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  • DfE steps in to require franchise partners to register with OfS

    DfE steps in to require franchise partners to register with OfS

    The Department for Education is consulting on a requirement for providers delivering courses under a franchise model to register with the Office for Students in order that they and their students can access student finance. We also get an impact assessment and an equalities assessment.

    The consultation defines “franchise” as follows:

    A ‘franchised student’ is one who is registered with a lead provider, but where more than 50% of their provision is taught by a delivery partner

    The proposals suggest that should a provider delivering teaching as part of a franchise arrangement (a delivery partner) have over 300 (headcount) higher education students in a given year it would need to be fully registered with the Office for Students under the existing Approved or Approved (Fee Cap) rules. A failure to register would mean that the institution could not access fee loans, and that students could not access maintenance loans.

    There would be some exceptions: providers already regulated elsewhere (schools, FE colleges, NHS trusts, local authorities, and Police and Crime Commissioners) would be exempt. Providers (not courses) would be designated (by DfE) as being eligible to access student finance, meaning that providers running courses regulated by a Professional Statutory Regulatory Body (PSRB) would not be exempt.

    The consultation (which closes 4 April 2025) will inform regulation from April 2026 onwards, with the first decisions about designation made in September 2027 (based on 2026-27 student data) for the 2028-29 academic year. Once up and running this pattern will continue: providers will be designated (based on student numbers from the previous academic year) for the academic year starting the year after. This gives newly designated providers a year to register with OfS.

    Student numbers would not be allowed to breach the 300 threshold without registration – the expectation is that providers should register the year before this happens. Should the threshold be breached, the provider will lose a year of eligibility for student finance for new students: the upshot being that if an unregistered provider had 300 or more students in 2026-27 and then registered with OfS, it would lose a year of designation (so would not be able to access student finance in 2029-30).

    In November of each year, DfE intends to publish a list of designated providers for the following academic year – providing a point of reference for applicants looking to access finance. Interestingly, despite the requirement being to register with OfS it is intended that DfE runs the process: making decisions about eligibility, managing appeals, and communicating decisions.

    The background

    We’ve been covering some of the issues presented by a subset of franchise providers on Wonkhe for quite a while, and it is now generally accepted that higher education in the UK has a problem with the quality and ethics at the bottom end of such provision. Students either enrol purely to access student finance, or are duped (often by higher education agents rather than providers themselves) into accessing fee and maintenance loans for substandard provision. Continuation and completion rates are very low compared to traditional providers, and the qualification awarded at the end (despite bearing the name of a well-known university) may not open the career doors that students may hope.

    We knew that an announcement on this issue was supposed to be coming in January via the government’s response to the former Public Accounts Committee’s report on franchising, which was sparked by a National Audit Office (NAO) report on the issue from a year ago – so the announcement today has just squeaked in under the Treasury’s wire.

    There is a slightly longer backstory to all of this – and we’re not referring to the various bits of coverage on potential abuses in the system that we’ve run in recent years. It was back in 2023 when the Department for Education’s heavily belated response to the Augar review reached a conclusion – promising to “drive up” the of franchised provision, in part by promising to:

    …closely consider whether we should take action to impose additional controls, in particular regarding the delivery of franchised provision by organisations that are not directly regulated by any regulatory body.

    Given the NAO and the PAC’s interventions since, and the work of the OfS in addressing franchise (and other academic partnership failings) via the coming round of quality (B3) investigations, special investigations, and enhanced data gathering, it is perhaps a little surprising that it is DfE that is in the lead here.

    There’s an important lesson in that to be drawn at some stage – the repeated pattern seems to be that an issue is raised, the sector is asked to self-regulate, it seemingly can’t, the regulator is asked to step in instead, and then it is discovered that what we actually need is secondary legislation.

    How big a deal is franchising

    Despite a number of years trying, OfS has never managed to compile full data on the extent of franchised, validated, and other partnership provision – the details are not in any current public dataset. It’s important here to distinguish between:

    • Franchised provision: where a student is registered at one institution, but teaching is delivered at another
    • Validated provision: where a student is both registered and taught at one institution, but receives an award validated by another institution on successful completion of their course
    • Other academic partnerships: which include arrangements where students are taught by more than one institution, or where existing providers partner to allow students to apply to a “new” provider (like a medical or veterinary science school)

    Of the three, it is just franchised provision that is in the scope of this new DfE requirement. It’s also (helpful) the most easily visible of the three if you are a fan of mucking about with Unistats data (though note that not all courses are in the unistats release, and the other vagaries of our least-known public data release continue to apply).

    DfE has done a bang-up job in pulling together some statistics on the scale of franchise provision within the impact assessment. We learn that (as of 2022–23 – usual student numbers caveats for that year of data apply):

    • There were currently 96 lead providers, franchising to 341 partners, of which 237 were unregistered.
    • 135,850 students were studying via a franchise arrangement – some 80,045 were studying at unregistered providers (a proportional fall, but a numerical rise, over previous years)
    • These students tended to study business and management courses – and were more likely to be mature students, from deprived areas, and to have non-traditional (or no) entry qualifications.
    • An astonishing 92 per cent of classroom based foundation years delivered as an intercalated part of a first degree were delivered via franchise arrangements.
    • There were 39 franchise providers teaching 300 students or more – of which four would be subject to the DfE’s proposed exemptions because of their legal status. These providers accounted for 66,540 students in 2022–23.

    A note on OfS registration

    Office for Students registration is confusing at the best of times. Though the registration route is currently paused until August 2025, providers have the choice of registering under one of two categories:

    • Approved (fee cap) providers are eligible to access fee loan finance up to the higher limit if they have an approved access and participation plan, receive direct funding from OfS, and access Research England funding.
    • Approved providers can access fee loan finance up to the “basic” fee limit. They are not eligible for OfS or Research England funding – but can directly charge students fees that exceed the “basic” fee limit.

    In the very early stages of developing the OfS regulatory framework it was briefly suggested that OfS would also offer a “Basic” level of registration, which would confer no benefits and would merely indicate that a provider was known to the OfS. This was speedily abandoned, with the rationale being that it would suggest OfS was vouching in some way for provision it did not regulate.

    The long and painful gestation of the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) also yielded suggestions of a third category of registration, which would apply to providers that currently offer provision backed by the Advanced Learner Loans (ALLs) that would be replaced by the LLE. We were expecting the Office for Students to consult on this new category, but nothing has yet appeared – and it does feel unlikely that anyone (other than possibly Jo Johnson) would be keen on a riskier registration category for less known providers that offers less regulatory oversight.

    Statutory nuts and bolts

    The proposal is to lay secondary legislation to amend the Education (Student Support) Regulations 2011 – specifically the bit that is used to designate types of courses for student finance eligibility. There is currently a specific section in this SI – section 5 part 1 subsection d, to be precise – that permits registered providers to franchise the delivery of courses to partners.

    The plan appears to be to amend this section to include the stipulation that were more than 300 higher education students (in total, excluding apprenticeships) are taught at a given franchise provider (I assume in total, across all franchise arrangements) then it must be registered with the Office for Students in order to be designated for student finance (allowing students to receive maintenance loans or providers to receive fee loan income).

    This might seem like a small technical change but the implications are surprisingly far reaching – for the first time, the OfS (as regulator and owner of the register) has the ability to decide who can and cannot deliver UK higher education. If anyone – even a well established university – is removed from the OfS register it will be unable to access fee loans (and students will be unable to access maintenance loans) for intakes above 300 students, even if it enters into a partnership with another provider.

    Let’s say, for example, that a large university becomes financially unsustainable and thus breaches the conditions of registration D1 or D2. Under such circumstances it could no longer be registered with OfS and thus would no longer be able to award degrees. The hope would be that student interests would be protected with the support of another university, and one way that this could happen is that someone else validates the awards offered to students so they can be taught out (assuming temporary financial support is forthcoming from government or elsewhere). Under the new rules, this arrangement would only work for 300 students.

    What might go wrong

    OfS has classically regulated based on the registered student population – the implication being that providers involved in franchise provision would be responsible for the quality and standards of teaching their students experience wherever they were taught. There have been indications via the B3 and TEF dashboards that students studying at franchise partners tend to have a worse experience overall.

    This does pose the question as to whether franchise partners who registered with OfS would now be responsible for these students directly, or whether there will be some sense of joint responsibility.

    There’s also the question of how providers will respond. Those franchised-to providers who either worry about their own outcomes (no longer judged within a larger university’s provision) wouldn’t cut it might stay that way – an outcomes based system that is always playing catch up on experience could see some poor provision linger around for many years. On the other hand, if they are now to be subject directly to conditions like those concerning transparency, finances and governance, they might as well switch to validation rather than franchising, which will change the relationship with the main provider.

    We might in aggregate see that as a positive – but that then raises the question as to whether OfS itself will be any better at spotting issues than universities have previously been. They could, of course, not fancy the scrutiny at all, and disappear with a rapidity that few student protection plans are designed to withstand.

