Blog

  • A Values-Based Approach to Using Gen AI – Faculty Focus

    A Values-Based Approach to Using Gen AI – Faculty Focus

    Source link

  • Horizon Europe revisited in wake of Trump’s attacks on unis – Campus Review

    Horizon Europe revisited in wake of Trump’s attacks on unis – Campus Review

    Universities Australia (UA) has again called on the Albanese government to invest in research fund Horizon Europe amid growing uncertainty from the United States.

    Please login below to view content or subscribe now.

    Membership Login

    Source link

  • TEQSA’s new payroll, wage regulatory expectations – Campus Review

    TEQSA’s new payroll, wage regulatory expectations – Campus Review

    Institutions will be required to prove that their payroll operations are effective to combat endemic wage underpayment, the university regulator has announced.

    Please login below to view content or subscribe now.

    Membership Login

    Source link

  • Senate HELP Committee Releases Big Beautiful Bill

    Senate HELP Committee Releases Big Beautiful Bill

    Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, spearheading the Senate plan for higher education reform.

    Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

    Senate Republicans want to eliminate so-called “inflationary loans,” stop federal aid to degrees that leave students worse off and expand the Pell Grant to workforce training programs as part of a draft plan released late Tuesday evening to overhaul higher education policy. 

    The 71-page legislation is part of the Senate’s response to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which passed the House last month and is designed to fund President Donald Trump’s tax cuts, his crackdown on immigration and other top agenda items.

    The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee drafted the higher education portion of the legislation. As expected, the plan mirrors the House bill in many ways as it calls for significant changes to the federal student loan system. For instance, both plans would end the Grad Plus loans and restrict the Parent Plus program.

    But the Senate has a different plan to hold colleges accountable, nixing the House’s proposed risk-sharing model, under which colleges would have to pay a fee for their graduates’ unpaid loans, for a measure like gainful employment. Under the Senate plan, colleges would have to report their average postgraduate income levels and could lose access to federal aid, depending on students’ earnings and debt. The Senate bill also omits a provision from the House bill that would exclude part-time students from the Pell grant. Overall, the changes in the Senate bill would save $300 billion over 10 years compared to the House bill, which would save $350 billion.

    “American higher education has lost its purpose. Students are graduating with degrees that won’t get them a job and insurmountable debt that they can’t pay back,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Republican chair of the HELP committee, in a news release.  “We need to fix our broken higher education system, so it prioritizes student success and ensures Americans have the skills to compete in a 21st century economy. President Trump and Senate Republicans are focused on delivering results for American families and this bill does just that.”

    Lawmakers are using the process known as reconciliation to advance the legislation, so it only needs 51 votes to pass the high chamber instead of the typical 60 votes. But before senators can vote, the Senate Budget committee and then the parliamentarian will have to scrutinize the various provisions and ensure they adhere to the reconciliation rules. For example, the policy changes must have a budgetary impact and be within the jurisdiction of the committee that proposed it. 

    President Donald Trump has set an ambitious July 4 deadline to sign the measure into law, which would require quick action from the Senate.

    From the beginning of the Trump administration in January, House Republicans have been pushing a more radical plan with steep cuts to key welfare programs like Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and, most recently, student financial aid like the Pell Grant. Meanwhile, senators have talked about more modest, though still significant, spending cuts. 

    Now, Republicans from both chambers will have to get on the same page if they want to meet their deadline. All the while, lobbyists, policy analysts and political figures—including ex-Trump advisor, Elon Musk—are expected to come at the bill from every angle with critiques.

    Source link

  • Prime Minister announces productivity roundtable – Campus Review

    Prime Minister announces productivity roundtable – Campus Review

    Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a productivity roundtable between business leaders, unions and community associations with the aim of boosting economic growth and wages, in his National Press Club address on Tuesday.

    Please login below to view content or subscribe now.

