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  • The Danger of Homogenisation: Why specialist HEIs are crucial to the success of UK Higher Education and the Government’s priorities

    The Danger of Homogenisation: Why specialist HEIs are crucial to the success of UK Higher Education and the Government’s priorities

    Today on the HEPI website, Annamaria Carusi challenges the common assumption that translational research is only relevant to STEM fields, making the case for a broader, more integrated approach that fully values the contributions of the arts and humanities. If we want to maximize the real-world impact of research, she argues, it is time to rethink outdated silos and recognize the creative industries as essential players in innovation and economic growth. You can read that piece here.

    Below, as the government considers higher education reform, Dr Brooke Storer-Church and Dr Kate Wicklow make the case for specialist higher education institutions and warn against the dangers of homogenisation.

    GuildHE represents the most diverse range of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) that are crucial to the prosperity of the sector, the economy, and our global reputation. We therefore argue that in an increasingly complex world, the role of specialist higher education institutions has never been more vital. These institutions, with their deep-rooted expertise and tailored approach, offer a unique and invaluable contribution to the landscape of higher education by providing diverse approaches and pathways to a wide range of students. 

    Diversity is a necessary ingredient for a successful and sustainable higher education sector, and this is becoming clearer from an analysis of the United States landscape, along with Australia and other large higher education systems.  Expert commentators grappling with some of the current challenges for American universities and colleges offer a hypothesis, positing that losing the diversity of mission and distinctiveness, objectives and audiences has been key to its diminishing public support. This homogenisation includes institutional, mission, operational, and aspirational similarities, which see every institution strive to ‘be all things to all people’ and thereby offer ‘the same thing for only some of the people.’ 

    In November, the Secretary of State wrote to the higher education sector outlining five areas for reform. GuildHE has scrutinised these areas and suggested to the Department for Education (DfE) ways to use the strengths of our sector to meet these challenges. However, some of the debate surrounding reform includes calls for consolidation and institutional mergers to offer the best ‘efficiencies’ in the sector. 

    While GuildHE members drive innovation, enrich communities and ensure access to high-quality education, their impact is often overlooked because they are not traditional, large-scale, multi-faculty universities. Funding and regulatory systems and government policies often fail to recognise institutions that do not fit this conventional university image. We, therefore, argue consolidation in the sector puts institutional diversity and student choice at risk, jeopardises our world-leading status, and undermines the Government’s missions of supporting local communities, equality of opportunity and our national economy.

    Overall, we want to see Government reform which champions our diversity, avoids policies that undermine the unique contributions of our diverse institutions, and actively invests to protect them.

    A focus on depth and industrial relevance

    Unlike their more generalist counterparts, specialist HEIs prioritise depth over breadth. They delve into specific disciplines, professions or industries, providing students with a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of their chosen field.  This focused approach fosters a level of knowledge and skills that is often unmatched elsewhere and is increasingly in demand to tackle 21st-century challenges.

    Whilst GuildHE is known for representing specialist creative arts institutions, which together train about 40% of all creative HE students in England, we represent a wider range of specialists, including healthcare specialists like Health Sciences University, specialists in the built environment like University College of Estate Management (which is also a specialist in online delivery) and all the land-based specialist universities in the sector. The agri-food sector employs almost 4 million people and is larger than the automotive and aerospace sectors combined. Technological innovations and sustainability and productivity improvements are driven by our specialist land-based institutions, which work closely with industrial partners. This specialist expertise is transforming the future of food production, bringing together disciplines such as robotics and artificial intelligence and contributing to the broader push towards net-zero food and farming. Several agriculture-focused higher education providers have their own farms and industrial research centres for testing and development.

    Nationally, our institutions work with the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, right across government and with industry sector bodies; for example, Harper Adams University has advised the government on matters related to food security.  Their impact is also international, as agri-food HEIs work with the Department for International Trade to boost the profile of UK agricultural innovation overseas and educational and research and development programmes are forged with international partners from the US and China to Kenya, Australia and the Netherlands.

    A culture of innovation

    As natural innovators, many specialist institutions know their regions well and will be a critical part of generating economic growth there. They are locally significant as employers and community anchors and active partners in Local Enterprise Partnerships and other local bodies, such as Chambers of Commerce. Below is just a small sample of the innovations delivered by our specialist institutions.

    Norwich University of the Arts collaborated with regional businesses to innovate film technology that mid-size regional film production companies use. The project created new jobs in Norfolk, boosted film production for regional, small-scale productions and start-ups, and the insights gained from the project were incorporated into the university curriculum. By equipping students with cutting-edge knowledge and skills, NUA is empowering them to contribute to the region’s growing knowledge-based economy by equipping them with cutting-edge knowledge and skills.

    Dyson Institute for Engineering and Technology is training the future workforce of engineers with a particular focus on pioneering new technologies that make intrinsically relevant real-world impacts. Innovation areas include delivering safe, cleaner, energy-efficient batteries, prototyping products in aerodynamics, mechatronics and microbiology and robotics for clinical imaging, navigation technology and machine learning.

    Hartpury University is a leading institution for agriculture, agri-tech, animal and veterinary sciences. Its Agri-Tech Centre is a state-of-the-art complex, connecting research, knowledge, data, and people in a real-world and applied setting. Through the Centre, it provides industry-led services for the advancement of agricultural technologies and delivers proven solutions and services to farms and suppliers across the UK. This hub offers a path for innovative agri-tech businesses to trial new products and services to modernise and sustain British farming.

    A sense of community

    One of the defining characteristics of specialist HEIs is their strong sense of community.  Students, staff and alumni often share a common passion for their field, creating a supportive and inspiring environment.  This sense of community fosters a deep sense of belonging and can lead to lifelong friendships and professional networks.

    Arts University Plymouth’s Young Arts programme was established in 1988.  It features the university’s renowned Saturday Arts Clubs and for over 30 years, has worked to bridge the gap in arts provision for young people created by increasingly limited access to creative activity in schools.  Young Arts uses art as a catalyst for learning, shaping the artists, makers and creative thinkers of the future, supporting learning and social development, often working with specific widening participation groups.

    Starting in September 2025, Harper Adams University (HAU) will open a suite of undergraduate courses at The Quad, Telford; its first additional site in 124 years and a new base from which the university can extend its collaboration with and connection to its local community.  In The Quad, HAU is co-located with Telford College, Invest Telford, and the local MP to broaden access for local learners to future-focused courses like data science, robotics mechatronics and automation, and digital business. HAU is also providing short courses and upskilling for local businesses to support local growth.

    Our asks of government

    As we argue extensively in our submission to DfE, specialist HEIs offer a diverse range of programmes and courses that meet the needs of a wide range of students and community partners and meet each of the five areas of higher education reform.  They are, therefore, the essential threads in the fabric of our diverse, rich and successful higher education landscape; threads that have been regrettably lost in other systems around the world. Their focus on depth, industry partnerships, innovation and community makes them uniquely positioned to prepare students for success in a rapidly changing world. As we look to the future, it is clear that specialist HEIs must continue to play a vital role in shaping the next generation of leaders and innovators.

