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  • Probe Into Alleged UMD President Plagiarism Cost Up to $600K

    Probe Into Alleged UMD President Plagiarism Cost Up to $600K

    Pines was cleared of misconduct last month.

    University of Maryland, College Park

    The University System of Maryland and its flagship College Park institution are refusing to release the report of an investigation into whether the flagship’s president committed academic misconduct. That probe cost at least $199,999 and may have cost up to $600,000, The Baltimore Banner reported.

    In fall 2024, The Daily Wire, a conservative news outlet, alleged that President Darryll Pines lifted 1,500 words from a tutorial website for a 5,000-word paper he co-authored in 2002 and later reused that same text for a 2006 publication. Pines said the claims were meritless, but Joshua Altmann, who wrote the text Pines was accused of lifting, told Inside Higher Ed, “I do consider it to be plagiarism.”

    The investigation, led by a law firm, extended to other articles Pines wrote, and it took more than a year. On Dec. 12, system officials released a statement saying an investigation committee “found no evidence of misconduct on the part of President Pines.”

    “The committee did determine that the two works highlighted last year contained select portions of text previously published by another author in the introductory sections,” the statement said. “In a separate text, a discrepancy in assignment of authorship was made. However, President Pines was not found responsible for the inclusion of such text in any of the three works, nor was he found responsible for scholarly misconduct of any kind.”

    But neither the system nor College Park released the investigative report. College Park spokesperson Katie Lawson referred Inside Higher Ed’s request for the report to the University System of Maryland. System spokesperson Michael Sandler wrote in an email that, “as a personnel record under the Maryland Public Information Act and per UMD’s Policy on Integrity and Responsible Conduct in Scholarly Work, the report is confidential.”

    The Banner, citing documents it received through a public records request, reported that Ropes & Gray, the international law firm hired for the investigation, had a $1,200 hourly billing rate, was paid $199,999 during an “inquiry phase” and received another contract that allowed the total to grow no larger than $600,000.

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  • Reading Sophocles in My Community College Class (opinion)

    Reading Sophocles in My Community College Class (opinion)

    I have a rule for myself in freshman English that I don’t assign readings that require much explanation. If I continually have to provide background of a work’s history and context, it means the students are awaiting a deus ex machina, AI or me to summarize and simplify. I seek out readings that feature conversational voices that create an immediate, imaginable world that my students can understand on their own—that is, read.

    Every year, though, I make one exception to this rule and assign either Sophocles’s Oedipus the King or Antigone. They don’t get any easier, no matter how many times I teach them, but they’re worth the effort because they’re sublime, and the range of topics they provide us for discussion and writing seems inexhaustible and ever relevant. In fall 2024, with the presidential election looming, I assigned Antigone.

    “Before we start … you know family trees? I need to show you Antigone’s.” I began drawing on the whiteboard the Oedipus family tree from the bottom. “Antigone and her siblings—Ismene, Polynices, Eteocles. Their parents: Jocasta and Oedipus. Up here, Jocasta’s parents: Menoeceus and Ms. Unknown. Oedipus’s parents, Laertes and Jocasta, are over here. And because they’re characters from Greek myth and legend, we can keep going back—”

    “Professor!” calls out Varna. “You made a mistake. Jocasta can’t be Oedipus’s mother, too—right? … Right?”

    “Actually …”

    “He can’t have children with his mother.”

    “Shouldn’t have. ”

    “Mm?”

    Even before the pandemic, I had given up assigning Oedipus and Antigone as homework reading. In my classes, we read Sophocles together. On paper, out loud. “Put away your devices, please. We’re going really old-school—ancient Greek school.”

    Although some of my community college students have shaky English or discomfort with speaking aloud, at some point in our halting and struggling reading we catch the play’s spirit and profundity and are knocked back on our heels. Marie, despite her thick accent, whether reading Antigone or Creon, is inspired and masterful. Is it the theatricality or simply having to communicate the words on the page that guide her into clearer enunciation?