    Membership Login

    Source link

  • What I learned from US universities – Campus Review

    What I learned from US universities – Campus Review

    I have greatly benefited from an academic and leadership career spanning three continents over 40 years, and always viewed the US as a different stage, but one with much to learn from. 

    Please login below to view content or subscribe now.

    Membership Login

    Source link

  • Seeing universities as others see us

    Seeing universities as others see us

    As the comparison between spending (per student) in Scottish and English universities comes into my argument later, Robert Burns’ famous lines from To a Louse seems a good place to start.

    O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us

    We are very familiar with how we see ourselves. Higher education is facing an intolerable financial squeeze.

    In England the maximum fee which institutions are allowed to charge has only been been upgraded once, and only marginally, since the switch from state grants to tuition fees as the main source of funding for teaching 13 or more years ago. Its real value is barely 70 per cent of what it was then, although the Labour government has agreed to another – marginal – increase from 2025-26.

    In Scotland, where Scottish domiciled students pay no fees, public expenditure on higher education has similarly failed to keep pace with inflation.

    The substantial increase in full-fee paying international students, which many institutions relied on to fill the gap has ground to a halt because of less generous visa rules imposed as part of the backlash against large-scale immigration. The never-had-it-so-good years when growing your income was easy are over.

    Red ink

    Meanwhile costs have piled up. Higher education faces not only the standard inflationary pressures – higher wage, pension, energy, estates and other costs. As employers institutions must also pay higher rates of higher national insurance, without the possibility of passing on these extra costs (because of frozen fees and frowned-upon international recruitment). They may also face a levy on international students, although the Government has weakly promised that, if imposed, its proceeds would be redistributed within the system.

    As a result an escalating number of institutions are reporting deficits. The talk is all of transformation, a new code for everything from sharing back-office services to full-blown institutional mergers. The prospect of outright institutional failures cannot be excluded. Dundee has already come close, although not perhaps as close as initial alarmist scenarios suggested. Scotland, of course, still has a funding council able to intervene in such situations. In England the Office for Students has only recently begun to focus on financial sustainability, so it is far from clear what the fate of an English Dundee might be.

    That is our story – and we sticking to it. Rightly so, because it is almost entirely true, although it might help to convince others if it was not sometimes expressed in a spirit of aggrieved entitlement.

    The other side

    However, going back to Burns, we also need to think a bit more about how others see us. It is not simply that we are living in a post-truth world, so the marshalling of incontrovertible evidence while still necessary is now far from sufficient. This applies in particular to the toxically tangled issues of international students and immigration. No amount of evidence of the benefits of “soft power”, or economic multiplier effects, or of the way non-UK PhD students and post-docs have allowed us to punch above our weight in science and scholarship (same in the US, of course) will persuade those who fear they will have to live in, in the queasy but presumably deliberate phrase of the Prime Minister, “an island of strangers”.

    But there is no need to go down the post-truth rabbit hole. There are perfectly rational and plausible ways in which others can see us that are radically different from the way we see ourselves, ways that might appeal to politicians set upon from all sides by multiple clamouring claims for increased state support and to their officials focused on delivery and free-lance advisers thrilled by difficult choices.

    For example, these others might highlight the fact that spending per student on higher education, from all sources, is high by international standards. Among OECD countries the UK comes third, really second after the US because Luxembourg in the number-one spot is clearly a special case. In OECD’s book expenditure per student is substantially higher than in every other European country.

    Of course, international comparisons are notoriously unreliable because of the difficulty of making like-for-like comparisons and disentangling higher from wider tertiary education. Even the apparently simpler task of just comparing public expenditure and excluding private expenditure is fraught, as the difficulty of categorising expenditure on student loans in England has demonstrated. But, with all these caveats, it is still fair to conclude that UK expenditure per student is towards the generous end of the international spectrum.

