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  • Overskilled and Underused? What PIAAC Reveals About the Canadian Workforce

    Overskilled and Underused? What PIAAC Reveals About the Canadian Workforce

    Before our show starts today, I just wanna take a minute to note the passing of Professor Claire Callender, OBE. For the last two and a half decades, she’s been one of the most important figures in UK higher education studies, in particular with respect to student loans and student finance. Holder of a joint professorship at UCL Institute of Education and Birkbeck University of London, she was also instrumental in setting up the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education, of which she later became deputy director. I just want to quote the short obituary that her colleague Simon Marginson wrote for her last week after her passing from lung cancer. He said, “What we’ll remember about Claire is the way she focused her formidable capacity for rational thought on matters to which she was committed, her gravitas that held the room when speaking, and the warmth that she evoked without fail in old and new acquaintances.”

    My thoughts and condolences to her partner Annette, and to her children. We’ll all miss Claire. 

    I suspect most of you are familiar with the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA. That’s a triannual test of 15 year olds around the world. It tries to compare how teenagers fare in real world tests of literacy and numeracy. But you might not be as familiar with PISA’s cousin, the Program for International Assessment of Adult Competencies or PIAAC. To simplify enormously, it’s PISA, but for adults, and it only comes out once a decade with the latest edition having appeared on December 10th of last year. Now, if you’re like most people, you’re probably asking yourself, what does PIAAC measure exactly?

    PISA pretty clearly is telling us something about school systems. Adults, the subject of the PIAAC test, they’ve been out of school for a long time. What do test results mean for people who’ve been out of school for, in some cases, decades? And what kinds of meaningful policies might be made on the basis of this data?

    Today my guest is the CEO of Canada’s Future Skills Centre, Noel Baldwin. Over the past decade, both in his roles at FSC, his previous ones at the Council Minister of Education Canada, he’s arguably been one of the country’s most dedicated users of PIAAC data. As part of Canada’s delegation to the OECD committee in charge of PIAAC, he also had a front row seat to the development of these tests and the machinery behind these big international surveys. 

    Over the course of the next 20 or so minutes, you’ll hear Noel and I, both fellow members of the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation Mafia, discuss such issues as how the wording of international surveys gets negotiated, why we seem to be witnessing planet wide declines in adult literacy, what research questions PIAAC is best suited to answer, and maybe most intriguingly what PIAAC 3 might look like a decade from now.

    I really enjoyed this conversation and I hope you do too. Anyway, over to Noel.

    The World of Higher Education Podcast
    Episode 3.28 | Overskilled and Underused? What PIAAC Reveals About the Canadian Workforce

    Transcript

    Alex Usher (AU): Noel, some of our listeners might be familiar with big international testing programs like PISA—the Program for International Student Assessment. But what is the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies? What does it aim to measure, and why?

    Noel Baldwin (NB): It’s somewhat analogous to PISA, but it’s primarily focused on working-age adults. Like PISA, it’s a large-scale international assessment organized by the OECD—specifically by both the education and labor secretariats. It’s administered on the ground by national statistical agencies or other government agencies in participating countries.

    PIAAC is mainly focused on measuring skills like literacy and numeracy. Over time, though, the OECD has added other skill areas relevant to the intersection of education and labor markets—things like digital skills, technology use, problem solving, and social-emotional skills.

    In addition to the assessment itself, there’s a large battery of background questions that gather a lot of demographic information—details about respondents’ work life, and other factors like health and wellbeing. This allows researchers to draw correlations between the core skills being measured and how those skills are used, or what kind of impact they have on people’s lives.

    AU: How do they know that what’s being measured is actually useful in the workplace? I mean, the literacy section is reading comprehension, and the math is sort of like, you know, “If two trains are moving toward each other, one from Chicago and one from Pittsburgh…” It’s a bit more sophisticated than that, but that kind of thing. How do they know that actually measures anything meaningful for workplace competencies?

    NB: That’s a good question. One thing to start with is that the questions build from fairly easy and simple tasks to much more complex ones. That allows the OECD to create these scales, and they talk a lot about proficiency levels—level one up to five, and even below level one in some cases, for people with the weakest skill levels.

    And while PIAAC itself is relatively new, the assessment of these competencies isn’t. It actually dates back to the early 1990s. There’s been a lot of research—by the OECD and by psychometricians and other researchers—on the connections between these skills and broader outcomes.

    The key thing to understand is that, over time, there’s been strong evidence linking higher literacy and numeracy skills to a range of life outcomes, especially labor market outcomes. It’s a bit like educational attainment—these things often act as proxies for one another. But the stronger your skills, the more likely you are to be employed, to earn higher wages, to avoid unemployment, and to be adaptable and resilient.

    And it’s not just about work. It extends to other areas too—life satisfaction, for instance. There are even some interesting findings about democratic participation and people’s perceptions of how their society is doing. So there are pretty strong correlations between higher-level skills and a variety of positive outcomes.

    AU: But, I can imagine that the nature of an economy—whether it’s more manufacturing-based or service-based—might affect what kinds of skills are relevant. So different countries might actually want to measure slightly different things. How do you get 50—or however many, dozens of countries—to agree on what skills to assess and how to measure them?

    NB: The point at which OECD countries agreed to focus on literacy and numeracy actually predates me—and it also predates a lot of today’s focus on more digitally oriented skills. It was a much more analog world when this started, and so literacy and numeracy made a lot of sense. At the time, most of the information people consumed came in some form of media that required reading comprehension and the ability to navigate text. And then, on the numeracy side, the ability to do anything from basic to fairly advanced problem solving with numbers was highly relevant. So I suspect that when this was being developed—through the 1980s and into the early 1990s—there was a high degree of consensus around focusing on those core skills.

    The development of the instruments themselves is also an international effort. It’s led by the OECD, but they work with experts from a range of countries to test and validate the items used in the assessment. Educational Testing Service (ETS) in the U.S. is quite involved, and there are also experts from Australia and Canada. In fact, Canada was very involved in the early stages—both through Statistics Canada and other experts—particularly in developing some of the initial tools for measuring literacy. So, the consensus-building process includes not just agreeing on what to measure and how to administer it, but also developing the actual assessment items and ensuring they’re effective. They do field testing before rolling out the main assessment to make sure the tools are as valid as possible.

    AU: Once the results are in and published, what happens next? How do governments typically use this information to inform policy?

    NB: I’ll admit—even having been on the inside of some of this—it can still feel like a bit of a black box. In fact, I’d say it’s increasingly becoming one, and I think we’ll probably get into that more as the conversation goes on.

    That said, different countries—and even different provinces and territories within Canada—use the information in different ways. It definitely gets integrated into various internal briefings. I spent some time, as you know, at the Council of Ministers of Education, and we saw that both in our own work and in the work of officials across the provinces and territories.

    After the last cycle of PIAAC, for instance, Quebec produced some fairly detailed reports analyzing how Quebecers performed on the PIAAC scales—comparing them to other provinces and to other countries. That analysis helped spark conversations about what the results meant and what to do with them. New Brunswick, for example, launched a literacy strategy shortly after the last PIAAC cycle, which suggests a direct link between the data and policy action.

    So there are examples like that, but it’s also fair to say that a lot of the data ends up being used internally—to support conversations within governments. Even since the most recent PIAAC cycle was released in December, I’ve seen some of that happening. But there’s definitely less in the public domain than you might expect—and less than there used to be, frankly.

    AU: Some of the findings in this latest PIAAC cycle—the headline that got the most traction, I think—was the fact that we’re seeing declines in literacy and numeracy scores across much of the OECD. A few countries bucked the trend—Canada saw a small decline, and parts of Northern Europe did okay—but most countries were down. What are the possible explanations for this trend? And should we be concerned?

    NB: I think we should be really aware. When it comes to concern, though, I’m always a bit hesitant to declare a crisis. There’s a lot of work still to be done to unpack what’s going on in this PIAAC cycle.

    One thing to keep in mind is that most of the responses were collected during a time of ongoing global turmoil. The data was gathered in 2022, so we were still in the middle of the pandemic. Just getting the sample collected was a major challenge—and a much bigger one than usual.

    With that caveat in mind, the OECD has started to speculate a bit, especially about the literacy side. One of the things they’re pointing to is how radically the way people consume information has changed over the past 10 years.

    People are reading much shorter bits of text now, and they’re getting information in a much wider variety of formats. There are still items in the literacy assessment that resemble reading a paragraph in a printed newspaper—something that just doesn’t reflect how most people engage with information anymore. These days, we get a lot more of it through video and audio content.

    So I think those shifts in how we consume information are part of the story. But until we see more analysis, it’s hard to say for sure. There are some signals—differences in gender performance across countries, for example—that we need to unpack. And until we do that, we’re not going to have a great sense of why outcomes look the way they do.

    AU: Let’s focus on Canada for a second. As with most international education comparisons, we end up in the top—but at the bottom of the top third, basically. It doesn’t seem to matter what we do or when—it’s always that pattern. Looking at global trends, do you think Canada stands out in any way, positively or negatively? Are there things we’re doing right? Or things we’re getting wrong?

