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  • How do you get from skills planning to effective learning provision?

    How do you get from skills planning to effective learning provision?

    For countries, regions and organisations across the UK and globally linking learning and skills has been a perennial problem. Employers and governments talk about skills gaps and shortages and look to education and skills providers to plug them. If it were that simple, gaps would be plugged already – so what gets in the way? And how might we create the conditions to overcome challenges and build a system that works?

    Through the Regional Tertiary Pathfinders programme the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) worked alongside enterprise and skills partners and colleges and universities to take a “learning by doing” approach to finding out how Scotland’s tertiary education and skills system can be made more responsive, more integrated, and better able to support regional economies.

    Seven pilot projects operating in the North East and South of Scotland helped us do just that, providing a real-world opportunity to learn from their work to deliver quick improvements. We are grateful to all the people in colleges, universities and regional organisations that have been involved along the way.

    The projects are delivering changes in their curriculum, course offer and marketing materials which will have positive impacts for learners, improving the information on which they base their choices, smoothing and supporting learner journeys and pathways, and enabling them to progress into key areas of employment in the region or beyond.

    Working regionally and as part of the programme, the education partners involved – three colleges, three universities and a tertiary institution – have been able to test how best to deliver ‘“next level” collaboration and together determine how best to achieve a shared local understanding of issues and needs.

    The programme has also enabled us to test what collaboration across the two halves of tertiary provision might look like. Too often people think tertiary means merging colleges and universities – it might, but there are other models. We’ve been able to see new forms of shared governance develop, pursuing a greater emphasis on a systems approach which moves to lower, blur or remove some institutional boundaries.

    Learning from experience

    As one of the Pathfinder participants told us: “Defining what is different about the approach is important, it’s not just a talking shop; it’s about getting things done and meeting the needs of our young people and industry and for the region.”

    The programme has been rich and multidimensional, providing insights at a project, regional and system level. I can only provide a flavour of the learning here with much more specific and practical learning contained in the reports, videos and other resources published on the Scottish Funding Council’s website.

    At a programme and system level the factors for success have been:

    Creating the right conditions for collaboration. It is important to have the right governance structures to facilitate effective collaboration with clear roles and responsibilities for development and delivery. It is also crucial that senior leaders provide the authorising environment for the work and are seen to be actively involved and supportive.

    Working together differently. This was made possible by focusing on joint curriculum development, shared resources, and regional agreement on shared priorities. It enabled institutions to collaborate to create more effective learner pathways, courses and information products. Examples from the programme demonstrate how deeper, sustained partnerships between colleges, universities, and employers contributed to more dynamic and responsive education models, providing benefits to both learners and the regional economy.

    Different models of collaboration. Formal institutional agreements emerged and provided long-term stability, while informal partnerships allowed for flexibility and adaptability in responding to emerging regional demands – and both provided opportunities for collaborations to grow and deepen into new curriculum areas.

    Skills planning partnerships operating to influence the successful development of learning provision. It is vital that there is a clear and coherent approach to accountability so there is clarity about the roles and responsibilities of various stakeholders within existing regional and local partnership planning fora in developing and delivering regional skills priorities and associated provision.

    Improving communication channels and formalising responsibilities ensures all partners understand their contributions to skills planning, enabling more effective alignment between educational pathways and regional economic needs. To enable more cohesive skills planning across sectors and partnerships, educational institutions should be empowered to lead skills responses – effectively using their brokering role to plan across multiple local authority areas and partnerships within a region.

    Supporting long term success

    Spreading and sustaining impact will be important as we move from programme to business as usual. Some key features which support both project and longer-term success include:

    Inter-regional collaboration: A consistent feature across all projects was the collaboration between institutions in different localities, aligning their programmes and resources to serve the broader region. This approach has not only reduced duplication but also created more cohesive learning pathways. Expanding this model to other sectors and regions offers the potential to improve coordination, ensuring consistent and accessible educational opportunities across local authorities.

    Recognising the role of the project co-ordinator: The project co-ordinator played a critical role in ensuring project success by facilitating collaboration, engaging the right stakeholders, and maintaining continuous progress. The success of this role demonstrates its potential to be scaled and adapted for use in other projects, ensuring smooth facilitation of partnerships and sustained momentum in multi-institutional collaborations.

    Data sharing and collaborative analysis: Several projects benefited from data-sharing agreements that allowed institutions to analyse application and enrolment data together. Shared analysis helped align recruitment strategies, improve learner outcomes, and enhance marketing efforts. The model of using shared data to drive collaborative insights and decision-making can be scaled to other institutions, sectors, or regions, offering a framework for improving alignment between educational programmes and market needs.