    Observations about the increasing homogeneity of higher education have been available publicly for at least 2 decades, with some suggesting that a combination of government policies, regulation and academic communities are all playing their part. Regardless of the reasons behind it, there is widespread agreement that such homogeneity restricts access for students with different educational backgrounds or achievements. 

    Global trend analysis has shown that government policies, regulation and academic communities have all contributed to the homogeneity of higher education in other countries. This reduces social mobility by reducing modes of entry and delivery. It also weakens applied research and innovation and the pipeline of experts into the labour market, as it loses its ability to create the growing variety of specialisations needed for economic and social development. 

    At a time when we, as a sector, are grappling with the twin pressures of making our contributions to wider society clearer and delivering the promise with fewer resources, we must all protect the very diversity within it that ensures we can rise to the 21st-century challenges on our doorstep and retain a world-leading and (possibly) increasingly unique higher education sector.

    We have published a summary of our submission to DfE with our various policy asks to protect the diversity of our system here.

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  • America’s kids are still behind in reading and math. These schools are defying the trend

    America’s kids are still behind in reading and math. These schools are defying the trend

    This story was produced by the Associated Press and reprinted with permission.

    Math is the subject sixth grader Harmoni Knight finds hardest, but that’s changing.

    In-class tutors and “data chats” at her middle school in Compton, California, have made a dramatic difference, the 11-year-old said. She proudly pulled up a performance tracker at a tutoring session last week, displaying a column of perfect 100 percent scores on all her weekly quizzes from January.

    Since the pandemic first shuttered American classrooms, schools have poured federal and local relief money into interventions like the ones in Harmoni’s classroom, hoping to help students catch up academically following COVID-19 disruptions.

    But a new analysis of state and national test scores shows the average student remains half a grade level behind pre-pandemic achievement in both reading and math. In reading, especially, students are even further behind than they were in 2022, the analysis shows.

    Compton is an outlier, making some of the biggest two-year gains in both subjects among large districts. And there are other bright spots, along with evidence that interventions like tutoring and summer programs are working.

    Students interact in a fourth grade classroom at William Jefferson Clinton Elementary in Compton, Calif., Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025. Credit: Eric Thayer/Associated Press

    The Education Recovery Scorecard analysis by researchers at Harvard, Stanford and Dartmouth allows year-to-year comparisons across states and districts, providing the most comprehensive picture yet of how American students are performing since COVID-19 first disrupted learning.

    The most recent data is based on tests taken by students in spring 2024. By then, the worst of the pandemic was long past, but schools were dealing still with a mental health crisis and high rates of absenteeism — not to mention students who’d had crucial learning disrupted.  

    “The losses are not just due to what happened during the 2020 to 2021 school year, but the aftershocks that have hit schools in the years since the pandemic,” said Tom Kane, a Harvard economist who worked on the scorecard.

    In some cases, the analysis shows school districts are struggling when their students may have posted decent results on their state tests. That’s because each state adopts its own assessments, and those aren’t comparable to each other. Those differences can make it impossible to tell whether students are performing better because of their progress, or whether those shifts are because the tests themselves are changing, or the state has lowered its standards for proficiency.

    The Scorecard accounts for differing state tests and provides one national standard.

    Higher-income districts have made significantly more progress than lower-income districts, with the top 10 percent of high-income districts four times more likely to have recovered in both math and reading compared with the poorest 10 percent. And recovery within districts remains divided by race and class, especially in math scores. Test score gaps grew by both race and income.

    A student works in a classroom at Benjamin O. Davis Middle School in Compton, Calif., Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025. Credit: Eric Thayer/Associated Press

    “The pandemic has not only driven test scores down, but that decline masks a pernicious inequality that has grown during the pandemic,” said Sean Reardon, a Stanford sociologist who worked on the scorecard. “Not only are districts serving more Black and Hispanic students falling further behind, but even within those districts, Black and Hispanic students are falling further behind their white district mates.”

    Still, many of the districts that outperformed the country serve predominantly low-income students or students of color, and their interventions offer best practices for other districts.

    Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education.

    In Compton, the district responded to the pandemic by hiring over 250 tutors that specialize in math, reading and students learning English. Certain classes are staffed with multiple tutors to assist teachers. And schools offer tutoring before, during and after school, plus “Saturday School” and summer programs for the district’s 17,000 students, said Superintendent Darin Brawley.

    To identify younger students needing targeted support, the district now conducts dyslexia screenings in all elementary schools.

    The low-income school district near downtown Los Angeles, with a student body that is 84 percent Latino and 14 percent Black, now has a graduation rate of 93 percent, compared with 58 percent when Brawley took the job in 2012.

    Harmoni, the sixth-grader, said that one-on-one tutoring has helped her grasp concepts and given her more confidence in math. She gets separate “data chats” with her math specialist that are part performance review, part pep talk.

    “Looking at my data, it kind of disappoints me” when the numbers are low, said Harmoni. “But it makes me realize I can do better in the future, and also now.”

    Brawley said he’s proud of the district’s latest test scores, but not content.

    “Truth be told, I wasn’t happy,” he said. “Even though we gained, and we celebrate the gains, at the end of the day we all know that we can do better.”

    A tutor helps students at Benjamin O. Davis Middle School in Compton, Calif., Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025. Credit: Eric Thayer/Associated Press

    As federal pandemic relief money for schools winds down, states and school districts will have limited resources and must prioritize interventions that worked. Districts that spent federal money on increased instructional time, either through tutoring or summer school, saw a return on that investment.

    Reading levels have continued to decline, despite a movement in many states to emphasize phonics and the “science of reading.” So Reardon and Kane called for an evaluation of the mixed results for insights into the best ways to teach kids to read.

    Related: Why are kids struggling in school four years after the pandemic?

    The researchers emphasized the need to extend state and local money to support pandemic recovery programs that showed strong academic results. Schools also must engage parents and tell them when their kids are behind, the researchers said.

    And schools must continue to work with community groups to improve students’ attendance. The scorecard identified a relationship between high absenteeism and learning struggles.

    In the District of Columbia, an intensive tutoring program helped with both academics and attendance, said D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Lewis Ferebee. In the scorecard analysis, the District of Columbia ranked first among states for gains in both math and reading between 2022 and 2024, after its math recovery had fallen toward the bottom of the list.

    Pandemic-relief money funded the tutoring, along with a system of identifying and targeting support at students in greatest need. The district also hired program managers who helped maximize time for tutoring within the school day, Ferebee said.

    Students who received tutoring were more likely to be engaged with school, Ferebee said, both from increased confidence over the subject matter and because they had a relationship with another trusted adult.

    Related: Some of the $190 billion in pandemic money for schools actually paid off

    Students expressed that “I’m more confident in math because I’m being validated by another adult,” Ferebee said. “That validation goes a long way, not only with attendance, but a student feeling like they are ready to learn and are capable, and as a result, they show up differently.”