    NB: Well, I’d say we continue to see something that the OECD points out almost every time we do one of these assessments: the gap between our top performers and our lowest performers is smaller than in many other countries. That’s often taken as a sign of equity, and I’d say that’s definitely a good news story.

    In the global comparison, we held pretty much steady on literacy, while many countries saw declines. Holding steady when others are slipping isn’t a bad outcome. And in numeracy, we actually improved.

    The distribution of results across provinces was also more even than in the last cycle. Last time, there was much more variation, with several provinces falling below the OECD or Canadian average. This time around, we’re more tightly clustered, which I think is another positive.

    If you dig a little deeper, there are other encouraging signs. For example, while the OECD doesn’t have a perfect measure of immigration status, it can identify people who were born outside a country or whose parents were. Given how different Canada’s demographic profile is from nearly every other participating country—especially those in Northern Europe—I think we’re doing quite well in that regard.

    And in light of the conversations over the past few years about immigration policy and its impacts across our society, I think it’s a pretty good news story that we’re seeing strong performance among those populations as well.

    AU: I know we’ll disagree about this next question. My impression is that, in Canada, the way PIAAC gets used has really changed over the last decade. The first round of PIAAC results got a lot of attention—StatsCan and the Council of Ministers of Education both published lengthy analyses.

    And maybe “crickets” is too strong a word to describe the reaction this time, but it’s definitely quieter. My sense is that governments just don’t care anymore. When they talk about skills, the narrative seems focused solely on nursing and the skilled trades—because those are seen as bottlenecks on the social side and the private sector side.

    But there’s very little interest in improving transversal skills, and even less knowledge or strategy about how to do so. Make me less cynical.

    NB: Well, it’s funny—this question is actually what kicked off the conversation that led to this podcast. And I’ll confess, you’ve had me thinking about it for several weeks now.

    One thing I want to distinguish is caring about the skills themselves versus how the data is being released and used publicly. There’s no denying that we’re seeing less coming out publicly from the governments that funded the study. That’s just true—and I’m not sure that’s going to change.

    I think that reflects a few things. Partly, it’s the changed fiscal environment and what governments are willing to pay for. But it’s also about the broader information environment we’re in today compared to 2013.

    As I’ve been reflecting on this, I wonder if 2012 and 2013 were actually the tail end of the era of evidence-based policymaking—and that now we’re in the era of vibes-based policymaking. And if that’s the case, why would you write up detailed reports about something you’re mostly going to approach from the gut?

    On the skills side, though, I still think there’s an interesting question. A few weeks ago, I felt more strongly about this, but I still believe it’s not that governments don’t care about these foundational skills. Rather, I think the conversation about skills has shifted.

    We may have lost sight of how different types of skills build on one another—starting from foundational literacy and numeracy, then layering on problem-solving, and eventually reaching digital competencies. That understanding might be missing in the current conversation.

    Take the current moment around AI, for example. Maybe “craze” is too strong a word, but there’s a belief that people will become great at prompt engineering without any formal education. Mark Cuban—on BlueSky or wherever, I’m not sure what they call posts there—made a point recently that you won’t need formal education with generative AI. If you can get the right answers out of a large language model, you’ll outperform someone with an advanced degree.

    But that completely overlooks how much you need to understand in order to ask good questions—and to assess whether the answers you get are worth anything. So we may start to see that shift back.

    That said, you’re right—there has definitely been a move in recent years toward thinking about workforce issues rather than broader skill development. And that may be a big part of what’s going on.

    AU: What do you think is the most interesting or under-explored question that PIAAC data could help answer, but that we haven’t fully investigated yet? This dataset allows for a lot of interesting analysis. So if you could wave a magic wand and get some top researchers working on it—whether in Canada or internationally—where would you want them to focus?

    NB: First, I’ll just make a small plug. We’ve been working on what we hope will become a PIAAC research agenda—something that responds to the things we care about at the Future Skills Centre, but that we hope to advance more broadly in the coming weeks and months. So we are actively thinking about this.

    There are a bunch of areas that I think are really promising. One is the renewed conversation about productivity in Canada. I think PIAAC could shed light on the role that skills play in that. The Conference Board of Canada did a piece a while back looking at how much of the productivity gap between Canada and the U.S. is due to skill or labor factors. Their conclusion was that it wasn’t a huge part—but I think PIAAC gives us tools to continue digging into that question.

    Another area the OECD often highlights when talking about Canada is the extent to which workers are overqualified or overskilled for the jobs they’re in. That’s a narrative that’s been around for a while, but one where I think PIAAC could offer deeper insights.

    It becomes even more interesting when you try to link it to broader labor supply questions—like the role of immigration. Some people have suggested that one reason Canada lags in things like technology integration or capital investment is that we’ve substituted skilled labor for that kind of investment.

    With PIAAC, we might be able to explore whether overqualification or overskilling is connected to the way we’ve managed immigration over the last couple of decades.

    So, there are a few areas there that I think are both relevant and under-explored. And of course, on the international side, you’re right—we should be looking for examples of countries that have had success, and thinking about what we can emulate, borrow from, or be inspired by.

    AU: I don’t know if either of us wants to still be doing this in 10 years, but if we were to have this conversation again a decade from now, what do you think—or hope—will have changed? What will the long-term impact of PIAAC Cycle 2 have been, and how do you think PIAAC 3 might be different?

    NB: Well, I think I need to say this out loud: I’m actually worried there won’t be a PIAAC 3.

    We’re recording this in early 2025, which is a pretty turbulent time globally. One of the things that seems clear is that the new U.S. administration isn’t interested in the Department of Education—which likely means they won’t be interested in continuing the National Center for Education Statistics.

    And like with many international initiatives, the U.S. plays a big role in driving and valuing efforts like PIAAC. So I do worry about whether there will be a third cycle. If it happens without U.S. participation, it would be a very different kind of study.

    But I hope that in 10 years, we are talking about a robust PIAAC 3—with strong participation from across OECD countries.

    I also hope there’s continued investment in using PIAAC data to answer key research questions. It’s just one tool, of course, but it’s a big one. It’s the only direct assessment of adult skills we have—where someone is actually assessed on a defined set of competencies—so it’s really valuable.

    For an organization like ours, which is focused on adult skills in the workforce, it’s up to us to push forward and try to get answers to some of these questions. And I hope the research we and others are doing will find its way into policy conversations—especially as we think about how workforce needs, skills, and the broader economy are going to change over the next decade.

    It would be a wasted opportunity if it didn’t.

    AU: Noel, thanks so much for being with us today.

    NB: Thanks Alex.

    *This podcast transcript was generated using an AI transcription service with limited editing. Please forgive any errors made through this service. Please note, the views and opinions expressed in each episode are those of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host and team, or our sponsors.

    This episode is sponsored by Studiosity. Student success, at scale – with an evidence-based ROI of 4.4x return for universities and colleges. Because Studiosity is AI for Learning — not corrections – to develop critical thinking, agency, and retention — empowering educators with learning insight. For future-ready graduates — and for future-ready institutions. Learn more at studiosity.com.

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  • Department of Education No Longer Posting Freedom of Information Requests

    Department of Education No Longer Posting Freedom of Information Requests

    The US Department of Education (ED) has stopped posting up-to-date Freedom of Information (FOIA) logs. These logs had been posted and updated from 2011 to September 2024 to improve transparency and accountability to the agency.  We have reached out ED for a statement. We are also awaiting for a number of information requests, some of which have taken more than 18 months for substantive replies. 

     

     

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  • What happens to the ski runs when the snow runs out?

    What happens to the ski runs when the snow runs out?

    I’m in high school now, and skiing is one of my favorite things to do — but I know it’s something my grandkids may never get to experience. 

    Normally the bike trails underneath the chairlift would be buried under a thick blanket of snow in the winter. But as temperatures begin to rise, more and more people are beginning to see the snow fade to brown earlier than ever before. Skiing could very well become a relic of the past — an age-old sport confined to history books and old photographs. 

    According to a study conducted by U.S. climate scientists in 2017 and funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Atmospheric Programs, “season length changes” due to warming winters “could result in millions to tens of millions of foregone recreational visits annually by 2050, with an annual monetized impact of hundreds of millions of dollars.”

    These same scientists found that ski seasons in the United States are expected to see reductions in length, exceeding 50% in 2050 and 80% in 2090 for some locations.

    The reality is that by the end of the century most resorts in the United States will have closed. While it may seem like artificial snow is the solution to this monumental problem, that is not the case. This fake snow may be able to help resorts stay afloat for the next decade or so, but it is not a viable option in the long run.

    Can we make snow?

    According to an article published by the American Chemical Society in 2019, snow making takes energy, mostly fossil-based, which further exacerbates the issue by contributing to more carbon emissions.

    Not only are these snow makers harmful to the environment, but as temperatures begin to rise, there are less windows for snowmaking itself. 

    Dr. Elizabeth Burakowski, a climate scientist at the University of New Hampshire, said that snowmaking operations require temperatures that are below freezing to operate efficiently. This means that even though artificial snow can be useful in the short term, it won’t be a feasible solution in the future as the conditions needed for making that snow begin to disappear.

    More importantly, artificial snow is merely a band-aid on a much larger wound. The onus is instead on ourselves to remedy this problem and not the resorts trying to scramble for answers. 