    Bewildered Samuel, meanwhile, eventually finds his footing and delightedly embodies the comic outlook of the Sentry. Everybody reads, taking turns with the roles. We are mostly patient with one another, and we dig in as anxious Tina loses heart and her voice notches down into her shoes and her classmates cheer her on and plead with her to speak up. The students’ encouragement of and aid to one another helps me limit my interventions, though I still continually interject with vocabulary definitions or references or to explicate idiomatic expressions or pose obvious questions to check in on comprehension. I pause us after a character’s thrilling or brilliant statement and ask them to quote this or that for us to ponder in writing.

    Reading aloud in a community college classroom is less a pleasure cruise than a field trip through a museum.

    During my recent sabbatical, while working on a biography of Max Schott, an author, one of my old teachers and my friend, I was, as must happen to some professors on leave, missing the classroom. So as a supplement to or diversion from my daily notes and questions to Max, I wrote scenes for a few weeks in the form of a play of what I remembered and imagined of what it was like to teach Oedipus the King, from the first day through the next several class sessions. Max regularly expressed enjoyment over the daily installments. That was my reward, praise from my mentor. Still, at the end, I told him on the phone that it was nice to be done.

    He said, “You’re not done.”

    “Yeah, I am. I even imagined them through the essay and the drafts!”

    “But what about Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone?”

    “Oh, I’d never try to teach those with Oedipus in the same semester. It’s freshman English.”

    “Why not?”

    “Well, they’re supposed to read essays and articles, too, and in real life the students themselves wouldn’t let me.”

    “You’re making it up anyway!” he laughed.

    I resisted for a week. I had just about finished the biography and the subject of the biography, my own mentor, was encouraging me to go on, write more about my imaginary classroom. No one else was asking for more from me.

    I reread what I had, about 150 single-spaced pages, half of which, I should say, were composed by Sophocles. I can compare my contribution to the play within a play to a quirky improvisational movie in which the soundtrack is a series of movements from Mozart’s string quartets. Whatever else is going on, the music—in my case, Sophocles’s Oedipus the King—carries a lot of intelligence and feeling.

    But Max was right—the imaginary semester wasn’t over. So for Act 2, the students having finished writing their essays, the teacher character, Bob, brings in a box of stapled copies of Oedipus at Colonus. The imagined students surprise me and are much more game than I thought possible. We proceed, not unhappily, and with interesting discussions (I thought) through Oedipus’s fateful disappearance from this land of suffering. Typing up the “transcript” of my students reading Oedipus at Colonus, I occasionally felt as if I, the writer, not the teacher character, was going through the motions for Max’s sake. Each day, pen on paper, I would reread and revise the previous day’s pages and then go on, writing by hand, through another several pages, and then type and email them off to Max. He and I were still talking once or twice a week by phone about his writing and life and about books, and he didn’t complain that the quality of my made-up classes had dropped off; hence, I knew I had to continue through Antigone. By the end of a semester’s classes, I had imagined me and my students through the three plays.

    Then I started going through old emails that I had sent Max about my real-life classes. These had been written, usually, on my phone on the subway home after my day’s teaching. “Don’t explain,” Max had often told us, his writing students, back in the day. “See if you can reveal the characters mostly through what they say.” And there, in those emails, I found my unimaginary students and me, my unimaginary self, acting sort of like the ones I’d made up.

    For example (I’ve changed their names and identifying information, but not, unfortunately, mine):

    Bob: Do we need to go over the characters in Antigone again?

    Tawny: Do we? I don’t.

    Bob: Who’s Creon?

    Class: …

    Tawny: (sighs) The king!

    Bob: Thank you … Anything else about him?

    Ashley: Antigone’s uncle?

    Bob: Yes! … Remember, we talked about identities. Paul?

    Paul: No.

    Bob: We didn’t?

    Jason: We did!

    Paul: Then I don’t remember. What’s identities anyway?

    Bob: We all have different identities depending on where we are … Here, I’m a …

    Class: …

    Bob: Right! A teacher. At home I’m Suzanne’s husband. Just like you’re in a role at home and another role at work and another here.

    Tawny: And so?

    Bob: In your paper, as a character yourself, you’re going to have to talk to one of the characters as they are at the end of the play … So where are they, what are they, when the play ends?

    Marcus: Creon’s alive.

    Bob: Right! And you can’t say that for …

    Ryann: Antigone.

    Bob: Right! Or … Haemon or … Eurydice. But the play is over, and you have to talk to one of them—whether they’re dead, down in Hades, or alive in Thebes—about this same topic as my morning class did—the purpose of life.