    A counter ability

    The counter-argument is that this higher expenditure pays dividends because there are so many UK institutions among the top universities in global rankings. But there are clearly other factors that explain our stand-out performance, although Switzerland actually has more highly graded institutions in proportion to its population. Also our global eminence is essentially rooted in research not teaching performance, which is only relevant to expenditure-per-student in terms of cross subsidy. A better counter-argument is that, because of shorter course lengths – three-year undergraduate degrees and one-year Masters – and high completion rates, expenditure per graduate is pretty average by international standards.

    The same ‘others’, faced with evidence that funding per student in England is higher than in Scotland (spelt out, for example, in the recent report by London Economics for a Royal Society of Edinburgh conference), might not automatically conclude, as we do, that therefore funding in Scotland should be raised to the English level. On the contrary they might conclude that, because Scottish universities offer the same quality (whether measured by league tables, shares of competitively won research funding or external examiners’ and other reports on teaching) and the incidence of financial distress is not greater north of the Border, perhaps English funding levels may actually be (too?) generous…

    Of course, all Anglo-Scottish unit funding comparisons are compromised by the fact that undergraduate degrees are three-years south and four-years north of the Border. Historically the younger age of university entrants in Scotland, the lower intensity of Highers and persistence of “democratic intellect” general degrees may have justified the different course lengths. But there is now no difference in entry ages, Highers and Advanced Highers are clearly equivalent to A levels (as English universities acknowledge in their admissions criteria) and ordinary degrees have almost disappeared.

    Nor is it immediately obvious why, if an English system were to be adopted (which is not going to happen), Scottish graduates should be burdened with substantially more debt. The pressure for shorter, and less costly, degrees would clearly increase. But that is an argument for another time and place – and an educationally informed outcome could well be that English undergraduate degrees should also be four-year, which after all is the international standard in the rest of Europe, the US and almost everywhere else.

    Shiny new buildings

    The same ‘others’, faced with this prima facie evidence of  “inefficiency”, might also express some concern about the less-than-prudent management of some – English – universities since the high-fees regime was introduced 13 years ago. Was it really reasonable to plan, as the cranes went up on campus, on the basis that the tuition fees windfall would last for ever? Or that in crabby post-Brexit Britain the very considerable expansion in the number of international students would not provoke a populist backlash?

    They might even point back to historical precedents, and argue there is nothing fixed or sacred about any particular level of funding. Back in 1981 the former University Grants Committee bet on protecting the unit of resource – and lost. The student demand displaced by this vain attempt at protection flowed into the then polytechnics, creating the shape of higher education with which we are familiar today. When expansion really took off in the 1990s the unit of resource was further degraded, Better times only returned with the revival of public expenditure under Tony Blair and, crucially, Gordon Brown and, later, for a while, with high tuition fees.

    Finally they might channel, in a much more moderate way of course, Donald Trump’s threat to use the money he is withdrawing from Harvard to fund “trade schools”. There are plenty of influential people who argue higher education, and specifically universities, has been expanded at the expense of further education. This may demonstrate how little they know and understand about what actually happens in universities today, in particular post-1992 universities. But they represent an important strand of political, if not public, opinion which is hardly sympathetic to increased funding for higher education.

    To be clear, I am not endorsing this alternative viewpoint. My absolute preference is for a better funded higher education system, and also for increased public funding and a managed retreat from the narrowly transactional and crassly commodified regime imposed in England (do you really, Scotland, want to go there?). Nevertheless, surely it is important to remember Burns’ “giftie… to see oursels as ithers see us”. It can only only strengthen our arguments.

    Source link

  • University spending and cost recovery, 2023-24

    University spending and cost recovery, 2023-24

    If you are the kind of person who sits down to read analysis of the latest available TRAC (officially, Transparent Approach to Costing) data the last thing you would expect would be cautious optimism.

    The sector, after all, is circling the financial drain – and when you can read press releases from unions and sector representative bodies that say fundamentally the same thing you could feel confident that this is the situation.

    Much of what we’ve recently read in the press is about the impacts of measures taken to address this financial peril – course closures, job cuts, changes in terms and conditions, and a retreat from spending plans on everything from maintenance to recruitment.

