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  • Summer Courses to Help Incoming College Students Adjust

    Summer Courses to Help Incoming College Students Adjust

    National data suggests today’s college students are less prepared to succeed in college than previous cohorts, due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic and remote instruction. Students lack academic and socio-emotional readiness, administrators say, prompting colleges to implement new interventions to get them up to speed.

    For years, Mount Saint Mary’s University in California has offered a summer bridge program for students who may be less prepared to make the transition to college, such as first-generation students.

    This summer, MSMU launched Summer Pathways, which is designed for all incoming students to get a head start on college. They complete two college courses for free and are able to connect with peers and explore campus before starting the term.

    “We felt the earlier we can engage students, the better,” said Amanda Romero, interim assistant provost.

    How it works: Summer Pathways is a six-week, credit-bearing experience that takes place in the middle of the summer, after orientation in June but before classes start in August.

    During the program, students complete a Summer Pathway seminar and one additional introductory course, choosing among sociology, English and mathematics.

    Students take classes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays; on Tuesdays and Thursdays they participate in workshops about managing their time, dealing with impostor syndrome or maintaining well-being.

    “We’ve invited the whole campus community to come in, meet with our students in person, talk about their careers, their offices, how they ended up at the Mount, what their hopes and aspirations are for the future,” said Elizabeth Sturgeon, interim assistant provost and director for Summer Pathways.

    The goal is to make students aware of campus resources and connect them with faculty and staff early in their college careers.

    The program also takes students on fun excursions around Los Angeles, including to the ballet, the Hollywood Bowl and the Getty Museum.

    The experience is free, and students are given a $250 stipend to help pay for gas and food. They can also pay $3,000 to live in a residence hall for the six-week program if they don’t want to commute to campus each day.

    A community approach: While many faculty work on eight-month contracts and have the summers off, Sturgeon and Romero said it wasn’t difficult to get professors engaged and on campus for the program.

    “We had departments that had never participated in Summer Pathways before, never knew what it was about, opting in and coming down in person to present to our students,” Sturgeon said.

    “It’s important for our core faculty to get in front of students, and this is a great opportunity to do just that,” Romero said.

    Returning students also stepped up to serve as peer mentors for new students.

    The program has paid off thus far, leaders said, with students hitting the ground running at the start of the term.

    “It offers a smoother transition,” Romero said. “A lot of anxiety with starting a new place is ‘where’s this, where’s that, where do I go?’”

    “They know what the resources are, they know where to park, what to order in the cafeteria,” Sturgeon said. “They have a friend group; they have that one peer mentor who’s their friend they can reach out to. From day one, in the business of being a college student, they’re an alum after six weeks.”

    What’s next: In summer 2025, 66 out of 90 incoming students participated in Summer Pathways, engaging in five different courses. And 98.5 percent of them matriculated in the fall.

    In the future, campus leaders hope to introduce project-based learning into the courses, interweaving the university’s mission as a Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet institution.

    “We just want to make it bigger going forward, with more classes and students participating,” Sturgeon said.

    The overarching dream is to get all incoming students to sign up, but administrators recognize that those who don’t live in the region may face additional barriers to engaging in in-person activities because they lack housing. Sturgeon and Romero are pushing for additional resources to offer housing and seeking solutions to address the need for additional funding and staffing.

    If your student success program has a unique feature or twist, we’d like to know about it. Click here to submit.

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  • The post-16 pivot: why higher education needs to lean into the skills revolution

    The post-16 pivot: why higher education needs to lean into the skills revolution

    This blog was kindly authored by Dr. Ismini Vasileiou, Associate Professor at De Montfort University.

    The government’s new Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper reframes how the UK prepares people for work, learning, and life. It promises a simpler, more coherent system built around quality, parity of esteem, and progression – introducing new V-Levels, reforming Level 3 and below qualifications, and setting out clearer routes into higher education and skilled employment.

    Within it there is an unmistakable message for universities: higher education is no longer a separate tier but a partner in a joined-up skills ecosystem.

    This direction of travel strongly echoes the recommendations of the Cyber Workforce of the Future white paper, which called for a unified national skills taxonomy, stronger coordination between education and employers, and consistent frameworks for developing technical talent. The government’s post-16 reforms, though broader in scope, now seeks to achieve at system level what the cyber sector has already begun to pilot.

