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  • Supporting the student wellbeing supporters

    Supporting the student wellbeing supporters

    Across the UK, the sector is focused on scaling up wellbeing provision for students.

    But as the mental health needs of learners increase, so too does the invisible pressure placed on academic and professional staff.

    It’s a quiet crisis: wellbeing support for students is climbing the strategic agenda, while support for those delivering that care remains comparatively under-resourced. This is thrown into sharp relief given the turbulent times across the higher education institutions with staff facing uncertainty about stability of jobs, expectations and workload.

    Staff as emotional first responders

    Within the current HE model, academic staff are expected to be responsive to student disclosures, emotionally available during distress, and flexible with academic adjustments, all while fulfilling the core responsibilities of curriculum design, delivery, and assessment. As a result, the boundaries between rising workload, pedagogy, pastoral care, and crisis navigation are becoming increasingly blurred. A 2022 report by Education Support found that 78 per cent of academic staff felt their psychological wellbeing was less valued than productivity, and over half showed signs of depression.

    While professional staff often serve as key facilitators of institutional wellbeing initiatives, they too experience compassion fatigue and rising burnout especially in roles that bridge student-facing services and policy implementation. The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on academic and professional services staff was far reaching, with an increased demand for staff to re-design teaching resources, master new technologies and approaches to engage students and support their wellbeing whilst also managing their own mental health and resilience.

    Reorganising workload and investing in their wellbeing is a necessity for retention, effectiveness, and staff morale.

    Coaching as a holistic practice of care

    Coaching in higher education is a personalised approach for investing in an individual by supporting them to reach their full potential. The way coaching approaches support for an individual is through reflection, clarify goals, developing a growth mindset and build self-awareness. Therefore, coaching has been increasingly introduced across the higher education institutions for supporting students’ resilience. As those initiatives progressed, a parallel narrative emerged “Look after the staff and staff will look after students” in the 2022 Journal of Further and Higher Education by Brewster. Academic and professional colleagues also needed a space to pause, reflect, and rebuild their own sense of clarity and confidence.

    Just as students have had to navigate the difficulties and emotional toll of the Covid-19 pandemic, so have staff had to navigate profound disruption in their lives whilst still providing support for students’ mental health. With the disruption caused by the pandemic only a few years in the past, staff now face more challenges resulting from job uncertainty, institutional restructuring, and sector-wide instability. The cumulative impact of these pressures has left many staff navigating blurred boundaries, depleted confidence, and a loss of clarity about their professional identity. In this context, coaching for staff focused on wellbeing, self-reflection, and self-compassion is a strategic necessity for supporting staff resilience.

    Coaching sessions embedded into staff work plans would provide spaces for staff to decompress and have meaningful conversations to clarify career goals. While it may be desirable to reduce workload, coaching can have indirect effect in equipping staff to manage workload more efficiently through reprioritisation. Consequently colleagues would not only feel better equipped to support students but would also be able to recognise and respond to their own emotional needs, re-align work plans with their personal and professional values enhancing their overall mental wellbeing.

    Coaching isn’t just a tool for student development, it’s a strategic investment in staff wellbeing. It’s also a reminder that institutional care must be available to all staff. As it stands right now coaching is reserved only for those in leadership management. All staff academic, professional, and operational deserve access to coaching as a tool for personal and professional wellbeing. When coaching is inclusive, it becomes a strategic lever for culture change, not just individual development.

    Reframing the culture

    In a sector often reliant on institutional employee assistance programmes or crisis-oriented interventions, staff coaching offers preventative, community-driven professional development that builds collective capacity for resilience. It reframes wellbeing not as “self-care,” but as cultural care embedded in day-to-day practice, mentoring, and reflection especially given the challenges of current circumstances.

    In an age increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence and automated systems, the need to preserve human connection, emotional intelligence, and identity within education has never been greater. Coaching provides space to foster not just personal and professional growth, but a grounded sense of self, anchoring staff in their purpose and values in a period of rapid technological change. We cannot afford to treat staff wellbeing as secondary to student success as they are interdependent. When staff are supported, resourced, and cared for, they are better positioned to create the conditions in which students can thrive.

    If the higher education institutions wants to retain engaged, resilient and emotionally intelligent educators, then coaching shouldn’t just be something we only offer to students and leadership staff. Leadership plays a critical role in setting the tone for this culture, ensuring that wellbeing is not just encouraged but embedded in everyday practice for all staff. It requires visible leadership commitment to wellbeing, through coaching, open dialogue, and consistent reinforcement of values of empathy, inclusion, and respect. One powerful way to enact this commitment is through institutionally supported coaching not just for leaders, but for all staff.

