A Coalition government would invest $260m to get more high school students to take up trades instead of pursuing university, it has been announced, after it indicated it would cut the Labor’s fee-free TAFE program..
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Western Sydney University (WSU) is expected to cut up to 400 jobs to help cope with an almost 80 million deficit in 2026 amid a “large deterioration” in student numbers.
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When we think about commuter students, the first thing that often comes to mind is the difficulties in balancing their studies with the demands of travel.
We frequently talk about how their lives are more challenging when compared to their peers who live nearer to campus, given the time constraints and added cost pressures they are exposed to.
However, a closer look reveals a fascinating paradox. Despite the perceived hardships, commuter students who progress with their studies can achieve better outcomes.
At the University of Lancashire, our ongoing student working lives (SWL) project, which was set up to understand the prevalence and impact of part-time work on the student experience, has started to shed light on the unique experiences of commuter students.
Our survey considers self-reported responses to questions related to students’ part-time work and university experiences, alongside linked student data to reveal a clearer picture of their non-university lives and their connection with student outcomes.
Initial data from our latest wave of the SWL project suggests that while commuter students frequently experience tighter schedules due to increased travel commitments and other out-of-class responsibilities, they can often experience better outcomes in their university and non-university lives than their non-commuter peers.
This data comes from our 2025 student working lives survey which is based on an institutional sample of 484 students, with permission to link data from 136 students.
Our research extends the recent debate around the choice versus necessity of commuting by repositioning commuters, not as left behind, but as a group of students prepared to meet the challenges laid in front of them, and in some ways, better navigating challenges and excelling in their studies.
The survey’s results reinforce the common belief that commuter students have busy lives.
In combination, commuter students are twice as likely to have caring responsibilities, tend to live in more deprived neighbourhoods (based on IMD quintile) and have a higher work and travel load than their non-commuting counterparts, resulting in less time to spend on study.
However, questions of necessity or choice can imply that university is the most central thing in their lives, challenging whether the assumptions we hold about commuting students have the correct premise.
Looking at our latest research, it tells us that commuters are more likely to spend longer working than non-commuter students. While an increased workload highlights the disadvantage some commuters experience, our findings reveal a more complex picture that requires a deeper dive into the lives of this student demographic.
As such, the commuter students we surveyed achieved higher attainment on average (+2pp) when linking this to university records, despite a lower self-reported rating of belonging compared to their peers.
Put bluntly, while commuting students feel slightly less attachment to the university and commit less time to study, they go on to receive better marks.
While this identifies a positive outcome for those students in our study, we should be mindful of wider research suggesting that commuter students are at greater risk of withdrawing, given the acute nature of the challenge experienced. As the study progresses we’ll continue to track further longitudinal outcomes such as continuation, completion and progression over the coming months and years.
In our study, when understanding experiences of work, commuter students reported that they felt their work was more meaningful, more productive and more fairly paid than their non-commuter peers.
They also felt better supported at work by their colleagues and managers and felt their current job requirements and responsibilities would enhance future employment prospects. What can we take from this?
| Student population | Student Working Lives – % Agree | |||||
| Is your work meaningful? | Is your work productive? | Do you feel fairly paid or rewarded? | Do you feel supported by colleagues? | Do you feel supported by managers? | Do you feel your job enhances your future employment prospects? | |
| Commuter | 43.5% | 53.2% | 47.2% | 42.7% | 37.5% | 41.1% |
| Non-Commuter | 40.3% | 39.8% | 44.5% | 38.6% | 31.4% | 30.9% |
It’s important to state that the quality of work outcomes, despite being slightly improved for commuter students, reinforce the findings from our 2024 SWL report and last year’s HEPI Student Academic Experience Survey – students are having to work more to deal with the increased cost of living and on the whole are not experiencing what can be considered as “good” work.
However, commuter students appear to be negotiating their challenges exceptionally well and are more likely to have a job that supports their future career aspirations.
While commuter students face unique challenges, are they effectively leveraging their time and resources to excel in their studies, leading to positive outcomes in various aspects of their lives?
If so, could this add further weight to reframing the argument away from a one-dimensional deficit approach when talking about commuting students?
We already know that commuter students often have busy lives. This fuller life however, with its many facets, could give them the direction and motivation to succeed in their studies and at work.
They are not just students, they are employees, caregivers, and active members of their communities. Rather than being a deficit, these experiences can add to their educational success if they can be supported to leverage their experiences.