    Reimagining pathways: from fragmentation to flow

    At the heart of the White Paper lies the ambition to create “a seamless system where every learner can progress, without duplication or dead ends.” The proposed V-Levels for 16-19-year-olds aim to sit alongside A-Levels, replacing hundreds of overlapping technical qualifications and creating a nationally recognised route into both higher technical and academic study.

    Reforms to Level 2 and entry-level qualifications will introduce new “Foundation Programmes” that build essential skills and prepare learners for work or further study. Alongside these, stepping-stone qualifications in English and Mathematics will replace automatic GCSE resits, acknowledging that linear repetition has failed to deliver progress for many young people.

    The emphasis on simplified, stackable routes reflects the very principles behind the Cyber Workforce of the Future model, which proposed interoperable learning pathways connecting schools, further education, higher education, and industry within a single skills continuum. What began as a sector-specific call for alignment in cyber is now being written into national policy.

    Higher education’s new context

    The White Paper links post-16 reform directly to the Industrial Strategy and to Skills England’s mission to align learning with labour-market demand. For universities, several themes stand out:

    • Progression and parity: Higher education is expected to work together with further education and employers to ensure that learners completing V-Levels and higher technical qualifications can progress seamlessly into Level 4, 5, and 6 provision.
    • Higher Technical Qualifications (HTQs): The expansion of HTQs in growth areas such as AI, cyber security, and green technology positions universities as key co-developers and deliverers of technical education.
    • Quality and accountability: The Office for Students will have powers to limit recruitment to poor-quality courses and tie tuition-fee flexibility to demonstrable outcomes, reinforcing the need for robust progression and employability data.
    • Lifelong learning and modularity: The commitment to the Lifelong Learning Entitlement demands interoperability of credits across further education and higher education – another concept long championed in the cyber-skills ecosystem.

    Taken together, these reforms require universities to move beyond disciplinary silos and become brokers of opportunity – enabling flexible, lifelong learning rather than simply delivering three-year degrees.

    From strategy to delivery: lessons from cyber that can scale

    The Cyber Workforce of the Future paper provides a live example of how the government’s post-16 vision can be delivered in practice. Its framework rests on three transferable pillars:

    1. Unified skills taxonomy – mapping qualifications and competencies against occupational standards to create a common language for education and industry.
    2. Education – industry bridge – aligning curriculum design and placements to real-world demand through structured partnerships between universities, FE colleges, and employers.
    3. Inclusive pipeline development – embedding equity and access by designing pathways that work for diverse learners and career changers, not just traditional entrants.

    These principles are not unique to cyber; they represent a template for how any technical or digital field can align with the White Paper’s objectives. The challenge now is scaling this joined-up approach nationally across disciplines – from advanced manufacturing to health tech and green energy.

    Six priorities for universities

    1. Redefine admissions and progression routes
      Recognise new qualifications such as V-Levels and HTQs as rigorous, valued entry points to higher education.
    2. Co-design regional skills ecosystems
      Partner with futher education colleges, local authorities, and industry to map regional growth sectors and align provision accordingly.
    3. Develop flexible, modular curricula
      Build stackable learning blocks that learners can access and re-enter throughout their careers under the Lifelong Learning Entitlement.
    4. Co-create with employers
      Move from consultation to collaboration, embedding placements, apprenticeships, and micro-credentials that reflect labour-market demand.
    5. Support learner transition
      Provide structured academic and digital-skills support for students from vocational or stepping-stone routes.
    6. Measure outcomes transparently
      Track progression, attainment, and employability by qualification route to evidence value and inform continuous improvement.

    Opportunities and risks

    The White Paper’s success will depend on genuine partnership between universities, further education providers, and employers. Without coordination, the new structure could replicate old hierarchies – leaving V-Levels or technical routes seen as second-tier options. Similarly, tighter regulation must not deter universities from widening participation or admitting learners who require additional support.

    The cyber-skills sector demonstrates what can work when these risks are managed: clear frameworks, shared standards, and collaborative delivery that bridges academic and technical domains. Replicating this across disciplines will require sustained investment and policy stability, not short-term pilots.

    A new social contract for tertiary education

    The Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper represents a genuine reset for tertiary education – one that values technical excellence, lifelong learning, and regional growth alongside academic achievement.