    Marcus: But they’re dead.

    Bob: We’re just imagining it. They all do have some hard-won experience, right? Imagine yourself talking to one of them. All right? … How about Antigone? What do you remember about her?

    Tawny: She’s dead.

    Bob: Yeah … What else? … Did we really forget the play over the weekend?

    Kaylia: (nods)

    Bob: Can anybody summarize it?

    Zeina: We have to summarize it?

    Bob: No … But can somebody just say what happens—in a nutshell, a tiny summary—so that we have that magic word “context” before we write? (Bob points at the word “context” at the board, from the lesson at the beginning of class time, when the six on-time students and he read Karl Ove Knausgaard’s essay “Conversation.”) Context, anybody?

    Tawny: Her brothers died.

    Bob: Yeah. And …?

    Tawny: She buried one of them.

    Ryann: But against the law.

    Bob: Right! Remember, guys? Let’s go back to Creon’s big speech near the beginning. That’ll remind us who he is and what he thinks of himself and the world. Ryann?

    Ryann: (reads Creon’s speech about “our Ship of State, which recent storms have threatened to destroy …”)

    Bob: What is Creon asking the citizens, the old men of Thebes, to do?

    Niege: Guard the body.

    Bob: He’s got professional soldiers for that. He asks them for one thing. What is it?

    Ryann: To stick with him.

    Olya: Loyalty.

    Bob: What’s that word, Olya?

    Olya: Loyalty.

    Juan: No matter what, you back them.

    Bob: Got it! Creon doesn’t need them for service. He needs them to support him no matter what he does.

    Tawny: They’re in his corner.

    Bob: Yes. He wants that assurance from them—and they give it. Do you think he knows he’s going to violate divine law? … Yeah, Paul?

    Paul: If we’re gonna write—

    Bob: We’re going to write.

    Paul: I forgot my pen.

    Bob Blaisdell teaches English at Kingsborough Community College.

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  • In Defense of the Student-Run Magazine (opinion)

    In Defense of the Student-Run Magazine (opinion)

    Despite the economic realities of the outside world, the campus magazine survives. Or perhaps not, if other colleges and universities begin to interpret federal guidance like the University of Alabama.

    Students at my own institution, Syracuse University, put out a fashion magazine, a food magazine and a Black student life magazine last semester, among others. And that’s just one semester: Magazines come and go most years based on student interests and appetites. (I do not miss a particularly provocative, though well-designed, sex magazine.) These student-run publications are a chance for young people to develop critical thinking, writing and editorial skills as they skewer icons and interrogate their world. They are also empowering. For these digital natives, there’s something especially meaningful about committing your name and your ideas to print for all the world to see. Student media helps young people make sense of a confusing present and uncertain future.

    Students at the University of Alabama shared in this tradition until Dec. 1, when campus officials effectively eliminated two magazines. Nineteen Fifty-Six was founded in 2020 and named for the year the first Black student, Autherine Lucy Foster, enrolled at Alabama. The magazine’s website notes that it is a “student-run magazine focused on Black culture, Black excellence, and Black student experiences at The University of Alabama.” Alice magazine launched in 2015 as “a fashion and wellness magazine that serves the students of the University of Alabama.” Like most professional consumer fashion or wellness publications, women are the primary audience.

    Though Alabama’s administration cited federal anti-DEI guidance as the impetus for its decision, The Crimson White, Alabama’s student newspaper, reported that neither magazine “barred participation based on personal characteristics like race and gender identity” and that both publications had “hired staff who were not part of their target audiences.” The same is true in industry; some of the most talented editors I’ve worked with were not the target audience of the publications they led.

    In their 2021 book, Curating Culture: How Twentieth-Century Magazines Influenced America (Bloomsbury), editors and scholars Sharon Bloyd-Peshkin and Charles Whitaker observe that magazines provide “information, inspiration, empathy, and advocacy for readers with specific interests, identities, goals, and concerns.” In a 2007 article, magazine scholar David Abrahamson explains that magazines “have a special role in their readers’ lives, constructing a community or affinity group in which the readers feel they are members.” Magazines, by intention and design, are exclusive and niche. That’s why audiences love them. Today, media across all platforms follow the magazine’s lead. What is a “For You” feed if not an enticing unspooling of curated content?