    Cross-institutional dialogue at multiple levels: A key feature of projects was regular dialogue between senior leaders, heads of departments, and professional service teams (including recruitment, admissions, and marketing). This dialogue enhanced collaboration at multiple levels, ensuring that institutions were aligned in their goals and activities. The multi-level dialogue model can be adopted by other institutions aiming to build closer working relationships across departments and leadership levels.

    Sustaining collaboration

    My list for enduring skills partnerships includes:

    • Developing a shared understanding of how to work together within the learning, skills and economy regional planning structures.
    • Avoiding over-reliance on individual relationships, which can be put at risk due to staff turnover. Take a systems-based approach instead – there is a role for the Scottish Government and SFC in creating the conditions for the system to work effectively.
    • Recognising there is an institutional cost associated with co-ordination and appropriately resource the partnership element of the work.
    • Having a dual focus on doing things together and maintaining the relationships that underpin joint delivery.
    • Obtaining meaningful buy-in from leaders at all levels, to enable and encourage staff to take the time required to build relationships and explore opportunities for deeper collaboration.
    • Discussing and agreeing attitude to risk – how open are partners to exploring and testing innovative solutions?
    • Including regular review points (as built into the Pathfinders programme) where partners step back and review, reflect and adapt together.
    • Facilitating better liaison with employers. For example, encourage more industry engagement in curriculum for a wider range of work-based learning opportunities.
    • Improving data sharing, e.g. Create central data sharing agreements to reduce institutional burdens, and have overarching tracking data for all.
    • Continuing to ask the questions:
      1. How far will our proposals meet learner, employer and societal needs?
      2. To what extent will they enable us to cope with increasingly tightening budget settlements?

    A project lead told us: “What makes the approach successful is being really clear about what we’re trying to achieve; using action plans for delivery means people own the actions and the outcomes; they can see that the outcomes will make a real difference to learners, college staff, employers and employees and make life easier for business providers in the region.”

    We want colleges and universities across Scotland to be inspired by what we’ve learnt through this programme and to use the Pathfinders resources to see what is possible. I hope the lessons learned (things to do, and things to avoid!) can be used to roll out a new approach more widely. The Pathfinders are an example of policy making as bottom-up, action-based research.

    The full suite of Pathfinders reports is now available Regional Tertiary Pathfinders – Scottish Funding Council.

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  • Arkansas Passes Higher Ed “Reform” Bill

    Arkansas Passes Higher Ed “Reform” Bill

    Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a wide-ranging bill last Tuesday, upending the state’s higher education budget and clamping down on DEI and student protests, according to The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

    The Arkansas ACCESS Law includes a number of measures prioritizing funding for trade schools and short-term credential programs, including using the lottery system to fund school scholarships and eliminating support for Advanced Placement accelerated learning tracks in an effort to encourage career readiness over traditional college prep.

    The law also doubles funding for the state’s Academic Challenge Scholarship and expands eligibility to trade school applicants; prohibits colleges from spending on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives or participating in any external DEI programs; and amends the state’s excused absence policies to prevent students from participating in protests.

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  • Try Reading Job Descriptions With a Growth Mindset (Opinion)

    Try Reading Job Descriptions With a Growth Mindset (Opinion)

    In a résumé workshop with a group of Ph.D. students, I shared a job description for a position for which they were qualified. The students had participated in an advanced pedagogy program at my university’s Center for Teaching and Learning, and the position was an instructional technologist at a small liberal arts college. Immediately, the students searched the job description for qualities and experiences they lacked and reasons why they were unqualified. Many were so turned off by the job title that they likely would not have continued reading had they come across this position on their own.

    Then I encouraged the students to approach the position description with a bias toward “I’m qualified.” In other words, instead of starting with the assumption that they were not qualified for the role, do the opposite. Once they changed their mindset and believed that they were qualified, they were able to see many connections between their skills and experiences and what they read in the job description.

    In my work as a graduate student career adviser, I have found that this tendency for Ph.D. students to approach descriptions for jobs outside their academic field from a deficit perspective is quite common. Graduate students who have trained for years with an eye toward an academic position in their field often see themselves as utterly unqualified when they begin to search for jobs in other sectors. This can even be the case for those who have spent considerable amounts of time on career exploration and self-reflection and feel committed to a career in a field other than academia. Once they get to the job search process, they get hung up on the job descriptions themselves.

    When I told another career adviser about my “bias toward ‘I’m qualified’” approach, she said that this reminded her of the growth mindset concept. Psychologist Carol Dweck came up with the concept of the growth mindset nearly 20 years ago, and it has since been applied to everything from business to professional sports to early childhood education. In short, a growth mindset is, to cite Dweck’s definition, “based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts, your strategies, and help from others.” In other words, you can change and improve many aspects of yourself through hard work and help from others. This is in contrast to a fixed mindset, which is the belief that your qualities are “carved in stone” and cannot be changed.