It’s important for universities to recognise this clear paradox around commuter students. Time restrictions and commitments make things harder for commuter students to designate more time to their studies, in particular independent study that infringes on the family home.
The benefits of having more time in the workplace, having a family and traveling can enrich their student experience and outcomes.
By understanding and appreciating these unique experiences, universities can better support commuter and non-commuter students alike.
At the University of Lancashire, we are feeding these insights into our institutional University of the Future programme. This focuses on curriculum transformation to enhance the student learning experience, the transition to block delivery to consider the pace learning aligns with student lives, and the introduction of a short course lifelong learning model that looks to meet the changing needs of students.
Commuter students teach us that life’s challenges can also be its greatest strengths. Their ability to balance multiple responsibilities and still be able to achieve positive outcomes is a testament to their ability and determination, attributes the sector is committed to harnessing and employers are keen on developing in the workplace.
As we continue to explore and understand their experiences in developing our project over the coming months, we can start to challenge assertions and learn valuable lessons that can benefit all students and allow more to “choose life.”
This blog is part of our series on commuter students. Click here to see the other articles in the series.
There are few safe bets about the future, so the impact of technology on labour markets, how transitions through education and into work will change, and the need to reskills and upskill, can only be predicted.
But we do know that technology – AI in particular – is a disruptive force. We know that declining birth rates and higher employer skills needs have the potential to create a difficult labour market that hinders growth. We also know it’s likely that people who don’t adapt to changes in work could see their careers suffer.
In response to these shifts, graduate and apprentice employers are considering fresh approaches to their talent strategies. Strategies that will focus less on a person’s age, education and technical experience, and more on their skills, capabilities and aptitudes.
The Institute of Student Employers (ISE) recent report, From early career to emerging talent, shows that 68 per cent of early career employers have already adopted or partially adopted a skills-based strategy to hiring – and another 29 per cent are considering it.
Quite rightly, we are all concerned about the tough jobs market facing students, the high volumes of applications they make, and the time it takes many to get a graduate job. Because of the UK’s anaemic growth, the current labour market is tight (ISE predicts graduate vacancies will only grow by one per cent this year). But once growth returns to the economy, it’s likely employers will see significant talent shortages.
We can see latent labour market problems in the current Labour Market Information (LMI) data. The UK’s unemployment rate at 4.4 per cent is historically low. Only 16.4m people in England and Wales are educated to level 4 or over – yet there are 18.6m jobs currently at that level, rising to 22.7m over the next 10 years. Over the next decade the working age population will increase only by 1.14m people (the over-70s, on the other hand, will increase by 2.1m).
Mention 2022 and while most remember the heatwave, recruiters remember the post-pandemic growth spurt which left many vacancies unfilled. A CIPD labour market survey from summer of that year reported that 47 per cent of employers had hard-to-fill vacancies and the top response to difficulties reported by employers was to upskill existing staff.
What is a skill, an attribute or a capability? What can be taught, learned and developed, and what individual traits are innate? Some skills are technical, some more behavioural. And we’ll all have our own views on the abilities of ourselves and others. So, the word skills is problematic, which makes agreement on what approach we take to skills problematic.
In their recent Wonkhe articles, Chris Millward and Konstantinos Kollydas and James Coe are right to highlight the challenge of differentiating between knowledge, technical behavioural and cognitive skills. To varying degrees, employers need both. I’d add another challenge, particularly in the UK: the link between what you study and what you do is less pronounced. Over 80 per cent of graduate recruiters do not stipulate a degree discipline. This makes connecting skills development to the labour market problematic.
Another problem with the use of the word skills is the danger that we take a reductive, overly simplistic view of skills. A student who does a group activity successfully may think they’ve nailed teamworking skills. In reality, working with people involves a multitude of skills that many of us spend our working lives trying to master.
In their report The skill-based organisation: a new operating model for work and the workforce, Deloitte describe how organisations are developing “a whole new operating model for work and the workforce that places skills, more than jobs, at the centre.”
As recruitment for specific expertise becomes more challenging, people are matched to roles based on skills and potential, less on experience in a role. Skills-based hiring strategies encompass career changers, older workers, people who have near-to work experience. Technology maps an organisation’s skills base to create an internal marketplace for roles and employees are encouraged to re-skill and upskill in order to move about the organisation as jobs change.
Graduates will need the skills and associated mindset to navigate this future world of work. World Economic Forum 2025 Future of Jobs analysis shows that 69 per cent of UK organisations placed resilience, flexibility and agility in the top five skills that will increase in importance by 2030.