    At Alabama, university officials were quick to point out that they were merely cutting financial support for the magazines, not attacking free speech, as students at public institutions are protected by the First Amendment. (Never mind that the Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that public universities may charge an activity fee to fund a program that facilitates speech if the program is viewpoint neutral, meaning that funds are disbursed in way that does not privilege one perspective over another.)

    Alabama has cited Attorney General Pam Bondi’s nonbinding 2025 guidance for recipients of federal funding, suggesting that because the two magazines primarily target certain groups, they are “unlawful proxies” for discrimination. Student press advocates are unconvinced by this rationale—one called it “nonsense”—but perhaps Alabama’s leaders did not want to find out whether the modest funding used to support a magazine read by women (among others) and another read by Black people (among others) would be considered unlawful “resource allocation” or “proxy discrimination.” Or maybe eliminating funding for one magazine coded as female gave adequate cover to cut a magazine explicitly targeted at another group. That Alice magazine didn’t even identify itself as a “women’s magazine” is enough to demonstrate that whom and what content is for is no longer defined by editors or the free market, but the specter of Trump’s Department of Justice.

    The chilling effect ripples. Universities that fear retribution from the Trump administration may be wary not only of student-run magazines, but any publication produced with public funds, including scholarly journals. So watch out, Southern Historian. You may be next.

    Aileen Gallagher is a journalism professor at Syracuse University’s S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and a former magazine editor.

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  • Data: turning insights into action at Teesside University

    Data: turning insights into action at Teesside University

    This blog was kindly authored by Professor Mark Simpson, Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Teesside University.

    Data is everywhere, but how do we turn it into insights that actually change outcomes for students and graduates?

    At Teesside University, this question underpins strategies that have helped us achieve sector-leading recognition: TEF Gold for teaching excellence, Ofsted Outstanding, and Times Higher Education University of the Year 2025.

    Did the predictions hold true?

    In earlier blogs, we anticipated major shifts: the rise of AI in learning and assessment, deeper collaboration between institutions, and the growing importance of data-driven decision-making. So, did they happen?

    AI adoption: far from being banned, AI is now embedded in teaching and assessment strategies, guided by ethic-focussed user principles.

    Collaboration: regional partnerships have strengthened, particularly around employability and mental health, though mergers remain rare.

    Data-driven action: the sector has moved beyond dashboards to interventions that improve student success, though capability gaps in data literacy persist.

    These trends confirm what we argued – universities that embrace innovation and ethical data use are better positioned to deliver outcomes that matter: graduate success, employer confidence, and sector-leading recognition.

    This blog moves the conversation from trends to action: the principles and practices that turn data into decisions, and decisions into impact for students, graduates, and employers.

    Why actionable insights matter

    Data tells us what happened. Insight explains why it happened and what to do next. In a sector where TEF narratives, OfS outcomes, and B3 metrics are under constant scrutiny, insight must be decision-ready: clear, timely, and connected to actions that improve student success.

    One example from Teesside University: analysis of engagement and wellbeing data revealed predictable spikes in anxiety before assessments. That’s an insight, but the real value lies in what changes next: assessment tweaks, targeted comms, coaching, or extended mental health support. Without action, insight is just noise.

    Principles for turning data into action

    Insights only create impact when they lead to meaningful change. These five principles, proven in practice, help ensure your data works for you:

    1) Clarity of purpose

    Start with a precise aim: Which outcome will we improve, by how much, and by when? Clear goals turn data into a roadmap rather than a report.

    2) Integration, not isolation

    Data should flow across curriculum design, student support, careers, and employer partnerships into one coherent picture. Bringing in the student perspective ensures this integration is authentic, connecting learning experiences to aspirations, not just administrative targets.

    3) Student voice driving decision-making

    Students should shape decisions about data use. Co-design privacy, transparency, and wellbeing safeguards with them. Explain the why, what, and how in clear language, and make opting in meaningful by showing how their input drives change.

    4) Timely intervention

    Move beyond annual reviews to real-time decisions that matter most: before assessments, during placements, and at key transition points. Use student feedback to set the rhythm for dashboards, reviews, and action cycles so insight lands when it counts.