    Amie Engerbretson, a professional skier and climate activist, thinks that both skiers and resorts are reluctant to talk about the problem. “I think they’re scared,” Engerbretson said. “I think they’re scared of being called a hypocrite.” This fear is understandable. Many in the ski-industry rely on fossil-fuel powered lifts and snowmobiles and travel to enjoy the sport they love. 

    Let’s speak for the snow.

    To Burakowski, speaking out means acknowledging these contradictions. “If anyone expects to be a perfect advocate, then they’re setting the bar impossibly high,” she said. 

    This is where the conversation around climate change usually stalls. Many athletes and outdoor enthusiasts hesitate to take a stand because they either don’t think their opinion matters or they don’t want to seem like hypocrites themselves. However, advocacy can reflect the complications as long as what is being advocated is progress toward a greener future.

    Most people get too caught up in the individual aspect of climate advocacy and climate change in general. However, if we try to address this problem as individuals, we won’t make much progress. 

    Instead, change will come from systemic action and involvement in the public sphere. When I asked Dr. Burakowski what the best thing someone can do to make an impact, she said: “vote”. 

    With the way things are going, just remembering to turn off your lights when you leave a room or buying an electric car will not be the difference between sustainability or catastrophe. Real progress requires a collective effort — new climate policy, corporate accountability and government action. 

    Questions to consider:

    • Why does the author think that his grandchildren won’t get the chance to experience skiing?

    • Why can’t making snow make up for a lack of snowfall? 

    • What sports do you like that might be at risk from climate change?

     

     

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  • Carnegie Classifications debuts redesign of system to group colleges

    Carnegie Classifications debuts redesign of system to group colleges

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    The American Council on Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching on Thursday released updates to the Carnegie Classifications, including a redesigned system to describe institutions and a new category to identify colleges that boost student access and earnings. 

    For the system’s basic classifications, colleges were previously grouped together based on the highest degree they awarded — a method that “fell short of adequately describing the full scope of activity on campuses across the country,” according to the announcement. 

    The basic classifications — renamed the institutional classifications — now group colleges together based on multiple characteristics, such as their size, the types of degrees they confer, and the fields of study they offer. For instance, the classifications will distinguish between institutions mostly focused on graduate education and those that offer a mix of bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees. 

    Colleges will also be grouped together by size: Those with under 4,000 students will be classified as small, those with over 20,000 students will be considered large, and those in between will be considered medium. Additionally, colleges will be grouped together by their academic program mix, such as whether they primarily award pre-professional degrees. 

    The updated list has been highly anticipated ever since ACE and the Carnegie Foundation announced they were overhauling the Carnegie Classifications in 2023 to better reflect the diversity of college missions. 

    “With this redesign of the Carnegie Classifications, we set out to measure what matters,” Mushtaq Gunja, executive director of the Carnegie Classification systems and senior vice

    president at ACE, said in a statement. “Nowadays, institutions can’t be reduced down to the highest degree they award because they exist to serve a wide range of students in a wide variety of ways.”

    The system also debuted its new Student Access and Earnings Classification. This designation seeks to measure whether colleges are enrolling students reflective of the regions they serve and how well they are preparing them for the job market. 

    To calculate this, it examines the share of undergraduates receiving Pell Grants and those from underrepresented racial and ethnic backgrounds, along with alumni earnings eight years after enrollment. Researchers then compare these metrics to the demographics of the regions colleges serve.

    This classification groups colleges based on their access and whether their former students have relatively higher or lower earnings compared to their regional peers. 

    Colleges with higher access and earnings are designated Opportunity Colleges and Universities. 

    Nearly 500 colleges earned this designation. The group includes a wide variety of institutions, including historically Black colleges like Howard University, in Washington, D.C., and large public universities such as Stony Brook University, in New York. 

    Meanwhile, colleges that provide lower access but higher earnings contain all eight universities that make up the Ivy League, as well as other prestigious colleges, such as Stanford University. This group also included state flagships such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Florida. 

    ACE and the Carnegie Foundation also updated their research designations, releasing their new list of research institutions under the revised metrics in February. The changes resulted in a sharp uptick in the number of institutions that earned the coveted R1 status, denoting the highest levels of research activity.

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  • Demands of Harvard Are Blueprint for Repression (opinion)

    Demands of Harvard Are Blueprint for Repression (opinion)

    Harvard University’s courageous refusal to obey the demands of the Trump administration—and its subsequent filing of a lawsuit this week seeking restoration of its federal funding—has inspired praise across academia. But there has been less attention to just how terrible those demands were. No government entity in the United States has ever proposed such repressive measures against a college. By making outrageous demands a condition of federal funding—and freezing $2.2 billion in funds because Harvard refused to obey—the Trump administration is setting a precedent for threatening the same authoritarian measures against every college in America.

    The April 11 letter to Harvard from Trump administration officials proposed a staggering level of control over a private college. Although at least one of the authors reported that the letter was sent in error while negotiations were still ongoing, this mistake didn’t stop the Trump administration from punishing Harvard for refusing to accept its dictates.

    After Harvard rejected the demands, Trump himself posted further threats to Harvard’s tax-exempt status on social media, even though federal law bars presidents from directly or indirectly requesting Internal Revenue Service investigations against specific targets: “Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’” Of course, if Harvard obeyed the Trump regime’s orders to silence political speech, it would be pushing a right-wing ideological agenda.

    Among the stipulations in the April 11 letter, the Trump administration demanded the power to compel hiring based on political views to, in effect, give almost complete preference to political conservatives: “Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity; every teaching unit found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by admitting a critical mass of students who will provide viewpoint diversity.” Since most people who enter academia are liberal, as are most current academics, this demand for ideological balance would effectively ban the hiring of liberal professors in virtually all departments for many years.

    Decisions on how to measure the presence or lack of viewpoint diversity would be made by “an external party” hired by Harvard with the approval of the federal government (meaning Trump). Government-imposed discrimination based on viewpoint would also apply to students, since the letter requires the “external party … to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity, such that each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse.” If every department “must be individually viewpoint diverse,” then students with underrepresented viewpoints (Nazis, perhaps?) must receive special preferences in admissions. This concept that every department’s students, faculty and staff must match the distribution of viewpoints of the general population is both repressive and crazy to imagine.

    The Trump administration letter also ordered Harvard to commission a Trump-approved consultant to report on “individual faculty members” who “incited students to violate Harvard’s rules following October 7”—and asserted that Harvard must “cooperate” with the federal government to “determine appropriate sanctions” for these professors. Retroactively punishing professors who violated no rules for allegedly encouraging student protesters is an extraordinary abuse of government power.

    Not to stop there, the Trump administration letter seeks to suppress the right to protest: “Discipline at Harvard must include immediate intervention and stoppage of disruptions … including by the Harvard police when necessary to stop a disruption.” Since the Trump administration seems to regard every protest as a “disruption” (and Harvard itself has wrongly banned silent protests), this could require immediate police intervention to stop a broad range of actions.

    The Trump administration also demanded unprecedented control over Harvard’s disciplinary system to order punishments of student protesters without due process. Among other specific steps, the Trump administration ordered Harvard to ban five specific student groups, including Students for Justice in Palestine and the National Lawyers Guild, and “discipline” all “active members of those student organizations,” including by banning them from serving as officers in any other student groups. And Harvard would be compelled to implement government-imposed punishments by “permanently expelling the students involved in the October 18 assault of an Israeli Harvard Business School student and suspending students involved in occupying university buildings.”

    Shared governance is another target of Trump and his minions. The Trump administration’s demands for Harvard included “reducing the power held by students and untenured faculty” and “reducing the power held by faculty (whether tenured or untenured) and administrators more committed to activism than scholarship.” It’s bizarre to imagine that a university could be forced by the government to determine whether a professor is committed to “activism” before banning them from any position of power such as a department chair or committee member. The letter also demands “removing or reforming institutional bodies and practices that delay and obstruct enforcement [of campus rules governing protests], including the relevant Administrative Boards and FAS Faculty Council.”

    Not surprisingly, the Trump administration’s letter also demands a complete ban on diversity programs: “The University must immediately shutter all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, offices, committees, positions, and initiatives, under whatever name.” This repression not only interferes with the ability of universities to run their own operations, but it is also designed to suppress speech on a massive scale by banning all programs anywhere in the university that address issues of diversity and equity, with no exceptions for academic programs.

    There’s more. Harvard would be forced to share “all hiring and related data” to permit endless ideological “audits.” A requirement that “all existing and prospective faculty shall be reviewed for plagiarism” could be used to purge controversial faculty. Perhaps the most ironic part of the letter to Harvard is its command for ideological control over foreign students: “the University must reform its recruitment, screening, and admissions of international students to prevent admitting students hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence.” Trump’s regime is undermining the Constitution and shredding the Bill of Rights, while demanding that foreign students prove their devotion to the very documents that the Trump administration is destroying.

    The Trump administration’s letter to Harvard should shock and appall even those conservatives who previously expressed some sympathy with the desire to punish elite universities by any means necessary. This is fascism, pure and simple. It portends an effort to assert total government control over all public and private universities to compel them to obey orders about their hiring, admissions, discipline and other policies. It is an attempt to control virtually every aspect of colleges to suppress free expression, ban protests and impose a far-right agenda.