    It’s also worth asking not just about OfS’ capacity or regulatory design, but its powers. Many of the issues we’ve identified (and that have been called out by the NAO and the PAC) concern how the courses are sold – OfS’ record on consumer rights is at best weak, and completely untested when the profit incentives are so high.

    And even if the sunlight of better outcomes data puts pressure on over outcomes, we do have to worry about how some of the providers in this space get there. In at least one of the providers that we have seen an OfS report for, a call centre team in another country that is supposed to offer support to students sounds more like a debt collection agency, chasing students up to submit, with academic staff paid partly on outcomes performance. Remember, providers that do this are already registered with OfS – so clearly the registration process itself is not enough to weed out such practices.

    The impact assessment is very clear that it expects some (an oddly precise four in the first year and two in subsequent years) unregistered franchise partners to drop out of HE provision altogether rather than applying for registration. The unspoken codicil to this is that everyone hopes that this will be the poor quality or otherwise suspect ones – but many excellent independent providers (including a number of Independent HE members) have struggled to get through a lengthy and often bureaucratic process, even before registration was temporarily closed because OfS decided it didn’t have capacity to run it this year.

    The line between supporting students and spoon feeding them is often debated in HE, but we might worry that a decent dose of it in a way that few would think appropriate could enable providers to evade regulation for some time – especially if validation (and therefore less risk to the validator) becomes the norm.

    And naturally, this is an approach that ignores two other things: whether a demand-led system at the edges should respond to the sort of demand that seems to come from those profiting from selling more than it does from students themselves, and whether it’s right. Even if you accept some for-profit activity, for anyone to be arranging for predominantly low-income and disadvantaged students to be getting into full tuition fees debt when sometimes more than half is kept in profits, and what is spent seems to include high “acquisition” costs and quite low delivery and support costs.

    In other words, one of the tests should be “does any of this change the incentives,” and it’s not at all clear that it does.

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  • POLL: Conservatives more optimistic, liberals more concerned about free speech in 2025

    POLL: Conservatives more optimistic, liberals more concerned about free speech in 2025

    • FIRE’s poll found confidence in the future of free speech is still low (41%), but jumped 10 points compared to a July poll.
    • Conservatives went from the most pessimistic subgroup to the most optimistic following Donald Trump’s election, while liberals’ optimism fell.

    PHILADELPHIA, Jan. 30, 2025 —A new poll finds that confidence in the future of free speech in America and belief in Donald Trump’s commitment to the First Amendment both saw an uptick, at least among conservatives. (Liberals are not so sure.)

    The newest edition of the National Speech Index — a quarterly barometer of free speech from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression — found that Americans are still mostly pessimistic about the state of free expression in America, with only 41% saying the country is headed in the right direction. 

    But those numbers represent an all-time high since FIRE began asking the question last year, and a 10-point jump from the 31% who said the country was headed in the right direction in July.

    The increase in confidence is driven in large part by a substantial surge in free speech optimism from self-described conservatives. The October edition of the National Speech Index found that less than a third (30%) of very conservative Americans and less than a fifth (18%) of conservative Americans said that people’s ability to freely express their views was headed in the right direction, while now roughly half of very conservative (49%) and conservative (52%) Americans now say it is headed in the right direction.

    “Unsurprisingly, the sudden shift suggests that for many Americans’ their feelings about the future of free speech depend in large part on whether they trust whomever occupies the White House,” said FIRE Research Fellow and Manager of Polling and Analytics Nathan Honeycutt. “Of course, we at FIRE have long recognized that no party has a monopoly on censorship.”

    Liberals, on the other hand, saw a drop in free speech optimism. In October, 46% of very liberal Americans and 49% of liberal Americans said people’s ability to freely express their views was headed in the right direction, compared to about a third now (34% and 32% respectively). That fall wasn’t large enough to outweigh the large jump from conservatives.

    When asked about Trump’s commitment to the First Amendment, opinions were mixed. While 39% said they had “quite a lot” or “full” confidence he would protect their First Amendment rights, 41% said they had “very little” or “no confidence at all.” But that’s still a seven-point increase from when FIRE asked the same question about then-candidate Trump in October, when 32% said they had “quite a lot” or “full confidence” in Trump’s protection of the First Amendment.

    For comparison, FIRE also asked about the Supreme Court and a high-profile elected official on the other side of the political aisle, California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Opinions on Newsom were split neatly into thirds: 34% said they had high confidence, 34% said they had some confidence, and 32% expressed low confidence. Meanwhile, only 23% of Americans said they had high confidence in the Supreme Court to protect their First Amendment rights, compared to 44% who said they had low confidence.

    “Though declining levels of trust in institutions is concerning, skepticism that politicians or the courts will protect your free speech is always a healthy instinct,” said Honeycutt. “The best defense against censorship isn’t a particular public official. It’s the American people themselves cultivating a free speech culture, defending others’ right to disagree, and holding leaders accountable.”

    As censorship attempts tend to target controversial and unpopular opinions, FIRE asked respondents to judge several political statements on how offensive they found them. The results showed that wide swathes of Americans identified statements on both sides of certain divisive topics as offensive. While 45% of respondents found it “very” or “extremely” offensive to say “Black Lives Matter is a hate group,” for example, 51% said “The police are just as racist as the Ku Klux Klan” was an offensive statement as well.

    Read more about the National Speech Index

    In another example, 40% of Americans believe that “transgender people have a mental disorder” — a sentiment banned on Facebook and Instagram until earlier this month — is an extremely or very offensive statement. But 59% also said the idea that “children should be able to transition without parental consent” was offensive. 

    “The problem with policing offensive speech is that there will always be disagreement on what is and isn’t offensive,” said FIRE’s Chief Research Advisor Sean Stevens. “Many people who want to ban offensive speech imagine they could never end up on the receiving end, but often what people find offensive changes rapidly.”

    The National Speech Index is a quarterly poll designed by FIRE and conducted by the Dartmouth Polarization Research Lab to capture Americans’ views on freedom of speech and the First Amendment, and to track how Americans’ views change over time. The January 2025 National Speech Index sampled 1,000 Americans and was conducted between January 3 and January 9, 2025. The survey’s margin of error of +/- 3%.

    The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending and sustaining the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought — the most essential qualities of liberty. FIRE educates Americans about the importance of these inalienable rights, promotes a culture of respect for these rights, and provides the means to preserve them.

    The Polarization Research Lab (PRL) is a nonpartisan collaboration between faculty at Dartmouth College, Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania. Its mission is to monitor and understand the causes and consequences of partisan animosity, support for democratic norm violations, and support for partisan violence in the American Public. With open and transparent data, it provides an objective assessment of the health of American democracy.

    CONTACT:

    Alex Griswold, Communications Campaign Manager, FIRE: 215-717-3473; [email protected]

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  • Colombia’s Higher Ed Utopia or Illusion? Insights with Javier Botero

    Colombia’s Higher Ed Utopia or Illusion? Insights with Javier Botero

    Latin America sometimes flies below the radar in discussions of global higher education. It’s too poor to have major players in the world-class universities game, but it’s too rich to be among the attention-getting new highfliers like Vietnam. And even within Latin America, not every country gets the same attention. Colombia also kind of flows below the radar, lacking the size of Mexico or Brazil, not punching above its weight like Chile, and not being stark raving tonto like Venezuela. But Colombia actually is pretty special because of the size and shape of its system. It’s actually in the middle of a range of debates going on across the world, making it a kind of miniature of the globe as a whole. A move to gratuidad, like in Chile? Colombia is doing that. Constant pressures on quality assurance, given its 207 public and private institutions? Check. Creating new popular universities on the Mexican model? Yep, that’s happening too. Working out how to improve student loan repayment? Well, ICETEX, the country’s national student loan agency—actually the oldest such agency in the world—is working on that too. In short, this is a country whose thinking on higher education deserves a lot more attention than it usually gets.

    The current government of Colombia, led by left-wing President Gustavo Petro, came to office with big ideas about higher education. But without a majority in Congress, things are not going his way. It’s not clear that he can pay for the gratuidad he promised young voters three years ago during his election campaign.

    With me today is Javier Botero, a lead consultant at the World Bank and formerly the Vice Minister of Higher Education in Colombia. He’s here to walk us through the latest developments in that country around free tuition, student assistance, and an intriguing case of institutional closure at the University of Antioquia.

    This was a fun, fast interview, and I enjoyed it a lot. I hope you do too. So, without further ado, let’s hand things over to Javier.

    The World of Higher Education Podcast
    Episode 3.18 | Colombia’s Higher Ed Utopia or Illusion? Insights with Javier Botero

    Transcript

    Alex Usher (AU): Javier, the last time you were on, we discussed President Petro’s ambitious plans for the higher education sector. One of his goals was to increase enrollment by half a million students. Two years later, have we seen much progress on that promise?