    And what the latest TRAC tells us is that these measures are working.

    Who turned on the light?

    To be clear, it’s not time to quit lobbying for a better funding settlement.

    Based on 2023-24 submissions from 128 institutions in England and Northern Ireland the sector has an aggregate deficit of £2,003m – down substantially from £2,854m in 2022-23. The sector has made savings of more than £800m between two years – no mean feat where costs are rising and the value of income is falling.

    What’s going on under the hood is that institutions are getting better at recovering the costs of things they are funded to do – 95.7 per cent of costs were recovered in 2023-24, up from 93.6 per cent in 2022-23. Costs still exceed income (they have done since the pandemic) but the direction of travel is promising – providers are generating more income (up 5.8 per cent to £44,508m) while limiting increases in costs (up 3.5 per cent to £46,511m).

    This is good news, but counterintuitive. We know that staff costs are rising (there was an annual pay uplift, and pensions spending has increased substantially for those providers involved in TPS), we know that the cost of doing business (everything from maintenance to logistics to consumables is rising). And TRAC confirms this – staff costs are up 6.4 per cent, other operating costs are up 4.7 per cent, on last year.

    There are savings in the costs of finance (such as interest payments) – these have fallen 13.3 per cent over last year, though this does not make a huge contribution to overall spending.

    MSI (coming on like a seventh sense)

    We do, however, need to talk about the margin for sustainability and investment (MSI). It’s the most controversial part of the TRAC specification, and when you tell people that universities need to have at least some money for non-income generating fripperies like student support and estates maintenance within any calculation of the cost of doing business they will lose their minds.

    The calculation is done by institution and is based on an average of three years of data and three years of projections (the nerd in me wants to be clear that these are based on Earnings Before Interest Taxation Depreciation and Amortisation – EBITDA) expressed as a proportion of full economic costs. In 2022-23 this was £3,770m (8.4 per cent of FEC), in 2023-24 this was £3,548 (7.6 per cent of FEC) for the sector as a whole.

    The effect here is that the total costs of running a university (FEC plus MSI) looks lower than it did last year. This is more evidence of savings over multiple years – cutting spending on maintenance, sustainability, and student services. This will make cost recovery and the deficit look better: it doesn’t explain all of the improvements this year but it explains some of them.

    The document provides a fuller list of institutional decisions that would have an impact on the MOS calculation – inflationary pressures, a (regulator advocated) caution in recruitment income growth and research activity growth, variability in forecasts as more institutions design in large changes of focus to plans for future spending, and the usual weirdnesses around pension provisions.

    Spend less, earn more

    So institutions are making cuts, and look financially healthier for it. But there is still an overall deficit, and if cuts and efficiencies are the only answer to financial constraints there is a long and painful road left to walk.

    Within the overall £2,003m deficit, the £1,693m deficit on publicly funded teaching is a major contributing factor: for every £100 a university spends on teaching home students, it receives £89.20 from the public purse. This varies, as we will see, by the type of institution in question and what else it gets up to. In real terms income is actually up slightly (a slight rise in the number of students), but it costs more to pay staff and to do all the other things that teaching requires.

    Conversely non-publicly funded teaching (all overseas students, and some self-funded home students) has a 143.1 per cent recovery rate, generating at a £3,232m surplus. The recovery rate is actually down marginally on last year, but the overall income from this source is up by 7.8 per cent (to £10,727m).

    Research has never had a good recovery rate – we’re now down to 66 per cent for 2023-24, from 68.5 per cent the previous year, and again there’s substantial differences by provider type. Again we can point to staff costs and operating costs rising as the reason, but we should also recall that most publicly funded research returns 80 per cent, and some research has no income attached at all.

    We should also note that other (income generating) activities like catering and accommodation run a small deficit, while other non-commercial activity (investments, donations, endowments) have an on-paper surplus.

    Peer pressure

    While the sector level figures are useful, they disguise a lot of diversity in the sector. We still – in 2025 – do not get institutional TRAC data, which would genuinely be useful for understanding where providers have costs that are substantially higher than comparators.