    It’s tempting to hope that the Trump administration merely wanted to target Harvard alone and freeze its funding by proposing a long series of absurdly evil demands, knowing that no college could possibly agree to obey.

    But the reality is that the letter to Harvard is a fascist blueprint for total control of all colleges in America, public and private. The demand for authoritarian control by the Trump administration is an assault on higher education and free speech in general. If Trump officials can impose repression on any college they target, then private corporations (as the assaults on private law firms have indicated) and state and local governments will soon follow.

    The government repression that began with Columbia University will not end with Harvard or the Ivy League institutions. These are the first volleys in a war against academic freedom, with the clear aim of suppressing free expression on campus or destroying colleges in the battle.

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  • Where Is Higher Ed Now and Where Is It Going? The Key

    Where Is Higher Ed Now and Where Is It Going? The Key

     
    In the latest episode of The Key, Inside Higher Ed’s news and analysis podcast, two economists highlight opportunities that college and universities can grab to improve engagement with their local communities, create greater access for first-generation students and increase transparency around pricing.

    David Hummels, professor of economics and dean emeritus, and Jay Akridge, trustee chair in teaching and learning excellence, professor of agricultural economics and former provost, both at Purdue University, are co-authors of a Substack newsletter on higher education, Finding Equilibrium.

    They join Sara Custer, editor in chief of Inside Higher Ed, and this episode’s host, Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed’s editor for special content, to analyze the findings from the Inside Higher Ed/Hanover Research 2025 Survey of College and University Presidents.

    In response to two-thirds of presidents having some serious doubts about the value of tenure, Hummels cautions that not offering faculty tenure means institutions are “going to have to pay faculty the way they’re paid in industry or you won’t be able to attract anyone.”

    Tenure is similar to executive stock options in the private sector, he argues: “It causes faculty to invest far more than they otherwise would in critical functions—like developing curriculum, hiring, developing and evaluating other faculty—because their tenure is going to be a lot more valuable if they’re part of a thriving institution,” he says.

    Akridge agrees with the 50 percent of survey respondents who say higher ed has a real affordability problem, even if his research shows that the value of college remains high and the debt students take on is overblown.

    “The sticker price and the debt they take on becomes how they think about cost. And that’s real,” he says. “Part of the fear for us is, who hears that message? Students with means and whose parents went to college are going to go to college. The evidence is quite clear that lifetime earnings, wage premiums, quality of life, even life span are better for those that go to college, and these families know that. Students that are first generation, that are maybe lower income, maybe underserved—I think they’re quite susceptible to that message and may write off college as perhaps their ticket to a better life, and that’s concerning from an equity standpoint.”

    A mere 3 percent of surveyed presidents said that higher ed has been very or extremely effective at responding to the diploma divide that is increasingly predictive of voter behavior. In response, Custer encourages colleges and universities to take accountability for, and be responsive to, valid critiques of higher education as a sector, while building on the confidence that many communities retain in their local institutions. She shared an example of a messaging campaign by one regional college that highlighted how graduates are contributing to the local area in everyday but fundamental ways. “‘We are putting really valuable people back into the community who are supporting you and your families and making it possible for you to live here,’” she summarizes.

    Hummels also stresses the importance of making the case for academic research, currently under threat. “Science broadly is essential to the competitiveness of the economy, to our firms and to the success of our students. It’s not just this cute thing faculty do in their spare time. We do it because it is central to who we want to be as a country and what our firms want to become. And I think we have been neglectful about maintaining awareness of how important this is.”

    Listen to the full episode.

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  • How to Lead Through Uncertainty (opinion)

    How to Lead Through Uncertainty (opinion)

    Uncertainty is unavoidable. Whether it relates to relatively minor topics such as today’s traffic and weather or potentially life-altering issues such as our health and employment, coping with an unknown future is part of our daily lives. At the same time, we are living in a moment of extraordinary uncertainty, with numerous changes to the landscape of higher education and increasing economic instability.

    If you are in a leadership role—whether that means leading an academic unit or leading a research lab or classroom—you may be feeling the weight not only of managing uncertainty for yourself, but also of guiding those you lead through uncertain terrain. In doing so, you are likely to encounter situations where those you lead are looking for definitive information around questions that you are not able to answer.

    How do you lead in these situations? I’m a firm believer that leaders can always do something even when it is not the specific thing that people are hoping for. In this case, I propose that even when we can’t provide answers or predict what the future will hold, we can offer something that might be even more valuable—the skills needed to manage uncertainty.

    Empowering others in the face of uncertainty is a complex and nuanced process, and your approach will differ depending on each individual and context. However, some steps that are likely to be helpful are:

    • Acknowledge the challenge. As a leader, you may feel an urge to avoid talking about issues that you’re not able to solve. However, this does not make those issues any less real for those you lead. Start by validating what is at stake for an individual, whether this is job stability, research funding or admission to graduate school. You can also acknowledge the broader challenge that uncertainty brings and how it taxes us mentally and emotionally. Acknowledging challenges does not mean that you are taking the blame for their existence or that you will not advocate to uphold the rights of individuals and shared values of your institution. However, openly recognizing the reality of a situation can go a long way in building trust with those you lead.
    • Reflect on past resilience. Every person you lead is a unique individual with their own way of managing adversity. You can offer some general strategies, such as focusing on purpose and impact and leaning on community for support. Even more helpful is to empower each person by encouraging them to reflect on challenges they have faced in the past and think about what strategies and supports enabled them to manage those situations. Helping someone remember that they have overcome difficult situations in the past provides guidance as to how they can do so again and builds their self-confidence to do exactly that.
    • Focus on what you can control. One of the many things that uncertainty robs us of is our sense of self-determination. A natural response is to place the greatest focus on the areas where we have the least amount of control. Effectively managing uncertainty or adversity can require that we do the opposite. Importantly, our domain of control includes both what we do and how we do it. You can offer guidance to an individual on how to create a plan and take actions that are within their domain of control, while also reinforcing that they are the one in control of the values and ethics that will guide the choice and implementation of those actions.
    • Create space for self-care. When the challenges we face may stretch over weeks, months or even years, self-care is more critical than ever in sustaining ourselves for what is to come. Just as you can help each person you lead reflect on their unique coping strategies, you can help them make a plan for self-care activities that will provide the greatest benefit to their mental health. This might include time spent doing activities they enjoy alongside people they care about. It can also mean checking out for a set time and playing video games or streaming a show where the only value is entertainment.

    Depending on your leadership role, simply managing your current responsibilities may already feel overwhelming. Adding in the task of helping others manage uncertainty may seem impossible. You may also feel unprepared to navigate a topic for which you haven’t received specific training. Those are very real challenges, but they do not have to prevent you from taking action.

    The principles outlined above can be woven into everyday meetings and email discussions and thus reap benefit without increasing workload. You can also lean on existing resources and expertise to disseminate helpful ideas in a time-efficient manner. For example, consider sharing an article or podcast on resilience, uncertainty or self-care with your team and setting aside 15 to 20 minutes at your next meeting to discuss the advice offered by experts. Or for a deeper dive, you can choose a book and work through each chapter together over a monthly sack lunch.

    As a leader, there is always something that you can do. And even when you don’t have all of the answers, you can have a powerful positive impact by mindfully guiding yourself and others through uncertainty.

    Jen Heemstra is the Charles Allen Thomas Professor of Chemistry and chair of the Department of Chemistry at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research is focused on harnessing biomolecules for applications in medicine and the environment, and she is the author of the forthcoming book Labwork to Leadership (Harvard University Press, August 2025)

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  • The OfS’s fine on Sussex is a blow against free speech, not for it

    The OfS’s fine on Sussex is a blow against free speech, not for it

    • Peter Scott is Emeritus Professor of Higher Education Studies at UCL and was Vice-Chancellor of Kingston University between 1998 and 2010.

    Freedom of speech and academic freedom are difficult enough to define and police. The task has become more difficult because they have got caught up in the two most toxic issues of the moment – Palestinian rights and anti-Zionism (seen as shading into anti-semitism) on the one hand and support for the Israeli Government on the other; and women’s and trans rights and transphobia. Never has it been more true that hard cases make bad law.

    This seems to have been lost on the Office for Students with its recent decision on the Kathleen Stock case, whose gender-critical views had led to protests and demonstrations by trans activists, to fine the University of Sussex more than £500,000 (with the threat that fines could be even higher for universities which, in the eyes of the OfS, fail to protect free speech and academic freedom in a similar way). Unsurprisingly, that decision is being challenged by Sussex on a number of grounds, including the OfS’s refusal to meet the University’s representatives face-to-face before reaching it, a curious decision in the light of normal proceedings in legal and quasi-legal cases. Remember the lawyers’ old Latin tag audi alteram partem.

    The Stock case was one of three recent high-profile free speech cases. The two others were the case of David Miller, the University of Bristol professor who won an employment tribunal case after his dismissal by the University for his anti-Zionist views and that of Jo Phoenix, the Open University (OU) professor who won a similar case for constructive dismissal following the University’s failure to support her when attacked for her gender critical views.

