of international students whose records were terminated in recent weeks, according to statements made by a Justice Department attorney during a federal court hearing in Oakland, California on Friday.

Elizabeth D. Kurlan, representing the Justice Department, informed the court that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is reactivating student records in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVIS) system while developing “a framework for status record termination” to guide future policies.

The abrupt reversals began Thursday afternoon when international students and university administrators across the country discovered that many previously terminated records had been unexpectedly restored in the system.

“It’s like somebody flipped a light switch on,” described Jath Shao, a Cleveland-based immigration attorney representing affected students.

The policy change follows weeks of controversy after the administration began revoking visas and terminating the legal status of thousands of international students, particularly targeting those who had participated in political activism or had previous legal infractions such as DUIs.

Higher education institutions have reported varying degrees of reinstatement. At the University of California, Berkeley, 12 of 23 affected international students have had their SEVIS records restored. Similar partial reinstatements have been reported at Rochester Institute of Technology and by attorneys representing students across multiple states.

Despite this development, significant concerns remain for international student populations. Legal experts also caution that terminated status records, even if reinstated, could potentially jeopardize future applications for permanent residency or other immigration benefits.

According to the Justice Department, ICE will continue to maintain authority to terminate records for legitimate violations of nonimmigrant status or other unlawful activity under the Immigration and Nationality Act. However, ICE will not terminate statuses solely based on findings in the National Crime Information Center, a computerized criminal history database that had been used to justify many of the recent terminations.

For higher education institutions, which rely heavily on international student enrollment for both academic diversity and financial stability, the policy reversals offer temporary relief while raising questions about the stability of immigration policies affecting campus communities.

Shao characterized the development as “a small but positive one” while emphasizing that more comprehensive protections are needed to ensure international students’ security within U.S. higher education institutions.

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April 25, 2025
How You Can Habituate the Circular Model of Reflection: Before-Action, During-Action, After-Action, and Beyond-Action – Faculty Focus

As scholar-teachers, we know that the habit of reflection can be a powerful tool for workplace learning and performance, which can separate high-performance professionals from mediocre ones.

Notedly, when educators engage in reflection, it is usually in the form of John Dewey: “We do not learn from experience…we learn from reflecting on experience.” This type of reflection is called after-action or on-action. However, often overlooked is that there are other forms of reflection. Further, reflection-after-action may not have the highest return of effort; or be the main task that drives the 20% of the effort that could result in the 80% of desired outcomes, the so-called 80/20 rule of which has been integrated in higher education.

That is, according to Donald Schon, who has written several of the most remarkable texts on reflection in the past several decades, educational practitioners should sift their reflection through during-action (or in-action), rather than primarily relying on after the action.

In contrast to Dewey, Schon’s reflection-during-action explicitly aligns with the idea that there is intellectual rigor in professional practice, such as those of us who are scholar-teachers. Here, Schon demonstrates that intellectual rigor lies in our knowing-in-action, which is tacit and gained through doing and experimenting. However, we are often unaware of tacit knowledge that underlies our activities and actions, especially when things do not go as planned.

Therefore, Schon has designed reflection-during-action in which we learn to frame and reframe unexpected outcomes, “talking-back” and “back-talking” to ourselves while teaching simultaneously. In turn, our actions and reactions can adequately address those unexpected classroom issues in real time. By implication, if the focal reflection is towards after the action, the classroom can become a bottleneck that hinders learning flows and creates more bad teaching days.

For Schon, while reflection-during-action is the most difficult to do, it has the highest RoE™ among the different types. Yet, Schon does not dismiss the importance of setting and reflecting a direction before the action in order to have a strategic plan before entering the classroom. Additionally, when leaving the classroom, the reflection-during-the action becomes the primary material for reflection after the action.

How I Approach the Circular Model of Reflection

In general, Schon’s model of reflection is practicable, where unexpected class issues can be identified and sufficiently solved immediately; together with before the action and after the action, the problem-setting and problem-solving can be iterated until desired results come about. Not to be overlooked is when educators circulate their knowing-in-action with and for others, this signifies beyond-action, cultivating double-loop learning for all to benefit from.

In experimenting with Schon’s reflective practices, I see the importance of connecting and sequencing the four types of reflection, as this has been implemented in practitioner fields such as nursing education and medical education. In particular, I have utilized this model when I teach a new course for the first time, improving an existing course, and/or experimenting with new teaching practices.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, I set a before-action directive in my international business for students to engage in a virtual consulting-based learning. This was done with one of the biggest US medical suppliers, which had to resolve a supply-chain bottleneck of importing medical supplies to American hospitals. The before-action directive included the anticipation of a good deal of messiness and muddling through during classes.

In the above context, I saw my pandemic classroom as a laboratory to prototype and test new pedagogical moves, and where unexpected issues are expected to come to light. Thus, I paid attention and reflected during the action in order to construct adjustments, while doing hybrid-teaching at the same time. Through reflection-after-action I then take a step back and “replay” why, how, and what effects did adjustments have; whether how I could handle those adjustments better; and whether those adjustments change my way of knowing. I then crafted those takeaways into my reflection-before-action for the next class.

In context of the 80/20 rule and its variation, I estimated that my effort in reflection during-action for the above was about 20 percent; and in which about 50 percent of the messiness and unexpected surprises were adequately addressed. Whereas my effort in reflection after-action was about 10 percent and with results about 20 percent, while before-action was about 5 percent with 10 percent in terms of results.