    5) Collaboration and ownership

    Insight should be co-owned across academics, student services, and employers – with students as equal partners. Involve them in approval panels, curriculum reviews, and evaluation loops. Their lived experience transforms data into stories that resonate and drive action.

    Teesside University in practice

    Teesside’s approach offers a concrete model for turning principles into practice.

    Future Facing Learning (FFL) embeds digital empowerment, global citizenship, and entrepreneurial thinking – making employability part of the learning experience, not an add-on.

    Learning & Teaching Framework (LTF)ensures course-first design, authentic assessment, and industry engagement, supported by staff CPD.

    Laser-focused strategy & KPIs link performance to TEF and B3, with regular reviews and targeted improvement plans.

    Breaking down silos brings employers onto panels and integrates meaningful student voice – feedback that leads to visible change.

    Pragmatic AI strategy encourages innovation and future skills, adapting quickly to a world where 65% of today’s primary school children will work in jobs that don’t yet exist.

    The challenge ahead (and how to navigate it)

    We all face familiar constraints: full curricula and professional body frameworks, budget and time pressures, and capability gaps in data literacy and change management. Progress depends on:

    • Course-first trade-offs: deciding what comes out when new skills go in; aligning assessments with employability outcomes.
    • Authentic assessment: using live briefs, micro-placements, and employer co-designed tasks.
    • Partnership by default: involve employers in approval events and reviews; move beyond advisory boards to co-production of learning.
    • Data fluency for staff: providing CPD focussed on interpreting and acting on data.
    • Targeted pilots: start small where the impact is highest (e.g. first-year transition), measure rigorously, and scale.

    Turning data into action isn’t about having more dashboards, it’s about better decisions, made faster, with students and employers at the centre.

    Teesside University’s experience shows that when strategy, frameworks, and student voice align, employability becomes a lived experience in the curriculum, not a promise on a prospectus.

    Professor Mark Simpson is speaking at Kortext LIVE on 11 February 2026 in London. Join Mark at this free event as he dives deep into the strategic impact of data alongside Dr Rachel Maxwell. Find out more and secure your seat here.

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  • “Say My Name, Say My Name”: Why Learning Names Improves Student Success – Faculty Focus

    “Say My Name, Say My Name”: Why Learning Names Improves Student Success – Faculty Focus

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  • “Say My Name, Say My Name”: Why Learning Names Improves Student Success – Faculty Focus

    “Say My Name, Say My Name”: Why Learning Names Improves Student Success – Faculty Focus

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  • ED Panel Divided Over New Earnings Test Rules

    ED Panel Divided Over New Earnings Test Rules

    With just one more meeting to go, the Department of Education and an advisory committee tasked with ironing out the details of how to hold college programs accountable appear far from reaching consensus.

    The 13-member panel, comprised largely of state officials, think tank researchers and higher ed lawyers, spent the last four days negotiating the rules of a new college earnings test called Do No Harm—which applies to all degree programs—as well as changes to the existing gainful-employment rule, an accountability metric that only applies to certificate programs and for-profits.

    The department’s proposal, which aligns the two accountability metrics and holds all programs to the Do No Harm’s standards, has gone largely unchanged in the first four days of negotiation.

    Under Do No Harm, all college programs, except undergraduate certificates, that fail to prove their students earn more than someone with only a high school diploma could lose access to federal loans, whereas the current version of gainful employment requires programs to show their graduates pass the earnings test and can reasonably pay off their debt. Programs that fail either test are cut off from all federal student aid.

    Although officials have agreed to a series of smaller changes and said they were open to considering larger ones, none made so far address the key issues that are dividing the committee—axing the debt-to-earnings ratio and the Pell Grant penalty.

    If the committee doesn’t reach consensus, the department is free to propose any changes to the regulation it wants, which could include scrapping gainful employment entirely. The department met with different committee members in private meetings Thursday, but it’s unclear if those talks will lead to compromises or flip votes.

    “Consensus seems pretty unlikely at this point, since negotiators are still disagreeing on key provisions of the department’s drafted text,” said Emily Rounds, an education policy adviser at Third Way, a left-of-center think tank. “Anything is possible, and these caucuses could be productive, but I would be surprised if they reached consensus.”

    Institutional representatives on the committee generally back the overall plan, while consumer protection advocates have taken issue with the department’s changes to gainful employment.