    Many institutions already have a valuable but underutilised resource; trained internal coaches. These individuals bring deep contextual understanding of the higher education institution itself. Encouraging and enabling internal coaches to work with staff across all roles not just those in leadership can embed a culture of care and reflection at scale. When coaching is normalised as part of everyday professional development and wellbeing, it signals that the institution values its people not just for what they produce, but for who they are.

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  • Gunman in deadly Brown University shooting still at large after person of interest released (CNN)

    Gunman in deadly Brown University shooting still at large after person of interest released (CNN)







    Higher Education Inquirer : Gunman in deadly Brown University shooting still at large after person of interest released (CNN)




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  • Disability equality in higher education requires a joined-up and co-created approach

    Disability equality in higher education requires a joined-up and co-created approach

    Despite more than two decades of legislation to establish equality in education for disabled and or diverse learners, disabled students continue to tell us that university can feel like an obstacle course.

    The barriers are rarely spectacular, they are cumulative. A lecture uploaded without captions here, a placement form that cannot be read by a screen reader there, an adjustment agreed in one department but lost somewhere between a registry system and a module leader’s inbox. Committed staff can be found everywhere, but problematic patterns remain unyielding.

    That is the core problem our Office for Students-funded project sets out to address: in a mass, complex, data-driven sector, local goodwill and isolated fixes do not add up to equality. The numbers matter, as more students are disclosing disability than ever before, across every discipline and level of study.

    Behind those patterns sit familiar barriers: inaccessible learning environments and systems; opaque, slow, or inconsistent processes; siloed responsibilities between academic departments and student services; and a tendency to treat reasonable adjustments as individual fixes rather than signs of institutional design problems. Disabled-led organisations such as Disabled Students UK (DSUK) and Disability Rights UK (DRUK) have been clear in stating that meaningful change needs meaningful collaboration with disabled people, not consultation after the fact.

    So why has the sector not moved faster? Because the challenge, as our team have discovered, is ecological not episodic. Individual good practices exist, but without a joined-up approach or student leadership they do not add up to consistent or sustained equality.

    Policy and case law have been clear for years about duties to make reasonable adjustments. Yet the practical experience of securing those adjustments and seeing them work consistently, module by module and term by term, lags behind. One reason is structural: student services and academic departments often own different parts of the reasonable adjustment pathway, with digital systems, estates, timetabling and external partners (for example placement providers) making decisions that affect implementation.

    When responsibilities are split, accountability can be blurred; when data is siloed, feedback loops break down; when workloads bite, the exception becomes normalised. Our conclusion, based on lived experience, sector evidence and our own work with institutions, is that we have been treating an ecosystem problem with point solutions.

    An ecological approach

    When considering where disability equality and inequality are located in HE, the spaces, places and experiences we think of are shaped by relationships and meeting points between students, staff, timetables, curricula, estates, timetabling, assessment regulations, digital platforms, suppliers, and external points such as placement providers, funding assessors and employers.

    If you change one meeting point, the effects are felt across the whole system, and if meeting points are not communicating or working in joined up ways, they experience limited success in their combined aims and objectives. In this case the equitable access, success and progression of disabled students in HE.

    The ecological approach we are developing calls for joined up practices connecting actors, including students, programme teams, services, registry, estates, IT, and external partners to co-diagnose problems and co-design solutions. It works across timescales, from “use tomorrow” fixes (such as alternative formats) to structural shifts (such as assessment policy and data flows). It is transparent and makes accountability visible, sharing data, and providing feedback loops highlighting whether adjustments are timely, effective and equitable. Fundamentally, it centres disabled leadership, qualifying disabled students and staff as co-leaders, users and evaluators throughout, not just consultees.

    Three steps for equitable university experiences

    Our work is taking three key steps in developing this ecological model for the sector. First, we are mapping where and why barriers persist in the journey from a student disclosing a need to an adjustment being delivered in their teaching context.

    That journey is seldom linear. It crosses multiple systems, is hands-offs, and it often requires invisible labour by students themselves to keep things moving. We are documenting these routes with our partners, leading disabled people organisations DSUK and DRUK, so we can co-design fixes that survive real institutional conditions. We are doing this by collecting accounts and experiences through surveys and workshops with disabled students, student services and academics.

    Second, we are co-creating continuing professional development that address the needs of module leaders, personal tutors, programme leads, placement coordinators, timetablers, disability advisers and frontline advisers. The content pairs short, practical scenarios with data on timeliness and effectiveness, and prompts teams to move repeated adjustments into course design. By centring lived experience, we are producing “use-tomorrow” learning that is also a lever for upstream redesign.