    This concept has many applications in work and life, and when we are stressed about a job search it is easy to let a fixed mindset take over. However, adopting a growth mindset in just one context—reading job descriptions—can help you be more positive and open-minded in your job search. Of course, not everyone can do every job, but a growth mindset will help you see and articulate both your qualifications and your potential in a new career field.

    Consider the following ways in which reading job descriptions with a growth mindset can create more opportunities in your career exploration and job search.

    • See and articulate your transferable skills and experiences.

    Talk to a career adviser for five minutes, and they are likely to discuss the importance of transferable skills. Yet it can be tough to conceive of your skills, know which skills are most important, see how they might come in handy in other contexts and then articulate those skills in a way that is appealing to other audiences. Here is an example from my own career about how reading a job description with a growth mindset helped me identify and articulate a skill set I didn’t know I had.

    Shortly after finishing my Ph.D., I came across a job posting for a school relations manager at a nonprofit organization, liaising between high school teachers and the organization. The job fit my interests, but at first glance it didn’t seem to match my skill set. In particular, the job description asked for relationship-building skills, which I had never thought about as a skill set, let alone one that I possessed. As I reflected on my experience throughout my time in graduate school, I thought about a short-term, part-time position I had meeting once a month with high school history teachers to help them design lesson plans. I enjoyed this work and was good at it and, though I had never thought about it before, realized that I could frame this experience as relationship building. In my application materials and job interviews, I emphasized this skill set and expressed confidence in continuing to grow in this area, and I got the job.

    • Open up new career fields.

    Several years ago, I worked with a Ph.D. student in art history who was interested in a career in user experience research. Although she was still two years away from graduation, she started looking at job descriptions to get a better sense of the responsibilities and qualifications for the kinds of roles she desired. In her research, she noticed that many positions asked for evidence of user experience projects, and some even asked for a portfolio. While some students would have seen this as an insurmountable barrier (a fixed mindset), she instead let her growth mindset kick in and got to work building her portfolio through project-based online courses, independent projects and on-campus jobs, and continued to network with practitioners in the field. Her hard work and help from others paid off, and she was able to move into the field after she graduated.

    • Compete for jobs for which you may be somewhat underqualified.

    Students often let the perception of being underqualified for a job prevent them from applying. This is a well-documented tendency among women and underrepresented groups, and, for graduate students, the impostor phenomenon often contributes to reduced confidence in relation to career possibilities. Most graduate students know about this tendency and the advice to apply if you meet 60 to 75 percent of the qualifications, Yet, many still have difficulty getting over the hump to apply when they don’t meet 100 percent of the qualifications in the job description. Or, if they do apply, they undersell their qualifications in their application materials.

    When you approach a position description for a job that interests you but feels like a reach, start with the job responsibilities and imagine yourself performing the tasks listed. If there are things on the list you haven’t done before, imagine how you could build on the skills and capacities you have in a new setting and then improve over time. Next, go through each qualification and look for some connection, however tenuous, to something you have done before and write it down. If you have trouble doing this on your own, work with a career adviser who can help. Usually this process helps you see capacities and qualifications you didn’t know you had and will give you confidence that you can grow into a role that feels like a stretch.

    • Apply for jobs for which you may feel overqualified.

    This next piece of advice addresses the other end of the spectrum—jobs for which you feel overqualified. Ph.D. students who are entering a field other than academia are making a career transition, which often requires spending some time in a role that might feel beneath your qualifications. This is especially true in certain industries like publishing, journalism, marketing and communications, and others. It can feel demoralizing for doctoral students to apply for jobs that only require a bachelor’s degree.

    In this case, use a growth mindset to imagine how you could advance within the organization or how this first position could be a stepping-stone to another opportunity in a couple of years. Keep in mind that people with advanced degrees tend to get promoted to a higher level and more quickly than those with just a bachelor’s. You won’t be stuck in this first role forever, and it will give you a chance to demonstrate your skills in your new field.

    Underlying these tips is a nudge to get online and read some job descriptions, even if you aren’t yet ready to apply. Just make sure that when you do, you suit up with your growth mindset first.

    Rachel Bernard is the GSAS Compass Consultant at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where she focuses on career development for master’s and doctoral students. She is a member of the Graduate Career Consortium—an organization providing a national voice for graduate-level career and professional development leaders.

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  • The Struggling Sanctuary Campus Movement

    The Struggling Sanctuary Campus Movement

    American University’s student government recently passed a referendum calling on the university to designate itself a sanctuary campus and limit its cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. Student protests broke out at the University of North Carolina Asheville, the University of Texas at Austin and elsewhere to push those campuses to embrace sanctuary status. A petition with the same demand from Colorado State University’s chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America garnered more than 3,000 signatures.