    Federal pandemic relief money has ended, but Ferebee said many of the investments the district made will have lasting impact, including the money spent on teacher training and curriculum development in literacy.

    Students walk through a hallway at Benjamin O. Davis Middle School in Compton, Calif., Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025. Credit: Eric Thayer/Associated Press

    Christina Grant, who served as the District of Columbia’s state superintendent of education until 2024, said she’s hopeful to see the evidence emerging on what’s made a difference in student achievement.

    “We cannot afford to not have hope. These are our students. They did not cause the pandemic,” Grant said. “The growing concern is ensuring that we can … see ourselves to the other side.”

    The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Trade union partnerships hold promise for high school students

    Trade union partnerships hold promise for high school students

    DANVERS, Mass. — It’s a rainy fall day in New England, but that doesn’t stop a group of students at Essex Tech North Shore Agricultural & Technical High School from donning work boots and hard hats and getting to work building a vegetable wash station on campus. This afternoon, they are installing wire mesh and prepping for a concrete pour under the watchful eye of Laborers’ Local 22 member Chris Moore, their teacher. “Hard hat hair don’t care,” reads the sticker on the hat worn by a young woman in the program.

    The construction craft laborers track at Essex Tech, which Moore helps lead, is one of only a few high school-based programs in Massachusetts co-sponsored by a trade union. Students are initiated in union norms and expectations early on. Two Essex Tech teachers in the program are Local 22 members, with the New England Laborers’ Training Academy, which runs the laborers’ apprenticeship, paying Moore’s salary. As seniors, students can attend union meetings. And after graduation, many of them go straight into a union apprenticeship, fast tracked to a journeyman’s license. For all these reasons, Owen Paniagua, a 16-year-old junior, described the program as “a golden ticket to job security,” noting that he has learned everything from carpentry and concrete work to excavation and masonry.

    “We feel as laborers that we should be in the schools,” said Lou Mandarini Jr., the retired business manager of Local 22 who now helps run the union’s school partnerships. “This is where your workforce is … If you treat young kids with respect, once they buy into your program, they are dead loyal.”

    Students in the construction craft laborer program gather around Dave Collins, masonry head, before leaving to work on a project at Essex North Shore Agricultural & Technical High School in Danvers, Mass. Credit: Sophie Park for The Hechinger Report

    In several states, including Massachusetts, Maryland and Louisiana, trade union leaders have forged similar, groundbreaking partnerships with high school CTE programs in recent years, ponying up their own resources for the efforts. There’s also been an uptick in training alliances between trade unions and community colleges. In a 2023 brief, AFL-CIO leadership encouraged these partnerships. “No one knows better how to do a job than someone who does the job,” the brief stated.

    Whether more unions decide to embrace this advice likely will play a large role in determining the long-term health and vibrancy of both career and technical high schools, and the trades themselves.

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

    Twin trends are fueling some of the efforts: rapidly declining trade union membership, particularly in the Midwestern states; and up to $850 billion in infrastructure investment under the Biden administration (though some of that is in limbo because of an executive order from President Donald Trump), including designated funding for partnerships between education and labor.

    Yet progress has been piecemeal and halting. And it’s too early to tell whether isolated partnerships across the country will translate into widespread change, said Taylor White, the director of postsecondary pathways for youth at the Center on Education and Labor at the think tank New America. “Schools and unions speak very different languages,” she noted. The same, she added, is true of employers and schools.

    The longstanding dearth of partnerships says a lot about the history of America’s trade unions, which traditionally have operated as insular, sometimes parochial institutions, preferring to maintain tight control over their membership pipeline, and their training. In some communities, such as Milwaukee, that insularity kept unions predominantly white and male for generations. “Historically a lot of the high-paying skilled trades were handed down from father to son,” said Lauren Baker, a former education director in the printers’ union who also led Milwaukee Public Schools’ career and technical education program between 2002 and 2012. “That kept the trades looking a certain way.”

    Mandarini, the retired union leader, said that in the past, “old timers didn’t help the young people.” But increasingly, he said, he hopes that mentality will become an anomaly.

    Owen Paniagua, 16, and Isabella Gonzalez, 17, both juniors in the Construction Craft Laborer program at Essex North Shore Agricultural & Technical High School, pose for a portrait at Essex Tech in Danvers, Mass. The Essex Tech program’s partnership with the laborers’ union helps to foster job prospects for graduating students. Credit: Sophie Park for The Hechinger Report

    For decades, many vocational school students have been held back by a lack of meaningful partnerships with both unions and employers at their schools, often leaving them without relevant training or clear pathways into jobs. “There’s skepticism from unions and employers that high school kids are ready for real training and real work,” said White, of New America.

    There’s also been a longstanding desire on the part of many unions to maintain tight control over who can access often coveted apprentice slots.

    Until recent years, most trade union apprenticeships in the Milwaukee area had admissions criteria that shut out many women, low-income, and Black and Hispanic city residents. “They were such closed communities, and it was a long process of breaking down some of those walls,” Baker said.

    Related: Apprenticeships are a trending alternative to college but there’s a hitch

    Back in the mid-1990s, Baker was the first woman to run a printing apprenticeship program for the union. In part to open up the field to as diverse a pool as possible, Baker abolished a requirement that apprentices had to be high school graduates. “Pretty much all a high school diploma told me was that they sat in a chair for four years,” she said, pointing out that many of the apprentices came from the academic bottom of their graduation classes. “I caught holy hell from the apprenticeship community for doing that,” she said.

    While the SATs and other college entrance exams have at times been accused of being biased toward privileged white students, Baker said some of the apprenticeship admissions exams were challenging for anyone who hadn’t grown up in the home of someone already working in a specific trade. A question might presume that an applicant had experience helping fix their family’s car, for instance, something that young men were far more likely to have done — and those growing up in urban areas, where fewer households own cars, were far less likely to have done.

    For decades, those tests contributed to keeping the construction trade unions, in particular, predominantly white and male. Only two of 16 Milwaukee area construction unions enrolled at least 20 percent Black apprentices in 2007, according to a report from researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Two of the unions, glazing and tile setters, had no Black apprentices in a city where, at that time, nearly 40 percent of the residents were Black.

    Much of that bias and insularity continues in some Boston-area construction trade unions, said Travis Watson, who serves as a commissioner of the Boston Employment Commission and has critiqued some of the unions for their lack of racial diversity, citing specific practices that make it harder for prospective Black members to get a foothold. “If you look at every big downtown project in Boston, there are very few Black people who are working on union construction projects,” he said. 

    Some of the local unions have made changes to their admissions process to become more accessible to applicants from diverse backgrounds, said Danyson Tavares, who worked for several years in leadership positions at YouthBuild Boston, a pre-apprenticeship program that helps prepare young people of color in the city for jobs in the construction and design industries. But other unions might take applications only once a year or remain secretive about their standards and curriculum. “The electrical union is the one we really want to have more relationships with, there’s such a demand for that workforce,” Tavares said. “We’ve slowly started to penetrate but it’s a lot more work than I expected.” 