    Third, we are writing university guidelines on reasonable adjustments that bring together responsibilities, timeframes and escalation routes. This is a working pathway, visible to students and staff alike, with shared ownership across academic and professional teams. These resources will be published openly on an OfS-sourced platform to support sector-wide take-up and long-term evaluation.

    Why a joined-up and co-created approach matters

    There is no shortage of “good practice” lists in the sector. What we do not yet have is a user-led, sector-ready pathway that integrates roles, systems and timescales. Gibson’s user-informed, user-led, user-evaluated approach provides the model of practice behind this project’s work. With its emphasis on partnership, user-leadership and co-creation the model places disabled students and lived expertise at the core and front of the project in design, output and impact evaluation.

    This approach reframes the idea of “reasonable”. A reasonable adjustment becomes not only something that can be delivered for an individual, but a signal about programme design and institutional capability. If the same adjustment is needed across a cohort, the reasonable response is to redesign. Staff recognise this logic; many are already pulling in that direction. The ecological approach provides them with a shared language, shared tools and shared accountability.

    On that basis, these are our recommendations for the sector:

    • Swap exceptions for design. Treat repeated adjustments as prompts to redesign curricula, assessments and processes so the need becomes built-in, not bolted on.
    • Create a single visible pathway. Publish a plain-English route, co-owned by departments and services, for securing, implementing and reviewing reasonable adjustments, with clear timeframes and escalation.
    • Close the loop with students. Ask disabled students if support was timely and effective, publish the actions you take, and track changes using measures that matter locally (as well as NSS/APP indicators).

    A student’s experience should not depend on which member of staff opens their email. In an inclusive ecology, the pathway is transparent and defensible, the systems talk to each other; the same student does not have to re-explain across every module; adjustments are recorded, enacted and reviewed; and the lessons from individual cases migrate into programme-level design.

    Our project aims to connect these practices into a pathway any provider can follow, and all the resources will be freely available for sector-wide use on an OfS-hosted platform.

    The authors would also like to thank Kathrin Paal, Chloe Webster-Harris, Lucy Bartlett, Arianwen Fox, Lottie Atton, Elena Brake, and Tyrell King for their contributions.

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  • USU Members turn out in Freezing Temperature to Fight for Fair Wages

    USU Members turn out in Freezing Temperature to Fight for Fair Wages

    USU members & union allies turned out in droves for a picket at the University of Michigan winter commencement on Sunday, December 14th over stalled contract negotiations due to management’s proposal on salary. The proposed 3% yearly salary increase for the Ann Arbor campus and 1% yearly salary increase for the Dearborn and Flint campuses was roundly rejected by USU’s bargaining team. 3% salary increases are standard on the Ann Arbor campus and would not cover the cost of dues, a staple of our platform. 1% salary increases for the Dearborn and Flint campuses were received as an insult to the staff who work there and goes against our commitment to parity among the campuses. Staff, faculty, and community allies turned out to make our voices heard and add pressure to management to pay its employees a dignified wage. Watch CBS News video coverage of the event here and read about the picket in the Michigan Daily here. Thank you to everyone who joined USU on the picket line and all the union allies who came out to support USU’s fight for fair wages!

    If you were not able to join us out on the picket line yesterday (or even if you could!), please sign and send a letter to support our fight for fair wages.


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  • New Jersey’s $40 Billion Education Machine Is Not Built to Teach

    New Jersey’s $40 Billion Education Machine Is Not Built to Teach

    Evan Scott is a lifelong New Jersey resident, a veteran, and a retired military service member. He holds a bachelor’s degree in education and was elected to his hometown’s Board of Education in 1988. Now living in Evesham Township, NJ, he continues to advocate for fair and transparent school funding.

    New Jersey spends about $40 billion each year on public education for roughly 1.3 million children. That’s one of the highest per-pupil spending levels in the country. We have a constitutional guarantee of a “thorough and efficient” education, a sophisticated school funding formula, a powerful state department of education, and layer upon layer of regulations and oversight.

    And yet: our statewide test scores are still below pre-pandemic levels. Achievement gaps by race, income, disability, and language remain enormous. In some grades and subjects, they’re widening.

    If you built a machine to spend this much money and still fail to close gaps year after year, it would look exactly like New Jersey’s education system.

    The System Optimizes for the Wrong Thing

    On paper, New Jersey’s education system is supposed to deliver a thorough and efficient education for every child, with equity across race and income, leading to college and career readiness.

    In practice, the system optimizes for compliance with regulations, political stability, and avoiding lawsuits and strikes.

    The proof is everywhere. We produce beautiful policy documents, voluminous regulations, complex aid tables, and endless reports. But ask a simple question — “what exactly are we doing differently in classrooms to get more third graders reading on grade level?” — and the answers get vague fast.