    Javier Botero (JB): Well, really, not as much as one would have expected. Of course, at the very beginning—and I’m sure I said this in that interview—I thought it was far too ambitious, you know, something in the clouds. But I think they’ve achieved about 20–25% of that.

    Mostly, this growth has been in technical education through SENA, this huge public institution that offers free technical education. Very little has happened in private education, where enrollments have actually decreased. Some state universities have increased their enrollments, but much less than what the government expected.

    AU: So it’s as much a shift in enrollments as it is an addition to enrollments.

    JB: That’s right. I mean, it is an addition in some sense because it’s true that some students who would have had difficulty accessing higher education have been able to do so—mainly through technical education or state universities. So there has been an increase in access for students from lower economic sectors of society.

    AU: That’s good. So, late last year—or maybe it was the year before—the president signed a law guaranteeing free tuition at Colombian public universities. Now, we have to be careful about that word because, for instance, in Chile, you have gratuidad, but it only applies to certain students, under specific conditions, like an income cutoff. So, what does the Colombian promise about free tuition consist of? Does it really mean free tuition for everyone?

    JB: Yeah, of course not. But the first thing I’d say is that this isn’t actually a policy of this government—it started under the previous government. What Petro did was clarify some points and widen the scope of the policy. Still—and I’m glad about this—it’s not for everyone. It’s targeted at certain groups, based on income. We have something called estratos, and it’s for the three lowest estratos. There are also other groups included, like Indigenous people, some Afro-descendants, and others who have faced significant disadvantages for years. So, yes, it has restrictions, but this is something Colombia has been working on for about six years now.

    AU: So, it is targeted free tuition, but not just based on income. As you said, there are some ethnic categories involved as well. That’s interesting.

    JB: And not just ethnicity. You all know Colombia has been through a peace process. People involved in or victimized by the violence during that period also qualify for free tuition in public institutions—and there are quite a lot of them.

    AU: All the groups involved in the peace negotiations, or their children, would benefit from this?

    JB: Yeah, and not just them. People who declared themselves victims during the period of violence in Colombia also qualify.

    AU: How much does this commitment cost? I’ve noticed there’ve been stories in the Colombian press about the government losing a tax reform vote just before Christmas, which must make it harder to afford these programs. So what’s the government’s financial ability to keep this promise?

    JB: You know, that’s one of the main issues—and a big question—because no one really knows how much it costs. In Colombia, universities have a lot of autonomy. Each university sets its own tuition, even public ones. So there’s a huge variety in tuition rates.

    Some public universities were almost free for poor students, while others charged tuition based on income, and some had relatively high tuition rates. This diversity makes it very difficult to calculate the cost.

    Chile faced a similar challenge when implementing gratuidad, but I’d say it’s even worse here because of the variation. For example, universities that used to charge very little would continue to receive little funding, while those that charged a lot would get much more. To resolve this, they came up with an average subsidy amount based on factors like the type of university, research output, and number of professors.

    AU: I’s a per-student subsidy based on the institution, not tuition?

    JB: That’s right. That’s the free tuition program.

    AU: I remember in Chile, when they were setting up their policy of gratuidad, they asked a question that made no sense in English: “Where do we set tuition so that tuition can be free?” It was funny, but it made sense in context.

    JB: Exactly, because that determines how much money the university gets from the government per student.

    AU: So I understand that while the government is trying to lower tuition costs, it’s also reducing expenditures on the student loan program, ICETEX. That feels like robbing Peter to pay Paul. What’s the logic behind this—free tuition but lower student aid?

    JB: First of all, free tuition in Colombia is not like in Chile—it’s only for public institutions. Private institutions don’t qualify for free tuition, so they don’t receive any subsidies for it. ICETEX, which is our student loan agency with over 50 years of experience, is mainly used for students attending private universities.

    Your point is valid, though. The logic is mostly ideological—the idea that education should be public and free. The private sector is seen as unnecessary, so the government focuses on public institutions and doesn’t assist students attending private ones.

    But this hasn’t helped at all with the goal of increasing enrollment by 500,000 students. ICETEX’s budget has already been cut, and the situation for 2025 looks critical. Not only because of these ideological choices, but also because of the budget deficit. We’re starting the year already in deficit, and I’m sure ICETEX will face more cuts.

    AU: Javier, I remember that quite early on in his tenure that President Petro seemed to be quite taken by the Mexican model of the Benito Juarez universities in remote locations. Maybe there may be some Venezuelan model he has in mind as well because they’ve opened a lot of new universities too. Has there been much movement on this front in the last two years?

    JB: A little bit, I would say, but also let me add that that’s not a either a new policy either. You know, we did this 20 years ago when I was working with the government with what we called the regional centers of higher education. The idea was to bring higher education to rural and small towns in Colombia because what you see is that for those who can—students from those towns that can go to a university, to higher education—they have to go to the big cities, and most of them stay there. So, it’s actually a brain drain from the small cities to the big cities, and that’s an issue. You really want more equity and homogeneous development in a country.

    So, many countries—Venezuela, at the time we did this, that was 2002 or 2003—were also starting what they called aldeas universitarias, like small-town universities, with the same idea. Mexico did that and has now a big program. But there are still many issues with that. One of them is the academic part—students from these regions have relatively low academic levels, so you have to work a lot to get them to a level where they can actually start a university program.

    The second issue, as with most things, is funding. How do you fund this? Of course, it’s very hard to expect that students will pay tuition to private universities in those regions, and those issues have not yet been resolved.

    AU: Recently—I think it was in September or October—the University of Antioquia in Medellín was the center of some very significant protests, some of which turned a little bit violent. What sparked those demonstrations? Was it something about specific issues at that institution, or was it about wider issues within higher education in Colombia?

    JB: I would say both. It’s wider issues—issues that are common to most universities—but at the University of Antioquia, these issues have brought the institution to a more difficult situation. And it’s really the funding, the financing of the universities. The University of Antioquia was one of those that actually charged very little tuition. Most students paid just a couple of dollars to study a semester, and they increased enrollment numbers significantly. They joined the policy, 10 to 15 years ago, of opening different regional campuses in small towns at very high cost. But they haven’t gotten the money to cover all of that, so they’ve been in a very difficult financial situation.

    Students started asking, “What will happen with this university?” There were delays in paying teachers, especially the type of teachers we have here in Colombia who are not regular faculty but teach specific classes and get paid for those hours. The university delayed those payments, and students and unions joined the protests—particularly the union of those types of teachers. This eventually led to the university closing. The university is now closed, and we are discussing how they will end last year’s final semester. It seems they won’t be able to.

    AU: So, did they close because of the protests, or did they close because they couldn’t make payroll?

    JB: Both. The teachers joined the demonstrations and the strike, so it wasn’t possible to keep the university open. They tried to keep some programs running virtually, using what they had learned from the pandemic, but it’s been very difficult.

    AU: To regain some stability—both there and in the rest of the country—you need a stable government. But the president has never had a majority in Congress. He’s losing key votes on taxes, recently lost a finance minister to a graft scandal, and he’s only about 18 months away from the end of his term. Is there any prospect he regains the initiative and can forge a renewed policy in this area, or is this going to be a really long lame-duck period?

    JB: I think the latter is most probable. It’s been less than three years, and we’ve had three ministers already. It looks like there will be another change in the ministry, so there’s no continuity in policies. The political situation is not getting better—it’s getting worse. As the elections approach next year, it will get even worse. The opposition will polarize further. And President Petro is not the type to try to calm things down; instead, he often throws gasoline on the fire.

    Maybe two years ago, they tried to pass a statutory law on education, but they couldn’t. Now, the minister is talking about passing a law just to change the funding model, which I must say is very archaic. It doesn’t incentivize universities to do much. With free tuition, it pushes them a little to admit more students, but that’s not a good solution because, as we see in Antioquia, it only worsens the problem. I don’t think much will happen in the remaining 20 or 22 months of this administration.

    AU: We’re already seeing the 2026 presidential elections start to take shape. Are any of the leading candidates likely to pursue policies in higher education that are radically different from the current government? You mentioned that, to a large extent, what President Petro is doing is a continuation of the previous government. So, do we expect continuity or change as we head towards those elections?

    JB: I would say there will be very different positions among the candidates. What you said isn’t totally true—Petro kept the free tuition policy, but there are many other aspects behind that. I expect some candidates, like Alejandro Gaviria—who was Petro’s first minister, though only for a few months—will bring higher education to the forefront. Gaviria is already a pre-candidate, and higher education is very popular as an issue because students vote, unlike primary and secondary students.

    Higher education in Colombia needs a deep reform, going far beyond just funding. Funding is an important issue, but the system requires much deeper changes. I expect some candidates will propose strong policies, but we’ll have to wait and see what happens with those proposals and who gets elected. The political situation in Colombia, like in many parts of the world, is very polarized, and in polarized environments, the best choices don’t always get into office.

    AU: Javier Botero, thank you so much for joining us today.