    “It is of the utmost importance that students, staff, and community members see CSU committing to protect the most threatened students in this community,” read the student petition to Colorado State administrators.

    The petitions and protests have also been fueled by student frustrations with universities’ compliance with other federal immigration actions. The Council on American-Islamic Relations and other groups sued Columbia University on behalf of students after federal immigration agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a green card–holding recent Columbia graduate, at his university-owned apartment because of his involvement in pro-Palestinian protests. Shortly afterwards, Department of Homeland Security agents searched two Columbia dorms, though no arrests were made. The CAIR lawsuit, which also targets the House of Representatives’ Committee on Education and the Workforce, led to an injunction that stopped the university from sharing more student records with lawmakers.

    “While I await legal decisions that hold the futures of my wife and child in the balance, those who enabled my targeting remain comfortably at Columbia University,” Khalil said in a statement from an ICE detention center in Louisiana. “Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration’s latest threats.”

    The renewed push for sanctuary campuses harks back to President Donald Trump’s first term, when students at dozens of campuses petitioned their colleges to follow the lead of sanctuary cities and create boundaries for their cooperation with federal immigration officials. At the time, a handful of higher ed institutions agreed to designate themselves sanctuary campuses and protect undocumented students to the fullest extent the law allows. Many more made public declarations of support for undocumented students without actually embracing the title.

    This time around, while some college and university leaders have promised they’ll support students in every way legally possible, few are eager to comment publicly on Trump’s immigration actions or use the sanctuary title, for fear of overpromising the protections they can offer or attracting unwanted attention to their campuses, potentially putting students or federal funds at risk.

    The Trump administration has already gone after sanctuary cities, with Chicago among the first targeted for immigration raids. One of Trump’s early executive orders asserted that “sanctuary jurisdictions” shouldn’t receive federal funding. The Trump administration also sued the city of Chicago, the state of Illinois and New York State over their immigration policies last month. And recently, Republican lawmakers lambasted the mayors of Boston, Chicago, Denver and New York City for their sanctuary statuses at a contentious hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

    Some college leaders are clearly worried that using the term “sanctuary” could make them a target as well. Even the few colleges and universities that previously designated themselves sanctuary campuses seem hesitant to use, or discuss, the term. Inside Higher Ed reached out to eight higher ed institutions that have called themselves sanctuary campuses in the past. Three institutions declined interviews, and four didn’t respond to email requests for comment.

    A spokesperson for a community college in the Southwest confirmed in an email that the institution “remains committed to serving and supporting all students” but no longer actively uses the term “sanctuary.”

    “Because our top priority is student safety, we prefer not to comment further,” the spokesperson wrote.

    ‘Meaningful,’ ‘Risky’ or Both?

    Current debates over the term “sanctuary” likely reflect some of the ways this political moment differs from Trump’s first term.

    Notably, fears that federal immigration officials could venture onto campuses became a reality after Khalil’s recent arrest, heightening the risks of taking a public stand. Other federal immigration actions affecting students and scholars followed, including the arrest of Badar Khan Suri, an Indian postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University.

    A professor at an institution that previously declared itself a sanctuary campus emphasized that Khalil’s case made those working with undocumented students “even more alarmed.” During Trump’s first term, campuses ultimately weren’t a target of federal immigration actions, but the events of the past month at Columbia show that may no longer be true, said the professor, who spoke with Inside Higher Ed on condition of anonymity.

    Another key difference between Trump’s first and second terms is that most of today’s undocumented students can’t participate in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects those brought to the U.S. as children before 2007 from deportation and allows them to work legally. That means many undocumented students are arguably more vulnerable than they were during Trump’s first term, the professor said. At the same time, campuses have far more infrastructure, resources and legal training to support undocumented students than in the past, they added.

    The professor believes it’s still worthwhile for colleges to call themselves sanctuary campuses—or at least offer undocumented students some kind of public support—because it means a lot to affected students and the faculty and staff supporting them. It helps them feel “braver.”

    “I think it’s both meaningful and risky,” they said. “In fact, I think it might be more meaningful now because it’s so risky.” But “I don’t necessarily think that using the word ‘sanctuary’ is the key. I think the key is saying something.”

    College leaders likely believe “not speaking out is going to give them a layer of safety, because we’re not waving a flag, like, ‘Look over here,’” the professor added. “I get that, but I’m just not sure that it’s right.” They noted that even though Columbia cracked down on pro-Palestinian protesters, the Trump administration has shown no signs of letting up on the institution, vowing to strip it of hundreds of millions of federal dollars.

    Even some college leaders who have long supported undocumented students have always had issues with the sanctuary designation, said Miriam Feldblum, executive director of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. Her organization doesn’t encourage the term because she worries it’s amorphous and sends a confusing message to undocumented students.