I see the 80/20 rule has an on-going process in which the next time I teach the same course, my goal is to move towards achieving 90% of desired outcomes. As a matter of good practice, I wrote up a Faculty Focus article, sharing my experiences of reflective practice through beyond-action.

Why You Should Engage in the Circular Model of Reflection

By some accounts, Schon’s reflective practice has ushered and advanced that professional practitioners such as scholar-teachers exhibit a form of intelligence, a complex form of professional creativity. As scientists produce new knowledge in their labs, Schon believes that practitioners like scholar-teachers should generate their knowing-in-action –  connecting knowledge generation, best practices, and administration policy.

“When someone reflects in action,” Don Schon states, “he becomes a researcher in the practice context” (Schön, 1983, p.68). For scholar-teachers, I interpret this to mean that we learn more about good teaching as we teach, and even more so when we deliberately integrate reflective practice to generate knowledge for ourselves and for our profession.

When we engage in the circular model of reflection – before-action, during-action, after-action, and beyond-action – we are explicitly creating new data. In turn, we can immediately utilize new information to further our faculty assessment reports, professional development, academic writings, and research publication.

If “we teach who we are,” the circular model of reflection can inform us for our espoused theory (i.e. we say what we do) and our theory in action (i.e. what we actually do). That is, when do make our reflective practice ‘modus operandi,’ we declare our commitment in developing our professional knowledge and artistry.

However, there is an ongoing criticism of the circular model of reflection, where reflection-during-action is thought to be too difficult for scholar-teachers; and there aren’t enough quality examples of when and how to do it in higher education. Interestingly, Schon would probably agree with the above. Ideally, faculty development programs could promote and illustrate that reflection during the action can be learned. That being said, Schon’s reflection-during-action is indeed being practiced in nursing education, medical education, acting schools, and professional sports.

How You Can Apply the Circular Model of Reflection

As mentioned earlier, reflection can be done in four ways: before-action, during-action, after-action, and beyond-action. In contrast to conventional practice of primarily reflecting after the action or significantly sifting to Schon’s reflection during the action, engage in all four types of reflection. First, decide what class is appropriate, such as a course that you expect a good deal of unexpected issues and problems due to the newness of teaching the course topics; experimenting new curriculum materials; new pedagogical approaches to a course; or improving and addressing student course evaluation and student feedback.

Before the action or before the lecture, set directive goals for your action, including naming the purpose and intention for that lecture along with anticipation of surprises and struggles that could emerge. Write them down and have it with you as you start the lecture.

During the lecture, focus on reflection-during-action. That is, while you are lecturing on the content knowledge, have a reflective conversation with yourself (i.e., back-talk and talk-back) on whether the delivery of the content is aligned with your directive goals. When blind spots and shortcomings arise, pay attention to how you reframe them in order to get back on track. When your class ends, write down the during-action reflection as soon as possible.

After the lecture, step back before assessing your reflection notes that you written down. Here, you could significantly benefit by recording your class. When you reflect after the action, see it as replaying or “watching film” of your teaching. Focus on the knowing-in-action, so that if a similar situation occurs, you can talk-back to yourself and reframe the situation more effectively. Write them down for the next class, including adjustment needed for before-action and during-action.

For beyond-action or when the course is over, assess the efficiency of the above reflective practices through the 80/20 rule. That is, estimate the percentage of effort for each reflection, as well as how the effort of each affected the overall desired outcomes. Organize the materials related to the reflective practices and embed them in your faculty assessment report.

Lastly, determine and share with others whether you would use the above reflective practices again.

Conclusion

Overall, the circular model of reflection is designed and promoted as a means to advance professional practitioners, including scholar-teachers. In particular, scholar-teachers can develop and exhibit a form of intelligence and a complex form of creativity. So that they are well equipped to adequately make moment-to-moment decision making and in-time adjustment during class.

Long Le is an Associate Teaching Professor in Management & Entrepreneurship at Santa Clara University. He is also a Faculty Fellow for Collaborative Development for Innovative Teaching.

References

Argyris, C. (1977). “Double Loop Learning in Organizations,” Harvard Business Review.

Baily, J. and S. Rehamn (2022). “Don’t Underestimate the Power of Self-Reflection,” Harvard Business Review.

Dewey, J. (1938, reprinted 1997). Experience and Education. New York: Touchstone.

Edwards, S. (2017). “Reflecting Differently. New dimensions: Reflection-Before-Action and Reflection-Beyond-Action,” International Practice Development Journal 7 (1) [2].

Lurie, S. (2015). “Boost Your Efficiency With the 80/20 Rule,” Inside Higher Ed, Feb. 3.

Lynch, G. (2014). “What We Can Learn from a Bad Day of Teaching,” Faculty Focus, May 12.

Munby, H. (1989). “Reflection-In-Action and Reflection-On-Action,” Current Issues in Education, Volume 9, Fall.

Russel, T. (2005). “Can Reflective Practice be Taught?,” Reflective Practice, 6(2)

Schön, D. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Guildford, UK: Arena.

Schön, D. (1991). The Reflective Turn: Case Studies in and One Educational Practice. New York: Teachers Press, Columbia University.

Source link

April 25, 2025
How You Can Habituate the Circular Model of Reflection: Before-Action, During-Action, After-Action, and Beyond-Action – Faculty Focus

As scholar-teachers, we know that the habit of reflection can be a powerful tool for workplace learning and performance, which can separate high-performance professionals from mediocre ones.