    The same two toxic issues were in play in all three cases. It is difficult to see how, from the OfS’s perspective, Bristol and the OU were not as much in breach as Sussex of the OfS’s regulatory condition E1 for failing to uphold the relevant public interest governance principles (ensuring staff have the freedom ‘to question and test received wisdom’ and ‘to put forward new ideas and unpopular opinions’ without placing themselves in jeopardy). Two separate employment tribunals found that this is exactly what happened to Professors Miller and Phoenix, although in the first case through gritted teeth. Constructive dismissal and dismissal certainly count as being placed ‘in jeopardy’.

    The OfS opened its investigation into ‘free speech matters’ at Sussex under the general powers it had under its regulatory framework. The fine was assessed within the same framework. The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, which has given the OfS extra powers to investigate individual complaints, had not yet been passed. In any case, the incoming Labour Government chose last year not to implement some key provisions in that Act. So, when it launched the Sussex enquiry, the OfS did not yet have the power to investigate individual cases. Officially, it did not do so in the case of Kathleen Stock, although it appears she was interviewed as part of the investigation.

    So it remains a mystery why the OfS decided not to investigate the Miller and Phoenix cases which, on the face of it, raised the same issues and, as a result, should have led to the same concern – and similar fines? Surely not because of the political and media firestorm that the Stock case set off. Instead, the OU was allowed to ‘mark its own homework’ by setting up the Dandridge review, which failed to placate Professor Phoenix. Bristol publicly expressed its ‘disappointment’ at the tribunal’s findings, so no regrets and no acknowledgement that free speech had been an issue. The involvement of employment tribunals was no bar to an OfS investigation. Any differences between the three cases cannot explain why Sussex was picked out, because the OfS did not carry out investigations into the other two cases and so could not be aware of any differences.

    The OfS report is a curious document. It is largely context-free, in the sense that Professor Stock’s case is so briefly sketched that anyone unfamiliar with the case would find it difficult to understand what had happened. The formal reason for this context-lite brevity is that the OfS was not investigating what had happened to Professor Stock. Officially there was no Stock case. But a more substantial reason surely is that this absence of context was necessary in the light of its claim, in the words of the Director for Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom, Professor Arif Ahmed, that ‘The OfS will continue to focus on a protection and promotion of lawful speech – irrespective of the views expressed. We will continue to be impartial and viewpoint neutral in our regulation and decisions’.

    In truth, free speech and academic freedom, even within the law, can never be absolute. This is explicit in section 43 of the Education (No. 2) Act of 1986 which states that universities ‘must take such steps as are reasonably practical to ensure that freedom of speech within the law is secured’. ’As are reasonably practical’ is an essential phrase, to which I will return. There will always be views which it is lawful to express but nevertheless are highly objectionable in the eyes of many people, and especially of those who feel they are threatened.

    Nor can they really be ‘viewpoint neutral’. The two toxic issues under discussion demonstrate this clearly. The expression of anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist views, because it is sometimes in danger of shading into anti-Semitism, is treated as beyond the pale. Gender-critical views, in contrast, despite the fact that they may be perceived to be transphobic, are firmly within it. The former, therefore, deserve to be banned and universities that tolerate their expression stigmatised or punished; the latter to be protected and universities that do not do so punished – as Sussex has been with its hefty fine. To be clear, I am not expressing an opinion about these viewpoints, just highlighting how they are treated differently.

    Why? Both Jewish and trans people, rightly or wrongly, feel threatened by what for them are hostile views. That is not sufficient in itself to override freedom of speech or academic freedom which, remember, are expected to be ‘unpopular’. This difference in treatment can only be explained with reference to history and politics. But, if the definition, and protection, of free speech and academic freedom are essentially political, the ‘viewpoint neutrality’ espoused by the OfS is an illusion. Its own decision to investigate Sussex was clearly partisan. The 2023 Act, which gave the OfS the mandate to investigate individual complaints, arose in a particular political context. It reflected the belief that conservative viewpoints were unwelcome in universities and therefore needed to be protected. Protecting liberal views was never the game.

    If free speech and academic freedom are context-specific, two questions arise. The first is practical. If that context is to be assessed and common sense applied – or, in the phrase in the 1986 Act, steps ‘as are reasonably practical’ defined – who is best placed to do that? In short, who is competent to make these complex decisions in which competing, and passionate, differences must be balanced? The effective choice is between officials in a State agency who are likely to have limited experience at the sharp end of university management, and vice-chancellors, their senior colleagues and university communities at large who know the people and personalities and real-world contexts. Free speech cases will not always be straightforward. They may contain multiple strands – breakdowns in professional relationships, complaints by students (ostensibly sovereign ‘customers’), even underperformance.

    The second question is one of principle, and much more important. In a liberal democracy that aspires to be an open society, should the State, or State agencies, ever be allowed to decide these delicate issues, particularly with regard to academic freedom, in the process invading and inevitably reducing the autonomy of universities? Of course, authoritarian and totalitarian States routinely behave in this way. They have no interest in academic freedom. But in a democracy, a foundational principle of academic freedom is surely that it is not defined or policed by the political authorities.

    The only conceivable justification for State intervention in a free society is that, if universities do not protect freedom of speech, they must be made to do so, as the partially implemented 2023 Act prescribes. There are two answers to this.

    • First, during the modern era, the practice has always been to trust universities to protect academic freedom because they understand it best. When I was a member of the board of the former Higher Education Funding Council for England two decades ago, no one would have suggested that HEFCE should have the power to fine universities for failing to uphold free speech. What is truly chilling is the erosion of institutional autonomy, with remarkably little protest or pushback. It is interesting how the political right, while believing passionately in a small State in the context of public services, economic regulation and taxation, believes equally passionately in a very strong State in the context of ideological surveillance.
    • Second, is there really a problem here – or, more accurately, a new problem? There is little evidence that universities have become less trustworthy in terms of protecting academic freedom. Of course, there have always been issues with ‘viewpoint diversity’ (in the phrase used by the US Government to justify its assault on Harvard – I’m coming on to Trump next…). In Economics departments dominated by econometricians behavioural economists are not always welcome. Some education departments may have ‘coloniality’ on the brain. Even peer review or the Research Excellence Framework may have ‘chilling effects’ in certain circumstances. But overall universities have always known, better than politicians, that intellectual creativity and productivity depend on a variety and diversity of ideas and of people.  

    … which brings me finally to Trump and Harvard. In a crooked sense, we should be grateful to President Trump for his brutish honesty. No serious attempt to disguise partisanship beneath a cloak of dispassionately protecting all free speech and academic freedom, just the driving desire to punish America’s greatest universities for refusing to toe the MAGA line in an extraordinary spasm of national self-harm. Harvard has been asked, and bravely refused, to allow the US Government to carry out ‘audits’ of departments suspected of being ‘woke’, to influence admissions, to vet academic appointments, to have access to lists of students, especially international students, who have taken part in demonstrations against Israel’s actions in Gaza, and outlaw all policies designed to promote diversity, equity and inclusion.

    The US example is important for two reasons, however little the OfS may appreciate being bracketed with Trump. First, the political focus on free speech, in the current form of the ‘war on woke’, has all the marks of being ‘made in America’, ideology borrowing rather than truly home-grown. Now we have been shown the future, and it stinks. Do we really want to go there? Second, the same politically partisan focus has actually made it more difficult to have a measured debate about free speech and academic freedom which, very sadly, is badly needed in a world from which reason, trust and mutual respect appear to have fled – and online abuse, fake news and AI have arrived. The OfS report on Sussex, and its disproportionate fine, are – in effect – a blow against rather than a blow in favour of free speech in higher education.

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  • College Uncovered: The Missing Men

    College Uncovered: The Missing Men

    Something has been happening on college campuses that’s as surprising as it is dramatic: The number of women enrolled has overtaken the number of men.

    Women now outnumber men by about 60 percent to 40 percent, and that gaps keep getting wider. And men who do enroll are also more likely to drop out.

    There are a lot of reasons for this. Boys get lower grades than girls, on average, in elementary and middle schools. They’re more likely to be held back or face disciplinary actions. They’re less likely to graduate from high school. And more men than women go into the skilled trades, instead of getting college degrees.

    Among the results: Universities and colleges now tip the scales for men in admission to try to keep the genders even.

    But as things keep falling out of balance, there are impacts on the financial success for men and on economic growth for everybody.

    We’ll hear from men and women students about what that’s like right now, and from colleges about what they’re trying to do about it.

    Listen to the whole series

    TRANSCRIPT

    [Kirk] This is College Uncovered. I’m Kirk Carapezza …

    [Jon] …and I’m Jon Marcus.

    [sound of referee] Climbers ready? Contestants ready? One, two, go!

    [Jon] This is the sound of one of the most unusual extracurricular activities at the University of Montana: running up a fallen tree with careful footwork, and neatly sawing off the end of it.

    [sound of club member] So really what we’re trying to do is keep the tradition of antique logger sports alive by bringing in new generations to doing activities that they did hundreds of years ago. I mean, we’re using cross-cut saws that they used to cut down giant redwoods.

    [Jon] That might seem like a throwback, but the University of Montana Woodsmen team has an important new purpose. Promoting programs such as forestry has become part of the university’s new strategy to attract an increasingly important type of student.

    [Kelly Nolin] There are definitely some efforts that are happening at the institution to help men find their community and to find a space.