    Instead, we are back with groups A-F:

    • Group A: Institutions with a medical school that get 20 per cent or more of their total income from research (pretty much the Russell Group)
    • Group B: Other institutions with research income constituting 15 per cent or more of all income (largely the big, research intensive, traditional universities that sit outside of the Russell Group).
    • Group C: Research income between 5 and 15 per cent of all income (larger and research focused post-92 providers with some pre-92s mixed in)
    • Group D: Research income less than 5 per cent of a total income greater than £150m (Other big post-92 providers)
    • Group E: Research income less than 5 per cent of a total income less than £150m (the rest of the traditional universities, plus specialist providers)
    • Group F: Specialist music and arts institutions (as you might expect)

    Here’s what they all spend money on, as a proportion of total expenditure:

    [Full screen]

    And here’s the proportion of costs they recover on each kind of spending:

    [Full screen]

    And here’s what happens when you drill down into research:

    [Full screen]

    It’s not usually a good idea to make blanket statements about sector finances – what’s true for one university is generally not true for another. But in this case the generality is valuable – it highlights that the problems facing the sector are less to do with autonomous decisions and more to do with the overall financial settlement. Individual, provider action is clearly helping the situation. But it won’t be enough.

    Source link

  • From crisis to community: engaging students in post-pandemic classrooms

    From crisis to community: engaging students in post-pandemic classrooms

    School and other learning environments are often a safe place for students who have difficult home lives.

    I know, I was one of those students. I take that knowledge into every classroom that I enter, and my understanding of student engagement and student experience are woven into my pedagogy of care and teaching to transgress.

    I cannot, (and do not wish to!) separate my lived experience from my teaching. As someone who dropped out of the university that I now work at, I do have an interesting insight into building community and belonging into the curriculum.

    As I wrote here with Lisa Anderson, we require a radical shift in how we consider the needs of students. I want every student in my classroom to experience it as a safe and welcoming space.

    These are not buzzwords or trends, it is how I ensure that students are able to learn – I want them to be in the room. Teaching is a relational activity that requires commitment, experience, honing our craft and being willing to adapt.

    The university sector is not in a good place, and as committed as I am to my research, it is teaching that brings me joy and new ideas every single time I enter the classroom. When we teach to transgress, it is for us as much as it is for the students.

    The classroom reminds me of what is possible. Engaging strongly with the literature of the UK’s leading emergency and disaster planner, Lucy Easthope, I recognise the education will be impacted forever by the pandemic, and I want to play my part in the recovery.

    Crime, justice and the sex industry

    I lead the largest optional final year module in my department, with 215 registered students, based on my 23 years’ experience of the sex industry. It was a community of care that got me here, with colleagues from around the country (and globe!) sharing material and ideas with me when I launched this module in 2020. Collaboration and teaching go hand-in-hand and we must allow time for this.

    The module is underpinned by my nonlinear pedagogy which I write about here. The design empowers students to have control over the direction and pace of their learning. All content is uploaded to our virtual learning environment Canvas in week one. There are weekly recorded lecture summaries, and 2-hour weekly workshops.

    The content also includes a comprehensive library reading list, weekly reading folders, watch folder and collaborative tools.

    This year the module is celebrating its fifth birthday and the student engagement is better than ever before. Here are some things that I have learned and that I am reflecting on.

    A welcoming classroom and learning names

    Where possible, I always enter the classroom ten minutes before class begins (this is definitely not always possible in a large and busy campus with extreme demands on estates and our time) to provide a prepared and calm setting for students to arrive. This is also helpful for me as a neurodiverse teacher.

    I like to greet students as they arrive, and learn names wherever possible (photo class lists are your friend).This sets the tone for our warm and welcoming teaching community. It demonstrates the way in which we will invite peers to contribute and talk through the content. It may seem a small thing, but it makes a huge difference to teaching and learning.