Notedly, when educators engage in reflection, it is usually in the form of John Dewey: “We do not learn from experience…we learn from reflecting on experience.” This type of reflection is called after-action or on-action. However, often overlooked is that there are other forms of reflection. Further, reflection-after-action may not have the highest return of effort; or be the main task that drives the 20% of the effort that could result in the 80% of desired outcomes, the so-called 80/20 rule of which has been integrated in higher education.

That is, according to Donald Schon, who has written several of the most remarkable texts on reflection in the past several decades, educational practitioners should sift their reflection through during-action (or in-action), rather than primarily relying on after the action.

In contrast to Dewey, Schon’s reflection-during-action explicitly aligns with the idea that there is intellectual rigor in professional practice, such as those of us who are scholar-teachers. Here, Schon demonstrates that intellectual rigor lies in our knowing-in-action, which is tacit and gained through doing and experimenting. However, we are often unaware of tacit knowledge that underlies our activities and actions, especially when things do not go as planned.

Therefore, Schon has designed reflection-during-action in which we learn to frame and reframe unexpected outcomes, “talking-back” and “back-talking” to ourselves while teaching simultaneously. In turn, our actions and reactions can adequately address those unexpected classroom issues in real time. By implication, if the focal reflection is towards after the action, the classroom can become a bottleneck that hinders learning flows and creates more bad teaching days.

For Schon, while reflection-during-action is the most difficult to do, it has the highest RoE™ among the different types. Yet, Schon does not dismiss the importance of setting and reflecting a direction before the action in order to have a strategic plan before entering the classroom. Additionally, when leaving the classroom, the reflection-during-the action becomes the primary material for reflection after the action.

How I Approach the Circular Model of Reflection

In general, Schon’s model of reflection is practicable, where unexpected class issues can be identified and sufficiently solved immediately; together with before the action and after the action, the problem-setting and problem-solving can be iterated until desired results come about. Not to be overlooked is when educators circulate their knowing-in-action with and for others, this signifies beyond-action, cultivating double-loop learning for all to benefit from.

In experimenting with Schon’s reflective practices, I see the importance of connecting and sequencing the four types of reflection, as this has been implemented in practitioner fields such as nursing education and medical education. In particular, I have utilized this model when I teach a new course for the first time, improving an existing course, and/or experimenting with new teaching practices.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, I set a before-action directive in my international business for students to engage in a virtual consulting-based learning. This was done with one of the biggest US medical suppliers, which had to resolve a supply-chain bottleneck of importing medical supplies to American hospitals. The before-action directive included the anticipation of a good deal of messiness and muddling through during classes.

In the above context, I saw my pandemic classroom as a laboratory to prototype and test new pedagogical moves, and where unexpected issues are expected to come to light. Thus, I paid attention and reflected during the action in order to construct adjustments, while doing hybrid-teaching at the same time. Through reflection-after-action I then take a step back and “replay” why, how, and what effects did adjustments have; whether how I could handle those adjustments better; and whether those adjustments change my way of knowing. I then crafted those takeaways into my reflection-before-action for the next class.

In context of the 80/20 rule and its variation, I estimated that my effort in reflection during-action for the above was about 20 percent; and in which about 50 percent of the messiness and unexpected surprises were adequately addressed. Whereas my effort in reflection after-action was about 10 percent and with results about 20 percent, while before-action was about 5 percent with 10 percent in terms of results.

I see the 80/20 rule has an on-going process in which the next time I teach the same course, my goal is to move towards achieving 90% of desired outcomes. As a matter of good practice, I wrote up a Faculty Focus article, sharing my experiences of reflective practice through beyond-action.

Why You Should Engage in the Circular Model of Reflection

By some accounts, Schon’s reflective practice has ushered and advanced that professional practitioners such as scholar-teachers exhibit a form of intelligence, a complex form of professional creativity. As scientists produce new knowledge in their labs, Schon believes that practitioners like scholar-teachers should generate their knowing-in-action –  connecting knowledge generation, best practices, and administration policy.

“When someone reflects in action,” Don Schon states, “he becomes a researcher in the practice context” (Schön, 1983, p.68). For scholar-teachers, I interpret this to mean that we learn more about good teaching as we teach, and even more so when we deliberately integrate reflective practice to generate knowledge for ourselves and for our profession.

When we engage in the circular model of reflection – before-action, during-action, after-action, and beyond-action – we are explicitly creating new data. In turn, we can immediately utilize new information to further our faculty assessment reports, professional development, academic writings, and research publication.

If “we teach who we are,” the circular model of reflection can inform us for our espoused theory (i.e. we say what we do) and our theory in action (i.e. what we actually do). That is, when do make our reflective practice ‘modus operandi,’ we declare our commitment in developing our professional knowledge and artistry.

However, there is an ongoing criticism of the circular model of reflection, where reflection-during-action is thought to be too difficult for scholar-teachers; and there aren’t enough quality examples of when and how to do it in higher education. Interestingly, Schon would probably agree with the above. Ideally, faculty development programs could promote and illustrate that reflection during the action can be learned. That being said, Schon’s reflection-during-action is indeed being practiced in nursing education, medical education, acting schools, and professional sports.

How You Can Apply the Circular Model of Reflection

As mentioned earlier, reflection can be done in four ways: before-action, during-action, after-action, and beyond-action. In contrast to conventional practice of primarily reflecting after the action or significantly sifting to Schon’s reflection during the action, engage in all four types of reflection. First, decide what class is appropriate, such as a course that you expect a good deal of unexpected issues and problems due to the newness of teaching the course topics; experimenting new curriculum materials; new pedagogical approaches to a course; or improving and addressing student course evaluation and student feedback.