    [Jon] That’s Kelly Nolin. She’s director of admissions at the University of Montana.

    [Kelly Nolin] Our gender split is about 42 percent male, 56 percent female. So it’s definitely widening, and it’s clearly a concern for a variety of reasons. And so that’s why we decided to look into opportunities to recruit more male students.

    [Jon] What Nolan says she’s trying to solve is a really big problem that most people don’t know is even happening: The proportion of men who are going to college is falling way behind the proportion of women who are going.

    Nationwide, women now outnumber men by about 60 percent to 40 percent, and that gap keeps getting wider. Far more young women than young men who graduate from high school are going to college, and men who do enroll are also more likely to drop out.

    We’ll tell you how this might actually be creating an advantage for men in the admissions process, and even how it affects even the dating scene on campuses — which, let’s face it, is a big part of college to a lot of students.

    Take it from Amber Turner. She’s a freshman at Nova Southeastern University in South Florida, which is now more than 70 percent women.

    [Amber Turner] It’s a lot more women than men and the men usually have a lot more options, whereas the women have disgusting options because there aren’t many of them. I have a boyfriend, personally, but I saw with my friends that it’s kind of like nobody here for them.

    [Jon] But fewer men in college has really serious implications for not only colleges that need to fill seats — or, for that matter, students frustrated by the dating pool. It affects the prospects of financial success for men, and of economic growth for everybody.

    This is College Uncovered, from GBH News and The Hechinger Report — a podcast pulling back the ivy to reveal how colleges really work. I’m Jon Marcus of The Hechinger Report …

    [Kirk] … and I’m Kirk Carapezza with GBH. Colleges don’t want you to know how they operate, so GBH …

    [Jon] … in collaboration with The Hechinger Report, is here to show you.

    Today on the podcast: ‘The Missing Men.’

    [Kirk] This season, we’ve been talking about the demographic cliff. That’s the decline that’s starting in the number of 18-year-olds, and how it will affect colleges and the economy.

    Now here’s a related milestone you might not have heard about. The number of college-educated women in the workforce has for the first time overtaken the number college-educated men. That’s because more women than men have been going to college.

    There are a lot of reasons for this. Boys in elementary and middle school get lower grades than girls. They’re more likely to be held back or face disciplinary action. And they’re less likely to graduate from high school. Jon, you and I have talked to high school senior boys about all of this.

    [Jon] Right, Kirk, and a lot of them were worried that they don’t have the confidence to tackle college.

    [Abdukadir Abdullahi] I feel like there’s more distractions for guys to get, like, the best grades because every school, like, the guy is always the class clown, and stuff like that.

    [Jon] That’s Abdukadir Abdullahi. He’s the son of a single father and just didn’t see himself in college. Neither did Pedro Hidalgo, even though he actually wanted to go.

    [Pedro Hidalgo] College was something I always wanted to reach and I always wanted to be accepted to, but I never had that belief within myself that I could do it.

    [Jon] Men are more likely than women to go into the skilled trades, which is faster and cheaper than paying for what seems to them to be an endless and expensive stretch of time in college. That’s what Abdullahi was planning to do.

    [Kirk] Back when you thought college wasn’t for you, what was the alternative? You were planning to just go straight to work or join the military or did you have an alternative plan?

    [Abdukadir Abdullahi] I was going to, like, be a plumber or something like that, like where you could have to go to school, but you could make a decent amount of money.

    [Kirk] In the end, he and the rest of these guys did end up going to college. But a lot of other high school boys feel like they need to get jobs right away, especially if they come from families that need help with their finances.

    Here’s Hidalgo’s classmate, Debrin Adon. His parents immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic.

    [Debrin Adon] I’m not going to speak for every man, but at least for young men like my classmates and I, we’re more focused on like money, you know? Like, getting money — getting that paycheck.

    [Kirk] That’s right. So a lot of them get jobs right out of high school and then they buy a car and maybe get married and by that point, it’s almost certain that they’ll never go to college.

    This is Kellie Becker. She’s the college counselor at the school where Abdullahi went.

    [Kellie Becker] A lot of young men are working. They’re working for their families. Like, they’re the man of the house. They are providing their entire family with one paycheck and they get a little taste of that where they, some of them, have to do it or some of them want to do it because they’re getting that money.

    [Kirk] These are just a few of the reasons we’ve ended up here. Fifty years ago, the gender divide was exactly the reverse, and there were far more men than women in college. Since then, there’s been a lot of work to encourage women to get degrees. But much less of that kind of thing is targeted at men. Women also disproportionately work in fields that require degrees, such as social work and teaching. And we’ve already heard how boys don’t do as well as girls in lower grades, how young men feel responsible for helping their families right out of high school and how many of them go into the trades. The decline is even steeper for Black men. Their numbers went way down during the pandemic. Even at historically Black colleges, Black men now make up only about a quarter of the students.

    [Michael Sinclair] Money is one of the main factors. A lot of our young men are looking for opportunities to earn a living, but they need the money now.

    [Kirk] That’s Michael Sinclair. He’s an associate professor at Morgan State University, and he points out that this becomes a vicious cycle.

    [Michael Sinclair] There’s a statement that my father once told me: You can’t be what you can’t see. And if you’re not seeing Black men on college campuses, a lot of young people don’t think that that’s for them.

    [Kirk] This mismatch between men and women is starting to create an odd divide on many college campuses.

    [Jon] Exactly, Kirk. I visited another big university, the University of Vermont. It’s already 64 percent female. I went to the student union, where Melinda Wetzel told me what it was like to be a woman student there.

    [Melinda Wetzel] Oh, yeah, I do have one small class that there is only one guy. I do undergraduate research and when I’m in the medical building, I feel like I hardly ever see men. I feel I’m walking around and it’s just, like, a bunch of ladies.

    [Jon] This extends to areas on campus you might not expect.

    [Melinda Wetzel] I was at the gym the other day and, like, if you think about going to a gym, you think of, like, oh, no, like, there’s going to be a lot of scary guys there. I looked around and I actually pointed out to my friend, like, ‘Whoa, look at all the girls here. This is great.’

    [Jon] Now, some men on campus also think it’s great that there are more women.

    [Pete Azan] So in our class we have, like, 83 girls and like 30 guys. They told us that like the first day of school. So we were all shocked.

    [Jon] Pete Azan is studying dental medicine down at Nova Southeastern. More women than men are going into dentistry these days, too — not only there, but nationwide. He’s okay with that, though.

    [Pete Azan] I love it. I go to class every day the happiest man, because I get to be around beautiful women all day.

    [Jon] And however you might feel about that, there’s another potential advantage for men to this little-noticed trend:

    [Kirk] To keep the gender mix more evenly balanced, a lot of universities are making it easier for men to get in. That’s become especially important as they start to topple over that demographic cliff that’s coming, in the number of students of any gender.

    Sourav Guha used to work in university admissions. He saw how men got an edge so colleges could keep the genders balanced. Now Guha is executive director of the Consortium on Higher Achievement and Success. It supports students who are already enrolled in college.

    [Sourav Guha] I’d put it this way: There were a lot of high school girls who, in terms of credentials, looked as good as or better than some of the boys we admitted, but the girls ended up either wait-listed or rejected. It’s not that the students we were taking were not qualified or capable of being there, but certainly they had credentials, like, maybe a lower GPA, sort of different classes, different levels of high school achievement.

    [Kirk] So listen to what he’s saying there, Jon. At some schools, the odds that men will get in are now better than the odds that women will.

    [Jon] Right, Kirk. And it’s absolutely true. We looked it up. A lot of prestigious universities are accepting more of their male applicants than their female applicants. Boston University, Brown, Vanderbilt, the University of Chicago, the University of Miami, the University of Southern California — all of them took at least slightly more male than female applicants.

    [Kirk] Now, that might keep the genders balanced for a while at those selective colleges and universities, even if it is at the expense of women who apply to them. But the problem isn’t going away, and some experts are warning that the repercussions are significant.

    [Jon] Right, Kirk. Richard Reeves researched this phenomenon of men not going to college and became so alarmed about it that he founded an organization to study and address it, the American Institute for Boys and Men.

    [Richard Reeves] Now, there are lots of good organizations ringing the alarm bells when there are gaps facing women and girls, and that is great, and they do a great job of it. But it hasn’t really been anyone’s job to wake up every day and ring the alarm bell around declining male enrollment in colleges.

    [Jon] Reeves says this should matter to everyone.

    [Richard Reeves] We’re leaving too much male talent on the table as a result of the failure of our education system to serve men as well as women. And as a result, those men are not doing as well in the economy as they could. That’s bad for the economy. It’s also bad for the women that they will end up with. And so this is, in the end, bad for everybody.

    [Jon] Colleges are trying lots of things to appeal to men. The University of Vermont has started running an entrepreneurship competition for high school students. It’s open to anyone, but more boys than girls have entered. That’s what the university expected, based on focus groups that showed that men liked entrepreneurship programs. The grand prize is a full-tuition scholarship.

    Like a lot of schools, Vermont is also using its athletic programs to attract men.

    Now, you’d think more women getting college degrees would be translating into higher pay and more promotions. But while there may be more of them in college, the degrees they tend to get are often in lower-paying fields. Men still outnumber women in disciplines such as engineering and business, which have a bigger payoff.