    Its goals mirror those already embedded within the Cyber Workforce of the Future initiative: building a national system where education and employment are continuous, mutually reinforcing stages of one journey. The cyber model shows that when universities act as integrators –  connecting further education, employers, and government – policy ambitions translate into measurable workforce outcomes.

    What began as a sector-specific experiment can now serve as a blueprint for system-wide reform. If universities across all disciplines embrace this pivot, they can help turn the White Paper’s vision into reality – a cohesive, agile, and inclusive skills ecosystem ready for the future economy.

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  • Can You Keep a Secret? – Teaching in Higher Ed

    Can You Keep a Secret? – Teaching in Higher Ed

    This post is one of many, related to my participation in Harold Jarche’s Personal Knowledge Mastery Workshop.

    The Medium: The “Smart” Phone

    Shhhh… Don’t tell anyone, but our 13 year-old son will likely be getting his first “smart” phone for Christmas this year. I don’t think he has ever read my blog, so we should be good until December. As long as you cooperate with this secret surprise.

    I remember reading a few years back that the average child in the United States gets a phone at the age of 11. That seemed really early to me then. By the time Christmas rolls around, he will be about a month away from turning 14, which seems awfully late.

    Our son would agree.

    He tells us that he and one other guy in school are the only kids without a phone at this point. This may sound like a stereotypical story of woe that young people tell their parents to let them have something. But when we discuss the subject, there’s a common theme:

    What he really wants is a camera, disguised as a phone.

    A primary driver for his wanting the camera and messaging functionality is his upcoming middle school Washington DC trip in the Spring. When I tossed the idea around of getting him a camera, instead, he had no interest in that, though. Dave and I have talked a lot about it and figure this is a good time for him to get a phone and we’ve started our discussions about how we want to handle that, as parents.

    Dave and I talk more about these tensions in the second half of the video we recorded of us unboxing and playing with Justin Shaffer’s Alignment: A Course Design Deck.

    We also link in the video’s notes to the parent resources from The Social Institute, which are recommended by the academic leadership at our kids’ school. Now, on to why I’m bringing up smart phones in this particular post.

    McLuhan’s Media Tetrad

    Jarche introduces those of us participating in his Personal Knowledge Mastery Workshop to McLuhan’s Media Tetrad this week. I’ve seen the diagram on Jarche’s blog, before, but never slowed myself down enough to spend time soaked in it, like I have today.

    A diamond-shaped diagram illustrating McLuhan’s media tetrad. The center diamond is labeled “Medium.” Four surrounding diamonds describe its effects: the top says “Obsolesces — a previous medium,” the right says “Retrieves — a much older medium,” the bottom says “Reverses — its properties when extended to its limits,” and the left says “Extends — a human property.” The image is adapted from jarche.com

     

    Here’s my best, novice’s understanding of the framework:

    It starts with a new medium.

    McLuhan posits through his Laws of Media that every new medium results in four effects. Jarche explains that under McLuhan’s laws, each new medium:

    Extends a human property,

    Obsolesces the previous medium (& makes it a luxury good)

    Retrieves a much older medium &

    Reverses its properties when pushed to its limits

    When we take time to understand what happens with new media, we can put in place steps to negate or minimize the negative effects. Ample examples exist of ways that social media extends humans’ voices, while ultimately making healthy, human-to-human conversation obsolete. Then, our more tribal affiliations can kick in (Twitter, anyone?) and we reverse into “populism and demagoguery,” according to Jarche’s example.

    Jarche writes:

    The reversals are already evident — corporate surveillance, online orthodoxy, life as reality TV, constant outrage to sell advertising. The tetrads give us a common framework to start addressing the effects of social media pushed to their limits. Once you see these effects, you cannot un-see them.

    My Example

    As I mentioned earlier, I’ve selected the “smart” phone as the medium to analyze.

    Here’s my attempt at the tetrad:

    A diamond-shaped diagram showing McLuhan’s media tetrad applied to the “smart” phone. The center diamond says “smart phone.” The four surrounding diamonds explain its effects: top—“Obsolesces: ‘home’ phone and other single-purpose devices”; right—“Retrieves: the village commons”; bottom—“Reverses: disconnection, distraction, and mental health issues”; left—“Extends: connection opportunities and access to information.” The image is labeled “adapted from jarche.com.”