    We have built a machine to show we are doing something. We have not built a machine engineered to maximize student learning.

    $40 Billion Is Not $40 Billion of Teaching

    That enormous figure pays for instruction, sure. But also: support services, administration, operations and maintenance, transportation and food, debt, pensions, and legacy costs. Nationally, barely half of K-12 spending reaches the classroom as direct instruction. New Jersey is no exception.

    The problem isn’t that buses or nurses are wasteful. The problem is this: we are spending tens of billions of dollars through a system that does not prioritize the highest-impact instructional uses of the next dollar.

    New money goes first to contractual raises, benefit increases, new programs layered on old ones without evaluation, and rising facility costs. Almost none of this is evaluated through the brutal question a serious system would ask: “If we invest this next $100 million, what evidence says it will move reading and math outcomes for our most vulnerable students?”

    We don’t ask that. We just roll the machine forward.

    The State Knows Better—But Only in Science

    The Department of Education has already shown us what a more serious approach looks like. On its own website, NJDOE concedes that less than 20 percent of classroom materials are aligned to standards in science, and has responded by building a Model Science Curriculum around vetted, high-quality resources.

    In other words: the Department knows that standards alone are not enough. Teachers need specific, evidence-based materials, and many districts aren’t getting them on their own.

    But why only science? Our most urgent gaps are in early reading and middle-grades math. If the Department can curate model units for science, it can create a K-3 literacy framework aligned with the science of reading and a model math sequence built around proven materials.

    Instead, New Jersey treats curriculum as a hyper-local, 600-district procurement hobby — and then acts surprised when quality is all over the map and only half our students read or do math on grade level.

    600 Districts, Zero Instructional Coherence

    New Jersey has hundreds of school districts, each with its own superintendent, business administrator, HR department, and curriculum staff. Many are tiny. Above them sits NJDOE and county superintendents, responsible for standards, accountability, and oversight.

    What does the state actually control? It sets standards, not curriculum. Districts must “align” to the New Jersey Student Learning Standards, but the state does not mandate or approve specific programs.

    The result: strong standards and a huge compliance apparatus at the top. A fragmented, district-by-district free-for-all in curriculum and instruction at the bottom.

    Contrast that with Mississippi and Louisiana, which have seen real gains in early reading. Their state agencies didn’t stop at standards. They rated and recommended specific curricula aligned to the science of reading. They tied professional development to those exact materials. They used state power to make instructional coherence non-negotiable in early grades.

    New Jersey has allowed 600 different answers to “what does reading instruction look like in K-3?” and then acts surprised when results are uneven and gaps persist.

    Our administrative machine is big enough to boss districts around on paperwork and testing windows. It is somehow too shy to insist on evidence-based literacy instruction for six-year-olds.

    SFRA: A Formula Without a Steering Wheel

    New Jersey’s School Funding Reform Act is, in theory, a rational way to calculate how much each district needs, with extra weights for poverty, language, and special education.

    But SFRA answers “how much?” It says almost nothing about “for what?”

    You can be billions closer to full funding and still have districts spending above adequacy with mediocre outcomes, districts below adequacy left on their own to figure out interventions, and no systematic connection between spending patterns and student outcomes.

    SFRA is a clever formula for filling tanks. It is not a steering wheel.

    A System That Protects Itself Better Than It Protects Children

    Step back and the obscenity becomes stark:

    We tolerate enormous fixed administrative overhead spread across hundreds of districts that could consolidate or share services. We accept a patchwork of curricula in early literacy even as other states prove you can do better. We pour in new money with minimal discipline about which interventions actually work. We allow graduation standards to be quietly lowered so statistics look smoother.

    All of this is defended in the name of “local control,” “flexibility,” and “respecting stakeholders.”

    Meanwhile, a third grader in Trenton is still far less likely to read on grade level than a third grader in a wealthy suburb — despite living in one of the highest-spending education systems on Earth.

    New Jersey’s system is extremely good at sustaining itself. It is not nearly good enough at changing itself when children are not learning.

    What a First-Principles Reset Would Look Like

    If we were designing a $40 billion system for learning, rather than inheriting a $40 billion system of habits:

    Clear, public goals. By 2030: 80% of third graders reading proficiently, with racial and income gaps below 10 percentage points. By 8th grade: 70% proficient in math, same gap constraint. By graduation: diplomas tied to real college and career readiness benchmarks.

    Evidence-based spending rules. The next billion in state aid goes first to high-dosage tutoring for students below proficiency, smaller K-3 class sizes in high-poverty schools, literacy and math coaches tied to vetted curricula, and high-quality pre-K expansion. Not to automatic expansion of everything we already do.