    One 25-year-old who recently finished his pre-apprenticeship in carpentry at YouthBuild said he got an interview with the union but was turned down for an apprenticeship for reasons that he said weren’t entirely clear. “I kind of felt like I wouldn’t get in,” said Keyshawn Kavanaugh. He found a non-union job easily at a company that he likes a lot, but he acknowledges that “the union is the best place to work,” at least from the standpoint of benefits and pension.

    In Milwaukee, Baker said she’s seen some positive changes since she ran the printers apprenticeship, with more local unions developing inclusive and transparent admissions. “The trades themselves began to realize that they needed to look beyond their natural base in order to fill jobs,” she said. “It became more apparent that there is a vast opportunity out there with women and people of color.”

    Related: States bet big on career education but struggle to show it works

    The idea that Massachusetts laborers should invest time and money in local schools originated over 20 years ago, when Mandarini and other Local 22 leaders decided they were neglecting a potential asset: kids. Mandarini proposed a pilot partnership to the vocational school in Medford, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston, which started in 2002. It wasn’t easy at first. “How do you adapt to a public school?” he said. “There was a lot of learning that we had to do on both ends.”

    The union had to fight against a perception that a four-year college degree was the only path to a stable, rewarding career, Mandarini said. It helped with recruiting to explain to prospective students that, at that time, union laborers could expect to retire with an annuity of about $1.2 million, he added. (In Massachusetts, laborers typically earn between $90,000 and $100,000 annually, and that annuity is now more than $2 million, Mandarini said.)

    A school bus sits in a parking lot at Essex North Shore Agricultural & Technical High School in Danvers, Mass. Credit: Sophie Park for The Hechinger Report

    Over the years, the partnership model has spread to eight career and technical schools in Massachusetts. At some, the union pays a teacher’s salary, and at others it does not, Mandarini said. “We want to be in every vocational school in Massachusetts,” he said, “and hopefully every vocational school in New England. That’s where our workforce is coming from.”

    In rural western Louisiana, it was a private company that encouraged a local trade union to partner with public high schools. The company, CapturePoint, which sells carbon storage services, reached out in March 2023 to the local branch of the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry, asking if the union would help build out a new career and technical track at the Vernon Parish School District.

    To make it happen, the company paid for the electricity, classroom equipment and furniture to help turn an old woodworking shop at one of the district’s high schools into an updated welding shop. CapturePoint also took on several ongoing costs, paying for  student transportation — the students can come from nine different high schools — and some administrative expenses. The union paid for some reconstruction and all the tools, and provided an instructor. The school offers the space and enrolls 30 students, who can skip their first year of apprenticeship if they join the union after graduating, thereby starting at a higher pay rate. “All of us have skin in the game,” said Lance Albin, who led the partnership for the union.

    At high schools with trade union partnerships, there’s no shortage of interested students. Isabella Gonzalez, 17, creator of the “hard hat hair don’t care” sticker, said she hopes to move straight into an apprenticeship with Local 22 when she graduates in a year and a half. Aspiring laborers learn more diverse skills than students in related tracks like plumbing and electrical, she said, opening up the possibility of a greater variety of work.

    That day last fall, juniors in the program practiced using a compactor to prep the ground for installation of a patio floor, part of the final stages in rebuilding a large cottage on campus. The construction students have been involved in the project since they poured the cement for the foundation in the summer of 2020, wearing masks during the pandemic’s early days, even outdoors.

    By afternoon, the students had transitioned to another work in progress: the vegetable wash station by the greenhouse, where they needed to install enough wire mesh and rebar to do the concrete pour early the next week. “Put your hard hat on and help out,” their teacher Moore reminded a group of students holding back as the rain hardened. “No … statues here.”

    Students in the Construction Craft Laborers program at Essex North Shore Agricultural & Technical High School lay mesh while working on a greenhouse washing station at Essex Tech in Danvers, Mass. Credit: Sophie Park for The Hechinger Report

    Students say the partnership with Local 22 provides them increased career security and the confidence that they are learning relevant, up-to-date skills: Moore until recently worked part time in the field, including on Boston’s project to restore the tunnel to the city’s Logan Airport. 

    Paniagua, the 16-year-old student in the program, said he can command a higher pay rate than most of his peers at a part-time carpentry and landscaping job because of the expertise he has gained in the Essex Tech program. He’s used the extra money to buy two new trucks. The union partnership has also allowed him to make more thoughtful, informed choices about career steps, he added. Leaning on his teachers as mentors, Paniagua said he decided to continue studying at a specialized welding school in Wyoming after graduation to maximize his future earning potential. “We know what we want to do here and get on it,” Paniagua said, noting that it’s a stark contrast to some of his friends who are conflicted about the value of a four-year college degree. “We’re not lost,” he said, “or wasting money.”

    Former President Joe Biden was exceptionally supportive of the labor movement, and specifically of partnerships between unions and schools. Some labor experts expect some of that support might continue in the new Trump administration. “We’re seeing indications of a Trump administration that might not be as hostile to unions as you might think,” said Shalin Jyotishi, founder and managing director of the Future of Work and Innovation Economy Initiative at New America. He cited Trump nominee Lori Chavez-DeRemer, opposed by many in the business community, for Labor secretary, and the president’s support of the longshoremen’s union over their anti-automation stance.

    In any event, “these bottoms-up innovations are already happening locally,” Jyotishi said. “Federal decisions can help or hurt … odds of success, but the proof-of-concept is already out of the bag.”

    Related: For some students, certificate programs offer a speedy path to a job

    A bigger question mark may be whether there is the will to expand capacity significantly on the ground. Some of the existing programs have not yet reached students in the most underserved communities who could potentially benefit most from a fast track into a union apprenticeship.

    In Massachusetts, for instance, many of the high schools the laborers work with have become increasingly selective in admissions. Students from low-income homes were 30 percent less likely to be accepted at the state’s vocational schools in 2023 and 2024 than those from wealthier households, according to an analysis by the Boston Globe. Similar disparities existed for students receiving special education services and English learners.

    The laborers have yet to expand their partnership model to Boston’s Madison Park Technical Vocational High School, where nearly all of the students are Black or Hispanic, about 85 percent come from low-income households, and 92 percent are identified as “high needs” — an umbrella term in Massachusetts that includes students with disabilities, English learners and low-income students, among other groups.

    Madison Park, part of the city’s public school district, has some partnerships and many strong programs and instructors, said Bobby Jenkins, an alum and long-time advocate of the school. But the chronic turnover of both superintendents and school leaders in recent years has hindered progress in undertaking some more ambitious partnerships. 

    Isabella Gonzalez, 17, a junior in the Construction Craft Laborers program at Essex North Shore Agricultural & Technical High School, compacts gravel at the Larkin Cottage, a project site at Essex Tech in Danvers, Mass. Credit: Sophie Park for The Hechinger Report

    Mandarini agreed that political and bureaucratic obstacles have made it more challenging to partner with Madison Park. But the union has made it a priority and is in promising talks with city officials about partnering with the school when a proposed new facility might be completed.