    Jarche suggested that we first explore what the technology enhances and then what it obsolesces. That felt easy and hard, simultaneously. Today’s “smart” phones contain so many features that the definition of what this technology is can be blurred. Our son, for example, has understandably brought up that when adults raise concerns about phones, they can often be actually talking about social media (which he presently has zero interest in).

    The “smart” phone:

    • Extends: connection opportunities and access to information
    • Obsolesces: “home” phone + other single-purpose devices

    As Jarche predicted, these two elements of the tetrad were fairly easy to identify (though I could have chosen to go in a bunch of different directions). I can still recall what it felt like to go with my brother to a convenience store that was about two miles from our house and involved climbing down a super steep, dirt hill. The idea that I could have called my Mom to ask her to pick us up, so we could have avoided the steep hill on the way home would not have occurred to me at the time.

    That’s despite the fact that we watched Star Trek as a family and they had these transporter beams that would transmit the characters in the show from the starship and a planet’s surface.

     

    Leonard Nimoy William Shatner Star Trek 1968Leonard Nimoy William Shatner Star Trek 1968

    The idea of extending our home phone to one that could be carried around in my pocket (if women’s pants had pockets, that is…) would have been a welcome idea to me. Then, there are all the other single-purpose devices that the “smart” phone can take the place of, such as:

    • 📞 Landline phone
    • 📷 Camera
    • 🎧 MP3 player
    • 🗺️ GPS
    • ⏰ Alarm clock
    • 📺 Video player
    • 💾 Disk or hard drive
    • 📝 Notepad
    • 🧮 Calculator
    • 💡 Flashlight
    • 💳 Wallet
    • 🧭 Compass
    • ✉️ Mail service

    I could have kept going with that list for a long time and just be getting started.

    Productive Struggle

    Cognitive psychologists talk about how helpful productive struggle can be in the learning process. As Jarche thought we might, I had trouble with what the smart phone might retrieve a much older medium, in terms of the way I had anchored the framework with the other two components (extends and obsolesces). I then moved my focus over to the reverses portion of the tetrad and thought how it was the polar opposite (disconnection) of what it promises to extend (connection).

    For the retrieves part, I kept getting stuck between two, broad ideas: the pubic square or the commons.

    I considered how the promise of today’s phones as the device to connect us with others and with information winds up making loneliness more likely and seeding a potential decline in mental health. I also fixated on how the “extends, obsolesces, and reverses” descriptions I had come up with were more geared toward individuals, yet the promise of the common good is only possible when we come together in community.

    I would like to learn more about the history of the public square, as well as regarding the commons in medieval and early modern Europe. I’m also intrigued to keep my learning going regarding “the commons” in digital contexts (Wikipedia, Wikis, Creative Commons, etc.). There are also a lot of places I continue to want to explore about the attention economy and surveillance capitalism.

    Until next time, when I share my reflections from Jarche’s Fake News lesson. That should be fun, ehh? Nothing going on there in the world, right? 🫠 

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  • The white paper kept quiet on market exit

    The white paper kept quiet on market exit

    The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s annual report in early July said that the government was working on a legislative programme to “ensure higher education sector access to an insolvency regime.”

    Yet for all that Monday’s post-16 white paper compiled together much of the ongoing work that had been trickling out of Whitehall for the previous 12 months, such plans were notable by their absence.

    Similarly, the Office for Students’ 2025–26 business plan said it was putting together proposals for a system whereby a “validator of last resort” for the English sector, which would protect students if the provider that validates their degree exits the market, as well as a possible “bespoke clearing system” for students in the event that their institution closes.

    Again, neither of these ideas got airtime in the white paper, despite skills minister Jacqui Smith having given her endorsement to the latter in comments to the media.

    The white paper in fact steers wholly clear of policy thinking around what would happen in the (ever more likely) event that a large English higher education provider finds itself in severe financial distress threatening its very viability. This omission is even more stark even against a background where we know that this risk has been scored “critical” and “very likely” on the DfE risk register, and the Office for Students has told the Commons education committee that it would be unlikely that it could “secure reasonable outcomes” for students if a large multi-faculty university closed, reeling off a list of all the ensuing risks ranging from students losing access to their academic records to PGRs whose work is tied to a particular supervisor finding transfer “difficult or impossible.”