Graduate recruitment strategies could evolve to make less use of education exit points to define the talent pool hired from: career-changers, older-workers, and internal switchers are incorporated into development programmes. More learning content becomes focused on developing behavioural and cognitive skills to promote a more agile cohort.
Within HE, practitioners have already established a considerable body of knowledge, research and practice on employability skills. Where change is occurring, is in the campus-wide approach to skills that many institutions have developed (or are in the process of developing). Approaches that aim to ensure all students have the opportunity to develop a core set of skills that will enable them to transition through education and into work. Bristol and Kingston, among others, have shown how skills can be embedded right across the curriculum.
I’m a big fan of Bobby Duffy’s work on delayed adulthood which suggests to me that the average student or graduate in their late teens and early twenties is at quite a different stage of development to previous generations. Which means that it’s wrong-headed to think of deficits in students’ work readiness as the fault of students (or their coddling parents).
Employers and educators together have a role to play in helping students understand their own skills and how to develop them. Skills require scaffolding. Surfacing skills in the curriculum ensures students understand how their academic work develops core skills.
And the provision and promotion of extra-curricular activities, including work experience, can be built into the student journey. Programmes where students develop their ability to deal with change and challenging situations, to analyse and solve complex problems, to adopt a positive approach to life-long learning.
At the ISE we leave the language of skills gaps and employers’ apparent low opinion of graduates to the tabloids. Only 17 per cent of employers in our annual survey say they disagree that graduates are not work-ready. We do ask a more subtle question on the attitudes and behaviours that employers expect early career hires to possess when they start work. The top skills employers thought students weren’t as proficient in as they expected were self-awareness, resilience and personal career management.
I am not, never have been, and never will be, a policy wonk. Maybe someone who is can design the architecture of incentives and systems that better connect education pathways to labour market needs. This architecture will also have to be able to predict labour market needs four to five years in advance, because that’s the lag between a typical students’ course choice and their job application. But if that can’t be done, surely a good investment is ensuring that students have plenty of opportunities to develop their skills and attributes to deal with an ever more changing workplace.
Fully embracing a skills approach is a great opportunity to demonstrate how HE adds value to the UK economy through the triangulation of student interests, employer needs and a great education experience.
Read the ISE’s report, From early talent to emerging talent, for a detailed analysis of the forces impacting how employers will hire and develop students in the future.
On April 21, 2025, Harvard University filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration after the federal government froze $2.2 billion in federal research funding with threats of more cuts to come. The administration claimed Harvard failed to address anti-Semitism on campus, especially in the aftermath of Hamas’ attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and issued a list of demands in exchange for lifting the freeze.
These demands included adopting an ideological litmus test for foreign students, a comprehensive mask ban, an audit of disfavored academic departments, mandated reforms to the university’s internal governance structure, and eliminating diversity programs. Harvard argued that these demands and the funding cuts that followed violated its institutional autonomy and constitutional right free speech and academic freedom. In the lawsuit, the university is asking the court to restore its funding and block the government from imposing such requirements in the future.
FIRE agrees that the Trump administration’s approach is unlawful. Below are answers to some common questions we have received about the situation.
You’re right. Harvard isn’t entitled to federal funding. No institution is.
But Harvard — just like you (or FIRE, or any person or organization) — is entitled to a federal government that follows the law. And just as the law gives us certain protections, it also says the government can’t cancel funding on a whim, like the administration did last week.
Let’s take a closer look.
The vast majority of colleges and universities receive federal funds. These funds mostly consist of financial aid, like Pell grants, and grants for scientific and medical research. Of the $9 billion reportedly under review by the Trump administration, the Harvard Crimson estimates over $6 billion comes in the form of funding for five regional hospitals associated with the university, along with $2.7 billion in research funding at the university itself.
To be eligible to receive federal funding, institutions pledge to follow federal anti-discrimination laws. Those laws include Title VI, the federal law that prohibits colleges and universities from discriminating on the basis of race, color, and national origin. Since the George W. Bush administration, the federal government has interpreted Title VI as prohibiting anti-Semitic discrimination, too.
So far, so good. Colleges get government funding for students and research. The federal government in return gets (among other things) a commitment that those colleges won’t engage in or tolerate discrimination. That’s the deal.
And the deal has rules to protect colleges, the government, and the taxpayers who foot the bill from being negatively affected by arbitrary decisions. Before the federal government can pull funds from an institution, it has to take a series of steps.