    State leadership on curriculum. NJDOE should review and rate K-8 ELA and math curricula and publish a short list of high-quality options. Professional development should be built around those choices. Districts can still choose — but from good choices.

    Rationalized administration. Require consolidation and shared services where appropriate. Reinvest savings into classroom-facing roles: teachers, aides, interventionists, counselors.

    Real accountability for results. Public dashboards showing, for each district: spending per pupil broken out by category, proficiency rates and gaps by subgroup, and whether things are improving. Tie flexibility and funding to demonstrated ability to turn dollars into learning.

    The Courage We Actually Need

    New Jersey doesn’t need one more glossy plan or press release celebrating “investments in education.” It needs the political courage to admit that our current system is not designed to do the thing we say we value most.

    It will take courage to challenge the sacredness of local administrative fiefdoms. To tell high-spending districts that dollars above adequacy must be justified by outcomes. To insist that early literacy is not a matter of preference but of evidence. To rebuild NJDOE from compliance cop to instructional engine.

    We are not a poor state. We are not a low-spending state. Our children’s struggles are not about scarcity. They are about design — the design of a system that has learned to protect adults, institutions, and routines more effectively than it has learned to teach children to read, write, and think.

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  • The Five Pillars of the College Meltdown

    The Five Pillars of the College Meltdown

    Demographics

    The first pillar of the College Meltdown is demographic decline. Following the Great Recession, U.S. birthrates dropped sharply, creating a smaller pipeline of traditional college-age students. Nathan Grawe’s projections and WICHE’s Knocking at the College Door reports point to a steep enrollment cliff between 2025 and 2029, with some regions—particularly the Midwest and Northeast—facing the most severe contractions.

    Case Study: Dozens of small private colleges in the Midwest, such as Iowa Wesleyan University (closed in 2023), have already succumbed to shrinking student pools. These closures foreshadow the demographic cliff that will hit hardest in tuition-dependent institutions.

    Economics

    The second pillar is economic fragility. Tuition and fees have risen faster than inflation and wages, leaving families burdened with debt. Student loan balances now exceed $1.7 trillion, with many graduates trapped in lifetime debt peonage. State disinvestment has shifted costs onto students, while tuition-dependent small colleges and regional universities face existential threats.

    Case Study: The collapse of Mount Ida College in Massachusetts (2018) illustrates how tuition-driven institutions can fail suddenly when enrollment drops and debt obligations mount. Similar financial stress has led to mergers, such as the consolidation of Pennsylvania’s state universities.

    Integrity (Fraud and Trust)

    The third pillar is integrity. Enrollment fraud has become a systemic issue, with ghost students, bots, and synthetic identities siphoning off Pell Grants and other aid. Documented losses exceed $100 million annually, but California officials estimate that nearly a third of applications in 2024 were fraudulent. Fraud not only drains resources but also distorts enrollment data, masking the severity of demographic decline and eroding trust in higher education institutions.

    Case Study: California Community Colleges uncovered tens of thousands of fraudulent applications in 2021–2022, with bots and synthetic identities targeting federal aid. This distorted enrollment figures and forced institutions to spend millions on fraud detection systems.

    Governance and Labor

    The fourth pillar is governance and labor. Higher education has been corporatized, with growing reliance on Online Program Managers (OPMs), outsourcing, and profit-driven models. Faculty labor has been deskilled, with adjuncts and contingent instructors making up the majority of teaching staff. Administrative bloat contrasts with shrinking instructional budgets, and some institutions resemble “robocolleges” with minimal full-time faculty presence.

    Case Study: The University of Phoenix, once the largest for-profit college, closed hundreds of campuses and shifted to online models heavily reliant on OPMs. Meanwhile, adjunct faculty at many regional universities report poverty wages and no job security, even as administrative salaries rise.

    Culture and Public Trust

    The fifth pillar is cultural erosion. Public confidence in higher education has plummeted, dropping from 57 percent in 2015 to just 36 percent in 2024. Skepticism about the value of a degree has grown, with alternatives like certificates, apprenticeships, and direct-to-work pathways gaining traction. Political polarization and media narratives of closures, mergers, and scandals reinforce the perception of a system in meltdown.

    Case Study: Gallup polls show declining trust across political and demographic groups. Regional newspapers covering closures of institutions like Green Mountain College (Vermont, 2019) and Becker College (Massachusetts, 2021) amplify public skepticism, reinforcing the narrative that higher education is no longer a safe investment.