    Perhaps the government simply wanted to steer clear of any negative news as it seeks to pat itself on the back for putting higher education on a “firm financial footing”, by way of keeping tuition fees at the same level in real terms (as long as inflation forecasts do not prove to be underestimates) while piling on additional costs to universities in areas including national insurance, pensions and a future fee levy. But – especially given that the white paper rounded up almost every policy initiative that is currently underway elsewhere in government, OfS and UKRI – it does feel, rather, that the idea of making legislative change to pre-empt issues around “market exit” has disappeared from the government’s to-do list.

    Pros and cons

    The education committee’s ongoing inquiry into higher education funding, which has the risks around insolvency as one of its central concerns, is shedding some light on the issues involved, both in the written evidence that has come the committee’s way and the first hearing which took place on Tuesday this week.

    Neil Smyth of lawyers Mills & Reeve told the committee that the fundamental answer to the question of what happens to an insolvent university which is not incorporated as a company – a large slice of the sector – is that “no-one quite knows”. He emphasised that there is debate about what the law entails, noting:

    At the moment, it is believed that the only insolvency process that would be available for a royal chartered entity or non-corporate entity would be to be wound up by the court as an unregistered company. That is a terminal process, it is a shutdown process, it is not a process that allows you to continue to trade.

    This uncertainty complicates what advice can be given to university governors about their responsibilities and liabilities – and also makes it difficult to see how student protection can be regulated for in such a situation. Mills & Reeve’s evidence to the committee adds that the unclear dispensations for unsecured creditors has, in their experience, led to something of a “land grab” among creditors:

    Key creditors, including pension providers, have sought to improve their position by demanding legal mortgages over land as these confer the contractual remedy of fixed charge receivership. This leads to highly expensive and time-consuming legal due diligence at just the point where the HEI can ill-afford those costs.

    Smyth, as he has previously argued on Wonkhe, told the committee that the advantages of some kind of restructuring regime being introduced included clarity for governors, confidence for lenders, and – as exists in the relatively new further education special administration regime – the potential for legal protections for students’ academic interests. That said, he warned that he couldn’t see a university coming out intact from such a process, given that student demand would inevitably collapse once the institution went into administration.

    However, Universities UK – represented at the committee hearing by chief executive Vivienne Stern – has moved away from advocating for a special administration regime. As the representative body’s evidence to the committee puts it:

    Universities UK’s current view is that it would be preferable to work with government, regulators and other sector bodies to clarify how existing arrangements can apply to higher education institutions, supported by stronger contingency planning at institutional level, and at the level of government, regulators and funders.

    The consequences of a large scale institutional failure would be so significant that policy effort should be primarily focussed on averting this outcome, rather than on mitigating its impact after the event.

    Stern highlighted the risk that a formal administrative process could be drawn out and expensive, and might even make it more likely that an institution collapses once entry into regime had taken place.

    The committee’s report will make a recommendation – it could be that Universities UK’s line of thinking has already swayed the government away from such a move. Committee chair Helen Hayes hinted that the committee will conclude that formal systems are needed, via her question to the effect of what would happen if there were a slew of insolvencies in short succession which compromised governmental and regulatory capacity to thrash out suitable arrangements behind the scenes.

    Fuzzy logic

    Keeping the threat of market exit – and the massive and unpopular clean-up job that would accompany it – hanging over the government’s head rather than handing off responsibility to a predetermined legal and fiduciary process is, sad to say, probably one of the few trump cards the sector still has to play around advocating for greater government investment.

    The lessons from FE, where a special administration regime has been in place for a few years now, are that the government seems reluctant to let things go as far as formal processes. In higher education, while it would depend on geography and circumstances, the smart money is probably still on Labour stepping in before push came to shove in a similar way to how the SNP felt forced to in Dundee.

    But there won’t be a Labour government forever. Future ministers who were relaxed (on paper) about universities going bankrupt would almost certainly be less keen to have to step in and make the final decisions in the places affected – while perhaps not being so worried if it ended up being purely a matter for the courts and the banks – and so keeping things fuzzy might end up being a sensible long-term strategy for the sector with an eye beyond 2029.

    That said, the apparent move away from government interest in legislating for a higher education insolvency regime doesn’t really explain why the white paper was quite so silent on other mitigating actions and the whole question of student protection (especially given its inclination towards “consolidation”). Is it really betting the house on the magical healing properties of holding tuition fees stable in real terms?