Before the action or before the lecture, set directive goals for your action, including naming the purpose and intention for that lecture along with anticipation of surprises and struggles that could emerge. Write them down and have it with you as you start the lecture.

During the lecture, focus on reflection-during-action. That is, while you are lecturing on the content knowledge, have a reflective conversation with yourself (i.e., back-talk and talk-back) on whether the delivery of the content is aligned with your directive goals. When blind spots and shortcomings arise, pay attention to how you reframe them in order to get back on track. When your class ends, write down the during-action reflection as soon as possible.

After the lecture, step back before assessing your reflection notes that you written down. Here, you could significantly benefit by recording your class. When you reflect after the action, see it as replaying or “watching film” of your teaching. Focus on the knowing-in-action, so that if a similar situation occurs, you can talk-back to yourself and reframe the situation more effectively. Write them down for the next class, including adjustment needed for before-action and during-action.

For beyond-action or when the course is over, assess the efficiency of the above reflective practices through the 80/20 rule. That is, estimate the percentage of effort for each reflection, as well as how the effort of each affected the overall desired outcomes. Organize the materials related to the reflective practices and embed them in your faculty assessment report.

Lastly, determine and share with others whether you would use the above reflective practices again.

Conclusion

Overall, the circular model of reflection is designed and promoted as a means to advance professional practitioners, including scholar-teachers. In particular, scholar-teachers can develop and exhibit a form of intelligence and a complex form of creativity. So that they are well equipped to adequately make moment-to-moment decision making and in-time adjustment during class.

Long Le is an Associate Teaching Professor in Management & Entrepreneurship at Santa Clara University. He is also a Faculty Fellow for Collaborative Development for Innovative Teaching.

References

Argyris, C. (1977). “Double Loop Learning in Organizations,” Harvard Business Review.

Baily, J. and S. Rehamn (2022). “Don’t Underestimate the Power of Self-Reflection,” Harvard Business Review.

Dewey, J. (1938, reprinted 1997). Experience and Education. New York: Touchstone.

Edwards, S. (2017). “Reflecting Differently. New dimensions: Reflection-Before-Action and Reflection-Beyond-Action,” International Practice Development Journal 7 (1) [2].

Lurie, S. (2015). “Boost Your Efficiency With the 80/20 Rule,” Inside Higher Ed, Feb. 3.

Lynch, G. (2014). “What We Can Learn from a Bad Day of Teaching,” Faculty Focus, May 12.

Munby, H. (1989). “Reflection-In-Action and Reflection-On-Action,” Current Issues in Education, Volume 9, Fall.

Russel, T. (2005). “Can Reflective Practice be Taught?,” Reflective Practice, 6(2)

Schön, D. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Guildford, UK: Arena.

Schön, D. (1991). The Reflective Turn: Case Studies in and One Educational Practice. New York: Teachers Press, Columbia University.

Source link

April 25, 2025
Balls to left, Willetts to the right, creates an industrial strategy with a gaping hole for universities

Denizens of public service reform former Shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls, and former Universities Minister, David Willetts, have reignited the debates of 00s with new arguments on when government should intervene in the economy.

In two recent papers, one authored by Willetts alone, and one by Dan Turner, Huw Spencer, Julia Pamilih, Vidit Doshi, and Ed Balls, two different versions of industrial strategies emerge. For Willetts, taking on the industrial strategy directly, there is a world of gently incentivising universities to align their fundamentals with an industrial strategy which picks some good areas to invest in if not winners . For Balls, addressing the industrial strategy via Bidenomics, there is a bazooka of more funding, support, and investment, to break the economy from its malaise, with far more far-reaching consequences for universities.

Survivor

Balls and Willetts are interesting messengers for new industrial policy. Back in 2014 Balls delivered a speech to London Business School entitled Beyond the Third Way. In it he argued that

After the debacle of British Leyland in the 1970s, ‘industrial policy’ have been dirty words in Britain. Some remain cautious about the politics of ‘picking winners’ – but that misses the lesson of the 1970s. Back then, it was the industrial losers who did the picking and good money was poured after bad.

His argument, albeit oddly worded, was that industrial strategies had focussed on the industries that were already in terminal decline. For him, industrial strategies had not been maps to the future but buckets to bailout the important but failing industries of the past.

Willetts was even more pugnacious still. Back in 2013 he was not willing to cede that the government should back winners, that would be too much like the economic blunders of the 1980s, but that

Focusing on R&D and on particular technologies is not the same as picking winners, which notoriously became losers picking the pockets of tax payers. It is not backing particular businesses. Instead we are focusing on big general purpose technologies. Each one has implications potentially so significant that they stretch way beyond any one particular industrial sector. Information Technology has transformed retailing for example. Satellite services could deliver precision agriculture.

At the time, Balls gave barely a mention to universities beyond noting that the UK’s educated workforce struggled to find jobs to meet their qualifications. Willetts, in a style familiar to anyone following industrial policy, mentioned universities mostly (albeit not exclusively) as tools to promote wider policy objectives not instruments in their own right.

Fast forward a decade or so and a lot has changed.