    The Pillars Weakening 

    The College Meltdown is not the result of a single factor but the convergence of demographics, economics, integrity failures, governance issues, and cultural distrust. Each pillar weakens the foundation of higher education, and together they accelerate its unraveling. Case studies from across the country show that the meltdown is not theoretical—it is already happening. Recognizing these interconnected forces is essential if policymakers, educators, and communities hope to address the crisis before the collapse becomes irreversible.

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  • You must use AI! Don’t use AI!

    You must use AI! Don’t use AI!

    But even when people are encouraged to use AI, that use comes with restrictions and these restrictions will differ from workplace to workplace.

    Rules for use

    At Reuters, Barrett said, there is a set of AI principles that all journalists must follow and a corporate policy that covers the use of AI for all use of data and tools throughout the organization.

    “We have a rule that no visuals may be created or edited using generative AI as news photos must show reality as it happened in front of the camera,” she said. “All the tools we are creating and approving for wider use are based on taking source material, creating content or analysis from that and, crucially, checking the veracity before publishing. Everything must keep to our tone and standards.”

    At Reuters, all reporters and photojournalists are accountable for everything they publish, Barrett said. “If we find that there has been irresponsible use of AI, there is a chain of custody through our editing systems which means we can track back to where the AI was used badly,” she said.

    Reuters is trying to stay ahead of the game in a world that is rapidly incorporating AI into just about everything. But not all organizations have the resources to keep up.

    For many of the people Savannah Jenkins works with, AI is viewed as a direct threat to their business. Jenkins is a communications manager at Onja, a social enterprise in Madagascar that trains underprivileged youth to become software developers. “It’s one of the world’s poorest nations and the jobs these students land after the program allow them to support their families and extricate themselves from poverty,” Jenkins said. “AI is a direct threat to entry-level coders and the enterprise is having to adapt to this threat.”

    Still, she acknowledged that overall, it is generally accepted that AI is here to stay and that it can benefit even small organizations. “As a comms professional working in the nonprofit space, there are a lot of tools that can help small, under-resourced teams do more, especially around content development,” she said. “For example, the AI-powered tools in Canva allow smaller outfits to deliver highquality graphics.”

    An AI future in flux

    The bottom line is that we are in an experimental period where a very new technology is still being developed and tried out in different ways that are new and untested.

    This creates all kinds of worries for people like Barrett.

    “I worry that somebody will steal a lead on us,” she said. “Another publisher, a competitor and, most likely, one of the AI companies coming up with a whizz-bang AI-driven news service or product that damages our business, our industry and democracy of well-informed people.”

    She also worries that someone will use a tool that has not properly been tested and inadvertently divulge information from Reuters that shouldn’t go out to the public.

    Her worries aren’t confined to internal use at Reuters. “I also worry about people getting into arguments or obsessive conversations with AI tools,” she said. “There is increasing proof that the sycophancy and attempts to keep users engaged with the chatbots can be very bad for you.”

    Questions to consider:

    1. Why is the use of AI in the work world so inconsistent?

    2. Why is it important for corporations and nonprofits to have policies in place on the use of AI?

    3. Do you feel prepared to use AI in any job you might get?

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  • Why every middle school student deserves a second chance to learn to read

    Why every middle school student deserves a second chance to learn to read

    Key points:

    Between kindergarten and second grade, much of the school day is dedicated to helping our youngest students master phonics, syllabication, and letter-sound correspondence–the essential building blocks to lifelong learning.

    Unfortunately, this foundational reading instruction has been stamped with an arbitrary expiration date. Students who miss that critical learning window, including our English Language Learners (ELL), children with learning disabilities, and those who find reading comprehension challenging, are pushed forward through middle and high school without the tools they need. In the race to catch up to classmates, they struggle academically, emotionally, and in extreme cases, eventually disengage or drop out.

    Thirteen-year-old Alma, for instance, was still learning the English language during those first three years of school. She grappled with literacy for years, watching her peers breeze through assignments while she stumbled over basic decoding. However, by participating in a phonetics-first foundational literacy program in sixth grade, she is now reading at grade level.

    “I am more comfortable when I read,” she shared. “And can I speak more fluently.”

    Alma’s words represent a transformation that American education typically says is impossible after second grade–that every child can become a successful reader if given a second chance.

    Lifting up the learners left behind 

    At Southwestern Jefferson County Consolidated School in Hanover, Ind., I teach middle-school students like Alma who are learning English as their second language. Many spent their formative school years building oral language proficiency and, as a result, lost out on systematic instruction grounded in English phonics patterns. 

    These bright and ambitious students lack basic foundational skills, but are expected to keep up with their classmates. To help ELL students access the same rigorous content as their peers while simultaneously building the decoding skills they missed, we had to give them a do-over without dragging them a step back. 