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  • We need to talk about high-tariff recruitment behavior

    We need to talk about high-tariff recruitment behavior

    There’s a storm brewing in UK higher education and, if we’re honest, it’s been brewing for a while.

    We all know the pattern. Predicted grades continuing to be, well, predicted. Students stacking their UCAS applications with at least one high-tariff choice. Those same high-tariff universities making more offers, at lower grades, and confirming more students than ever before.

    Confirmation charts that had us saying “wow” in 2024 are jaw-dropping in 2025 and by 2026 we’ll need new numbers on the Y axis just to keep up.

    [Full screen]

    On their own, you could shrug and rationalise these shifts: post-pandemic turbulence, demographic rises and dips depending on where you regionally look, financial pressures. But together? Here’s your perfect storm.

    Grades remain overpredicted because schools and colleges know universities will flex at offer stage and, in all likelihood, at confirmation. Universities flex because grades are overpredicted, and because half-empty halls of residence don’t pay the bills. Students expect both to continue, because so far, they have.

    This is not harmless drift. It’s a cycle. And it’s reshaping the market in ways that don’t serve students, teachers, or institutions well.

    What’s really at stake

    Sure, more students in their first-choice university sounds like a win. But scratch beneath the surface and the consequences are real.

    For students, it’s about mismatched expectations. That ABB prediction might have got you a BCC place confirmed, but the reality of lectures and labs can feel a whole lot tougher. The thrill of “getting in” can be followed quickly by the grind of “catching up” and not everyone has the support infrastructure available to bridge the gap.

    For schools and teachers, it’s a lose–lose. Predict realistically and you risk disadvantaging your pupils against those down the road with a more generous hand. Predict optimistically and you fuel the cycle, while the workload and stress keep piling up.

    For universities, tariffs are being squeezed like never before. If ABB, BBB, and BCC are all getting the same outcome, what does “high-tariff” even mean anymore? And what happens to long-term planning if your recruitment strategy rests on quietly bending standards just a little more each year?

    And for the sector as a whole, there’s the reputational hit. “Falling standards” is a headline waiting to be written, at a time when the very value of HE is under political scrutiny, that’s not the story we want to hand over. It doesn’t matter how nuanced the reality is, because nuance rarely makes the cut

    How long can we keep this up?

    The uncomfortable truth is the longer we let this run, the harder it’ll be to unravel. Predictions that don’t predict. Offers that don’t mean what they say. A confirmation system that looks more like a safety net than a filter. Right now, students get good news, schools celebrate, universities fill places. everyone’s happy…until they’re not.

    We all know the ideas that surface. Post-qualification admissions. Post-qualification offers. The radical stuff. I’m not convinced they’re coming back, that ship feels well and truly sailed after multiple crossings.

    Sector-wide restraint sounds great in theory. But let’s be real, who’s going to blink first at a time when most of the sector is unlikely to welcome a restraint on numbers of entrants.

    And then there’s regulation. Hard rules on entry standards, offers, or tariffs. Politically tempting, practically messy, and likely to create more problems than it solves. Do we really want government second-guessing how universities admit students? I’m not sure we do.

    None of this is easy. But pretending nothing’s wrong is also a choice and, in both the short and long-term, not a very good one.

    Time for a proper conversation

    Please don’t take this as a “booo, high-tariff unis” article. These are some of the best institutions in the world, staffed by incredible people doing incredible work. But we can’t ignore the loop we’re stuck in.

    Universities want stability. Teachers want credibility. Students want fairness. Right now, we’re not giving any of them what they need. Because if offers don’t mean what they say, and predictions don’t accurately predict, what exactly are we asking applicants to believe in?

    Unless we start having the grown-up conversation about how predictions, offers, student decision making and confirmation intertwine and interact, the storm will keep building.

    We often see and hear about specific mission groups having their own conversations about admissions, recruitment-type topics but, very rarely, do you see or hear anything cross-cutting in the sector which I think is a missed opportunity. Anyone want to make an offer?

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  • Furore over Stanford University AI conference – Campus Review

    Furore over Stanford University AI conference – Campus Review

    A controversial conference at a prestigious American university where AI will author and review academic research papers has faced worldwide backlash as Australian academics join the debate about the event.