    “When I was part of the building trades, I used to say, ‘I don’t understand why you aren’t taking more kids, especially in the city of Boston,’” Mandarini said. “Every single trade should be in (Madison Park).’”

    For now, that attitude has not spread to all union leaders. It will take a cultural shift from trade union groups to expand their school partnerships beyond scattered, boutique programs. Among other things, they will need to prioritize flexibility and the learning and growth of young people more than they are accustomed to, said White, of New America.

    She noted that many union leaders seem aware that they have a pipeline and recruitment issue but remain unsure what to do about it. More school-based partnerships could help not only with that challenge but also with reenergizing and selling unions to future generations of workers — and voters, White added. “All of the polling suggests that young people are pretty pro-union,” she said. “There’s a missed opportunity on the part of unions if they don’t capitalize on that.”

    Contact editor Nirvi Shah at 212-678-3445 or shah@hechingerreport.org.  

    Reporting on this story was supported by the Higher Ed Media Fellowship, where Carr was a fellow in 2024. This year, Carr has a fellowship from New America to report on early childhood issues.

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

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

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  • Can knowledge exchange fix a broken economy?

    Can knowledge exchange fix a broken economy?

    There’s always a challenge in trying to describe knowledge exchange, how it’s funded, why it’s worth worrying about, and what it actually does to the economy.

    Mechanisms

    The default is to talk about its underpinning mechanisms. The way that money goes to universities, their partners and then circulates into the real economy, and then hopefully something good happens. The problem with this approach is that outside of experts and hardy enthusiasts like me this approach is, well, rather dull.

    And knowledge exchange is a less than glamorous name for some of the most important work universities do. ESRC, one of UKRI’s funding councils, has a rather elegant way of describing it:

    The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is committed to encouraging collaboration between researchers and businesses, policymakers, the public and third sector organisations (for example charities and voluntary groups). This can create mutual benefits and contribute to positive economic and social impacts outside academia, for example through changes to policy and practice or new products and services created by commercialising research. Two-way interactions of this type are often collectively referred to as knowledge exchange. This is an umbrella term that covers a wide range of activities researchers might engage in, including policy engagement, public engagement, commercialisation and business engagement.

    A less elegant way is to say that universities working together with other organisations can make the economy and society stronger. It is not a dry technocratic thing but the very way in which the wonderful things that are produced in universities become useful. Great ideas without an audience are interesting but fruitless. An expectant audience with no great ideas are bound for disappointment.

    This means that there must be both the conditions for useful ideas to be produced and the conditions for organisations to make use of them. Research England, another funding body of UKRI, funds knowledge exchange through the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) and the Connecting Capability Fund (CCF). While HEIF is a more general knowledge exchange fund the CCF is focussed on the commercialisation of research with business. These funds are small compared to the overall research funding pots. HEIF is a formula based fund of £260m compared to an overall UKRI budget of over £8bn.

    The key question isn’t whether knowledge exchange is a good thing. It self evidently is. But whether the intervention by funders is producing bigger impacts than would naturally happen through universities working with businesses, policy makers, and other groups. After all, universities would still benefit from equity in spin-outs and bask in the warm glow of civic participation even if they weren’t supported to do so.

    Reports

    UKRI has brought out three new reports that look at knowledge exchange funding.

    The first report is an evaluation of HEIF carried out by Tomas Coates Ulrichsen. The part which UKRI will be most proud of, and should definitely cause them to consider whether their funding is enough, is that every £1 invested in HEIF produces £14.8 return on investment if you crowd in actual and estimated external impacts. Perhaps even more impressively the report also suggests that “38% of knowledge exchange outputs and incomes would not have happened in the absence of HEIF.” This isn’t activity that is being paid for twice but activity that is actually being created.

    However, while this makes the case persuasively for the value of HEIF it’s the summary which gives us a bigger clue into what is going on in the economy. The report notes

    The past two decades has seen KE income secured by English HEPs grow significantly in real terms, with KE income 81% higher in 2022/23 than in 2003/04 for HEPs in receipt of HEIF during the period 2017/18 – 2022/23 (the vast majority of HEPs in England). However, what is clear is that this twenty-year period is characterised by two very different decades. While KE income grew strongly – and faster than the economy as a whole – during the first decade, the past ten years has seen this growth largely stagnate. The limited growth in KE income may well reflect the multiple crises and shocks the UK has faced since then, not least with the Covid-19 pandemic, cost of living crisis, and departure from the European Union and the effects of this on R&D with research grants and contracts income to HEPs from European sources declining almost 30% in real terms since the EU referendum in 2016. KE income now appears to track trends in the economy more widely (as measured by the UK’s GDP).

    To read the inverse of this is that the wider economy is a constraining factor on the ability of universities to deploy their research for social and economic benefit.

    There is perhaps a tacit assumption that if universities produce great and useful research it will lead to great and useful things in the economy and society. This is only true as long as the economy has the absorptive capacity to keep the cycle of knowledge exchange investment which leads to knowledge exchange outputs which supports knowledge exchange income churning.

    Help/HEIF

    The evaluation of HEIF carried out by PA Consulting is particularly illuminating within this frame. The key findings are that in a changing policy environment HEIF has anchored the sector to make some significant social and economic impacts. It is the flexibility of the fund which has allowed specialisms to develop, the autonomy of the fund has found favourability in the sector, its stability has allowed for long-term partnerships, and a more permissive approach to accountability has allowed providers to demonstrate their value without drowning under administration.

    The report is full of examples of how HEIF funding has catalysed wider social and economic activity but the examples have two things in common. The first is that allowing flexibility in the fund means it can be deployed in multiple partners in multiple ways. This means that even where there are wider economic challenges the funding can be tailored to suit the challenges of local economies. The second is that the long-term nature of the fund allows for greater stability within partnerships to withstand adverse economic headwinds.

    Together, the two reports point toward HEIF as being successful as it demonstrably supports economic growth but does so through flexibility and provider autonomy linked, to a lesser or greater extent, to national priorities. It’s only a small fund but it is impactful.

    Same old SMEs

    The final report on CCF by Wellspring again demonstrates a positive return on investment. The programme has led to 200 new spin-outs and supported over 1,500 SMEs. The programme has led to the launch of at least 338 products and services and it is expected more will be launched over time, particularly in high-tech spin-outs.

    The obvious albeit incorrect conclusion to draw would be that if each of these interventions induce such strong economic benefits then making the intervention larger would make the economy stronger. In fact, if the economic returns are so strong then the projects could presumably be 10, 100, or 1,000 times bigger, and continue to provide economic return.

    Instead, what these reports highlight is that knowledge exchange funding is a product of the wider economy. There is a natural limit to how much activity can take place as there comes a point where the economy is not large enough or dynamic enough to absorb the benefits of universities’ work. In fact, these reports indirectly demonstrate how economies get stuck into a death spiral. Productivity stalls which prevents the absorption of innovative products and services. Without innovative products and services the economy cannot become more productive. And so on.