    Front-loaded prep

    As a dyslexic I need to be prepared. This is a large module, and a busy teaching load. I spend the weeks before semester begins frontloading my prep so that I am ready to go. This involved re-recording the summary E lectures, updating workshop materials, sheets, reading folders, module guides, etc.

    Visitors to my office are surprised to see a row of 12 piles along the floor- with each week’s content printed out, highlighted, and ready to go. I am always very grateful once semester starts that I took the time to do this. It creates a calm tone to classes that students explicitly comment on.

    Lesson plans

    This year I went old-school in multiple ways, including buying a hardback lesson planner, in which I mapped out the learning objectives for every workshop – mapping against learning outcomes for the module.

    Physically mapping these out, with prompts, links to the readings and case studies, was something that students positively picked up on. This also ensured adaptability and that I was reflecting upon and updating my material. Students need calm and expert guidance; experienced teachers are key.

    Workbooks

    Acting on student feedback from the previous year, I designed a workbook that students can print out or use digitally. Students always make a lot of notes on this module, and the workbook helps them with organising those thoughts. In class, I was very pleased to see rows of pink workbooks looking back at me.

    The workbook also includes space for questions, and learners can bring this to my student support hours. I have been learning a lot from school teachers, and recognising how much extra structure students need post-pandemic.

    Learning through tempo

    I made an active decision this year to experiment with the tempo of each workshop class, with differences even between some workshop groups. This was in response to student feedback who wanted some slower sessions in order to read in class, and more time to talk with their groups/peers.

    This was music to my ears (pun absolutely intended) and it made me reflect on the pace and rhythm of my classes. I am a high-energy teacher and I like to pack a lot into classes, but stripping (pun not intended!) some of this back to create quieter time (for class reading) and slower sessions with more time for groups to talk, has been a game-changer. Students actively requesting some slower workshops so they could read together in class, was amazing to witness. Students reacted overwhelmingly positively to my ability to respond and adapt.

    Learning through play

    It is interesting in this post-disaster period of the pandemic to witness students enjoying, and requesting, playful activities in class. As I argue here, we need to build community into the curriculum to boost attendance.

    Poster paper and felt tip pens might have attracted horrified faces a few years ago and a low uptake, but this year, every single “play” activity that I have offered has been taken up by almost every student. I always offer a range of engagement tools, with non-verbal options such as our collaborative google doc, padlet, and other online tools, and I offer the option for sheets, paper, pens etc.

    A welcoming, hospitable classroom where students know they are being considered, pays dividends in engagement and mutual respect. Once students feel safe and able to take risks, no matter how low-stakes, they open up, and engage in difficult and complex debates.

    One group activity looked at sexual entertainment venue closures using five different pieces of coloured card to map out key findings from two different journal articles, identify and apply concepts from earlier weeks in the module, examples of venue closures, and examples of campaign group discourse.

    A “fun” activity that involves deep critical thinking and the ability to successfully weave together multiple forms of evidence to formulate a convincing argument. I then took a photo of the giant map we all created across the module. Every single student wanted to take part; students are actively seeking community and togetherness within the classroom.

    As Treasa Kearney and I argue here, campus should be a treasured space that offers valuable connections to students.

    The activity with foam stickers, which I thought students would resist, was the most popular activity of the semester (after the guided walk, below). Through the mechanism of light-hearted play, students successfully navigated a tricky and sensitive topic examining the harms, dangers and exploitation associated with online sex work. We ended up with students stickering their laptops, phones, their workbooks, and themselves! We cannot forget that these are all students of the pandemic, they missed out on so many opportunities to interact with peers. They are embracing every opportunity to connect with each other within timetabled sessions.

    Guided walk

    Another activity on the module (and the one that students most favourably comment on) is our guided walk of sexual entertainment venues in Liverpool city centre. I provide online material for accessibility purposes recognising that not all students can walk around the city, or may not wish to.