    To her, the label evokes the idea of “civil disobedience,” reminiscent of the way churches housed and shielded Central American refugees in the 1980s sanctuary movement. But campuses are still responsible for “complying with the law,” she said. If students interpret the term “sanctuary” to mean otherwise, she fears they might misunderstand what protections they do and don’t have.

    “It’s actually not communicating clearly and transparently what the campus is going to do,” she said.

    Feldblum believes students’ outrage toward Columbia over its handling of federal immigration actions reflects how easy it is to misunderstand campuses’ legal options. From her perspective, Columbia followed best practices by developing policies delineating private and public space on campus—where ICE can and cannot enter without a judicial warrant—and making sure immigration officials had the correct warrants when they came knocking. Feldblum argued a sanctuary campus would have done the same.

    She emphasized that just because campus leaders take extra care with their language doesn’t mean they’re doing any less to support undocumented students. She said many campuses are furiously updating their protocols on how to handle ICE officials on campus and ramping up services and supports for undocumented students without a sanctuary label.

    “The commitment to support students, to use the tools in our toolbox to make sure that we’re protecting students’ right to free speech, that we’re supporting our campuses so they are places for safe and supportive learning is very much at top of mind for campus leaders,” Feldblum said.

    Maryam Ahranjani, professor of law at the University of New Mexico, expressed similar discomfort with the term “sanctuary”; she argued it “may not have the same meaning to everyone” and as a result can be “counterproductive.”

    “There may be people who would actually support the goals of people in favor of a designation, but maybe they just don’t like the term,” Ahranjani said.

    Instead of making a big national push for sanctuary, advocates of undocumented student should “think about how to get the support of highest-level leaders, presidents, provosts” on a set of specific goals informed by the needs and concerns of undocumented students’ on individual campuses, she added.

    Colleges need plans in place for how they’d respond to ICE raids, but undocumented students could also be facing other problems that go unnoticed, like bullying or “how the current climate affects [their] ability to learn,” she said. “I think it’s important to talk to them about what their exact individual needs are.” But some advocates for sanctuary campuses insist the designation is needed now more than ever, with both undocumented populations and campus free speech squarely in the administration’s crosshairs.

    Michelle Ming, political director at United We Dream, an immigrant youth advocacy organization, empathizes with campus leaders who fear for their federal funding but argues that colleges that don’t embrace sanctuary campus status deny undocumented students a sense of security, thus depriving them of the full benefits of the college experience.

    “What is the point of having a school if it’s not going to be safe?” she said. To Ming, sanctuary means students “feel safe to go to class. They feel safe to go and do what they came to do—and paid to do—which is learn, further their education, discover what the next step in life is and form communities that really resonate with who they are and who they want to be. And that includes exercising free speech.”

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  • Essay on Immigration Law and Student Activism (Opinion)

    Essay on Immigration Law and Student Activism (Opinion)

    On Sept. 23, 1952, Mugo Gatheru had just finished English class when an American official approached him and flashed a United States Immigration Services badge. Gatheru, a young Kenyan student at Lincoln University, quickly realized that his education was not the officer’s concern. His politics were. The officer interrogated him about his role as an editor of the Kenya African Union’s newspaper, The African Voice, and about whether he had ever engaged in political agitation against government officials in Kenya, India, England or the United States.

    In the 1950s, the Cold War logic of American immigration enforcement sought to place Gatheru into a rigid political binary: communist or anticommunist, agitator or ally. But Gatheru challenged these political borders. When accused of being an agitator, the young Kenyan student reframed the terms of the interrogation. Agitation, he argued, was a matter of perspective. British colonial authorities may have seen him as disruptive, but what he was doing was simply a continuation of the democratic ideals he had learned in America. “After all,” he told the immigration officer, “even George Washington was an agitator here in your country.”

    Seventy-three years later, it’s old wine in a new bottle.

    The same Immigration and Nationality Act that was used to justify deportation proceedings against Mugo Gatheru in the 1950s is now being wielded against Mahmoud Khalil. In Gatheru’s time, the target was anticolonial activists suspected of communist ties; today, it’s Palestinian advocates accused of supporting terrorism. The global politics are different, but the playbook remains the same: Silence dissent, rebrand it as a security threat and use immigration law to make it disappear.

    These cases are not just about two individuals. They are part of a much longer history of using immigration enforcement as a tool of political suppression on college campuses. Gatheru was one of many African, Latin America, Asian and Caribbean students in the mid-20th century whose presence in U.S. universities became politically suspect. Fueled by Cold War anxieties, U.S. authorities from across the political spectrum saw anticolonial activism as inherently subversive to American geopolitical interests. In the late 1970s, the Carter administration, which professed a strong commitment to human rights, employed the same tools of immigration enforcement to investigate and silence Iranian students who denounced U.S. complicity in the shah’s regime. And in the mid-1980s, the Reagan administration also utilized those same tools to prosecute young Palestinian activists in Los Angeles.