    Reaching consensus at this point would likely require ED to significantly rework its original proposal.

    “We have moved well into the vote-tallying stage,” one committee member said on the condition of anonymity to maintain good faith in the negotiation process. “The question is, does ED think it can get certain negotiators on board without caving on their original proposal to integrate gainful employment and Do No Harm.”

    Department officials acknowledged the differences of opinion but said they would work to bring committee members together.

    “The department is going to work on some language overnight based on the things that we’ve talked about today in our various caucuses,” Dave Musser, ED’s negotiator, said at the end of Thursday’s meeting. “We plan to come back in the morning prepared to share some of that language, recognizing that it may not be enough alone to get us to consensus. However, we want to show that we are doing everything that we can to get to a place where everyone can get to an agreement.”

    2 Key Issues, 2 Key Sides

    The Education Department and institutional representatives said the proposal plan creates a level playing field, calling it a more fair and simple means of accountability. State higher education officials and employers also joined in at times, agreeing that this plan would be the most legally sound and could end years of political ping-pong over higher ed accountability.

    But committee members representing taxpayers and legal aid organizations as well as left-leaning research groups and consumer protection advocates argue that the department’s plan waters down existing standards, could put students at risk and may lead to legal challenges.

    Although negotiators representing students who receive Title IV aid and students who are veterans have also expressed concerns about the changes to gainful employment, Tamar Hoffman, the committee member representing legal aid organizations, was the most outspoken throughout the week, saying there were “inherent issues” with the department’s current proposal.

    “It does not make sense that we would allow the most economically disadvantaged students to use up very precious resources that they have in their lifetime Pell eligibility on programs that the department has deemed to be inadequate to receive loans,” she said at the close of Thursday’s meeting.

    Ideally, Hoffman and others would like to see the debt-to-earnings test reinstated as well, though Pell appears to be the top priority.

    Preston Cooper, the committee member representing taxpayers and the public interest, voiced more opposition at the beginning of the week as he highlighted his analysis of department data that showed ED’s plan would disburse an estimated $1.2 billion in Pell dollars annually to programs that failed the earnings test.

    By Thursday, however, multiple of Cooper’s smaller concerns had been addressed through amendments, and he appeared poised to support the department’s proposal. The changes included added clarity about the ability to separate gainful employment and Do No Harm if courts strike down either test and that failed programs must pass the earnings test for at least two years before regaining loan eligibility.

    Some Changes Made

    Despite their overall support for the department’s plan, institutional advocates—particularly Jeff Arthur, the negotiator representing for-profit institutions, and Aaron Lacey, who represented nonprofit institutions—did try to change parts of the earnings test that they argued were unfair, like the age and work experience of high school graduates that college students were compared to, or the way rural institutions were held to the same standard as urban ones. So far, they haven’t been successful.

    They had better success with an amendment that allowed existing students in failing programs to maintain the loan access needed to complete their degree. The department agreed to the change under a few conditions: The program will have to voluntarily agree to shut itself down after the first year of failure, terminate all enrollment for new students and enter a formal teach-out plan for those who remain.

    Hoffman, however, said the change would only further water down existing accountability standards.

    “To me, this seems like a giant loophole for institutions to try to maintain eligibility for Title IV funds when they aren’t actually delivering adequate services to students,” she said. “There isn’t anything here that prevents institutions from ceasing new enrollment in a failing program [while] at the same time standing up a [new] substantially similar program within the same institution.” (Title IV of the Higher Education Act authorizes federal financial aid programs such as the Pell Grant.)

    The regulations do include some restrictions on starting new programs, but Hoffman and other student advocates from think tanks don’t believe they are strong enough to prevent institutions from developing other similarly poor-performing certificates and degrees.

    By the end of Thursday’s meeting, the department had not yet publicly proposed any concessions to address Hoffman’s concerns on the teach-out plan or the core changes to gainful employment.

    But talks appeared to continue after the meeting ended. One department official told Hoffman he’d be amenable to talking over happy hour about what changes would be needed to get her on board.

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  • Is higher education ready for generation alpha?

    Is higher education ready for generation alpha?