    For students who attend, we map out the city in terms of gendered harm and risk, and I give a lecture inside of a sexual entertainment venue that opens exclusively for our class. This brings the Policing and Crime Act 2009 to life, and gives students a unique insight into what the key texts are discussing. It is also very much a community building exercise, with a large proportion of our module cohort in attendance. Learning outside of the classroom is very important for student engagement.

    Scaffolding learning

    I intentionally choose to layer texts: curating texts of various complexity, using tools such as padlet. Students choose what texts to access based on their own areas of interests and confidence, as they progressively build up skill and academic knowledge of the area. This ensures that the module is accessible to all students, with learners challenged at a point which feels appropriate for them.

    It also means that students always have supported content to work with. In week ten, we looked at the media, and we returned to a key text from week eight, to apply three media myths from a journal article to three documentary clips. Using worksheets, the students demonstrated a sophisticated ability to apply a criminological concept to media sources.

    Responding to ongoing feedback

    Building a rapport with students through modelling a pedagogy of care and inclusion, equips students with the ability to provide feedback throughout the semester. Students appreciate the wealth of resources available from the beginning of semester, but others may feel overwhelmed with choice.

    In rapid response to student feedback, I started to provide recommended readings in addition to the large selection. Students appreciated this speedy closing of the feedback loop, and being valued co-producers of the module approach. The student feedback for the module was the best yet.

    Accessible assessment as the default position

    With growing numbers of students experiencing health issues, it is good practice to think of accessibility as the default position, not an additional bolt-on. I am in favour of different modes of assessment that students can choose from, or developing an assessment that can be approached in different ways. I have written here about my letter assessment, inspired by the work of Katie Tonkiss. Students often feel worried about “academic writing”, and this assessment allows students to use the first person, and to use a more colloquial writing tone if desired. The students develop a nuanced, convincing and influential writing style, with the ability to hold conflicting and competing harms in tension.

    Ultimately, it is about remembering that teaching is a huge privilege and blessing. We get to have an impact on so many people and play a part in shaping ideas and innovations of the future. I will never lose the gratitude for getting to do this job and remembering where I come from.

    Source link

  • HR and the Courts — June 2025 – CUPA-HR

    HR and the Courts — June 2025 – CUPA-HR

    by CUPA-HR | June 10, 2025

    Each month, CUPA-HR General Counsel Ira Shepard provides an overview of several labor and employment law cases and regulatory actions with implications for the higher ed workplace. Here’s the latest from Ira.

    Federal Court Allows Nationwide Class Action Alleging AI Age Discrimination To Proceed

    A federal court recently ruled that Workday’s artificial intelligence scoring algorithm for screening job applicants meets the standard to conclude that it may violate the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) in discriminating against older job applicants. The court ruled that the nationwide class action may proceed (Mobley v. Workday (N.D. Cal. 3:23-cv-00770, 5/16/25)).

    While the court has not yet ruled on other allegations, the lawsuit also alleged that the algorithm has an unlawful disparate impact based on race and disability. President Trump has instructed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Justice not to prosecute disparate impact cases, but this executive order does not apply to private lawsuits or state equal employment opportunity laws.

    Conflicting Federal Court Decisions on President Trump’s Executive Order Involving Mass Layoffs and Office Closings at the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights

    On May 22, 2025, a federal court judge in Massachusetts issued a broad injunction prohibiting the mass layoffs and office closings at the Department of Education. The judge ordered the administration to reinstate all laid-off employees, and carry out all duties mandated by U.S. law, including managing student loans, aiding state educational programs and enforcing civil rights laws. The judge ruled that the personnel cuts would likely “cripple the department.” The judge concluded that the president lacked the power to effectively dissolve a federal agency created by Congress by getting rid of employees, closing offices and transferring duties to other agencies (Somerville Public Schools v. Trump (D. Mass. 25-cv-10667, 5/22/25)). The Trump administration will appeal the decision. Learn more.