    The benefits these schemes are realising would suggest they are not close to meeting the capacity of the economy and could therefore be much larger. It is also a matter of purpose. The funds are designed on a premise that there is capacity to make use of university work. It is a much harder question to imagine how funding should be designed where it is necessary to restart a broken economy.

    The impact of these funds is striking, the reports written about them are convincing, however they open a door to a wider question of whether knowledge exchange funding is big enough, well directed enough, or tooled properly, to fix the UK’s entrenched economic issues including its collapsed productivity.

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  • Supporting the careers of researchers means innovation, not isolation

    Supporting the careers of researchers means innovation, not isolation

    The phrase attributed to Sir Isaac Newton, “if I have seen further, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants,” is often used as a metaphor for research and innovation: how each great thinker builds on the thoughts and research of others, the unending column of prize winners and esteemed fellows pursuing academic endeavour.

    However, the environment I sought as a researcher and aim to enable as a university leader is more of a supportive collective, certainly one with a much less precarious base.

    Perhaps the most important lessons learnt during my own research career was that the giants of research, innovation and knowledge exchange whose shoulders we are more often standing on are not the senior staff but rather the PhD students, early career researchers, postdoctoral fellows and technicians, who turn challenging questions posed into the most exciting innovative answers. And often without the bias of doing things the way we have in the past.

    Untangling

    Achieving the UK’s priority of innovation and the growth it drives requires a long-range vision to set direction matched with agility to rapidly pivot as new opportunities arise. This agility needs a skilled research workforce and the attraction of the brightest minds into roles at all stages of a research and innovation career.

    However, these giants, whose shoulders we balance UK innovation on, need long-term confidence to initiate a career which currently has precarity baked in. Growing investment to support research and innovation is needed, but investment in equipment, facilities and consumables will not succeed without engaged and enabling expertise.

    Alongside this, regional disparity of funding, low research cost recovery, and increasing regulatory demands are posing the question of how much research can any university afford to undertake. The simple answer may appear to be to do less, or divert funding to specialist institutes without dual responsibility for teaching – however, this would undermine the agility that is underpinned by broad expertise, civic and industrial partnerships and infrastructure which resides across our higher education institutions.

    Fixing this knotty problem needs a systematic approach, balancing external and internal funding alongside improved recovery of the true cost of research. With restrictions in the sector and reduced internal funding impacting decisions, it is imperative to not forget the essential role of the precarious base on which our research activity in the UK is built – and to support it accordingly.

    Concordat priorities

    My commitment to career development and recognition of researchers is why I am excited to be continuing the great work led by Julia Buckingham as the incoming chair of the Researcher Development Concordat Strategy Group, which oversees the Researcher Development Concordat.

    The concordat was first published in 2019, building on agreements of funding bodies and universities over a decade earlier. The current signatories are over 100 higher education and research institutes, who commit to the principles of environment and culture, employment, and career development for researchers in our institutions and 17 funding agencies who set grant holder requirements relating to the concordat commitments.

    The concordat has recently undergone a review which identified future areas of focus to achieve continued effectiveness. Three priorities were identified:

    First, agreeing a set of shared principles to define the characteristics of a positive environment for research culture, and second, working to a shared set of research culture values with measurable indicators of progress. We seek to align a set of shared broad principles to define the characteristics of a positive environment for research culture. While these must link to the REF people, culture and environment measures, they need to be high-level shared principles and ensure that they define measurable indicators of progress to avoid confusion across multiple agendas. These also need to be high enough level to ensure a collective agreement to deliver whilst also accommodating the diversity and breadth of higher education institutions and research organisations.

    The third priority is simplifying the bureaucracy. This is essential in a sector with ever-growing demands of attention and associated costs to deliver. While we must maintain accountability, we need to simplify the bureaucracy to work in service of our principles and values, not dictate them. In short, we must simplify for our communities how the different national concordats can complement rather than compete for attention. To achieve this, we are reviewing and reforming reporting requirements to achieve better alignment and to incorporate them into existing reporting where possible. We are working with other bodies to align data and reporting requirements.

    I am also keen to work with industry body representatives to understand and reduce barriers to the movement of careers from academia to industry and vice versa. This porosity of career is needed for both innovation and rapid business adoption of innovative ideas. For this porosity to support innovation and growth we also need to enhance engagement from the industry to support researchers throughout a changing career.

    While this work is delivered by the concordat strategy group, the concordat is collectively owned by the sector and continued engagement is needed to ensure the concordat is fit for purpose. Given this, we are looking for engagement in future work, more details about which can be found on the concordat webpage. I look forward to working with higher education institutions, industry, funders, the Researcher Development Concordat Strategy Group, and individuals to deliver our collective commitments.

    The Researcher Development Concordat Strategy Group secretariat is jointly funded through funding bodies from the four nations: Research England, the Scottish Funding Council, Medr (previously HEFCW), and the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland. I thank them for their continued support.

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  • DOGE temporarily blocked from accessing Education Department student aid data

    DOGE temporarily blocked from accessing Education Department student aid data

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    UPDATE: Feb. 12, 2025: The U.S. Department of Education on Tuesday agreed to temporarily block staffers of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, from accessing student aid information and other data systems until at least Feb. 17. 

    On that date, a federal judge overseeing the case is expected to rule on a student group’s request for a temporary restraining order to block the agency from sharing sensitive data with DOGE. 

    Dive Brief: 

    •  A group representing University of California students filed a lawsuit Friday to block the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency from accessing federal financial aid data.  
    • The University of California Student Association cited reports that DOGE members gained access to federal student loan data, which includes information such as Social Security numbers, birth dates, account information and driver’s license numbers. 
    • The complaint accuses the U.S. Department of Education of violating federal privacy laws and regulations by granting DOGE staffers access to the data. “The scale of intrusion into individuals’ privacy is enormous and unprecedented,” the lawsuit says. 

    Dive Insight: 

    President Donald Trump created DOGE through executive order on the first day of his second term, tasking the team, led by Tesla co-founder and Trump adviser Musk, with rooting out what the new administration deems as government waste. 

    DOGE has since accessed the data of several government agencies, sparking concerns that its staffers are violating privacy laws and overstepping the executive branch’s power. With the new lawsuit, the University of California Student Association joins the growing chorus of groups that say DOGE is flouting federal statutes. 

    One of those groups — 19 state attorneys general — scored a victory over the weekend. On Saturday, a federal judge temporarily blocked DOGE from accessing the Treasury Department’s payments and data system, which disburses Social Security benefits, tax returns and federal employee salaries. 

    The University of California Student Association has likewise asked the judge to temporarily block the Education Department from sharing sensitive data with DOGE staffers and to retrieve any information that has already been transferred to them. 