    JB: It was my pleasure. Thank you very much.

    AU: And it just remains for me to thank our excellent producers, Tiffany MacLennan and Sam Pufek, and you—our viewers, listeners, and readers—for joining in. If you have any questions or comments about today’s episode, please don’t hesitate to get in touch at [email protected]. Don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel so you never miss an episode of The World of Higher Education. Join us in one week’s time when our guest will be freelance writer Ben Wildavsky. He and I are going to chat about the 15th anniversary of his influential book, The Great Brain Race. Bye for now.

    *This podcast transcript was generated using an AI transcription service with limited editing. Please forgive any errors made through this service.

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  • The people who live where nickel is mined

    The people who live where nickel is mined

    Etus Hurata, 56, and Tatoyo Penes, 64, gather sago, a starch found in tropical palm, in the forest near the Kali Meja River with bamboo sticks and machetes. They will process the sago they collect into daily food ingredients.

    Daniel Totabo, 27, meanwhile, hunts for Sogili, a type of eel, in the middle of the fast-flowing river.

    According to data from Survival International, 300 to 500 O’Hongana Manyawa people still reside in the forested interior of the island of Halmahera. The tribes have never had direct contact with people outside the forest.

    But mining companies have already taken over increasing parts of their forest. The latest research data from the Association of Indigenous Peoples Defenders of Nusantara reports 21 matarumah (lineages) of this tribe inhabit the entire Halmahera mainland. One matarumah usually consists of 4–5 heads of families.

    Nickel dredging projects in the corners of Halmahera have disrupted their lives. Based on observations on digital maps, there are at least four mining companies operating within a 50–100 kilometers radius of the forests inhabited by indigenous peoples. This number is likely to increase in the next few years as global demand for nickel continues to increase.

    “If it continues like this, the forests in Halmahera will be destroyed,” Sumean said. “The trees will be cut down and the animals will be driven out and die because their homes have been completely cleared. Then where will we live?”

    Moving people to make way for mines

    The Indonesian government has tried to resettle people in other hamlets and villages, like Dodaga Village where Sumean lives. But supporting facilities such as health, economy and education built there are often inadequate. And for a people who lived nomadically, moving from forest to forest, it is difficult to adapt to land and houses in a village.

    “The house is very hot during the day and very cold at night because it uses a zinc roof. It is different from a leaf roof that can adjust to the season,” Sumean said. “We did get a house, but maybe they forgot that we also must find our own food every day.”

    As a result, the indigenous community largely abandoned Dodaga Village. It is now inhabited by immigrants from outside the area.

    Some are pinning their hopes on Tesla which seemed to take a firm stand for Indigenous peoples in its 2023 Impact Report published in May 2024. The electric car manufacturer owned by Elon Musk says it is pushing for a no-go zone for mining system or a mining-free area that can protect the rights of uncontacted Indigenous peoples such as O’Hongana Manyawa.

    The UK-based nonprofit organization Survival International has said that this concept could provide fixed boundaries for the industrial sector and any mining company so that they do not pass through the living space of indigenous peoples.

    But until now, the company has not provided any follow-up regarding the development of the concept in the report. Tesla says it uses around 13% of nickel ore from Indonesia and that energy transition is almost impossible without these nickel supplies. Moreover, they predict that nickel production in Indonesia will continue to increase along with the increasing demand for electric vehicles in the global market.

    The multinational corporations moved in.

    Travel six hours by road from Dodaga Village and the beautiful, green and dense Halmahera plains begin to change shape as the highway reaches the Indonesia Weda Industrial Park (IWIP) located along Weda Bay. In Lelilef Sawai Village, coal-fired power plants and nickel smelters stand where the forest once stood. Thick smoke from chimneys billow without pause.

    This industrial area began operating in 2020 through development carried out by PT Weda Bay Nickel, a joint venture between state-owned company PT Aneka Tambang and Strand Minerals which was initially formed in 1998.

    The two parties then also attracted French mining company Eramet and Chinese stainless steel company Tsingshan Holding Group. Over time, Tshingsan and Eramet took full control of the project. This area, included in the Indonesia’s National Strategic Project since November 2020, is predicted to attract investment worth U.S. $15 billion

    The mountainous area on the north side of IWIP has long been known to be rich in nickel reserves. The world’s nickel needs are predicted to increase drastically by 60% by 2040 to meet carbon reduction requirements of the Paris Agreement.

    While sales of electric vehicles have slowed in the United States and Europe, it is projected that half of all new cars sold in China will be electric. China, Europe and the United States represent the largest markets for electric vehicles, collectively accounting for approximately 95% of all sales in 2023.

    Un-environmental side effects of an environmental push

    The carbon footprint of the nickel smelting in Indonesia could negate much of the carbon reductions the e-cars promise. In addition to the smoke coming out of a total of 12 new coal-fired power plants there, deforestation activities are also clearly visible.

    Seen from satellite imagery monitoring, queues of trucks carrying materials snake along the road. Dozens of heavy equipment are also digging the hills next to it. This view will be visible up to 10 kilometers away.

    Geospatial analysis research conducted by Climate Rights International and the AI ​​Climate Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley revealed that nickel mining activities throughout the island of Halmahera have destroyed 5,331 hectares of tropical forest that act as absorbers of greenhouse gases.

    The industrial area currently employs around 43,000 employees. They are housed in huts built not far from the smelter and power plant chimneys. The huts are built close together with very limited ventilation in each room. In some places, garbage is left to pile up in the open space. The grass and plants growing around it are also covered in road dust.

    The massive deforestation that has taken place, mostly in the upstream areas of large rivers, has increased the risk and frequency of flooding.

    Danger from flooding

    JATAM, an organization that advocates for communities affected by the mining industry, reported that between 2020 and 2024, floods with a height of more than one meter occurred more than 12 times. In the summer of 2024, a flood in the Weda Bay mining area submerged seven villages, sending some 1,670 residents into temporary tents.

    Flood waters completely covered the home of Ahmad Kruwet, 62, a transmigrant from Tegal who now lives in Woe Jarana Village, Central Weda. “I think this is the effect because the forest upstream has been cut down until it is completely gone,” he said.

    Ahmad added that changes in the quality of the groundwater around his house made it unsafe to use. Since the industrial park started operating, he has had to buy gallons of water to meet his daily drinking water need.

    Meanwhile, in Lukolamo Village, Central Halmahera, cocoa farmer Adrian Patapata, 64, also saw a change in the quality of his water, which became smelly and colored.

    “Before, the water in our house was still clean and fresh,” he said “We drank this water. After the mine came here, the water could no longer be used. Let alone for drinking, we couldn’t even bathe.”

    Now he and his family make sure they are prepared for the next flood. They will run to the tent on the hill behind his village where there is a new post set as an initial mitigation site for flood victims.

    Health suffers near nickel plants.

    Mining activities and the disasters that occurred also have physical and health consequences. Beside Adrian, Juni Nadira Patapata, 9, was scratching her feet which looked blistered as result of being submerged in the floodwater for too long. In addition the local health center has been seeing an increase in upper respiratory infections in areas near the industrial areas, mostly in children and the elderly, but some mine workers as well.

    In January 2024 the center saw 174 cases. That increased to 345 in July. He has special attention for them, because every day almost 40% of patients who come to the health center are workers.

    Data from Eramet shows that the company plans to mine around 6,000 hectares of the total area of ​​Weda Bay Nickel’s 45,065-hectare concession over a 25-year period.

    Currently, as many as 2,000 hectares of land and forest have been exploited, both for the construction of new smelters and for mining activities.

    Mining activities in the industrial area and massive deforestation around it have also damaged the ecosystem of agricultural land and plantations owned by residents who live not far from there. Many farmers have experienced crop failures because the plants they planted died or sickened due to declining water and soil quality. Others were lost in the flooding.

    In his plantation in the Trans Kobe area, Adrian saw coconut and chocolate trees that he had cared for destroyed by the flood.

    For many years he has maintained a 5.5-hectare plantation planting cocoa, coconuts, nutmeg and a fuzzy fruit called langsat. “Before the mud flood like now, I could even plant bananas and sweet potatoes. Now I can’t anymore,” he said.

    Adrian said floods occurred even before the logging and nickel extraction but the puddles of water and sand that rose to the surface of would recede quickly. The mud that now inundates his garden takes longer to recede, and inhibits plant growth.

    “When it is already flooded and muddy like this, the roots absorb too much water,” he said. “Now it is just left like that, the children are also lazy to clean the garden because not much is growing anymore.”

    Meanwhile, the same situation is also seen on the coast. The expansion carried out by mining companies coupled with the contamination of liquid waste and heavy metals from the ferronickel processing smelter also polluted the estuary, beach and Weda Bay areas where fishermen would catch fish every day.

    Pollution enters the sea water.