Frosted tips

In his latest piece for the Resolution Foundation, How to do industrial strategy, Willetts has a clear view of what an industrial strategy is. It’s not about picking winners but about picking some obvious areas of strength for investment while freeing up some capacity to allow industries to strike their own sector deals. The strategy should not necessarily be about new money but about marshalling resources around industries for example opening up supply chains, easing procurement routes, and management training.

It is in Willetts’ views of the relationships between industrial strategy and higher education where things get really interesting. He is cognisant of the sometime disconnect between university education and skills needs and writes that

The University of Sunderland runs automotive engineering course directly serving the automotive facilities nearby. Some universities include in their degree programmes elements specifically designed with local business requirements in mind. The Government’s new entity, Skills England, should help promote these.

The Vice Chancellor of the University of Sunderland is now of course the Vice Chair of Skills England. However, it is interesting that for all of the fanfare of skills England the level of intervention he proposes is to promote these industrial links. He does not advocate for greater interventions by government nor employers. He promotes the idea of kitemarks for programmes aligned to industrial priorities, more funding competitions for business schools, and Centres for Doctoral Training co-funded with business.

It is not surprising that the man who invented much of the current higher education architecture does not call for its complete reform but his proposals seem modest given the ongoing economic collapse the country is enduring.

However, Willetts is perturbed by absence of universities from the industrial strategy green paper which he describes as “very odd”. His advice here is to encourage greater incubation of university start-ups, remove the numbers of spin-outs as a measure of success to discourage their premature release, and get universities to reduce their stakes in spin-outs. Again, all entirely sensible but not very large for the enormous challenges ahead. His more radical idea, innovation vouchers to support businesses to use university expertise, is a rehash of ideas that have been used across the UK including in Dundee to bring together businesses and academics around gaming. The trick is not to issue these vouchers generally but to target them at businesses with latent potential, where there are regional strengths, and commensurate university expertise.

Destiny’s Child

And this opens up a fundamental tension which Balls’ paper tries to address. Whether an industrial strategy is primarily about economic growth of the country or regions, investment in leading or latent assets, and how far the government should intervene. In a co authored paper, What should the UK learn from Bidenomics, Balls et al imagine the forthcoming industrial strategy as an opportunity to ruthlessly focus on the things that are strategic for the future of the UK’s economy. As they conclude in their paper

With clear goals in place, the toolkit of the Industrial Strategy should then seek to minimise the risk of capture by incumbent firms. That means using rules-based mechanisms like tax credits to realise clear growth objectives, crowding in private investment through public incentives, while resisting the pressure to reduce competition or favour incumbents.

Their view is the goal is not to ease the path for winners but to pick a few priority areas and support them with general levers of support that would benefit a range of firms. One of the lessons from Bidenomics is that their industrial policy succeeded on the basis that it was massive with $108bn of investment in energy deals alone. Balls and his co-authors highlight the need to support and expand areas of existing economic strength, this includes universities and spending outside of the golden triangle.

On the face of it the Balls proposition is more appealing. The basis of his argument would seem to be that if the government simultaneously invests in its leading assets while encouraging competition it can grab the best of both worlds. A more dynamic economy with more funding for the leading assets. The challenge is, as the paper acknowledges, the economic success of Bidenomics was also predicated on an appetite to allow creative destruction. Allowing zombie firms to die and workers to be made redundant and moved to more productive parts of the economy in order for the economy to grow. The paper refers to labour market churn and new business formation as the secret sauce “which appears to have contributed to higher productivity, stronger job creation, and faster growth.”

Blockbuster

Any decision ever to make any public investment implies winners and losers. The real debate is the extent to which the government should back those winners.

The Willetts view of the world would see universities broadly fulfilling the same role they do now with a bit of new funding for collaboration. The more challenging view by Balls and his colleagues is that economic dynamism is inherently linked to creating and destroying more business and labour market churn. This would not only mean that universities would have to adapt more rapidly in their kinds of labour market work, skills training, CPD, KTPs and so on. It would also mean that they may also find themselves in urgent need of yet another political narrative, levelling up, securonomics, whatever next, in an ever changing policy landscape.

The challenge that has yet to be fixed in any industrial strategy is regional inequality. Even America with all of its economic levers to pull still has many places that have been “hollowed out” with a mixed record of turning things round through public investment. Any university that can play a distinct role in this puzzle is likely not only to win the favour of the government but solve one of the biggest impediments to the UK’s productivity, and by proxy the quality of life of its people.

The Balls view of industrial strategy as a tool for economic dynamism, the Willetts view of industrial strategy as a tool for reorientating government and reorganising bits of the economy, may both lose out to a Chancellor who may feel she has little fiscal headroom to make dramatic economic interventions. For universities, the opportunity is to define their role in the government’s central economic policy, if they do not their role will be defined for them.

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April 25, 2025
Podcast: Portugal special | Wonkhe

This week on the podcast the SUs team has been on a study tour to universities in Lisbon in Portugal, and have reflections on everything from space to food, from interdisciplinarity to curriculum design and from Praxe to ribbon burning.

With Khadiza Hossein, VP Education at UWE SU, Emillia Zirker, Student Representation Officer at Lincoln SU, Gary Hughes, CEO at Durham SU, Mack Marshall, Community and Policy Officer at Wonkhe and hosted by Jim Dickinson, Associate Editor at Wonkhe.

Those who fight don’t always win, but those who don’t fight always lose

Students should be co-authors of their education

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April 25, 2025
Education Department’s Anti-DEI Guidance Blocked

The Education Department won’t be able to enforce its guidance that declared all race-based programming and activities illegal following two court orders Thursday.