    The history of immigration and student activism is thus also a history of global racial politics. White European students were welcomed into American universities while Black and brown international students from the Global South were scrutinized for their political beliefs. In effect, academic freedom was never truly universal for international students. It was selectively granted and shaped by a racialized global hierarchy that mirrored U.S. Cold War priorities. Ultimately, an uncomfortable truth might be this: American universities are deeply entangled in America’s geopolitical agenda, and their commitment to academic freedom rarely extended to those who challenged U.S. hegemony.

    Today, the U.S. government is deploying a similar logic. In addition to Khalil’s arrest, the government has trumpeted the arrest of another international student tied to the Columbia protests, Leqaa Kordia, and the visa revocation and “self-deportation” of Ranjani Srinivasan, who says she got mistakenly swept up in arrests of protesters during the occupation of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall last spring. A Georgetown University postdoctoral scholar from India, Badar Khan Suri, was also arrested last week, targeted, according to his lawyer, for his wife’s “identity as a Palestinian and her constitutionally protected speech.”

    In other words, these are not isolated incidents but part of a deliberate policy effort to criminalize Palestinian advocacy and antiwar protest.

    In the past two years alone, we have seen student groups labeled as extremist, faculty members investigated for their political speech and foreign nationals facing heightened scrutiny for their views on the ongoing war in Israel-Palestine. The arrest of Khalil, even if dropped, has had its intended effect: It sends a chilling message that political dissent, particularly when voiced by students from politically fraught regions, comes at a cost.

    The echoes between these cases should prompt us to reflect on the historical legacies at play. Both Gatheru’s and Khalil’s experiences show how governments, fearing the power of certain ideas, attempt to control the discourse by criminalizing student activists. Both demonstrate how racialized and colonialist logics shape the policing of dissent, whether in the 1950s, under the specter of communism, or in 2025, under the guise of counterterrorism. And, most significantly for those in higher education, both reveal the ways in which universities serve as battlegrounds for global political struggles.

    Yet both cases also highlight the potential role of academic communities and activist networks in resisting such overt suppression of political activism. When Gatheru faced deportation, university allies and civil rights leaders and groups, including Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP, mobilized on his behalf. Faculty and students at Lincoln University established the Friends of Mugo Gatheru Fund. They reframed his case as a fight for both racial justice and academic freedom. Their efforts eventually led to the U.S. government dropping its case.

    Khalil’s arrest has likewise sparked widespread resistance. Student organizations and faculty at Columbia have mobilized swiftly, with Jewish faculty members holding a campus rally under the banner “Jews say no to deportations.” Meanwhile, an online petition demanding Khalil’s release has amassed more than three million signatures. These responses underscore the broader stakes of Khalil’s case: It is not just about one student but about the right to dissent in an era in which protest is again being reframed as a national security threat.

    Gatheru’s case, once seen as a national security risk, is now remembered as an example of state overreach. Will we look back on Khalil’s case the same way? If so, it will be because students, faculty and advocates refused to allow immigration enforcement to dictate the terms of political activism. As Gatheru reminded his interrogator, George Washington was an agitator, too. The question is whether we will continue to punish today’s agitators for following in that tradition.

    David S. Busch is the author of Disciplining Democracy: How the Modern American University Transformed Student Activism (Cornell University Press).

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  • Understanding Incoming College Student Demographics

    Understanding Incoming College Student Demographics

    Anecdotally, higher education practitioners frequently share challenges and changes with today’s college students, but how unique are the incoming learners of the Class of 2029?

    A February report published by the American Council on Education and the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, found the incoming class of college students is more diverse than past classes in terms of race, sexuality and socioeconomic standing.  

    According to the CIRP Freshman Survey 2024, some demographic groups are less likely to say they’re confident in their academic abilities and that they encounter mental health struggles, highlighting ongoing need to support students with their personal and academic development in higher education.

    “This report gives institutional leaders a clear view of today’s first-year students—their backgrounds, aspirations, and challenges—so they can better support learner success,” said Hironao Okahana, vice president and executive director of ACE’s Education Futures Lab, in a February press release. “Centering student experiences in higher education policy and practice is essential, and these findings help colleges and universities create environments where all students can thrive.”

    Methodology

    The survey, conducted between April 14 and Oct. 10, 2024, includes data from 24,367 incoming students across 55 colleges and universities.

    Demographics: Over half of respondents (50.8 percent) identify as white, but significant portions are students of color, including more than one race (14.8 percent), Asian and Pacific Islander (14.6 percent), Hispanic or Latino (11.0 percent), or Black and African American (7.7 percent). Around 1 percent of respondents are American Indian or Alaska Native.