    Higher education has always been a multigenerational co-op. A space where different worldviews, values and learning habits collide and evolve together. Right now, universities are still learning how to teach and support Gen Z, students who have redefined expectations around flexibility, purpose and wellbeing.

    But just as the sector starts to feel comfortable with these adjustments, the next generation is already forming behind them. “Gen Alpha” – those born from 2010 onwards – will start arriving within the next five years and their presence will make the intergenerational mix even more fascinating, and far more challenging to work with.

    Universities are used to responding to disruption when it is forced upon them, whether through policy reform, funding shifts or sudden global shocks. But this time, the change is visible on the horizon. Higher education can see one of its next major disruptions coming years in advance. The question is not whether Gen Alpha will alter how we teach, learn or engage. They will. The question is whether the sector can prepare in time, drawing lessons from what’s already happening with today’s learners.

    By 2030, higher education will become an even more complex multi-generational co-op. Gen Alpha students will be learning alongside the tail of Gen Z and quite a few millennials and Generation X. They will be taught by academics largely from the Millennials and Generation X age groups. Each group will bring different digital literacies, communication norms and values into the same ecosystem.

    The challenge, and opportunity, will be in creating environments flexible enough to bridge these perspectives while sustaining academic rigour. Understanding Gen Alpha, then, is not about predicting a single generation’s quirks. It’s about preparing universities for a shared future where several generations will need to coexist, collaborate and learn from each other.

    No off switch

    Much of what will define Gen Alpha is already visible in classrooms now. Current higher education students are demanding immediacy, connection and relevance; expectations born in a digital ecosystem that never switches off. Yet Gen Alpha will take these habits to another level. They are growing up with technology not as a tool but as the background hum of existence; seamless, intuitive and always present. They have learned to read, count and solve problems through interactive and gamified environments long before they stepped into a school.

    There is a high chance that because of or – depending on your vantage point – thanks to these habits Gen Alpha will be the most self-directed learners higher education has ever seen – but also the least patient with systems that feel slow, static or disconnected from their lived reality. Long feedback cycles, rigid timetables or outdated online platforms won’t just frustrate them; they will feel illogical. The idea of sitting through a two-hour lecture (even online) may seem not just boring but absurd.

    The early evidence is already visible in schools. Teachers across the UK talk about declining engagement and rising frustration when lessons are delivered in traditional ways. In the US, teachers describe pupils who question why they are being taught a certain way and struggle to engage with methods that feel prescriptive or irrelevant. In Australia, schools experimenting with more adaptive and project-based models such as NSWEduChat report that students are more motivated when given freedom, agency and connection to real-world issues. This is the mindset that will soon walk through our university doors.

    Cultural readiness

    Gen Alpha’s world is also more emotionally complex than that of previous generations. They are growing up surrounded by climate anxiety, social awareness and global instability. Unlike many other generations, their exposure to world events is constant and their access to information is, many times, dangerously unfiltered. They form strong opinions early and are not afraid to express them. They value authenticity and expect institutions they interact with to demonstrate values that align with their own. I am rather certain that if higher education speaks in jargon, hides behind hierarchy, or treats them as passive recipients, Gen Alpha will tune out.

    This is a generation that has been encouraged to ask questions, to expect answers quickly and to always be heard. They are unlikely to respond well to ecosystems that require silent compliance or delayed gratification considering they are growing up with feedback loops built into everything they do, from online games to learning apps. They are more likely to engage with learning that is immediate, collaborative and visually rich instead of linear or text heavy.

    Culturally, Gen Alpha is also more diverse, more inclusive and more globally connected than any generation before them. Many grow up in multilingual homes and navigate multiple cultural identities. Their sense of belonging is not bound by geography but by shared values and interests – imagine the extraordinary opportunities this will bring for HE. But universities need to create environments that feel inclusive, authentic and flexible enough to truly accommodate that diversity.

    The challenge then is not simply technological development but cultural readiness. Universities must ask whether the way they structure courses, deliver teaching and define success reflects the world these students live in. Long assessment cycles and stale teaching methods will become relics of an age that made sense when information was scarce and time moved slower.

    Foresight

    The first wave of Gen Alpha will enter UK universities in 2029 or thereabouts. That is closer to us today than the first pandemic lockdowns are behind us (and 23 March 2020 still feels like yesterday). The window to act is narrow and the sector is already under strain.