Federal judges in New Hampshire and Maryland handed down the rulings after finding plaintiffs in the two separate lawsuits were likely to succeed in proving that the Feb. 14 Dear Colleague letter violated procedural standards and the First Amendment. Prior to the orders, colleges and K-12 schools that failed to comply with the letter risked their federal funding.

“Although the 2025 letter does not make clear what exactly it prohibits, it makes at least one thing clear: schools should not come close to anything that could be considered ‘DEI,’ lest they be deemed to have guessed wrong,” the New Hampshire judge wrote. And since loss of federal grants could cripple institutions, “it is predictable—if not obvious—that [they] will eliminate all vestiges of DEI to avoid even the possibility of funding termination,” regardless of whether it is an example of executive overreach.

The New Hampshire court’s preliminary injunction, which was issued first, was limited to institutions that are members of the plaintiff association, leaving many colleges and universities vulnerable. But just hours later, a Maryland judge filed her opinion that prevented the letter from taking effect until the case is resolved, which essentially serves as a nationwide injunction.

The injunctions do not, however, block all of Trump’s attacks on DEI. The Dear Colleague letter was just one aspect of the president’s multipronged strategy.

In a separate lawsuit from the NAACP challenging the department’s guidance and actions related to DEI, a District of Columbia judge blocked the department from requiring that K-12 schools certify that they don’t have any DEI programs. Thursday, April 24, was the deadline to comply. The department threatened to withhold federal funding from K-12 schools that didn’t meet the certification requirement. The judge ruled that “because the certification requirement conditions serious financial and other penalties on insufficiently defined conduct,” the plaintiffs were likely to succeed.

Since its release, the Dear Colleague letter has sent K-12 and higher education advocates across the country into an uproar as lawyers and others argued that the document was a prime example of Trump abusing presidential power.

The Education Department said in the guidance that the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which banned race-conscious admissions, also made any race-based programming, resources and financial aid illegal. The department gave colleges two weeks to comply. A few weeks after the letter took effect, the Office for Civil Rights opened dozens of investigations into colleges, accusing them of violating the guidance in the letter.

Some colleges and universities, in an effort to comply with the letter, began to retract, or at least rebrand, their DEI activities, resources and scholarships. Some institutions, including the Universities of Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and Alaska, responded by scrubbing their websites of words like “diversity” and “inclusion.” Others, including Ohio State University, shuttered DEI offices and changed the eligibility requirements for certain programs entirely. (Those changes were made despite the advice of some academic associations to avoid pre-emptive compliance.)

On March 3, the Education Department released an FAQ that watered down and provided clarity on some of the letter’s bold orders. But still, higher education groups continued to push back, and by the end of the week, both lawsuits had been filed.

The one in New Hampshire was led by the National Education Association, the nation’s largest K-12 union, and the other in Maryland was from the American Federation of Teachers, a union that includes many higher education faculty.

The unions argued that the letter and its threat to cut federal funding violated the First and Fifth Amendments, using vague language that exceeded the Education Department’s statutory authority. They also alleged that the scrubbing of DEI programs as well as the potential funding cuts would weaken schools’ and universities’ ability to act as tools of socioeconomic mobility.

“This letter is an unlawful attempt by the department to impose this administration’s particular views of how schools should operate as if it were the law. But it is not,” the AFT complaint stated. “Title VI’s requirements have not changed, nor has the meaning of the SFFA decision, despite the Department’s views on the matter.” (Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin.)

At a recent hearing in the Maryland case, the Department of Education argued that its letter was merely a reminder that existing civil rights laws protect white children from discrimination just as much as children from a minority group, Maryland Matters reported.

“It’s highly unlikely that they’re going to go after a school because they taught a certain book,” U.S. attorney Abhishek Kambli said. “All this letter does is just clarify what the existing obligations are under Title VI [of the Civil Rights Act].”

But the Maryland judge didn’t buy that argument, and she sided with the plaintiffs, as did the New Hampshire judge.

The New Hampshire judge said the policies outlined in the letter failed to appropriately define DEI and therefore threatened to erode the “foundational principles” of free speech and academic freedom.

The Maryland judge, on the other hand, approached her case from a perspective of “substantive and procedural legality,” saying the Trump administration’s letter failed to hold its own on that front as well.

“Plaintiffs have shown that the government likely did not follow the procedures it should have, and those procedural failures have tangibly and concretely harmed the Plaintiffs,” Gallagher wrote. “This case, especially, underscores why following the proper procedures, even when it is burdensome, is so important.”

And though the orders are just temporary holds and litigation will continue, education stakeholders consider it a win.

“The nationwide injunction will pause at least part of the chaos the Trump administration is unleashing in classrooms and learning communities throughout the country, and it will provide the time for our clients to demonstrate clearly in court how these attacks on public education are unconstitutional and should be permanently stopped,” said Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, a pro bono legal group that is representing AFT in Maryland.

AFT president Randi Weingarten added in a statement that “the court agreed that this vague and clearly unconstitutional requirement is a grave attack on students, our profession, honest history, and knowledge itself.”

For the NEA, the New Hampshire decision was “a victory for students, parents, and educators” that blocked an “unprecedented and unlawful” effort to control American schools.

“Across the country educators do everything in their power to support every student, ensuring each feels safe, seen, and is prepared for the future,” NEA president Becky Pringle said in a news release. “Today’s ruling allows educators and schools to continue to be guided by what’s best for students, not by the threat of illegal restrictions and punishment.”