    Last year, we introduced our students to Readable English, a research-backed phonetic system that makes English decoding visible and teachable at any age. The platform embeds foundational language instruction into grade-level content, including the textbooks, novels, and worksheets all students are using, but with phonetic scaffolding that makes decoding explicit and systematic.

    To help my students unlock the code behind complicated English language rules, we centered our classroom intervention on three core components:

    • Rhyming: The ability to rhyme, typically mastered by age five, is a key early literacy indicator. However, almost every ELL student in my class was missing this vital skill. Changing even one letter can alter the sound of a word, and homographic words like “tear” have completely different sounds and meanings. By embedding a pronunciation guide into classroom content, glyphs–or visual diacritical marks–indicate irregular sounds in common words and provide key information about the sound a particular letter makes.
    • Syllabication patterns: Because our ELL students were busy learning conversational English during the critical K-2 years, systematic syllable division, an essential decoding strategy, was never practiced. Through the platform, visual syllable breaks organize words into simple, readable chunks that make patterns explicit and teachable.
    • Silent letter patterns: With our new phonics platform, students can quickly “hear” different sounds. Unmarked letters make their usual sound while grayed-out letters indicate those with a silent sound. For students frustrated with pronunciation, pulling back the curtain on language rules provided them with that “a-ha” moment.

    The impact on our students’ reading proficiency has been immediate and measurable, creating a cognitive energy shift from decoding to comprehension. Eleven-year-old Rodrigo, who has been in the U.S. for only two years, reports he’s “better at my other classes now” and is seeing boosts in his science, social studies, and math grades.

    Taking a new step on a nationwide level

    The middle-school reading crisis in the U.S. is devastating for our students. One-third of eighth-graders failed to hit the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) benchmark in reading, the largest percentage ever. In addition, students who fail to build literacy skills exhibit lower levels of achievement and are more likely to drop out of school. 

    The state of Indiana has recognized the crisis and, this fall, launched a new reading initiative for middle-school students. While this effort is a celebrated first step, every school needs the right tools to make intervention a success, especially for our ELL students. 

    Educators can no longer expect students to access grade-level content without giving them grade-level decoding skills. Middle-school students need foundational literacy instruction that respects their age, cognitive development, and dignity. Revisiting primary-grade phonics curriculum isn’t the right answer–educators must empower kids with phonetic scaffolding embedded in the same content their classmates are learning. 

    To help all students excel and embrace a love of reading, it’s time to reject the idea that literacy instruction expires in second grade. Instead, all of us can provide every child, at any age, the chance to become a successful lifelong reader who finds joy in the written word.

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  • Grad Programs Brace for Loan Caps

    Grad Programs Brace for Loan Caps

    Most of the colleges with the largest graduate programs in the country don’t have clear plans for how they’ll deal with new loan caps, set to kick in next July. And if they do, they aren’t taking publicly about it.

    For years, students could borrow essentially unlimited funds to pay for graduate education, thanks to a program known as Grad PLUS that capped loans at the cost of attendance. Republicans in Congress and other critics have argued that colleges took advantage of this program and raised their prices, fueling the student debt crisis. Loans for grad students make up nearly half of the federal loan portfolio.

    Along the way, colleges have begun to rely on graduate education to fund their university operations, higher ed experts say.

    But now that two-decade-old system is ending. Congress eliminated Grad PLUS over the summer and will cap how much students can borrow for graduate education. Lawmakers also limited Parent PLUS loans, which were also previously uncapped and offered families a way to make up the gap and pay for college. Both changes came out of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

    Beginning next summer, most graduate programs will have a federal loan cap of $100,000, with exceptions for a scaled-down number of professional programs with a limit set at $200,000. Those changes have created uncertainty for graduate schools and students who are navigating a changing landscape with fewer resources. Experts say graduate schools could face enrollment declines and some could shutter, thanks to the new limits.

    Even before the loan caps, graduate education was facing a reckoning, particularly after the Trump administration clamped down on federal research funding. Colleges paused graduate admissions for doctoral programs, and sometimes rescinded offers. Meanwhile, colleges are starting to rethink their approaches to humanities doctoral programs, among other shifts in this space.

    Planning for Change

    To better understand how universities are planning ahead, Inside Higher Ed reached out to 20 of the largest graduate programs in the nation. Most did not respond. Those that did emphasized a mix of increased corporate engagement and expanded loan options, among other measures.

    But for the most part, many appear to still be figuring it out.

    “We’re spending a lot of time this year looking at diversifying the streams of funding for graduate students,” said Bonnie Ferri, vice provost for graduate and postdoctoral education at Georgia Institute of Technology.