First, the Department of Education must investigate complaints about discrimination. If it finds problems, ED is required to work with an institution to address those problems “by informal means whenever possible.” This is the most common process, where the department’s Office for Civil Rights enters into a “resolution agreement” with an institution to ensure compliance with Title VI.
If that doesn’t work, for whatever reason, here’s what happens next. In order to strip federal funding, the department must give notice to the institution again and provide an opportunity for an administrative hearing where the institution can challenge the determination. If the determination stands, ED then has to report this to Congress and give 30 days’ notice before it actually terminates funding to the affected programs. ED may also refer the matter to the Department of Justice for litigation.
In short, one way or another, the federal government is going to have to provide evidence and prove its case if it wants to pull out of the deal.
Those are a lot of steps, but they’re important. They protect students by making sure colleges live up to their obligations. And they protect colleges by making sure they have an opportunity to contest the allegations as well as a chance to make things right.
These rules are also important because they provide a safeguard against political bias, risk of error, and governmental overreach.
Even the federal government acknowledges the role of due process and following existing statute. In a federal court filing earlier this month, the government wrote, “But ED’s only power is to withhold funding from institutions receiving federal funding, after a robust process required by statute and aimed at ensuring compliance.” In that same court filing, the government reiterated that point, writing that “by statute and regulation, numerous steps aimed at ensuring compliance must occur before ED may withdraw funding.”
Without these rules, an administration could, for example, decide to dramatically expand the definition of “sexual harassment” to include core protected speech and to remove due process protections from sexual misconduct hearings, using the threat of federal funding to force schools to go along with it. That’s exactly what happened under President Obama — and FIRE fought back.
And without these rules, nothing prevents the federal government from arbitrarily declaring a university in violation of federal law, yanking federal funding, and demanding fealty and censorship.
That’s what President Trump is doing now. And again, FIRE is fighting back.
No. As FIRE has consistently noted, some campus protests veered into violations of both campus rules and the law. Examples include when protesters took over buildings, blocked access and exit to and from areas of campus, disrupted classes, or committed acts of violence against Jewish students.
In responding to these incidents — or failing to respond — Harvard, Columbia, and other colleges may well have been in violation of their obligations under Title VI. If they refused to correct their mistakes as the process played out, revoking their funding might have been justified and legal.
But the process matters.
What FIRE is saying is that the law is important. Following it isn’t optional. It protects all of us — students, faculty, administrators, families, scientists, hospitals, and the entire country. The administration can’t just decide unilaterally to skip steps.
If you support President Trump — or just don’t like Harvard — remember this: Any power the president seizes to ignore the law now won’t magically disappear when he leaves office. It will be wielded by his successors, too. And this time, it might well target schools or other organizations you like.
It sure did — two years in a row, in fact.
But one of the reasons we created our rankings was to give colleges and universities an incentive to do better. Protecting expressive rights on campus is a big part of our mission, and Harvard has a long way to go. Indeed, Harvard (like Columbia) makes a politically popular target precisely because so many people resent its years of engaging in the kind of behavior towards dissenting students and faculty that FIRE was founded to combat.
But lately Harvard has been making an effort, and we won’t succeed by writing schools off. And we definitely won’t succeed by allowing the federal government to take them over, trading one dominant ideology for another.
You can’t censor your way to free speech.
The ongoing faculty strike at Wellesley College reveals, in stark terms, the reality of the two-tier faculty system that has come to define much of American higher education. Despite its reputation as a progressive liberal arts institution, Wellesley—like many of its peers—relies heavily on contingent faculty to carry out the core educational mission, while systematically denying them the security and respect afforded to their tenured counterparts.
At Wellesley, non-tenure-track (NTT) faculty make up about 30 percent of the teaching staff but are responsible for teaching 40 percent of the college’s classes. These educators are essential to the functioning of the institution, yet they are paid less, enjoy fewer benefits, and live with little to no job security. Only in January 2024 did they formally unionize, and since May, they have been negotiating what would be their first collective bargaining agreement. The protracted nature of these negotiations—and the college administration’s sluggish response—led to the strike, now stretching into its fourth week.
The strike has exposed the deep fissures between NTT and tenure-track faculty. In response to the disruption, the administration asked tenured professors to take on additional students, offer independent studies, or otherwise fill in for their striking colleagues. No additional compensation was offered. Faculty were given less than 48 hours to decide whether to participate. The move created a moral and professional dilemma: Should tenured faculty support their striking colleagues by refusing to cross the picket line, or should they prioritize the needs of students—particularly those whose immigration status or financial aid depended on maintaining full-time academic standing?