    The day before, on May 21, 2025, a federal court judge in Washington, D.C. denied a private lawsuit to enjoin President Trump’s executive order, which resulted in placing nearly half of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) staff on administrative leave and closing seven of the OCR’s 12 regional offices. The lawsuit was brought by a group of parents and students and the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates. The judge denied the request for a temporary injunction, holding that the plaintiffs lacked appropriate standing to sue and were unlikely to prevail on the merits (Carter v. United States Department of Education (D.D.C. No. 1:25-cv-007044, 5/21/25)).

    Presidential Executive Order Disfavors Criminal Enforcement of Federal Agency Rules

    An executive order signed by President Trump on May 9, 2025, advised all federal agencies that they should consider civil rather than criminal enforcement of their regulations. This could have a significant impact on the enforcement of federal laws and regulations in the HR field. The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) all have an optional criminal enforcement capability, which is in addition to the standard civil enforcement typically pursued by the Department of Labor. The executive order also stated that agencies should avoid imposing a “strict liability” standard to their rules. Strict liability allows the government to pursue a person or entity in a situation regardless of intent.

    The executive order also requires all agencies to, within one year, provide the Department of Justice with a list of criminal regulatory offenses they are enforcing and the range of the criminal penalties for violation.

    Teacher Loses First Amendment Case Against School District After Firing

    A federal court recently ruled that the Unified Oakland School Board was immune from a lawsuit by a kindergarten teacher who refused to call a student by the pronouns they use, despite the student’s and parents’ wishes. The teacher claimed that to do so was inconsistent with her religious beliefs and to require her to do so violated her First Amendment right to freedom of religion. The school district had offered the plaintiff several accommodations before termination, including the option to call the student by their first name. The plaintiff refused and was ultimately terminated.

    The court dismissed the claim against the school district on sovereign immunity grounds and against individual officials on qualified immunity grounds (Ramirez v. Oakland Unified School District et al. (2025 BL 181443 N.D. Cal., No. 24-cv-09223, LB, 5/27/25)). The plaintiff was given 28 days to file an amended complaint against individual defendants.

    The judge also dismissed the teacher’s First Amendment free speech claim, holding that her refusal to use the pronoun the student uses was not protected free speech.

    Harvard Wins Temporary Reprieve From Presidential Executive Order Banning Its International Students From Entering the United States

    A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) barring the government from enforcing a presidential executive order which would have banned Harvard from continuing to enroll foreign students. The judge ruled that it would cause Harvard irreparable harm and issued the TRO barring enforcement of the executive order and ordering that a hearing be held on the issue on June 16, 2025 (Harvard v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (25-cv-11472, U.S. D Ct. Maa. (Boston) 6/5/25)).

    The TRO will be in effect until the June 16, 2025, hearing when the court will hear arguments over whether to extend the injunction. Learn more.

    NCAA and Power Five Conferences $2.8 Billion Settlement Proposal of Antitrust, NIL Suit Approved by Federal Judge

    On June 7, 2025, Judge Claudia Wilkens of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California approved the proposed NCAA and Power Five conferences (the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12, and SEC) settlement of the antitrust lawsuit brought against them for not allowing college athletes to receive payments for name, image and likeness (NIL) related to their college sports status. The judge approved a $2.8 billion settlement proposal to be distributed among student-athletes playing during the 2016-2024 seasons. In addition, the colleges are allowed to share up to 22% of revenue received annually from athletic programs with college athletes — capped at $20.5 million a year — going forward for 10 years. The cap will be adjusted upward by 4% during the first two years of the agreement.

    It is estimated that, of the $20.5 million annual cap, about 90% will go to football players and about 10% will go to male basketball players. In addition, NIL payments made by boosters and other sports-related entities are subject to outside review by the accounting firm Deloitte.

    Because of the unprecedented and fast-changing pronouncements of the new presidential administration and the intervening court challenges, the developments contained in this blog post are subject to change. Before acting on the legal issues discussed here, please consult your college or university counsel and, as always, act with caution.



    Source link