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  • Intl students caught in child, drug trafficking – Campus Review

    Intl students caught in child, drug trafficking – Campus Review

    The federal government will crack down on actors using international students that come to Australia as a means to fund child exploitation, human trafficking and drug trade efforts.

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  • New VC for University of Southern Qld – Campus Review

    New VC for University of Southern Qld – Campus Review

    International crime expert Professor Paul Mazerolle has been appointed to lead the University of Southern Queensland (UniSQ), replacing acting vice-chancellor Karen Nelson.

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  • The white paper opens the door, but we need to ensure everyone gets in

    The white paper opens the door, but we need to ensure everyone gets in

    After months of anticipation, the post-16 education and skills white paper has finally landed.

    For many across the sector, the wait has been worth it. There are bold commitments on funding, skills pathways and structural reform. But for those of us focused on widening participation there are the green shoots of ideas but very little detail and the group of students who are at most risk to lack of equality of access – care experienced and estranged students – are barely even mentioned. The paper feels more like a promising prologue than a full chapter.

    There are areas of positive progress. The previously trailed increase in maintenance support, which will help students better manage rising living costs – a critical issue for those without family safety nets.

    Plus the report commits to “provide extra support for care leavers, some of the most vulnerable in our society, who will automatically become eligible to receive the maximum rate of loan.” We would want to see these extended to estranged students as well as care experienced young people as we know many report financial hardship without the support of parents to top up income. Data from the Student Academic Experience Survey showed us that both care experienced and estranged students work a statistically significantly higher number of hours per week – 11.3 and 11.1 hours respectively – than 8.8 hours non-care experienced students at 8.8 hours.

    But we must await further detail to see whether this makes any material difference for care leavers (and hopefully estranged students) – given that they’re currently already eligible for the maximum maintenance loan, and this maximum doesn’t cover anywhere near enough to support their living expenses, as recent work on minimum income standards has shown.

    A richer picture

    The promise of better information for applicants, combining UCAS data with graduate outcomes and completion rates, is an important move toward transparency and fairer choice. The work that UUK, Sutton Trust and UCAS have already started in this space is welcome but ensuring consistency will be key. This is especially important to consider when we know from UCAS research that 60 per cent of surveyed applicants said “they did not receive guidance at school around applying to higher education, specific to their status as a care-experienced student.”

    We’re also encouraged by the focus on regional disparities and disadvantage cold-spots, especially in coastal and low-participation areas. These are often the places where care experienced and estranged students are most at risk of being left behind.

    But while these commitments signal progress, there’s still much to be drawn out around widening participation. Care experienced and estranged students remain largely invisible in mainstream policy design. They’re not always captured in data. They’re rarely the headline. But they matter (which is why we welcomed HESA’s planned exploration of the issues involved in publishing data on this group of students more regularly). These students face some of the steepest barriers to access, retention and success.

    There are pockets of excellent practice and growing awareness of this group of students that is driving change in some areas. The commitment by Russell Group universities to develop a consistent offer of support is welcomed as is seeing more FE and HE institutions achieving the NNECL Quality Mark. These examples demonstrate that progress is achievable when there is institutional will and leadership – but there is still such little evidence about what works.

    At the Unite Foundation, we were pleased to see recognition that accommodation is a key issue. For care experienced and estranged students, having somewhere safe and stable to live is not just a nice-to-have – it’s a fundamental prerequisite for participation in education. If we’re serious about widening participation, then addressing the barrier of housing insecurity must be central to the conversation. And yet, the white paper is light on detail about how government will support access to accommodation. This is a missed opportunity.

    The Unite Foundation’s own scholarship programme remains the only intervention to meet OfS Level 2 standards for impact on retention, progression, and completion for this group. It’s a powerful testament to what targeted, sustained support can achieve – but it also highlights how little evidence we have about what works.

    The journey continues

    So while the white paper offers a welcome direction of travel, it’s not the final destination. I’m pleased to be joining the national access and participation task and finish group, chaired by access and participation champion Kathryn Mitchell, to work within government to ensure that we’re embedding care experienced and estranged students at the heart of this work as the detail starts to emerge.

    If we’re serious about change we need more than just warm words. We need system-wide commitments that embed equity in funding, housing, student support and success metrics. We need to listen to students and design policy that reflects their lived realities.

    The wrapping paper is off. Now it’s time to see what’s inside – and to make sure care experienced and estranged students aren’t left out of the picture.

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