In many ways, this is the real function of the two-tier system. It doesn’t just allow institutions to save money by underpaying a significant portion of their teaching workforce. It also creates structural divisions that can be exploited in times of labor unrest. The privileged position of tenured faculty makes them natural pressure points for the administration, able to be guilted or coerced into mitigating the effects of a strike without fundamentally changing the system that caused it.
Driving this system are university presidents and senior administrators who increasingly adopt corporate, anti-labor management styles. These leaders often frame themselves as neutral actors mediating between stakeholders, but their actions tell a different story. In their refusal to negotiate in good faith, their last-minute crisis planning, and their strategic deployment of fear—around students’ financial aid, immigration status, and graduation timelines—they reveal a deep alignment with union-busting tactics more often seen in the private sector. These administrative strategies not only weaken labor solidarity, but also erode the educational environment they claim to protect.
What’s happening at Wellesley is not unique. It mirrors a broader pattern across higher education, where elite institutions rely on the labor of contingent faculty while denying them the protections and prestige of tenure. This isn’t a bug in the system—it is the system. The two-tier model is not about flexibility or innovation, as administrators often claim. It’s about control and cost containment, and when challenged, colleges will invoke crisis—whether financial, academic, or humanitarian—to maintain that control.
In this moment, Wellesley’s administration has positioned tenured faculty as potential strikebreakers, students as bargaining chips, and contingent faculty as expendable. The strike, and the response to it, underscores the urgent need to dismantle the exploitative structures that underpin so many American colleges. Until that happens—and until college presidents are held accountable for anti-labor tactics—students and faculty alike will continue to suffer, not only from instability, but from the erosion of trust and shared purpose in the academic community.
AUSTIN, Texas, Apr. 22, 2025 — A pair of civil liberties organizations are joining forces today to demand the University of Texas System Board of Regents rescind its ban on campus drag shows — a clear First Amendment violation.
In a joint letter, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression called on the UT System to drop its drag ban that is currently chilling and infringing upon the speech of more than 200,000 students across its nine campuses.
“Banning performances because government officials disapprove of their message is a textbook example of unconstitutional government censorship,” said FIRE Attorney Adam Steinbaugh. “The First Amendment protects the right of students at public universities to express themselves through art and performance, and that includes drag.”
In March, University of Texas System Board of Regents Chair Kevin Eltife, citing unspecified “executive orders,” publicly declared that “our public university facilities, supported by taxpayers, will not serve as venues for drag shows.” Eltife’s statement followed a letter from Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare, which complained that drag shows “denigrate women” and suggested they violated an executive order from President Donald Trump that said “federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology.”
But as a public university system, the UT System is required to abide by the First Amendment, which protects expression even if it offends state officials, campus administrators, or fellow students. And the justifications O’Hare cited are the same arguments from the Texas A&M University System that a federal judge in Texas roundly rejected when holding that system’s drag ban unconstitutional. On March 24 — just days after UT announced its drag ban — Judge Lee H. Rosenthal of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas struck down Texas A&M’s drag ban, ruling that drag “is speech and expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment.”
The UT drag ban violates the First Amendment in a number of ways. First, it creates a prior restraint on speech, silencing artistic performances before they can even be held. This is a form of censorship that the Supreme Court has held to be “the most serious and the least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights.”
Second, by seemingly being issued to comply with Trump’s executive order targeting “gender ideology,” the ban is viewpoint discrimination; government institutions can’t gag speech based solely on whether they approve of the ideology being expressed. Lastly, UT’s drag ban is unconstitutionally vague. Because “drag” and “gender ideology” are undefined by the Board of Regents, students have no way of knowing whether their speech will fall afoul of regulations.
West Texas A&M President Wendler enforced his unconstitutional prior restraint by canceling a student-organized charity drag show for the second time.
“The University of Texas System must immediately rescind its unconstitutional anti-drag policy, which is an affront to its students’ First Amendment rights and its stated commitment to free speech and academic freedom,” said ACLU of Texas staff attorney Chloe Kempf. “The UT System’s vague and discriminatory ban on drag performances will make its campuses less free, less fair, and less welcoming for every student — especially LGBTQIA+ students. Texans expect state institutions to vigorously protect our fundamental rights and freedoms, no exceptions.”
UT’s drag ban doesn’t just contradict the Constitution and recent court rulings in Texas — it also contradicts its own expressed values. Just last year, the UT System Board announced a “Commitment to Freedom of Speech and Expression,” which held that “it is not the proper role of the UT System or the UT institutions to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.”