The Department of Education did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment prior to the publishing of this story.

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April 25, 2025
Real inclusion is there for the taking

Life with a disability or chronic condition is inconsistent.

On good days, personal and professional obligations are met, and a reasonable, if not uninterruptedly good, quality of life is enjoyed – there is the mental and physical capacity to interact with others.

On bad days, the limitations suddenly imposed lead to frustration, and obligations narrowly met, if at all.

Interacting with others outside the immediate family is impossible, constituting a demand on personal resources which are fully deployed just trying to make it through the day.

As a disabled researcher, staying motivated while pursuing an academic course lasting for several years while at the whim of fluctuating health conditions can be a complex and often lonely process.

In my experience, trying to communicate this reality to colleagues and providers is met with compassion initially.

However, a more comprehensive response over time to the shifting sands of life with a disability is often lacking. This is redolent of how professionals react to change in the workplace, when it is introduced at a strategic level – when long-established processes and systems are in place, lip service is paid to new initiatives but in reality, says psychologist John Fisher:

…people maintain operating as they always have denying that there is any change at all.

When everyone says – and often mean – “Poor you”, but then carry on regardless, this does little to enhance motivation for the disabled colleague for whom being at the mercy of their condition is a real, and lasting, psychological drain.

Making a difference

So what can a higher education provider do to reduce this sense of being a burden, and bolster motivation for disabled students, researchers and colleagues?

David McClelland advances the theory that people are motivated by achievement (n-ach), by authority (n-pow) or by affiliation (n-affil) to varying degrees, and says the responsibility lies with the organisation to create the right conditions to motivate, arguing convincingly that:

…any behavioural outcome is a function of determinants in both the person and the environment.

This means that the responsibility rests with the organisation to provide optimum conditions for every individual to be motivated and to perform, and this is an on-going process – not a once-yearly day of “awareness” for a particular condition.

The 21st of March is World Down Syndrome Day, but does sending our children to school in odd socks really transform people’s thinking about the condition? Disability support should be a strategic, year-round priority which informs the culture of organisations – and shouldn’t higher education providers, as the ultimate symbols of knowledge and understanding in our society, be leading the way?

This is not to say that changing any organisation’s culture is a quick or an easy process. Noel Tichy and Stratford Sharman identify three crucial steps which must be followed by strategic leaders seeking transformation – “awakening; envisioning; re-architecturing”.

The awakening stage involves a crucial shift from complacency in the status quo, by creating a shared understanding that the establishment cannot and should not continue in its current incarnation and needs to evolve. In the case of disabled colleagues, this deep understanding of the changes needed can only be achieved in consultation with those who are experiencing – first-hand and over time – the issues with the working environment and the general approach towards disability support.

Making this a “whole organisation” approach to consultation can be an opportunity to promote understanding and integration between disabled and non-disabled colleagues; research has found this to be:

…particularly powerful in bringing about change as it removed the onus from the individual and avoided disabled people being singled out.

While many universities have initiatives and working groups to consult with, and support, disabled students, researchers and staff, the socio-political landscape within which we are all immersed is impossible to ignore.

The current toxic, divisive rhetoric about people claiming sickness and disability benefit, and how they are costing the hard-working taxpayer too much money, could not be further from the positive vision of whole-organisation consultation on disability support.

The cuts to benefits which were announced by the government last month have resulted in widespread alarm amongst the disabled community – Scope says they constitute “a catastrophe for disabled peoples’ living standards and independence”.

The recent statement by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions that “taxpayers are paying millions more for the cost of failure” through “spending on working age sickness and disability” actively promotes resentment and social division between those who can work, and those who cannot.

Universities can change communities

Against this backdrop of blame and misinformation, it is difficult for those of us with disabilities to feel that we are not viewed by at least some individuals as burdensome and problematic. However, in the absence of a cultural shift coming into universities from society, perhaps university-led initiatives can begin to build cultures which will, over time, impact their local communities.

“Access Insights”, a project by Disabled Students UK, encapsulates this idea beautifully in their tagline, “We believe in the power of disability wisdom to better society”.

They recognise that disabled students have a deep understanding of how accessibility can be achieved in the university environment and offers institution-specific recommendations to universities who become Access Insight members. Using a evidence-based approach, they consult with disabled students to evaluate their experiences and pinpoint what is going well, as well as what needs to be improved.

In the same way, it is only via consultation with the disabled community and a shift in mindset away from “us and them” to “all of us together” that true accessibility in society can be achieved.

The higher education landscape has a responsibility to set the tone and the approach to disability awareness and support – the Access Insight model provides a blueprint for how organisations can begin to consult on, and take accountability for, their strengths and weaknesses in relation to disability support.

For me as a disabled student, I have a responsibility to speak up and show my university how they can make my course truly accessible; and my university has the responsibility to listen and to respond.

The question now is – can there be a wider impact for communities and society, if higher education providers demonstrate what truly inclusive environments could look like? The answer is out there for the taking – one conversation, one blog piece, at a time.

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April 24, 2025
Higher education postcard: Grey College, Durham

It’s 1959, and Durham University is still a federal university, with colleges in Durham and Newcastle. And expansion in Durham was underway. Elvet Hill, just south of the River Wear, had already seen St Mary’s College move in 1952 from its old site; and now a new college was being built.

The college was to be named Grey College, after Charles Grey, Prime Minister when the university was founded (Grey may also have been the earl who inspired the eponymous tea). The name was subject to some controversy: the alternative was Cromwell College, after regicide and Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell; Grey won by one vote.