    Sourav Guha explains.

    [Sourav Guha] If you look at the top two fields for women, it’s still nursing and teaching. You know, for men, it’s software development. So women are going to college and the economic returns they’re getting from college are not the same that men are getting.

    [Kirk] But Richard Reeves says men who don’t get degrees at all will generally be worse off.

    [Richard Reeves] One of the myths that is really important to nail here is the idea that, well, men don’t need college degrees because there are lots of jobs — well-paid, good jobs that men can go and do even if they don’t have higher educations. That is not true anymore.

    [Kirk] However they’re approaching it, and for whatever reasons, colleges are laser-focused on this issue. As we’ve been saying all this season, they need all the students they can get right now.

    [Jon] Yeah, Kirk, and Reeves is worried about a new reason men are finding to not go to college: politics.

    [Kirk] Right. As colleges continue to be targets in the culture wars, Reeves says some men consider them not only woke, but anti-male.

    [Richard Reeves] I’m worried that not only does higher education seem like it’s more female and coded a bit more female, but also coded left, progressive and maybe even somewhat intolerant toward men, and particularly perhaps conservative men from, say, rural areas, right? I think if you want to find someone who’s pretty skeptical about higher education, it may well be a conservative white guy living in a rural area. And turns out that is one of the groups that we’re really seeing a big decline in enrollment.

    [Jon] This concern isn’t lost on colleges. We already heard from University of Montana admissions director Kelly Nolin. Among the ways her university has tried to win back men is by inviting conservative speakers such as Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.

    [Charlie Kirk] And I’m going to make a case, and I don’t know if it’ll be persuasive to do, why I think DEI is unbiblical. …

    [Kelly Nolin] And regardless of how you feel about his political views, it was an important moment for people in our state to see that as a liberal arts college, we were willing and able to bring a conservative person to campus, but also somebody who appeals to a lot of men. And so just sharing those different perspectives, trying to break some of the stereotypes of how people in our state or maybe outside of our state view us, that’s some of work that we’re doing right now.

    [Jon] That’s on top of pushing its forestry school and that Woodsmen Club and other things, based on what it learned from focus groups of male students.

    [Kelly Nolin] They really felt, in their experience, that we needed to focus more on the attractive nature of our location. So some of the activities that are available to students very easily — things like fly-fishing, hiking, skiing, hunting — those were important to these students. And they weren’t things that we were really highlighting in our brochures.

    [Jon] Kirk, you and I got to go to the University of Montana on assignment, and it is a really beautiful natural setting, although, as I recall, I beat you to the top of Mount Sentinel when we hiked it.

    [Kirk] I was taking in the scenery, Jon. But, yes, those are the kinds of things the university is now using to market itself to men.

    [Kelly Nolin] We sent an email with a link to our wild sustenance class, which is a class about hunting that really focuses on not just the mechanics of hunting, but the conservation purpose behind hunting that could appeal to a wide range of people from a wide variety of political affiliations.

    [Kirk] Yeah, Jon, and just as an aside, that email had an unexpected effect.

    [Kelly Nolin] I will tell you that somebody saw that ad and they came to visit. And when they were asked why they were looking at the University of Montana for college — they were from Virginia — they said they wanted to come someplace where they had rugged men.

    [Kirk] She’s laughing because that person was a woman.

    [Jon] Right. But colleges are taking this deadly seriously. As we’ll continue to discuss this season, they are facing down that demographic cliff and every student counts.

    This is College Uncovered. I’m Jon Marcus from The Hechinger Report.

    [Kirk] And I’m Kirk Carapezza from GBH. This episode was produced and written by Jon Marcus …

    [Jon] … and Kirk Carapezza.

    If you want to see whether a college accepts more male than female applicants, we’ve linked in the show notes to the federal government website where you can find that.

    [Kirk] We had help on this episode from Liam Elder-Connors of Vermont Public and reporter Yvonne Zum Tobel in South Florida. Our sound of the Woodsmen Club came from the University of Montana student newspaper.

    This episode was edited by Jonathan A. Davis. Our executive editor is Jennifer McKim. Our fact-checker is Ryan Alderman.

    [Jon] Mixing and sound design by David Goodman and Gary Mott. All of our music is by college bands. Our theme song and original music is by Left Roman out of MIT.

    Mei He is our project manager and head of GBH podcasts is Devin Maverick Robbins.

    [Kirk] College Uncovered is made possible by Lumina Foundation. It’s produced by GBH News and The Hechinger Report and distributed by PRX.

    Thanks so much for listening.

    More information about the topics covered in this episode:

    To see the acceptance rates of men vs. women applicants at any college or university, go here, enter the name of the institution, and click on ADMISSIONS.

    Universities and colleges search for ways to reverse the decline in the ranks of male students

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

    Join us today.

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  • A lot of hope was pinned on after-school programs — now some are shutting their doors

    A lot of hope was pinned on after-school programs — now some are shutting their doors

    CLEVELAND — In a public school cafeteria here, 6- and 7-year olds were taking turns sketching their ideas for a building made of toothpicks and gummy bears. Their task: to design a structure strong enough to support a single subject notebook.

    It was a challenge meant to test their abilities to plan ahead, work as a team and overcome setbacks. But first, they had to resist the urge to eat the building materials.

    Zayden Barnes, a first grader at Clara E. Westropp School of the Arts, picked up a blue gummy bear and sniffed it. “That smells good,” he said, licking his lips.

    Mia Navarro, another first grader, held a green gummy bear to her nose and inhaled deeply. “I can’t stop smelling them!” she exclaimed. “I just want to eat it, but I can’t!”

    The lesson in engineering and self-control was part of an after-school program run by the nonprofit Horizon Education Centers. It’s one of a dwindling number of after-school options in a city with one of the highest child poverty rates of any large urban area in the country.

    Last year, Horizon and other nonprofit after-school providers reached more than 7,000 students in Cleveland public schools, buoyed by $17 million in pandemic recovery aid. But when the money ran out at the end of that school year, nonprofits here had to drop sites, shed staff and shrink enrollment. Horizon, which was in five public schools last year, is now in just one.

    Similar setbacks can be seen across the country, as after-school programs struggle to replace billions in federal relief money. While a few states are helping to fill the gap, Ohio isn’t among them. And many providers fear more cuts are coming, as the Trump administration continues its campaign to slash government spending and end “equity-related” grants and contracts.

    The after-school sector plays a critical role in the nation’s economy, providing close to 8 million students, or nearly 14 percent of all school-aged children, with a safe place to go while their parents work. It offers homework help, enriching activities, healthy snacks and physical exercise — often for a fee, but sometimes for free.

    Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education.

    Done well, after-school programs can strengthen students’ social and emotional skills, increase their engagement with and attendance in school, and reduce their risk of substance abuse or criminal activity. In some cases, they can help improve grades and test scores, too.

    Yet the sector, which has existed for more than 100 years, has long been hobbled by inadequate funding, staffing shortages and uneven quality. There are long waitlists for many programs, and low-income families often struggle to find affordable options.

    In a recent survey by the nonprofit Afterschool Alliance, more than 80 percent of program leaders said they were concerned about their program’s future, and more than 40 percent said they worried they’d have to close permanently.

    “The state of afterschool in America feels very grim,” said Alison Black, executive director of the Cleveland affiliate of America Scores, a nonprofit that teaches soccer and poetry to students in 13 cities across North America.

    Students build a gummy bear structure in an after-school program run by Horizon Education Centers, in Cleveland. Credit: Grace McConnell for The Hechinger Report

    After-school programs emerged in the second half of the 19th century, in philanthropic settlement houses that provided English courses and health care to the children of immigrants, according to a Rand Corporation report. They multiplied after Congress passed child labor laws in the 1930s, and again during World War II, when women entered the workforce in large numbers.

    In those early days, the programs functioned mostly as child care, offering a solution to the problem of the “latchkey kid.” But they began to take on a broader role in the 1960s, when the programs started to be seen as a way to both reduce youth crime and provide kids with positive role models, according to Rand.

    In the 1980s and 1990s, policymakers and funders began demanding that after-school programs play a part in closing the academic gaps between wealthier and poorer kids. High-poverty schools began setting aside some of their Title I funds to provide after-school programs.

    But it wasn’t until 1998 that the federal government offered targeted support to after-school programs, in the form of competitive grants awarded by the states through the newly created 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program. The first year, Congress appropriated $40 million for the program; by 2002, that number had swelled to $1 billion.

    Today, the after-school sector is made up of a mix of programs providing academic support, enrichment (sports, theater and the like) or some combination. Their goals and funding streams vary, from public dollars to philanthropic and corporate gifts. Many survive by stitching together multiple sources of funding.

    The 21st Century program remains the only dedicated federal funding stream for after-school and summer learning, providing $1.3 billion in support to 10,000 centers serving close to a fifth of students in 2023.

    Related: One of the poorest cities in America was succeeding in an education turnaround. Is that now in peril?

    After-school programs are popular among parents, and demand for slots far exceeds the supply. For every child in an after-school program, there are three more who would participate if an affordable, accessible option was available to their families, according to surveys by the Afterschool Alliance.