“The UT Board of Regents laid down its marker last year that it would uphold the First Amendment and protect speech that may offend others,” said FIRE Supervising Senior Attorney JT Morris. “Now’s the time to put their money where their mouth is and stand up for the constitutional rights of all its students, instead of bowing to political pressure.”
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending and sustaining the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought—the most essential qualities of liberty. FIRE recognizes that colleges and universities play a vital role in preserving free thought within a free society. To this end, we place a special emphasis on defending the individual rights of students and faculty members on our nation’s campuses, including freedom of speech, freedom of association, due process, legal equality, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience.
The ACLU of Texas is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that works with communities, at the State Capitol, and in the courts to protect and advance civil rights and civil liberties for every Texan, no exceptions.
CONTACT:
Alex Griswold, Communications Campaign Manager, FIRE: 215-717-3473; [email protected]
Kristi Gross, Press Strategist, ACLU of Texas, [email protected]
When teachers search for help with lesson plans, parents look for answers on school policies, or researchers dig into the roots of America’s education system, many unknowingly rely on a public treasure: ERIC, the Education Resources Information Center. Behind nearly every meaningful Google result about U.S. education lies this carefully curated public database, an open-access archive of more than 2.1 million education documents funded by the U.S. Department of Education.
But this essential public good—free, accessible, nonpartisan—is now on the chopping block.
Unless something changes in the coming days, ERIC will stop being updated after April 23, marking the end of a 60-year-old institution that has helped educators, researchers, and policymakers base decisions on evidence, not ideology. The shutdown is not the result of budget shortfalls or Congressional gridlock. It’s a deliberate act of sabotage by the Trump administration, hiding behind the bland bureaucratic label of “efficiency.”
ERIC has been a mainstay of U.S. education since the 1960s, originally distributed on microfiche and now operating as a seamless, open-access website used by 14 million people each year. Think of it as the education world’s PubMed—a foundational, publicly funded resource that supports millions of decisions in classrooms and boardrooms alike.
The platform is funded through a five-year contract set to run through 2028. But that contract is now functionally dead thanks to DOGE, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, a newly created unit within the Trump Department of Education. Though Congress authorized the money, DOGE has refused to release it, effectively forcing ERIC into paralysis.
“After 60 years of gathering hard-to-find education literature and sharing it broadly, the website could stop being updated,” said Erin Pollard Young, the longtime Education Department staffer who oversaw ERIC until she was terminated in a mass layoff of more than 1,300 federal education employees in March.
Let’s be clear: this isn’t just about saving a database. This is about obliterating public access to knowledge—especially knowledge that challenges right-wing narratives about education in America.
This is not an isolated incident. The Trump administration’s hostility toward public institutions, academic research, and intellectual labor has been a central feature of its governance. From banning diversity training to rewriting U.S. history standards, this White House has repeatedly attacked education systems that promote nuance, evidence, or inclusion.
ERIC is now the latest victim in a broader war on independent knowledge. It doesn’t just house peer-reviewed journal articles. It archives what’s known as gray literature—unpublished reports, independent studies, and school district evaluations that are often the only public record of how education really works in practice. These materials often tell inconvenient truths: about inequality, segregation, charter school corruption, and failed policies pushed by corporate reformers.
“Big, important RCTs [randomized controlled trials] are in white papers,” said Pollard Young. “Google and AI can’t replicate what ERIC does.”
But gray literature doesn’t fit neatly into Trumpworld’s political project. It can’t be weaponized into culture war talking points. And perhaps that’s why it’s being buried.
Before being fired, Pollard Young was ordered by DOGE to cut ERIC’s budget nearly in half—from $5.5 million to $2.25 million—a demand she tried to meet, despite knowing the consequences. Forty-five percent of journals would have been removed from the indexing pipeline. The help desk would vanish. Pollard Young herself agreed to take over publisher outreach from contractors to keep the program alive.
Her plan was rejected with a single email in all caps: “THIS IS NOT APPROVED.” Then, silence.
“Without constant curation and updating, so much information will be lost,” she warned. And with her termination, ERIC has no federal steward left.
Make no mistake—ERIC is being suffocated, not because it failed, but because it succeeded too well. It made knowledge available to anyone with an internet connection. And for an administration that thrives on disinformation and division, that’s a threat.