    The group argues that the Education Department is violating the Privacy Act of 1974, which says that government agencies may not disclose an individual’s data “to any person, or to another agency,” without their consent, except in limited circumstances. The Internal Revenue Code has similar protections for personal information. 

    “None of the targeted exceptions in these laws allows individuals associated with DOGE, or anyone else, to obtain or access students’ personal information, except for specific purposes — purposes not implicated here,” the lawsuit says. 

    The Washington Post reported on Feb. 3 that some DOGE team members had in fact gained access to “multiple sensitive internal systems,” including federal financial aid data, as part of larger plans to carry out Trump’s goal to eventually eliminate the Education Department. 

    “ED did not publicly announce this new policy — what is known is based on media reporting — or attempt to justify it,” Friday’s lawsuit says. “Rather, ED secretly decided to allow individuals with no role in the federal student aid program to root around millions of students’ sensitive records.”

    In response to the Post’s Feb. 3 reporting, Musk on the same day posted on X that Trump “will succeed” in dismantling the agency. 

    Later that week, the Post reported that DOGE staffers were feeding sensitive Education Departmentdata into artificial intelligence software to analyze the agency’s spending. 

    The moves have also attracted lawmakers’ attention. Virginia Rep. Bobby Scott, the top-ranking Democrat on the House’s education committee, asked the Government Accountability Office on Friday to probe the security of information technology systems at the Education Department’s and several other agencies. 

    An Education Department spokesperson said Monday that the agency does not comment on pending litigation. 

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  • Walden University President Michael Betz Cashing In

    Walden University President Michael Betz Cashing In

    Walden University President Michael Betz has sold $380,000 worth of Adtalem shares. Walden is one of America’s largest robocolleges, proving online education to tens of thousands of folks in psychology, social work, nursing, education, business, and criminal justice each year.  

    Adtalem, formerly known as DeVry Education, is Walden’s parent company.  Adtalem also owns the Chamberlain College of Nursing and medical schools in the Carribean.  Walden and Adtalem have been profitable despite mediocre results for worker/consumers, a disproportionate number are women and people of color.  

    In 2024, Walden settled a case for $28M that claimed the school systematically deceived black and female students.   

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  • ‘Self-inflicted wound’: Widespread alarm as Trump administration slashes NIH funding

    ‘Self-inflicted wound’: Widespread alarm as Trump administration slashes NIH funding

    UPDATE: Feb. 11, 2025: A federal judge late Monday barred the National Institutes of Health from enforcing massive cuts to grant funding for researchers’ indirect costs, a move widely decried by universities and other research institutions. 

    U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley issued restraining orders in two separate cases filed earlier Monday against NIH, including one by 22 state attorneys general and another by the Association of American Medical Colleges and other groups. A third lawsuit — brought by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, the American Council on Education and the Association of American Universities — was also filed late Monday. 

    Regarding the AAMC case, Kelley wrote that plaintiffs would “sustain immediate and irreparable injury” without a restraining order against the NIH funding cap. Along with restraining orders, Kelley required NIH to provide biweekly status reports confirming regular disbursements.

    Dive Brief:

    • A coalition of 22 attorneys general filed a lawsuit in federal court on Monday seeking to block the National Institutes of Health’s newly announced research funding cuts.
    • NIH announced Friday it would cut roughly $4 billion a year worth of funding for indirect research costs such as administration and facilities — by capping reimbursement for these expenses at 15% for current and new grants. 
    • Research institutions have previously negotiated individual indirect cost rates, with an average of 27% to 28%, NIH said. Organizations, universities and researchers quickly raised alarms about the cuts, warning they could hurt important medical research and the economy.

    Dive Insight:

    NIH framed its unilateral decision to cut indirect costs as bringing them in line with practices at nonprofits such as the Gates Foundation, which caps indirect costs at 10% for higher education institutions, and the Rockefeller Foundation, which sets a 15% ceiling for colleges and universities.

    In a Friday memo outlining the new policy, the agency said the new cap would “allow grant recipients a reasonable and realistic recovery of indirect costs while helping NIH ensure that grant funds are, to the maximum extent possible, spent on furthering its mission.”

    The same day, the agency flagged on the social media platform X the “old” indirect cost rates negotiated by Harvard University, Yale University and Johns Hopkins University — which are all between 63.7% and 69% — as well as those institutions’ endowments ranging from $13 billion to $53 billion. 

    NIH noted that of the $35 billion it spent on grants in fiscal 2023 to universities, medical schools and other research institutions, about $26 billion went to direct research and $9 billion went to overhead in the form of indirect costs. 

    Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, described NIH’s move as an illegal violation of an appropriations bill that prohibits modifications to NIH’s indirect cost funding. Murray also said that the move will shift costs onto states rather than reducing them.

    In their lawsuit, the attorneys general argued, “Without relief from NIH’s action, these institutions’ cutting-edge work to cure and treat human disease will grind to a halt.” 

    They pointed to the legislation flagged by Murray that protected indirect reimbursements: During President Donald Trump’s first term, his administration in 2017 included a 10% cap in its budget proposal, but Congress responded the next year with an appropriations provision prohibiting NIH from modifying reimbursement rates, the lawsuit said.

    Filed in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, the 59-page lawsuit — brought overwhelmingly by Democrat-led states — seeks both preliminary and permanent injunctions blocking NIH from enforcing the rate cap. 

    Many in the higher education sector reacted with dismay over NIH’s move.

    The decision “sabotages the decades-long partnership that has ensured U.S. global leadership in life-saving medical research,” American Council on Education President Ted Mitchell said in a statement on Friday. 

    “This decision is short-sighted, naive, and dangerous,” Mitchell added. “It is a self-inflicted wound that, if not reversed, will have dire consequences on U.S. jobs, global competitiveness, and the future growth of a skilled workforce.”

    Mark Becker, president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, described NIH’s policy change as a “direct and massive cut to lifesaving medical research.” 

    “NIH slashing the reimbursement of research costs will slow and limit medical breakthroughs that cure cancer and address chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease,” Becker said in a statement. APLU noted that funded indirect costs include patient safety, research security and hazardous waste disposal. 

    Jeremy Day, director of the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Comprehensive Neuroscience Center, said on social media that NIH’s cut would “cripple research infrastructure at hundreds of US institutions, and threatens to end our global superiority in scientific research.” 

    Meanwhile, institutions are grappling with what it means for their research programs going forward. The University of Michigan, for instance, said in a statement that NIH’s indirect cost funding supports development and maintenance of its laboratories as well as information technology and administrative support for regulatory compliance. 

    “This change would result in a significant decrease in the amount that U-M receives from the federal government to conduct vital research,” the university said. 

    Others echoed the warning. In a statement, the University of Wisconsin-Madison said NIH’s directive would “significantly disrupt vital research activity and delay lifesaving discoveries and cures.”

    “Indirect costs contribute to everything from utilities charges to building out the laboratories where science is done, to infrastructure for clinical trials of new medicines and treatments,” the university said.