And then on 6 March, catastrophe. There’s lots of detail in the report in the Shields Evening News, but the long and short is that the building was burned out. Notwithstanding the reviving tea that the firefighters were able to get. It was due to admit its first students in the next academic year, just six months later. And it did!

Clearly a get up and go spirit was needed, and that appears to be what happened. The college opened; the master paid from his own pocket for the hall to be panelled. Felix the Phoenix was adopted as a mascot.

The college expanded rapidly – this is, of course, in line with the general growth in UK HE at that time. By 1964 it had over 350 students, all men – a sevenfold growth in five years. And in 1966 it became the base for the USSR football team during the world cup. Their group games were played at Ayresome Park in Middlesbrough and Roker Park in Sunderland, so staying in Durham made sense. This was the USSR’s most successful world cup: they made it to the semi-finals, where they lost to Germany. There’s a nice – if somewhat long – telling of the story here.

Grey admitted its first women students in 1984. The title of its head changed from master to principal when Professor Sonia Virdee was appointed to the role in 2023. Heidi Alexander, at the time of writing Secretary of State for Transport, is an alumna; Nish Kumar, comedian, is also among its alumni.

And here’s a jigsaw of the card for you.

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April 24, 2025
Federal judges deal major blow to Education Department’s anti-DEI guidance

Two federal judges issued separate rulings Thursday that together dealt a major blow to the Trump administration’s recent guidance threatening to strip federal funding from colleges and K-12 schools that consider race in any of their policies, including scholarships and housing.

U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher ruled that the U.S. Department of Education did not follow proper procedures when issuing the Feb. 14 letter and postponed its effective date nationwide while the legal challenge against the guidance plays out.

The order came in response to a lawsuit from the American Federation of Teachers and other groups, which alleged that the guidance “radically upends” federal antidiscrimination law and is too vague for colleges and K-12 school officials to understand what conduct is prohibited.

The guidance interprets the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling against race-conscious college admissions to extend to every aspect of education, including financial aid, administrative support and graduation ceremonies.

According to AFT, the letter also implied that a wide variety of “core instruction, activities, and programs” used in teaching students — from diversity initiatives to instruction on systemic racism — could now be considered illegal discrimination.

The Feb. 14 letter asserted that colleges and K-12 schools had “toxically indoctrinated students with the false premise that the United States is built upon ‘systemic and structural racism’ and advanced discriminatory policies and practices.”

The Education Department appeared to walk back some of the strictest aspects of its guidance in a March Q&A document, but Gallagher wrote that the Q&A still lacked “sufficient clarity to override the express terms of the [Feb. 14] Letter.”

Gallagher, a federal distict judge in Maryland, said the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in their arguments that the letter exceeds the Education Department’s authority by attempting to exercise control over curriculum.

“The government cannot proclaim entire categories of classroom content discriminatory to side-step the bounds of its statutory authority,” Gallagher wrote.

AFT Maryland President Kenya Campbell hailed the court’s order on Thursday.

“This preliminary injunction pauses the chaos caused by targeting and attacking vital communities and temporarily protects the critical funding schools, from our K-12 schools to our higher education institutions, rely on,” Campbell said.

The order came the same day as another federal judge made a similar ruling in a separate case brought against the Feb. 14 guidance.

The National Education Association, its New Hampshire affiliate and the Center for Black Educator Development sued the Education Department in early March, arguing the guidance undermines the free speech rights of educators.

Although the plaintiffs had sought a nationwide injunction, federal Judge Landya McCafferty, ruling for New Hampshire district court, only blocked enforcement of the guidance for federally funded colleges and schools that employ or contract with the plaintiffs’ members. NEA alone has about 3 million members, including higher education workers.

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April 24, 2025
Searches Were About Vandalism of Michigan Leaders’ Homes

The Michigan attorney general’s office revealed Thursday that the police searches Wednesday in Ann Arbor, Canton and Ypsilanti were part of a yearlong investigation into “evidently coordinated” vandalism, including pro-Palestine graffiti and in some cases shattered glass at the homes of the University of Michigan’s president, provost, chief investment officer and one regent, Jordan Acker.

In a news release, the office of Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, said there were many “related criminal acts.” It listed 12 locations where incidents—spanning February 2024 to last month—are under investigation, including the four university leaders’ homes.

“It is currently estimated that the total damage from these incidents is approximately $100,000,” the release said. “In all cases, the crimes were committed in the middle of the night and in one case upon a residence wherein children were sleeping and awoken. In multiple instances windows were smashed, and twice noxious chemical substances were propelled into homes. At every site, political slogans or messages were left behind.”

No arrests have been made yet.

Police—including local, state and the FBI—raided five homes connected to university pro-Palestinian activists Wednesday, according to Lavinia Dunagan, a Ph.D. student who is a co-chair of the university graduate student union’s communications committee. She said at least seven people, including at least one union member, were detained but not arrested. All are students, save for one employee of Michigan Medicine, she said.

The union—the Graduate Employees’ Organization, or GEO—said in a news release Wednesday that “officers also confiscated personal belongings from multiple residences and at least two cars.”

The state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said in a release Wednesday that “property damage at residences took place, and individuals were handcuffed without charges during the aggressive raids.”

The attorney general’s office did say Thursday that “in one instance, an entryway was forcibly breached following more than an hour of police efforts to negotiate entry to satisfy the court-authorized search warrant.”

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April 24, 2025