    One day, Hernemus Takuling left his fishing boat abandoned on the beach. Although it was a good season for fishing, the waves were too high and fierce and he was reluctant to fish on the beach. Hundreds of meters from where he stood, a pipe from the smelter was discharging waste into the sea, turning the water around the beach brownish yellow.

    Now, Hernemus and most fishermen on the coastal villages directly adjacent to the industrial park must travel farther to get better quality fish without exposure to hot water radiation from the waste disposal.

    Some even fish as far as other islands. “Now, I rarely fish here,” Hernemus said. “Usually, I take the closest boat up to four kilometers from the end of the beach because there the condition of the fish caught is much better.”

    He leaves every day at 4 AM and returns around 3 PM. In one day, he might only get a few fish with an average weight of just one kilogram. “Now I need more time and energy just to catch fish,” he said. “Moreover, I must buy diesel for boat fuel. When I get fish, it’s sometimes hard to sell. In the end, I just eat it alone with my family at home.”

     

    Three questions to consider:

    1. How is nickel mining and processing affecting the Indigenous people of Indonesia?
    2. What is being proposed to help the people who live near nickel plants?
    3. Do you think the benefits from electric cars outweigh the damage done from mining the needed metals?

     

     

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  • What would a TikTok ban mean for higher ed?

    What would a TikTok ban mean for higher ed?

    Less than two weeks into President Donald Trump’s second term, he’s already testing the limits of executive power.

    As one of his first actions in office, he wielded that power to resume Americans’ access to TikTok—the popular Chinese-owned short-form video app 47 percent of college students use on a daily basis—after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a law banning it.

    Last April, Congress banned companies from distributing, maintaining or updating a “foreign adversary controlled application,” specifically those “operated, directly or indirectly” by TikTok or its parent company, ByteDance Ltd. As a result, TikTok went dark for about 12 hours two days before Trump, who had previously supported the idea of a TikTok ban, took office. Almost immediately after his inauguration, he issued an executive order halting enforcement of the ban for 75 days, while the administration determines “the appropriate course forward in an orderly way that protects national security while avoiding an abrupt shutdown” of TikTok.

    Some experts say Trump’s order falls into murky legal territory, and TikTok’s fate in the U.S. remains unclear. But banning a social media app that 170 million Americans use as a tool for self-expression and self-promotion would have numerous implications for both college students and their institutions. A 2022 study found two-thirds of teenagers were using TikTok to consume a wide range of information, including news, tutorials, entertainment and advertisements, making it a vital recruiting tool for colleges.

    “TikTok represents a pivotal transition point between what was the social media–driven higher ed of the last 15 years and now the artificial intelligence–powered, immersive digital future that’s going to define the next decade,” said J. Israel Balderas, an assistant professor of journalism at Elon University and a lawyer specializing in First Amendment cases. “TikTok isn’t just a social media platform somehow caught in this geopolitical battle. It represents a transition point in digital history.”

    Last week, Inside Higher Ed asked Balderas five questions about what a TikTok ban would mean for students, faculty and institutions. The interview has been edited for concision and clarity.

    1. What are the implications of a TikTok ban for the culture of higher education?

    TikTok has become a dominant space for student expression, activism and social engagement. For professors, it also has become a place of research and AI literacy. Losing the platform means that student organizers would lose a mobilization tool. TikTok has played a critical role, not just in campus activism—from political movements to social justice campaigns—but it has also been a way for others to communicate and play a role in the marketplace of ideas.

    What’s most concerning to me is the potential chilling effect on student expression. Students will start to question whether other digital spaces will face similar crackdowns. For example, if TikTok can be banned under the guise of national security, what will happen to other foreign-owned or politically sensitive platforms? Will they be next?

    Universities would also lose a primary storytelling platform. You have campus life blogs; you have student-run media accounts. TikTok allows institutions and students to shape their narrative in a way that no other platform currently allows.

    2. Do you think there’s justification for a TikTok ban?

    It depends on how you weigh national security risks versus free speech rights. The Chinese government could potentially use TikTok’s recommendation engine to shape political discourse, suppress content or even promote certain narratives. But we’ve been here before with that. We were here in 1919 with Schenck v. United States and Abrams v. United States that questioned influence from socialists and communists. What we discovered is that the marketplace of ideas theory works and the truth rises.

    While the national security argument is valid, why is TikTok being singled out when U.S.-based platforms with equally invasive data practices, like Meta, Google and X, remain untouched? The First Amendment doesn’t protect the companies from regulation, but it does protect Americans’ right to access information.

    Headshot of man with dark hair in a blue suit

    J. Israel Balderas is a journalism professor at Elon University and a First Amendment lawyer.

    3. Could such a ban really be enforced? What might college students do to get around it?

    Banning a social media app in a free society is incredibly difficult.

    Big tech being so powerful and so close to power in Washington also creates a very gray legal area, because Apple and Google control access to mobile apps. If they refuse to reinstate TikTok, then enforcement becomes a de facto reality even without the government directly blocking access. But what we saw earlier this month, with Trump’s intervention to reinstate TikTok, shows that enforcement can be overridden by executive power. So, it’s unclear how consistently a ban could be applied, but enforcement of a ban is far more complicated than either the courts or Congress can anticipate.

    College students are digital natives, and they adapt to these things by bypassing restrictions. They can use VPNs [virtual private networks], which are already widely used in countries with restricted internet laws, like China. Students could also download it from unofficial sources, instead of the traditional app stores. They can also use alternative apps, like the other, increasingly popular Chinese-owned app, RedNote.

    Somebody will find an emerging app, especially now in the world of AI, where AI is open source. You can take the backbone of TikTok, and with AI and proper coding you can create the same kind of environment as TikTok. So how many more clones out there would that be, right?

    4. How would a TikTok ban shape colleges’ digital literacy efforts in the age of AI?

    A TikTok ban would be a blow to digital literacy and AI education. This is the moment when we need to be talking about AI education and what it means for the workforce, students and us as faculty members, who are teaching that it’s not just about facts and knowledge. It’s about teaching students how to ask the right questions and how to connect the dots.

    TikTok opens the door to asking students what it is the algorithm knows about you, if that’s an ethical thing and if they want it. It’s not about shaming students for their choices. It’s about teaching them to think critically about what they’re doing and then letting them decide what it means for their lives and relationships.

    If the government can decide what content is good or bad for the population, we’d have to rethink what it means to have AI literacy in the curriculum.

    5. TikTok is caught in a geopolitical crossfire. Is there a teachable moment in all of this?

    The fact that we are having these conversations is the best part of this entire fiasco. Because students are questioning if the government can really do these things. What about the future? What about AI? Will the government be able to say that it’s not suppressing speech, but just suppressing the person who’s writing these codes or the person who’s putting these algorithms into the marketplace? Students are at least trying to figure out what is the role the government will play going forward when it comes to ideas that are not popular.

    If they’re being more critical about those things, then as a professor, I’ve done my job.

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  • Ducking and covering is no way to protect higher ed

    Ducking and covering is no way to protect higher ed

    This is one of those times I’m glad I’m in charge of only myself. I can’t imagine the pressure of leading an organization—like a higher ed institution—that is dependent on support from the federal government for its literal day-to-day operations.

    Also, I am aware of the old saw about free advice … it’s worth what you pay for it.

    Nonetheless, I’m going to venture some advice for institutions experiencing the assault of the opening 10 or so days of the second Trump presidency.

    Opinions may differ on exactly what is happening, but I’m convinced that New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie is correct in saying, “Donald Trump is waging war on the American system of government.”

    If you believe this is true, there’s no room for accommodation. Ending democratic governance leaves no room for the kind of higher education that has made the U.S. the envy of the world.

    You’ve got to resist, all of it, actively, with as much countering force as possible. An administration that without notice “pauses” NIH and NSF activities, that even stops disbursement through the Office of Management and Budget, is not merely reorienting the government around the new president’s priorities. It seems clear they either intend to destroy or hobble higher education to make it a vassal state.

    I’ve got myself thinking of a couple of dynamics that I think are important to recognize in the moment.

    One is the problem of “institutional awe,” which I draw from the term “vocational awe,” coined by Fobazi Ettarh from observing the work of librarians such as herself. She calls vocational awe “the set of ideas, values and assumptions librarians have about themselves and the profession that result in notions that libraries as institutions are inherently good, sacred notions, and therefore beyond critique.”

    Ettarh identifies vocational awe as a route to self-exploitation as librarians are called upon to sacrifice their own well-being in order to preserve the operations of the library itself.

    “Institutional awe” is a bit different, and something perpetrated not by the laborers, but by leadership, where it’s judged that the continued operation of the institution is of the utmost importance, no matter the sacrifices required by the individual stakeholders, or the damage to the underlying mission of the institution.

    Under institutional awe, as long as the doors remain open, anything goes.

    There are already some worrying signs of this mentality in terms of some pre-emptive compliance with merely perceived threats from the Trump administration. In some cases, these moves appear to be motivated by a desire for administrations to use Trump policy as a rationale for either seizing more control or silencing dissent that’s causing them headaches. I do not want to think uncharitably of some of the leaders of the nation’s higher education institutions, but “Trump made me do it” appears to be a handy rationale for dodging responsibility.