    The solution is not to rip everything up or abandon academic rigour, but to start prototyping now: testing interactive teaching models, embedding AI into learning processes, creating more authentic and timely assessments, and developing staff confidence to deliver education that resonates with digital native learners. Universities that take these steps will be positioned not just to survive the arrival of Gen Alpha but to thrive with them.

    The disruption ahead is unusual in one crucial way – we can see it coming. There will be no excuse for surprise. The next generation of students is telling us (those who listen), every day, what they expect learning to feel like. The question is whether higher education will have the courage, creativity, foresight and capacity to listen – before Gen Alpha decides it no longer needs us.

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  • Higher education postcard: University College Stockton

    Higher education postcard: University College Stockton

    A significant book in political science is Pressman and Wildavsky’s wonderfully titled Implementation: how great expectations in Washington are dashed in Oakland; or, why it’s amazing that federal programs work at all, this being a saga of the economic development administration as told by two sympathetic observers who seek to build morals on a foundation of ruined hopes.

    Let’s see how different things were in County Durham.

    The Middlesbrough Herald and Post, 14 October 1992, could hardly have been more excited. Hailing the opening of the University College Stockton, a joint venture between Durham and Teesside universities, it noted that it was “the most important higher education development in Britain for 25 years” (the transmogrification of polytechnics to universities was clearly just a footnote).

    The principal, Professor Bob Parfitt, who had joined from the University of Western Australia, expressed the view that the college would have a bright future in 20 years’ time:

    I would hope that we are an international institution which is a clear part of the local community. We will be meeting the needs of the local market in our degrees and short courses, but I also hope we shall play a leading role in the industrial and urban regeneration of the area.

    Fast forward to 1995 and the first students were graduating. The Stockton and District Herald and Post on 28 June 1995 reports that Catherine Barker was the first to receive a joint degree from Durham and Teesside, gaining a first in European Studies (French). Environmentalist David Bellamy and local environmental activist Angela Cooper received honorary degrees at the same ceremony.

    But it wasn’t to last. John Hayward’s account of the first ten years of the college tells a tale of insufficient capital, changing government policy which slowed expansion of student numbers, and the complexities of operating a college jointly between two universities. It had been only by the skin of its teeth that the new college had got off the ground at all; and in 1994 the two universities agreed that it would continue under the tutelage of just one of them – Durham University.

    Over the next few years the university college fought to establish a sustainable basis for operations, trying different subjects and seeking funding from many sources for buildings and equipment. By the late 1990s it was no longer operating in deficit, and in the early 2000s, in order to bring it more into line with norms elsewhere in Durham University, two colleges were created at the Stockton Campus – Stephenson College and John Snow College.

    The colleges have since moved, physically, to Durham, and the campus is now known as the Queen’s Campus, Stockton. It hosts the university’s International Study Centre, so in this respect Professor Parfitt’s hope that it would be an international institution has been borne out. But not in a way he would ever have imagined.

    John Hayward’s account is worth a read. There’s a story – hidden behind the institutional politics and the minutiae of council and senate meetings – of the practical difficulties in getting something new off the ground. And of the difficulties in multi-institutional working. Which in these days of radical new governance models is a lesson worth remembering.

    Here’s a jigsaw of the postcard – it wasn’t posted, but must date from the early 1990s. It was sold in aid of the Butterwick Hospice, and slight perforation marks at the top suggest that it was one of a concertina strip of cards.

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  • Erasmus+, student loans, Rhineland study tour

    Erasmus+, student loans, Rhineland study tour

    This week on the podcast from Nijmegen on the SUs study tour the team discuss the return of the UK to Erasmus+. What steps can UK HE take to ensure that UK students take advantage of and get the benefits of mobility?

    Plus there’s a Private Members’ Bill on student loan timings, and the team share reflections on the associations, student leaders, curricula and food they’ve seen across Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg and Switzerland.

    With Abi Taylor, President at Durham SU, Gary Hughes, CEO at Durham SU, Mack Marshall, Community and Policy Officer at Wonkhe and presented by Jim Dickinson, Associate Editor at Wonkhe.


    Re-associating with Erasmus+ is only the first step

    Student Finance (Review of Payment Schedules)

    Rhineland Study Tour blogs

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