    Ferri noted that while Georgia Tech already has corporate partnerships that sponsor projects, which in turn help fund students, the university is doubling down on those efforts this year and “focusing on being more systematic” to spread those dollars across more graduate programs.

    At a recent University of Florida Board of Trustees meeting, Vice President and Chief Enrollment Strategist, Mary Parker, said UF will “have to figure out how to fill the gap for our students” as loan options diminish. She noted UF is rolling out Scholarship Universe, a tool to help students find internal and external scholarships. Parker said UF is also “looking at the expansion of our institution loan program” and the university will also help students identify private loan options.

    University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign spokesperson Patrick Wade told Inside Higher Ed by email that Illinois is still in the planning process and it is too early to share specific details. But Wade added that university officials “are directing units to begin developing contingency plans and to communicate proactively with current and prospective students, particularly in professionally oriented programs, where we expect recent changes to have the greatest impact.”

    Several other institutions said it was too early to share details about how they’ll fill loan gaps.

    Grad Enrollment Fallout

    Some experts believe the changes to federal loans will leave students scrambling.

    “I think when we get to July 1 next year, when these caps are scheduled to go into place, there will be a lot of students who are going to need to come up with another way of paying for graduate school than what’s been true in the past,” Jordan Matsudaira, director of the Postsecondary Education & Economics Research at American University, told Inside Higher Ed.

    Research led by Matsudaira projects that programs such as dentistry, osteopathy and medicine will be particularly squeezed by the changes.

    And given the many other pressures on university budgets, such as federal research funding challenges, federal efforts to limit international enrollment, and the looming demographic cliff, Matsudaira doesn’t expect universities to lower graduate tuition or significantly increase aid.

    “I just think institution budgets are going to be under so much pressure from so many different things that it is just incredibly optimistic thinking, bordering on fantasy, to believe that they’re going to come up with substantial sources of funding to be able to either cut their graduate school prices or be able to fund their own loan program to enroll students,” he said.

    (Some experts have suggested that states should get involved by providing low or no-interest loans as the Grad Plus loan option goes away.)

    Matsudaira expects a “very rough transition period over this coming year” for students. He also expects graduate enrollment to decline.

    “The question is how much does it reduce the number of students pursuing graduate school,” Matsudaira said.

    Private loans are one option students are likely to turn to. He believes private loans will surge, with the market growing from around $3 billion a year currently to $10 billion in the near future.

    But even private loans may prove difficult to obtain for some students.

    “If I had to make predictions, I would guess that private student loan providers will make loans available to students attending programs with a good track record of earnings and loan repayment, but it is less certain whether students in programs that tend to lead to lower earnings and/or worse loan repayment outcomes will be able to access private student loans,” Lesley Turner, an associate professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, wrote by email.

    She added private loans will have “fewer protections and less flexibility in repayment terms.”

    Turner expects that the fallout of the changes to graduate school funding will not only decrease enrollment but may even prod some institutions to shutter such programs as headcount falls.

    Credit rating agencies have also taken a dim view of what the changes will mean.

    “Institutions with a greater proportion of graduate students will likely face more pronounced impacts from these policy changes, particularly if they serve disproportionately high levels of aid- and loan-dependent students,” Fitch Ratings concluded in its 2026 sector outlook, which it described as deteriorating. “While private loan providers can fill gaps created by federal limits, private offerings may nevertheless deter students, as private loans will likely be offered with less favorable rates and limited flexibility compared to what was available under federal programs.”

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  • MacKenzie Scott Showers Colleges With More Gifts

    MacKenzie Scott Showers Colleges With More Gifts

    Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott gave more multimillion donations out to colleges.

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    Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott is at it again with another round of gifts.

    Robeson Community College in North Carolina announced a $24 million gift from Scott on Thursday, the single largest contribution in the rural college’s history.

    Robeson’s president, Melissa Singler, called the gift “a profound affirmation of our students, our faculty and staff, and the limitless potential of Robeson County.”

    “Never before have we been given a gift of this magnitude that affords our team the time, space and freedom to think, dream and plan boldly,” Singler said in a news release.

    Scott also gifted Carl Albert State College in Oklahoma $23 million. The college is working on a strategic plan for how to use the funds, focused on “sustainability, academic and career success, innovation, and community engagement,” according to an announcement last week. Connors State College, also in Oklahoma, celebrated a $15 million contribution from Scott, its largest gift ever.

    Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College also announced a “multi-million dollar gift” last week, the largest unrestricted gift in its history, but didn’t specify the amount. The tribal college plans to use Scott’s funding to support scholarships and grants for native and non-native students.

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