    Gina Warner, CEO of the National Afterschool Association, says afterschool is a space where kids can try new things and take risks they wouldn’t take at school, where the stakes are higher. “Afterschool is still a place where kids can fail” without consequence, she said.

    The programs also connect students with positive adult role models who aren’t their teachers or caregivers, said Jodi Grant, executive director of the Afterschool Alliance. “Our biggest strength, when it gets down to it, is relationships,” Grant said.

    But sustaining those connections can be difficult in a sector with low pay and limited opportunities for advancement. Turnover rates are high, and when staff don’t stick around, “You’re missing one of the best benefits of afterschool,” said Warner.

    Students practice a dance routine at the Downtown Boxing Gym, in Detroit. Credit: Kelly Field for The Hechinger Report

    For a sector accustomed to scraping by, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 was like a winning lottery ticket.

    Over three years, after-school programs received roughly $10 billion in ARPA aid — money they used to add staff, improve pay and benefits and expand enrollment, according to the Afterschool Alliance. It estimates that programs were able to serve 5 million more kids as a result.

    But the money has mostly been spent, and late last month, Education Secretary Linda McMahon told districts that their time to use any remaining funds was over. In Cleveland, which spent almost $28 million on out-of-school time programs between fiscal 2022 and 2024, Horizon and other nonprofits formed a coalition to try to convince the district to continue at least a portion of the aid. They held rallies, secured media coverage and brought parents to testify before the school board. But the district wouldn’t budge, said David Smith, Horizon’s executive director.

    “There’s no opportunity to go back to the scale we were at during the pandemic, and we still have the same problems,” said Smith. “Kids are getting in trouble after school, and they still need the extra academic help.”

    The Cleveland Metropolitan School District made significant gains under its last CEO, Eric Gordon, whose Cleveland Plan was credited with improved student outcomes, including a 25 percentage point increase in the high school graduation rate. But the pandemic erased some of those gains and Cleveland, like many districts, is still recovering.

    Related: $1.5 billion in recovery funds goes to afterschool

    The district’s new CEO, Warren Morgan, has defended his decision not to fund the nonprofit providers, noting that the district offers after-school sports and an arts program. But those extracurriculars vary by day and by school, and after-school advocates say many schools have been left without the consistent, comprehensive care working parents depend on. 

    “Our city is focused on workforce development without thinking about who cutting this care hurts,” said Black, of America Scores Cleveland.

    Without continued support from the district, Black’s organization has had to dip into its rainy-day fund and drop fall soccer for middle schoolers. Serving elementary students feels more essential, she explained, since younger kids can’t stay home alone.

    Other nonprofits have been harder hit. The Greater Cleveland Neighborhood Centers Association, or NCA, has closed half of its locations in the district, leaving programs in seven schools. The Boys and Girls Clubs of Northeast Ohio, which lost $3 million in pandemic relief dollars and other federal support this academic year, has shuttered 17 sites.

    Dorothy Moulthrop, chief executive officer of Open Doors Academy, another nonprofit, thinks the losses might have been less severe if the after-school coalition had been able to show strong results for the federal money. Though individual programs handed over reams of data to the district, Moulthrop wasn’t able to get its leaders to share the data in a form that would allow providers to study their collective impact.

    “We needed to be able to demonstrate our return on investment and we were not able to,” she said.

    Students in a poetry class run by America Scores Cleveland. Credit: Grace McConnell for The Hechinger Report

    Questions about whether after-school programs are a good investment of public dollars have dogged the sector since the early 2000s, when Mathematica Policy Research began publishing the results of an evaluation that found the 21st Century program had little impact on student outcomes.

    The study, which is often cited by politicians seeking to gut after-school spending, was controversial at the time, and remains so. Defenders of afterschool argue the evaluation was methodologically flawed and point to other research that found that students who regularly attended high-quality programs saw significant gains. But one of the study’s two authors, Susanne James-Burdumy, said in an interview that it was the most rigorous of its time.

    In the 20 years since the Mathematica reports were published, hundreds of dissertations and program evaluations have added to the evidence base for both sides of the debate. But large-scale, rigorous evaluations of after-school programs remain rare, and their findings are mixed, James-Burdumy and other researchers say.

    Though some analyses have found after-school programs can boost reading and math achievement, promote positive social behaviors and reduce negative ones, other studies have shown little growth in those and other areas.

    Some of that inconsistency likely stems from differences in the quality of programs, researchers and advocates say. When funding is tight, after-school programs tend to focus their dollars on services, rather than professional development or program evaluation.

    “Quality often feels like an extra,” said Jessie Kerr-Vanderslice, a consultant at the American Institutes for Research who focuses on out-of-school time programs.

    Related: Tracking Trump: His actions to abolish the Education Department, and more

    Advocates also note a misalignment between program goals and outcome measures: While after-school programs often prioritize relationships and social and emotional skill-building, their funders frequently focus on academic gains.

    One variable that seems to matter in student outcomes is attendance: Studies have found that students who attend regularly reap greater benefits than those who show up sporadically.

    Yet more than half of students who participated in programs paid for with 21st Century grants in 2022-23 attended for less than 90 hours, a program evaluation shows. That works out to just 30 days for a three-hour program.

    At Clara E. Westropp Elementary in Cleveland, where Horizon Education Centers has been able to continue its after-school program with a 21st Century grant, 73 students are enrolled, but average daily attendance is less than half that.

    Students descend the stairs during an after-school program run by America Scores Cleveland. Credit: Grace McConnell for The Hechinger Report

    On the other side of Lake Erie, at Detroit’s Downtown Boxing Gym, students are required to attend at least three days a week. To keep them coming, the program offers a huge range of activities, from cooking to coding (but ironically, not boxing).

    Inside the large building that houses the program, there’s a lab with a flight simulator and 3D printer, and a music studio paid for and built by one of Eminem’s former producers.

    Outside, on a turf field where the program plans to build an addition that will enable it to double enrollment, a group of middle school majorettes was preparing for an upcoming dance performance.

    Debra Beal, who became the caregiver to her niece’s two young sons when she was in her 50s, says the program saved her life — and theirs. It kept the boys, now 19 and 20, off the streets while she worked, provided them with exercise and tutoring, and even served them dinner. The staff became like family, supporting her when she struggled as a parent and offering to pay for counseling when one son lost his father and uncle from fentanyl overdoses on the same day.

    “What they’re doing is life-changing,” said Beal, whose long denim coat had the word “Blessed” written in sequins on the back.

    Financially, the Downtown Boxing Gym is on surer footing than its counterparts in Cleveland. The Michigan Legislature has provided $50 million in funding for after-school programs in each of the last two years, and the program recently received $3 million in funds from the state.

    Related: ‘The kids everyone forgot’: Push to reengage young people not in school, college or the workforce falters

    That doesn’t mean the program isn’t being pinched by the Trump administration’s cost-cutting campaign and purge of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, said Jessica Hauser, its executive director. Corporations the program was counting on for seven-figure gifts for the addition and program expansion are reconsidering their pledges, and a promised federal earmark now seems unlikely.

    Hauser is also worried about potential cuts to federal child nutrition programs and student aid, which the program depends on for meals and college student tutors.

    Back in Cleveland, the coalition Smith formed to fight for after-school funding has expanded to include the city, the county and a local foundation, which hired a consultant to come up with the cost to deliver quality after-school programming. To longtime advocates like Smith and Allison Wallace, executive director of the NCA, it feels like the sector is having to prove itself, yet again.

    “They’re revisiting conversations we had 15 years ago, around best practices and identifying quality,” Wallace said. “We keep going over the same things, and we’re not getting any traction.”

    Things could get even tougher in the next couple years, as the district shifts the costs of providing security and custodial services for after-school programs onto the nonprofit providers. Wallace estimates that the change will cost providers tens of thousands per site.

    And future federal funding is far from guaranteed. Though the 21st Century program enjoys bipartisan support in Congress, Trump sought to eliminate it in every budget proposal he issued in his first term and is expected to do so again.

    For now, though, after-school programs are still providing kids in Cleveland with caring staff, a safe place to spend the hours after school, and engaging activities like gummy bear construction.

    Related: After-school programs have either been abandoned or overworked

    The teams had 10 minutes to build structures that could support a notebook. When the timer went off, the structure built by Zayden and Mia’s group resembled a two-story house with a caved-in roof. Zayden wasn’t feeling optimistic.

    “I think it’s going to fall,” he said.

    “Think positive,” said Kathy Thome, a program administrator who is helping the group.

    Ian Welch, the program’s site coordinator for Clara E. Westropp, picked up a notebook and approached the table. He reminded the teams that failure is part of the scientific method. If their structures collapse, they can try again, he said.

    “It’s going to squish down,” Mia predicted.

    She was right. But the flattened structure still held the notebook aloft. The kids jumped up and down, and Zayden did a little boogie.

    “We’re so happy — we did it!” he said.

    Welch rewarded their effort with some fresh gummy bears, and the kids, proud and hopped up on sugar, waited for their parents to pick them up.

    Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, on Signal at CarolineP.83 or via email at [email protected]. 

    This story was produced with support from the Education Writers Association Reporting Fellowship program.

    This story about afterschool was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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

    Join us today.

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