    Nearly 10 percent of surveyed students reported English was not their primary language, and almost half of those learners are U.S. citizens.

    A majority of respondents indicated they are heterosexual (82.3 percent), but the next-greatest share identify as bisexual (8.5 percent).

    Nineteen percent of respondents were classified as low-income, defined in this study as having a family income of less than $60,000. First-generation students (those whose parents or guardians had no college experience) made up 12.4 percent of all students and one-third of the low-income group.

    Eight percent of respondents were military-affiliated, and these learners made up 3 percent of the low-income group.

    College prep: Nearly all students took three years of math in high school, but those from higher-income backgrounds were more likely to have completed advanced mathematics courses and Advanced Placement courses.

    Women (66.8 percent) were less likely than men to see themselves as having strong academic ability, compared to their male peers (75.8 percent) and those who indicated another gender identity (72.3 percent). Similarly, female students were less likely to say they have above-average intellect, compared to men and others.

    Despite that lack of self-confidence, women were more likely to report earning A’s in high school (78 percent) compared to men (72 percent) and other gender minorities (72 percent). Women and nonbinary students were also more likely to say they felt challenged by their coursework frequently (34.9 percent and 36.2 percent, respectively).

    Over half of students studied at least six hours per week, but first-generation students were less likely to study for six hours per week, compared to their continuing-generation peers. First-generation college students were also slightly more likely to work for pay at least six hours per week at 41.3 percent versus 38.6 percent.

    Around one-third of students socialized with their friends for at least six hours per week, on trend with national data that suggests Gen Z spends less time with friends compared to previous generations.

    Personal struggles: Mental health concerns have risen among young people nationally, and many incoming college students indicate feelings of being overwhelmed or depressed. Nonbinary students were most likely to report feeling anxious, stressed or depressed, and women were slightly more likely than men to share mental health concerns.

    “When asked how they compare with their peers on emotional health, men showed the most confidence; 48.5 percent rated themselves as above average or in the top 10 percent,” according to the report. “By contrast, only 35.2 percent of women and just 16.6 percent of students who identified outside of the gender binary rated themselves as above average or in the top 10 percent.”

    Around half of students indicated they had at least some chance of using mental health services offered at their institution.

    Financial stress continues to weigh on students, with over half (56.4 percent) expressing some or major concern about paying for college. Latino (81.4 percent) and Black students (69.6 percent) were more likely to say this was true. Sixty percent of Latino students, over half of American Indian or Alaska Native, and half of Black students utilize Pell Grants to fund their education, and each of these groups also relied on work-study funding for their education costs at higher rates than their peers.

    However, many students believe in the economic value of a college education, despite the financial barriers to access.

    Politics: For the first time, the survey asked students if they considered state policies and legislation to be important to their college decision. One-third of men and almost 40 percent of women considered politics and legislation to be at least somewhat important of where to go to college, compared to 56 percent of their nonbinary peers. LGBTQ students (48 percent) also weighed this factor as important more than their peers.

    The Class of 2029 is also civically engaged, with one-quarter of respondents indicating that they frequently or occasionally have demonstrated for a cause and one-third of respondents having publicly communicate their opinion about a cause. LGBTQ students were more likely to agree with these statements.

    Military-affiliated students also reported high levels of community engagement, such as volunteering and voting.

    Across the U.S., diversity, equity and inclusion work has become more controversial, but respondents still indicate a care for social equity. A majority of college students believe racial discrimination is still a major problem in the U.S., with students of color more likely than their white peers to share this opinion. Many students expressed an interest in correcting social inequalities and gender equity.

    We bet your colleague would like this article, too. Send them this link to subscribe to our newsletter on Student Success.

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  • Strengthening data and insights into our changing university research landscape by Jessica Corner

    Strengthening data and insights into our changing university research landscape by Jessica Corner

    The UK continues as a global leader in research and innovation and our universities are uniquely strong contributors, among which are the highest performing in the world. We have some of the highest-intensity innovation ecosystems in the world, with universities as the core driver. As a country, our invention record is well recognised. The UK, with its powerful life sciences effort, delivered one of the first UK COVID-19 vaccines, saving millions of lives around the world and only possible because of long-standing investment in research that became serendipitously essential. In cities across the UK, universities act as pillar institutions with positive and reinforcing effects on their local economies. We have a rich network of specialist institutions that excel in music, the arts, medicine and life sciences. Our universities continue to deliver discoveries, technologies, creative insights, talent for our industries and public services and so much more. Many have the scale and reach to deliver across the full span of research and innovation to enterprise and commercialisation.