Educators, researchers, and school leaders will lose the most. But the real tragedy is what this means for public education as a democratic institution. When vital information disappears or becomes inaccessible, it opens the door to policy based on myth and ideology, not reality.
“Defunding ERIC would limit public access to critical education research, hindering evidence-based practices and informed policy decisions,” said Gladys Cruz, past president of the AASA, The School Superintendents Association.
The Department of Education responded not with a defense of ERIC, but with a political attack on its parent agency, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). A spokesperson claimed IES has “failed to effectively fulfill its mandate,” echoing the administration’s now-familiar strategy: discredit the institution, defund it, then destroy it.
Pollard Young, who is still technically on administrative leave, has chosen to speak out, risking retaliation from a vindictive administration to warn the public.
“To me, it is important for the field to know that I am doing everything in my power to save ERIC,” she said. “And also for the country to understand what is happening.”
We should listen.
ERIC is more than a database—it’s a record of our educational history, a safeguard against ignorance, and a tool for building a more equitable future. Killing it isn’t just reckless. It’s ideological.
This is what authoritarianism looks like in the 21st century. Not just book bans and curriculum gag orders, but the slow, quiet erasure of public knowledge—done in the name of “efficiency,” while the lights go out on truth.
Learn more about how endowments support students and research: Contact Congress, read our brief Understanding College and University Endowments, and explore our Tax Resource webpage.
The Trump administration has launched an aggressive and unprecedented attack on higher education—unlike anything we’ve seen before. Billions of dollars in federal support for vital research on diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s, and HIV disappeared overnight. The law and longstanding due process protections for institutions have been disregarded.
These sweeping actions have harmed every type of institution—and, more importantly, the students and communities they serve. As a consequence, colleges and universities have been forced to freeze hiring, lay off staff, eliminate programs, halt life-saving clinical trials, and pause graduate admissions—all within the administration’s first 100 days.
Some traditional supporters of higher education, as well as frequent critics, suggest that there is an easy way out: colleges and universities should simply use their endowments to plug these sudden financial gaps. This idea has come from across the political spectrum—from Republican Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland and the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute to liberal New York Times columnist Ezra Klein and the left-leaning think tank New America.
These calls to “just spend the endowment” tend to resurface during crises, as seen during the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. If endowment spending increased then, why can’t the same thing happen now? It sounds simple, but it’s wrong.
First, while institutions have increased endowment spending during major emergencies, the billions of dollars in research funding cuts being proposed now dwarfs anything confronted previously. In 2023, the federal government provided nearly $60 billion on research funding, compared to total endowment spending—financial aid, research, student services, academics, operations, and more—of about $35 billion, according to IPEDS data.
Second, during these recent crises, institutions didn’t have to shoulder the burden alone. They acted in partnership with the federal government and other stakeholders to weather the storm. That shared response made a difference. In 2025, however, the federal government isn’t a partner—it’s the source of the crisis. And unlike past emergencies, there is no clear end in sight, leaving open the potential of a devastatingly long-term drain on endowments.
Third, endowments are not like a single checking or savings account that can be dipped into at will. Instead, they consist of up to thousands of individual accounts, the vast majority of which are legally restricted by donors. These restrictions often designate support for specific purposes like expanding financial aid, supporting the chair of a particular academic discipline, or fueling groundbreaking medical and technological research. Most endowment spending boosts access for low-income students and academics. The 2024 NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments found that almost about two thirds of endowment spending goes directly to financial aid and academics, and institutions with large endowments are the most likely to provide need-blind admissions, meet students’ full financial need, and offer no-loan financial aid packages. These funds cannot legally be redirected to make up for canceled government funding—or bail out reckless federal policy decisions.
Even the wealthiest institutions don’t have enough unrestricted funds to routinely absorb massive, sustained cuts without irreparably draining their endowments. Endowments are managed like marathon runners: they expend energy strategically, knowing they can’t sprint the whole race. There are times to surge—such as during the pandemic—but that pace can’t last. Try to sprint the whole race, and the endowment, like a runner, collapses. Reckless financial decisions today won’t just hurt current students—they’ll shortchange the next generation as well.
For this reason, endowment spending is closely monitored, regularly audited, and guided by strict policies designed to ensure long-term sustainability. Colleges and universities spend what is both prudent and legally permitted each year while preserving benefits for future students. According to the 2024 NACUBO report, institutions’ average effective spending rate was nearly 5 percent. That figure isn’t arbitrary. It’s shaped by state laws, donor intent, and sound financial stewardship. Some states actually impose legal restrictions on the percentage of endowment spending each year. For example, in Ohio, spending more than 5 percent in a given year could expose an institution to legal liability.