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  • Trump Previews Elon Musk’s Next DOGE Targets (Forbes Breaking News)

    Trump Previews Elon Musk’s Next DOGE Targets (Forbes Breaking News)

    The Higher Education Inquirer continues to document the DOGE takeover of the US Department of Education. 

    While some Democratic officials in Congress have protested this action by DOGE, there has been little resistance otherwise. 

    DOGE consists of Elon Musk and several young men who have been tasked to reduce the federal budget by at least $1 Trillion. The US Senate has oversight of the Department of Education through the HELP (Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) Committee, but Republicans, who are led by President Trump, control the Senate, and appear to be supporting these aggressive measures. 

    While Mr. Musk has claimed that the Department of Education no longer exists, its website is still operating. 

    DOGE also promotes the buying and selling of cryptocurrency.  

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  • Retrenchment Watch Newsletter | HESA

    Retrenchment Watch Newsletter | HESA

    This is the first edition of Retrenchment Watch, a new initiative tracking how Canadian post-secondary institutions are reacting to current financial challenges. The Retrenchment Watch monitors the most recent developments, highlighting key trends and institutional responses across the country. Future editions will provide ongoing updates, analysis, and institutional case studies to help sector leaders navigate this challenging period. Updates to the website will be made weekly with summary emails flowing in a biweekly schedule.

    The Impact of Declining International Enrollments

    International students have played a critical role in the financial stability of Canadian post-secondary institutions. Over the past decade, many universities and colleges have relied heavily on international tuition revenue, amidst rising costs, frozen domestic tuition, and stagnant funding from provincial governments. 

    The federal immigration policy changes of 2024—including caps on the number of applications for international study permits that will be processed by IRCC—have caused a steep drop in new international student enrollments across the country.

    Comparison of Study Permit Applications Processed by IRCC, by Month (2023 vs. 2024)

    Source: IRCC Data, “Source Countries – Applications Processed by IRCC for New Study Permit Applications (in Persons) by Month, from January 2022 to December 2024”

    However, the impact of the government’s announcements has reduced the numbers of international students who are actually being enrolled much further than the caps themselves would imply. ApplyBoard is projecting that only 280,000 study permits were approved in 2024, as opposed to 515,880 in 2023, a 45% drop in international student numbers.

    This matches what we are hearing about dramatic falls in international student numbers across the country. However, the drops are much greater at certain institutions. For example, Okanagan College has seen a 50% decline in new international student enrollment, with expectations of a further 70% in the winter term. Thompson Rivers University reported a 50% drop in new undergraduate international enrollments and a 75% drop in post-baccalaureate diploma students. These declines are forcing institutions to make difficult financial decisions to remain operational.

    Budget Deficits

    The enrollment shortfall has translated into substantial budget deficits at many institutions. Universities and colleges across Canada are now facing difficult financial realities, with some implementing drastic cost-cutting measures.

    • York University has the largest projected deficit, at $142 million, and is implementing cost-cutting measures to reduce spending by $130 million over three years.
    • Sheridan College is projecting a $112 million loss in revenue due to falling international student numbers. 
    • University of Waterloo estimates a $75 million deficit.
    • Algonquin College is projecting a $32 million deficit for 2024-25, which is expected to rise to nearly $100 million by 2026-27.
    • Carleton University is projecting a $38 million deficit for 2024-25, expected to reach $70 million by 2025-26.
    • Memorial University reported a $9.5 million revenue loss.

    While these numbers may seem alarming, they don’t tell the full story. Public details on institutional budgets and cuts remain limited and inconsistent. Some institutions report projected deficits, others focus on lost revenue, and many omit details on where cuts will actually fall. Job loss estimates vary widely, and program cuts are often announced without specifying which programs are affected.

    In the coming weeks, we’ll be diving deeper into institutional budgets to provide a clearer picture of what these figures really mean and how they will shape the sector in the years ahead.

    Program Suspensions and Faculty/Staff Layoffs

    To manage financial constraints, many institutions are suspending programs and reducing staff. The impact is particularly severe for smaller colleges and those heavily reliant on international students.

    • Sheridan College is suspending 40 programs and reviewing 27 others, with an estimated 700 layoffs.
    • Fleming College has suspended 29 programs, possibly increasing to 42, due to a $38 million revenue shortfall.
    • Centennial College is suspending 49 programs after experiencing a 43% drop in international student enrollment.
    • St. Lawrence College is cutting 55 programs—approximately 40% of its offerings.
    • Seneca Polytechnic has temporarily closed its Markham campus, which primarily served international students.
    • Fanshawe College is cutting 18 programs this semester.
    • Public-private partnership campuses, set up primarily by Ontario colleges in the Greater Toronto Area, are being wound down.

    Hiring freezes have become common, with institutions like McGill University, Dalhousie University, the University of Waterloo and the University of Alberta pausing recruitment efforts to manage budget shortfalls. A number of institutions, such as Conestoga College and Carleton University, have introduced programs to incentivize voluntary retirement, in the hope that they can reduce salary expenditures without widespread compulsory layoffs.

    However, layoffs are occurring across the sector. Mohawk College has cut 65 full-time administrative staff, amounting to 20% of its administrative workforce. Simon Fraser University has eliminated 85 staff and faculty positions. University of Windsor has already issued layoff notices to 15 employees and is warning of further cuts.

    We know that large, but so far uncounted, numbers of contract instructors are not being rehired as their contracts expire. For example, Okanagan College has canceled 11 part-time term faculty contracts, with up to 80 more positions at risk. Western University is introducing enrollment thresholds to determine whether a course will be offered, with minimum class sizes ranging from 50 for first-year courses to 15 for fourth-year courses. These thresholds imply that contract instructors teaching courses which do not meet the cap are unlikely to have their contracts renewed.

    We will be updating a list of institutional responses on the Retrenchment Watch as they are announced.

    The Recovery Project 

    In response to the widespread retrenchment across Canadian higher education, HESA has launched the Recovery Project. 

    The financial challenges facing Canadian higher education are unprecedented, but they are not insurmountable. Most institutions have survived similar experiences in the past. The HESA Recovery Project helps Canadian colleges, polytechnics, and universities navigate financial challenges by providing insights and facilitating peer learning and collaborative action. Through monthly reports and virtual meetings, leaders gain evidence-based strategies on budget decisions, maintaining morale, and academic redesign. Drawing from interviews with veterans of past periods of retrenchment and case studies of institutions that have successfully come through major cuts, the project delivers actionable guidance. Reports and discussions begin this month, with future topics shaped by member needs to ensure timely, relevant support for institutions adapting to financial pressures. For more information, contact Tiffany MacLennan at tmaclennan@higheredstrategy.com.

    Looking Ahead

    The Retrenchment Watch will continue to monitor and analyze developments across the sector, providing timely updates and insights. The next editions will cover new announcements, policy shifts, and institutional adaptations that arise in response to ongoing financial pressures. 

    For more details, you can visit the Retrenchment Watch webpage. Have something you want to share with us about cuts at your institution? Reach out to us. 

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