    In other cases, I think we’re looking at rank cowardice, as in Northeastern University’s decision to purge any public-facing information that even references diversity, equity and inclusion. I suppose this suggests that Northeastern was not particularly committed to these things, as they are setting a land speed record for “obeying in advance.”

    The other big-picture caution I have is something I wrote about recently, to remember that there is always something next, and decisions you make in the present shape what that next thing is going to be.

    It seems clear to me that higher ed institutions are going to be fundamentally different both because of the efforts of Trump and some red state governors to make them over to something that must express fealty to their preferred vision, and simply because we’ve reached an endpoint regarding a prior vision of postsecondary education as something that should be accessible to all.

    A long-standing belief of many conservatives, that too many people go to college—and by too many people they mean women and minority students—that has been simmering under the surface for decades has now come into the open as overt attempts to, in the words of Victor Ray, “resegregate America” under the guise of challenging diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

    I understand the urge to treat what’s going on as perhaps elevated but still normal government functioning in line with what happens during any transition from one party to the other holding the White House. Members of the Democratic Party themselves seem to be acting according to this view.

    But how much evidence is necessary to recognize that this is a delusion and that pre-emptive appeasement or ducking and covering while hoping the blows land elsewhere is not going to work?

    While public trust in higher education has declined in recent years—mostly along partisan lines—it does not follow that most Americans would like to see the important work of teaching and research be utterly destroyed.

    As much as possible, institutions should act in solidarity with each other, considering an attack on one institution an attack on all, given that your institution will be next at some point.

    In the words of Alexander Hamilton, as imagined by Lin-Manuel Miranda, “If you stand for nothing, what will you fall for?”

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  • Q&A with a student success dean, Soka University of America

    Q&A with a student success dean, Soka University of America

    As an undergraduate student, Lisa MacLeod wasn’t sure where her career path would take her. She majored in English literature and international relations with the aspirations of being a journalist or a State Department staffer and found herself back in academia not long after.

    Lisa MacLeod, assistant dean of student success at Soka University of America

    Lisa MacLeod/Soka University of America

    Now, as the inaugural assistant dean of student success at Soka University of America since last fall, MacLeod is charged with breaking institutional silos at the California institution to improve student outcomes after graduation, working collaboratively across campus.

    MacLeod spoke with Inside Higher Ed about her time thus far at the institution, a private liberal arts college, and her aspirations in the long-term.

    Inside Higher Ed: What is your new role at Soka and how does it fit into institutional goals for student success?

    MacLeod: One of the most important things [about my role] is that I am housed under the dean of faculty, so I’m not under the dean of students, which is very different from how a lot of schools have done this.

    My top priority, luckily, isn’t getting students to graduate—because we already are doing that very well as an institution … I’m not just new in the job, the position is new at the university—so there’s some room for me to define what the position is.

    I was asked to look specifically at advising. Right now, our program is all faculty individually advising students for academic advising. Career services and internships is the other side of the house, and historically, the two sides of the house don’t talk to each other very well. So looking at how we advise, but also thinking about, are there ways that we can integrate better, because we have lots of good things happening by different people. But do faculty know about that? Do they know enough about it to recommend it to students? Not so much.

    The other thing is starting to integrate career readiness skills into the curriculum. This year, we are rolling out RATE (Reflect, Articulate, Translate, Evaluate), which was developed by the University of Minnesota for their liberal arts students.

    We’re having our first cohort this coming semester—so beginning in February—of faculty fellows who have pledged to develop the RATE system into their existing course, and we’re supporting them with some training and other kinds of activities so that we’re very specific in the application. We’re not asking you to change your course. What we’re asking is that you make it more evident to students how they are developing career readiness skills in addition to academic and subject area knowledge.

    Inside Higher Ed: You were a double major in college. While interdisciplinary learning can be an asset to students, sometimes academic departments can be more focused on helping students on a specific path within their discipline. Do you have any insights based on your experience as a dual major and helping students find their own path?

    MacLeod: At Soka, we don’t have majors—everyone graduates with a major in liberal arts, and then within that, we have concentrations. Students here do have the opportunity to double concentrate, so they’re not taking as many courses as you would for a major, but there’s still some degree of specialty.

    I encourage them to look at the whole course catalog and say, “Take the classes that really attract you, that are interesting, and you’ll figure out how they connect to each other if you look for it,” and to not worry about double concentrations. Or, you know, force yourself to take courses you wouldn’t otherwise.

    Certainly, I encourage students, depending on what their interests are, if you’re going to go to graduate school, yes, take statistics, take a research methodology course. Do these kinds of courses that are skill building [so] you’ll have that [for] the next level of your education; they will have expected you to have that background.

    But beyond that, I’m really focused on having students maybe try something they wouldn’t otherwise. I wish as an undergraduate I had taken an anthropology class, but it never occurred to me; it just wasn’t on my radar. Explore, because you don’t know what you don’t know, and to really find something that drives them, that they’re really excited about doing the coursework and learning more about that area. Because they’ll put more into it, and as they put more into it, they’re going to develop the liberal arts skills in the process. Whereas, if they’re forcing themselves to take a course because they feel they should take this course, they’re not going to have the same level of motivation. They’re not going to get the same out of it.

    Inside Higher Ed: As you said, one of your priorities is advising, which is so important to the student journey. What does quality advising look like to you?

    MacLeod: I think that quality advising really requires time and listening.

    I always ask students to come in with kind of a worksheet: Where are you [in your progress] toward graduation? Where are you in terms of taking required courses? But I also ask them things like, “OK, this is a required course, but you have a selection of five different faculty members that might be teaching that course, and of course, they bring their skills and expertise and kind of personality in each course. Why did you choose that faculty member? If you’re interested in this, maybe this other faculty member—even though it’s the same requirement—might teach that course in a way that you would find appealing?” And directing them to resources, encouraging them to talk to faculty before they enrolled in the course if they have questions or concerns or if they’re not certain about something.

    Then also asking them very blatant questions that I wish someone had asked me when I was an undergraduate. What are your plans after you graduate? What are you doing to achieve that goal? What information do you need to know, and how are you going to get it moving forward?

    I took time off [after graduating] because I’d never had those conversations. Maybe people at the university thought I was having it with my family. My family may have thought I was having it with people at the university. I’m not sure where I lost the memo, but it just didn’t happen. Before, someone had always come along and said, “Apply for this,” and it was a very structured thing. That’s not how life after graduation works at all. So I ask those questions I wish someone had asked me.

    Inside Higher Ed: What is student success to you?

    MacLeod: It’s not for me to define for someone else what success looks like. I have my own ideas, but I think it’s wrong to impose that on other people, because success can look like so many different things.

    In general, I feel that student success is they graduate from the program, and they feel good about that. That there’s not regret that they should have gone someplace else, but also that we’ve equipped them with the skills in their personal and in their professional life to face the challenges that will inevitably come and to be able to surmount them.

    The first couple years after graduation for everyone is hard—that’s just kind of the nature of the beast—but that they are prepared for, that they can get through it, and know that there’s something on the other side. that they are confident in their skills, that they will figure it out and then end up on the other side in a career that they find fulfilling in some manner, being able to contribute to the community, if that’s their goal, in a way that is meaningful to them. And hopefully happy alumni that are talking to our current students that and sharing their experiences.

    Inside Higher Ed: What are your long-term goals in this new role?

    MacLeod: It feels like so much of academic life is keeping your head above water for now.

    I think that in the long term, I’d really like to see a more collaborative campus culture, where faculty members are supporting each other in their endeavors, maybe a bit more. It’s not that my colleagues are unsupportive, but we don’t always ask each other or are aware of the ways in which our research overlaps and we could actually be doing more—whether it’s with our teaching or where we could be drawing more on each other’s skills and knowledge base.

    I’m still really new at this … so I think right now my priority is still listening, rather than planning for the future.

    Seeking stories from campus leaders, faculty members and staff for our Student Success focus. Share here.

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  • Academic unions should adopt neutrality (opinion)

    Academic unions should adopt neutrality (opinion)

    Institutional neutrality at universities is having its moment in the aftermath of a year of nationwide campus protests over the Israel-Gaza war. The list of universities that have adopted neutrality has grown over the course of the past 12 months. The concept necessarily is expanding to include conversations around university investments. Yet, academic unions have slipped under the radar as purveyors of positions on political issues. They should not be neglected in the push for neutral stances except for those that directly pertain to an institutional mission. In the case of the union, this should be to promote labor interests. Professors from a range of ideologies should be able to find common cause for collective bargaining purposes without being forced into supporting other political positions.