    A unique feature, and underpinning this extraordinary record, is our dual support funding system. That system balances competitive grant funding from UKRI Research Councils, charities, business, and others with long-term stable underpinning funds to enable universities to pursue ambitious and necessary strategies, develop research strengths, foster talent, pivot towards new fields, collaborate and maintain research infrastructure.

    However, the sector faces unprecedented challenges. Erosion of the value of student fees and the growing costs of delivering education, disruptions to anticipated income from international student fees, a slow erosion of the value of QR, rising costs of research and a mismatch between this and cost recovery from grants has created a perfect storm and unsustainable operating models for most institutions. The additional £5bn a year in funding from universities’ own surpluses towards research and innovation is no longer guaranteed. The sector has and continues to evolve in response to a changing landscape, but consideration is needed about how best to support the sector to change.

    Research England’s role is to support a healthy, dynamic, diverse, and inclusive, research and innovation system in universities in England6. We work by facilitating and incentivising system coherence, acting as both champion and challenger. In partnership we aim to create and sustain the conditions for the system to continue delivering excellence and leverage resources far beyond funding provided by government. We are working to enhance the data and evidence to support our role as expert, evidence-based funder and on the outcomes that the funding delivers. In fulfilling this role and against the current context, Research England has two initiatives that we will be taking forward in the coming weeks.

    Our ongoing programme to review the principles underpinning our funding and mechanisms by which we allocate research funds to institutions has reached a point where we are seeking to increase the visibility and transparency of how these funds are deployed by institutions. We are developing an approach, designed to be light touch and low burden that asks universities to report back on their use of strategic institutional research funding. We will begin testing the approach with a selection of institutions in the coming months and, subject to the outcomes of this initial engagement, aim to roll out a pilot with institutions in the 2025/26 academic year. We will be communicating to institutions directly about the pilot in the early Autumn. In the second phase of this work, we intend to work with institutions to develop a forward-looking strategic element that will give insight into plans and then how decisions are made about the deployment of funding. For the programme, we are also reviewing the effectiveness of the different unhypothecated and ring-fenced research funds provided to institutions. When fully implemented, the information we will acquire will enable Research England greater visibility of the role of institutions and the contribution of our formula-based research funding (including QR) to the research and innovation system while also contributing to efforts to have more systematic and timely data.

    A second strand of work is our programme to monitor the implications for the sustainability of research in universities against the current financial context. We are seeking to better understand how challenges are impacting universities’ ability to deliver research and innovation and maintain research capabilities, capacity, and facilities and, in turn, further strengthen assurance with more robust data. In partnership with the Department for Innovation Science and Technology, we have commissioned the Innovation Research Caucus with OMB Research Ltd to undertake a survey into how institutions are responding to current pressures with respect to research and innovation. The survey will provide important data that can support advice to government and others on the extent of universities’ financial challenges, how these issues are being managed, and how this impacts their investment and planning in the research and innovation space. The approach is to provide insights that are currently not available at an aggregate level or in a timely way through national data sets. Additionally, Research England will be asking institutions to report on material changes they are making to research and innovation capabilities and capacity or in relation to wider changes in institutional form or organisation when these may affect the basis on which our funding is awarded.

    We continue to see our role as facilitator, enabler and partner and believe we have a strong reputation for having timely and robust insights into the conditions underpinning our great research and innovation system. These two programmes of work are being taken forward in support of universities and, against the current backdrop, will strengthen Research England’s fundamental role in the research and innovation system. We look forward to working in close partnership with universities as we take these critical work programmes forward.

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  • From Feedback to Feedforward: Using AI-Powered Assessment Flywheel to Drive Student Competency – Faculty Focus

    From Feedback to Feedforward: Using AI-Powered Assessment Flywheel to Drive Student Competency – Faculty Focus

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  • HEDx Podcast: Applied learning at Singapore Institute of Technology – Episode 160

    HEDx Podcast: Applied learning at Singapore Institute of Technology – Episode 160

    Dr May Lim Sok Mui is an Associate Professor and the Assistant Provost of Applied Learning at the Singapore Institute of Technology.

    She has pioneered a coaching approach to competency-based education at the Institute, from its new campus in Punggol.

    In this episode, Dr May Lim explains what best practice looks like when teaching skills-based students who need to be lifelong learners.

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  • “Portrayed as a place that isn’t what I know it to be”: Professor Bell on ANU’s public perception

    “Portrayed as a place that isn’t what I know it to be”: Professor Bell on ANU’s public perception

    ANU vice-chancellor Genevieve Bell with Rachel Marape at James Marape, the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea’s address to the ANU in February, 2024. Picture: Martin Ollman



    By: Erin Morley

    in Top Stories, VC’s corner


    March 24, 2025

    Australian National University’s (ANU) vice-chancellor Genevieve Bell has made a statement confirming she plans to stand by her university after a “four-month negative media campaign.”

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