Misconceptions about endowments aren’t just misleading—they threaten the very people and programs that they were created to support: scholarships, research, academic excellence, and the futures of countless students and faculty. And they divert attention from the real issue: an unprecedented assault on American higher education.
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When it comes to building a successful online learning ecosystem in higher education, there’s no magic switch to flip — and certainly no one-size-fits-all strategy to follow. For colleges and universities navigating the complex shift to digital, growth isn’t linear. It’s staged. Enter the Good, Better, Best model, one of the most effective techniques an institution can use to grow online.
Unlike blanket approaches that assume every school has the same staff, resources, and readiness level, Good, Better, Best offers a practical, capacity-driven road map — a flexible framework that honors where an institution is while guiding it toward where it wants to go.
At its core, this model isn’t about chasing perfection; it’s about committing to measurable progress over time. “Best” isn’t a static end point. It’s a moving target that evolves alongside the institution’s goals, stakeholders, and capabilities.
At Archer, we view Good, Better, Best not as a ranking system, but as a framework for institutional improvement — one that works only when there’s transparency, alignment, and shared ownership across departments. Whether your institution is just beginning its online learning journey or fine-tuning an established program, Good, Better, Best meets you where you are — and grows with you.
If your institution is experiencing any of the following roadblocks, you may benefit from adopting a Good, Better, Best strategy.
With so many moving pieces — in areas ranging from tech platforms to student support — it can be hard to know what to tackle first. Good, Better, Best helps you identify which areas should be your priority based on capacity, not guesswork.
When leaders aren’t on the same page, it’s easy to spin your wheels. Good, Better, Best creates a common language and plan that fosters alignment across departments and roles.
If your outsourced solutions no longer fit your evolving needs, Archer’s Good, Better, Best partnership model can help you reclaim ownership of your operational processes with a scalable, strategic framework tailored to your team.
Role clarity is critical to success. Good, Better, Best surfaces ownership gaps and overlaps so you can streamline your operations and empower your teams to move forward confidently.
Ambition is great — but it needs direction. Good, Better, Best turns a vision into action with clear phases, milestones, and accountability across stakeholders.
Momentum is hard-won, and sustaining it takes intention. Good, Better, Best supports continuous improvement so you can build on your success without burning out your team.
For institutions looking to grow their online programs, knowing where to go next starts with understanding where they are now.
At Archer, we help colleges and universities assess their current state across the core functions that shape the online student experience — from marketing and enrollment to student support and information technology (IT). Our Readiness Assessment is the first step in building a road map rooted in the Good, Better, Best model.
Rather than applying a rigid, one-size-fits-all playbook, we use Good, Better, Best to create a customized path forward for each institution, shaped by its unique capacity and goals. Each department involved in the assessment — whether it’s admissions, advising, IT, or marketing — gets to define what “Good,” “Better,” and “Best” look like for them.
This is what makes the framework so powerful. It’s not prescriptive; it’s practical and flexible, built around what institutions have today and where they want to grow tomorrow.
By anchoring their enrollment strategy in this kind of honest, department-level reflection, institutions can align their efforts, set realistic goals, and build momentum toward long-term success.
In today’s competitive higher ed landscape — where enrollment patterns are shifting and online options are expanding — many institutional teams find themselves overwhelmed. They’re trying to do everything at once, often with stretched resources, siloed decision-making, and no clear sense of what should come first.
The result? Progress that feels more reactive than strategic.
But what’s missing isn’t more effort. It’s more structure.
We’ve seen that the most successful institutions don’t attempt to leap straight to “Best” on day one. Instead, they take the time to map out a clear, achievable path forward. That’s where the Good, Better, Best model makes a difference. It gives teams a way to define their current state, envision their future goals, and understand the phased steps required to get there.
This kind of structured transformation allows institutions to move with purpose — prioritizing what matters most, aligning cross-functional teams, and building momentum one phase at a time.
At its core, the Good, Better, Best model isn’t about doing everything at once — it’s about doing the right things, at the right time, with the right people. It’s a strategic framework that meets institutions where they are and guides them forward with clarity and intention.
At Archer, we don’t just help you design your road map — we walk it with you. As your partner in strategy, delivery, and implementation, we’re here to support you as you achieve sustainable, long-term growth that’s aligned with your mission and built for your team’s unique capacity. With Good, Better, Best, progress isn’t just possible. It’s practical.
Contact us today to learn more.