    The lack of neutrality of professors’ unions on non-labor-related issues is a pernicious problem. Federal law and some state laws that pertain to unions work to compel professors’ speech. Under the federal National Labor Relations Act, if a majority of private sector workers voting in a union election choose to unionize, all workers in that bargaining unit must be exclusively represented by that union. New York’s Taylor Law requires the same for public employees. And, if workers want the benefits of membership, like voting for union leadership and contracts, they must pay dues.

    While public employees could choose not to be union members before the Supreme Court’s 2017 Janus v. AFSCME ruling, that case now guarantees their right to not pay agency fees. But even if workers wish to eschew membership and not pay fees, they cannot dissociate entirely. They are required to be represented by a union that speaks via statements at the local, state and national level on many non-labor-related subjects. Therefore, with their veneer of solidarity, unions quash viewpoint diversity and suppress First Amendment rights. They tie one of the only forms of dissent possible (withdrawing dues) to disenfranchisement from the union, the organization that negotiates their wages and labor conditions.

    Professors who do stop paying their dues are often derided as “free riders.” They risk offending union leadership, who have a say in university processes that can impact their employment, like grievances and denial of reappointment. The union is formally required to provide equal advocacy as their exclusive representative. However, even if one believes biases will never prevail against “free riders,” there is still the suppressive impact of professors’ perception that paying dues and keeping quiet is best for their careers.

    And so, professors are forced into a kind of protection racket, paying unions that may endorse positions with which they may disagree. The National Education Association has opined on everything from ending private prisons to climate change, from promoting women-led businesses to helmets for motorcyclists. They have issued statements on the Israel-Gaza conflict, advocated for codifying Roe v. Wade into law and called for Donald Trump’s ouster. They have adopted progressive ideological lenses throughout such statements, arguing for instance that “white supremacy culture” is prevalent in the current U.S., and that “intersectionality must be … addressed … in order to advance the [NEA’s] social justice work.”

    To be clear, I am not arguing that these positions taken by unions are bad. I am not reflecting my own political preferences. I am not highlighting progressive examples to critique only progressive examples: I could find none that can be considered conservative. I am not saying that it’s not possible that a majority of members agree with the statements. I am also not arguing that workers do not have the right to form associations to advocate for political causes.

    What I am arguing is that due to laws making exclusive representation compulsory, unions should adopt neutrality on political issues that do not impact the primary purpose of academic unions: advocating for professors’ interests as workers. This lets ideological diversity exist and prevents coerced speech and dues payments. This neutrality is of paramount importance with public sector unions, where union leadership activities may receive taxpayer-subsidized administrative benefits.

    This neutrality should extend to political endorsements of individual candidates. While there may be some argument to be made that endorsing a pro-union or pro–higher education candidate over their opponent directly pertains to professors’ interests as workers, this carries with it implicit endorsement of a wide slate of other policies. A better approach would be for unions to support (or critique) candidates’ specific policy proposals or voting records. It would also reduce antagonism between unions and candidates they did not endorse, should those be elected.

    Recent examples show the perils of academic unions not having a neutrality standard. In 2018, a University of Maine professor sued his union, noting his opposition to its stances, like endorsing Hillary Clinton for president. More recently, in 2022, six City University of New York professors filed suit against the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), which passed a pro-Palestinian resolution they viewed as antisemitic. They resigned their memberships, along with approximately 263 other professors. But because of the Taylor Law, they are required to be represented by the PSC, which did not give evidence it could be fair in representing them. The PSC called them free riders, claiming their lawsuit was “meritless … funded by the notoriously right-wing National Right to Work Legal Foundation,” and described the “‘Right to Work’ agenda” as “rooted in white supremacy.”

    After lower courts ruled to dismiss their suit, the CUNY professors appealed to the Supreme Court, which just this month declined to hear their case. Yet, while this case could have been a victory for viewpoint diversity and free speech and an impetus for unions to get on the institutional neutrality bandwagon, future such suits will doubtless arise and reach a court favorable to their claims. Academic unions should get ahead of such a court ruling and make union membership attractive to all who may want to participate based on advocacy for improved working conditions, but not for particular solutions to international wars—or for wearing motorcycle helmets.

    Colleen P. Eren is a professor of sociology and criminal justice at William Paterson University and a research fellow at the Segal Center for Academic Pluralism. Her commentaries on higher ed and other topics can be found across a range of publications, including The New York Times, Discourse, Reason, and the Foundation for Economic Education.

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  • Ideas for navigating editor-reviewer relationships (opinion)

    Ideas for navigating editor-reviewer relationships (opinion)

    An editor or reviewer can have an outsize impact on the career of a scholar, particularly in the early stages. The stakes can be high for an author. A negative review or edit can set back a research plan by months and harm a scholar’s chances for tenure or promotion. This reality creates a power imbalance between an editor or reviewer and an author that can be abused.

    Graduate schools offer few pointers on how to navigate editor and reviewer relationships. Our goal in this essay is to debunk the process and offer suggestions and observations for editors/reviewers and authors on how to approach the task in a more thoughtful and efficient way.

    Understanding the Reviewer and Editor Roles

    First, it is important to note that while reviewers and editors take part in a similar process—assessing the work of an author—the tasks are different. The editor is rarely an expert in the specific subject of an article and necessarily needs to rely on impartial reviewers to place the work in context. Nevertheless, the editor—and, at times, an editorial board—is the decision-maker in this equation. Having a clear and transparent line of communication between the author and the editor is critical.

    The task of the reviewer is to place the work in its scholarly context and to weigh its merit. Is the work breaking new ground? Is it challenging a long-held interpretation within the academy? Are the sources contemporary and the most relevant? Does the work fit the subject area of the journal or press? Can it be revised to make it suitable for publication?

    It is our strong belief that reviewers need to meet the authors where they are—that is, to understand the goal of the author, determine whether the work is suitable for the journal or press in question and, if so, help them reach the promised land of publication. Simply put: The reviewer should weigh the author’s case against the author’s intent.

    Unfortunately, this does not always happen: It is sometimes the case that reviewers stray from this path and insert suggestions that they would like to see addressed but that are not central to the submitted work. The dreaded “reviewer number 2” has become the bane of many an author’s existence. In this sort of review, the reviewer raises so many questions and objections that an author is left to ponder whether the two are reading the same text. And, it must be said, just as on social media, anonymity can at times lead to incivility. Instead of being helpful, sometimes a reviewer is unkind and cruel.

    The role of the editor is to referee between the goals of the author and the desires of the reviewer. Egos and politics often come into play in this process because reviewers in many cases are colleagues of the editor and contributors to the publication in question. Our experience suggests there are two major types of editors. Authors will need to adjust their approach based on which of these two types best describes their editor:

    • Sympathetic editor: This is the ideal. This editor will work with an author to publish a submission if the research is strong and will allow them to keep their own voice. They do not seek to impose their vision on the book or article. They do not allow their personal politics to influence the decision-making process. They are driven by one central question: Does the author accomplish what they set out to do? This type of editor tries to determine whether a reviewer is acting out of hubris by suggesting tangential and substantial changes or whether they are addressing core issues. On the opposite end of the spectrum, they are alert to the two-paragraph, lackadaisical reviewer who read the work over lunch while answering emails.
    • Visionary editor: It may sound counterintuitive, but an editor with their own vision for someone else’s work can mean frustration and ultimately rejection for an author. This type of editor sees someone else’s work as an opportunity to explore an aspect of a topic that interests them. They impose their own vision on someone else’s work rather than determining whether the author has achieved the goal they set for themselves. This typically takes the form of a lengthy response asking an author to fundamentally rethink their piece. The response contains so many critiques that to adhere to the suggestions would amount to writing a completely different piece of scholarship. This editor also tends to extend and even impede the process almost endlessly.

    As an example, upon the death of Fidel Castro in November 2016, the Latin American historian of this writing duo (Argote-Freyre) was asked by a journal editorial board member to author an article comparing the career of Castro with that of the prior dictator of Cuba, Fulgencio Batista. The resulting piece concluded that the two political figures shared more similarities than differences. The editor, although agreeing to the concept, was unhappy with the conclusions reached by the essay. The editor struck out paragraph after paragraph; a lecture on tone and thesis ensued.

    The editor suggested a piece analyzing the revisionist historiography on Batista—a subject outside the contours of the original assignment and one that would take many months to complete. The author made a rookie mistake in assuming that a member of the editorial board was vested with the authority to make assignments. In retrospect, it seems as if the assignment was foisted upon the working editor, who then wanted to steer the piece in a completely different direction. The author withdrew the piece; the only positive was that only a few months were lost in the process.

    The visionary editor is the type who is never satisfied. They forget that the piece is the author’s, not theirs. Yes, the editor is a gatekeeper for the journal or press, but if it is not a good fit, they should say so and move on. This picky editor sends a revision back to a new third (or fourth) reviewer, who is likely to ask for another, different round of revisions. This is nothing other than moving the goalposts. One of us had this occur with an editor who said, “As you know, we often send articles to several rounds of reviewers.” Well, we did not know, because the journal’s website did not say that. Such a process could go on forever and, to our eyes, makes no sense. The editor should decide on his or her own whether the author has revised sufficiently: It is clear from the reader reports what needed to be done, so just check and see. The editor needs to be decisive.

    At the point a work is about to be sent to an additional set of reviewers, an author needs to withdraw the article or book from consideration. Run as fast as you can in search of another editor and publication. Do not let someone waste your time, especially if your clock is ticking for tenure and promotion.

    How to Make Relationships Work— and When to Walk Away

    The author-editor relationship should be a dance, not a duel. An author is not at the mercy of the process; you are a partner. If you are not clicking with the editor, walk away. A bad first date rarely turns into a good second date. This is particularly true when working on a book project, given the many steps and long timeline involved.

    For a revise-and-resubmit, we suggest strongly that you be professionally assertive. Ask about the review of the resubmission before you do it. If the editor says it will go to new readers, withdraw the piece. This never goes well. Editors should be transparent about the steps involved. It is our experience that some editors are hesitant to divulge their process. If that is the case, the author needs to reassess the integrity of that process.

    Being fully transparent allows you to ask for transparency in return, whether you are an editor or an author. If, as we have experienced, two peer reviews come in that are quite opposed, the editor should get a third before returning to the author. If there are two or three reviews, the editor should synthesize them with a memo attached to the reports. The summary should go something like: “All reviewers agree chapter four needs to be revised with this material, but there is disagreement about chapter six.” There is also nothing wrong with asking the author to make the tough call on a contested point of interpretation. Once again, it is the author’s scholarship, not the editor’s, the journal’s or the press’s.

    For authors: Have a conversation with the editor. If it’s a call, follow up with a written summary. When responding to reader reports, especially when they disagree, say what you will and will not do. Do not say you will revise when you disagree—but don’t be stubborn. Give a little to get what you won’t compromise. If you disagree with a reviewer’s suggestion, say why, and ask the editor for approval not to make a specific change suggested in one of the reader reports. Get that approval. If the editor says the revision will go back to one or both original readers instead of making the final call himself, politely insist that the written exchange between the author and editor be sent along, too.

    It may not always work. Recently, one of us did just what we described and the editor said the plan sounded good, only to have the journal reject the revision. The editorial board said a specific change was not made even though the editor agreed that change would not be necessary. Poor communication and coordination between an editor and an editorial board should not penalize an author.

    Finally, we’d like to briefly weigh in on the argument that professors should reject peer reviewing because it is an unpaid task. If you do not want to do it, don’t—but there are compelling reasons to write responsible peer reviews. First, unpaid labor is not without merit. Even if your tenure and promotion committees might not value the task, that does not mean it is not worthwhile. You’re not paid to volunteer at your local food pantry, but you still do it. Second, people do this for you; it is time to be generous in return. Third, reviewing provides insights into the process for your own work. Peer reviewing keeps you current on trends in the field. Editing and peer reviewing make you a better writer and produce better scholarship. Isn’t that what we all want?

    Frank Argote-Freyre and Christopher M. Bellitto are professors of history at Kean University in Union, N.J., with extensive experience with peer review on both sides of the process. Argote-Freyre, a scholar of Latin American history, serves as a frequent peer reviewer and content editor on various book and article projects. Bellitto, a medievalist, is the series editor of Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition and academic editor at large of Paulist Press.

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  • Degree Apprenticeships in England: What Can We Learn from the Experiences of Apprentices, Employers, and Education and Training Providers?

    Degree Apprenticeships in England: What Can We Learn from the Experiences of Apprentices, Employers, and Education and Training Providers?

    By Josh Patel, Researcher at the Edge Foundation.

    Degree Apprenticeships (DAs) were launched in 2015, as a novel work-based learning route to obtaining a degree. On their introduction, then Prime Minister David Cameron said they would ‘give people a great head start, combining a full degree with real practical skills gained from work and the financial security of a regular pay packet’. Since then, they have taken the higher education sector by storm. Their growth has been the key factor in the expansion of higher apprenticeships from 43,800 starts in 2015/16 to 273,700 in 2023/24, a rise from 4.8% to 35% of all apprenticeships. They have stimulated innovative models of delivery and new and productive relationships between employers and providers. Former Skills Minister Robert Halfon remarked that ‘Degree Apprenticeships’ were his ‘two favourite words in the English language’.

    DAs have, however, recently come under scrutiny. Concerns persist that the growth of DAs and their high cost – reported in the media as growing from 2% of the apprenticeship budget in 2017/18 to 21% in 2021 – might crowd out opportunities for young entrants to the workforce, as DAs are primarily taken by existing employees. The suitability of DAs as instruments to improve upward social mobility has been contested. Meanwhile, the government is drawing up plans to increase the flexibility of the Apprenticeship Levy through which Degree Apprenticeships can currently be funded, asking employers ‘to rebalance their funding for apprenticeships… to invest in younger workers’.

    Our report, ‘Degree Apprenticeships in England: What Can We Learn from the Experiences of Apprentices, Employers, and Education and Training Providers?’, written in collaboration with colleagues from the Universities of Bath, Huddersfield, and Oxford, was published on Tuesday and is a timely intervention into these discussions. Here, we present the evidence for some our policy recommendations, gathered from nearly 100 interviews with stakeholders including large employers and SMEs, providers, degree apprentices, and policymakers.

    Engaging employers

    The government needs to consider a more systematic approach that serves to rationalise the way that employers are supported to offer a wide range of work-based opportunities. As Edge has identified in other programmes, such as T Levels or plans to provide universal work experience through the government’s Youth Guarantee, DAs are restricted by the number of employers willing to engage. We repeatedly heard evidence of the difficulties ‘resource-poor’ employers had in engaging with the design of apprenticeship standards and participating fully in collaboration with providers. As one SME told us contributing to the design and development of a DA ‘doesn’t give me any benefit now, and I’m impatient’.

    The government needs to develop a coherent strategy for DAs with a particular focus on support for SMEs, including improved awareness of levy transfer schemes. Involvement in DAs is often based on being ‘in the know’ and contacts with providers and local authorities. In our ‘Learning from the past’ stream of work, we reviewed Education Business Partnerships, as an example of intermediary organisations, noting both their strengths and shortcomings, which could inform effective initiatives for supporting employers.

    Reducing complexity

    With the creation of Skills England, the government should take the opportunity to review and simplify the process of design, delivery and quality assurance for DAs, and ensure regulatory elements work together. DAs currently draw in a large number of bodies including the OfS, IfATE, regulatory bodies, professional bodies and Ofsted. Providers told us that this had created a complex landscape of ‘many masters’ where lines of accountability are blurred and innovation is stifled. Providers described ‘overregulation’ as limiting ‘our ability to go off-piste’, and while the process could be constructive, providers were unconvinced of its added value. ‘Does that add to the quality?’ one provider asked. ‘I don’t think it necessarily does’.

    Skills England’s remit includes shaping technical education to respond to skills needs, and its incorporation of IfATE has already begun. As a first exercise, it could review the regulatory requirements to remove any duplication and contradictions and then consult with the sector to devise a simpler, clearer mechanism for providers to report.

    Increasing flexibility

    These difficulties meant that, while we found examples of excellent integration of academic learning and the workplace, concerns persisted as to the vocational relevance and obsolescence of learning, particularly in fast-moving sectors such as IT and mental health provision. One employer involved in delivery said they told their apprentices: ‘we have to teach you this so you get through your apprenticeship, but actually in practice that is not the way it’s done any longer’.

    In other countries, such as the Netherlands, a proportion (up to 20-25%) of an apprenticeship standard is kept flexible to be agreed between the employer and provider so that it can take better account of the current and changing situation in that particular industry, location and employer – such flexibility could be piloted in the UK.

    …without compromise

    The government’s commitment to adapting the levy into a ‘Growth and Skills Levy’, offers opportunities to improve DA delivery. Diversification was not a major consideration for the majority of employers when recruiting, though we certainly did hear evidence from those with a strong sense of their social corporate responsibility. As one SME put it:

    there are too many people in the IT industry that are like me. So we’re talking middle-aged white guys. […] Now, DAs allow people who don’t necessarily, wouldn’t consider getting into this industry from a variety of backgrounds, creeds, colours…

    We recommended in our Flex Without Compromise report that the government should take a measured approach to levy reform to minimise the risk that a broadening of scope diminishes the opportunities available particularly for younger people and newer entrants to the labour market. It should consider modelling the impact of differentiating levy funding available for DAs by either or both age and staff status, and diversification of the workforce. This could be a powerful mechanism to encourage employers to focus DA opportunities on younger people and on new recruits but would need to be considered carefully to allow for continued expansion of DAs.

    These initiatives might help address existing challenges and enhance the efficacy of Degree Apprenticeships in fostering equitable access and meeting the needs of learners and employers.

    To find out more about Edge and to read the report in full, visit www.edge.co.uk

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