One of the major trends in UK higher education is the increasing number of postgraduate students.
There are now as many postgraduate taught students graduating every year as there are undergraduates.
However, the equity of postgraduate experience and outcomes is almost completely overlooked.
Modern postgraduates
The postgraduate population is large and increasingly diverse. Approximately 450,000 students complete a postgraduate qualification in UK higher education institutions every year. 11 per cent of those students have declared a disability. Some 28 per cent of postgraduate taught students with a permanent UK address identify as Global Majority, while 9 per cent identify as Black and 13 per cent as Asian and those proportions are increasing year-on-year. One in three postgraduate taught students pay international fees.
Whereas 10 years ago most international students were from the EU or China, the diversity of nationalities in postgraduate cohorts is growing. Data on the socioeconomic demographics of postgraduates is not currently available, but it is likely that the increase in students from socioeconomically deprived areas undertaking undergraduate study population is mirrored at masters level. Half of postgraduate students study their programmes on a part-time basis. Excluding those on visas that prohibit working, we can assume that a significant proportion of postgraduates are combining study with paid employment. The diversity of the postgraduate population is therefore considerable.
Given how widespread inequity of outcomes is at undergraduate level, it would be extraordinary if the outcome gaps we see on the basis of disability, ethnicity and socioeconomic status were not replicated at postgraduate level. They may even be more acute for postgraduates given the higher costs of tuition fees and the increased academic independence required for postgraduate study. Yet there is almost no awareness or activity around equity or outcomes for this huge cohort of students.
Lack of activity
At undergraduate level there has been significant progress made in terms of awareness of student outcomes and inequity. Institutional committees and working groups scrutinise split metric data to assess ‘gaps’ in outcomes between demographic groups. Action plans are in place to address inequity of access, continuation, degree completion, degree class awarded and progression. Senior leadership teams monitor progress against established equity key performance indicators. Providers are even bringing in consultancy companies whose sole business is to help institutions understand the language of Access and Participation Plans. Universities are at least talking the talk around improving equity of outcomes, even if progress lags significantly behind this.
However, none of this activity is replicated for postgraduate students. There isn’t a data dashboard of split metrics for postgraduate student outcomes. We haven’t even established the equivalent of the undergraduate degree classification awarding gap. Why isn’t there an outcome gap focussed on demographic equity of distinctions awarded for postgraduate taught students? Why aren’t we looking at completion rates for postgraduate students through the lens of disability and socioeconomic status?
Pragmatically, the answer to this question is that the Office for Students has thus far paid little attention to postgraduate student outcomes, let alone equity of outcomes. The Teaching Excellence Framework included undergraduate courses with a postgraduate component (e.g. an integrated masters), but excluded postgraduate taught and postgraduate research provision. Access and Participation Plans are linked to the ability to charge the higher rate of undergraduate tuition fee, so again exclude postgraduate students.
League table providers also ignore postgraduates. HESA only publish data on postgraduate qualifications awarded, and the publically available data is not broken down by demographic factors other than gender. In the contemporary higher education landscape, what gets measured gets done. If universities are not prioritising postgraduate outcomes, it is because the regulatory landscape allows them not to.
Entry and equity
It is also important to note that many masters programmes will now accept students with a lower second class degree. Those same students who were disadvantaged by the awarding gap at undergraduate level are now likely to be the ones struggling with the increased academic requirements at masters level. If a student never got past the hidden curriculum in three years of undergraduate study, what are their chances of overcoming it in a one year masters course?
Postgraduate programme leaders need to be aware of these issues, and adopt parallel approaches to those managing transition into undergraduate study. They need to design activities and assessments to address disparities in entry qualifications. They need to build the confidence of students who missed out on higher undergraduate grades.
To really focus on equity at postgraduate level, we also need to address inequity for international students. The regulatory link between APP and the home undergraduate tuition fee means students with any other fee status are excluded. This has the inevitable result that the sector barely considers inequity for international students, but is more than happy to take their fees. This is deeply uncomfortable at undergraduate level, but even more concerning at postgraduate level, where one in three students is international.
To make change, senior institutional leaders need to see postgraduate outcomes as a priority. In the current landscape, this strategic direction needs to come from the Office for Students. The equivalent data infrastructure developed for undergraduate outcomes needs to be built for postgraduates. Future iterations of the TEF need to go beyond undergraduates and include all students.
We cannot justify ignoring postgraduates any more. The sector has an ethical responsibility to ensure equity of outcomes for all students, not just those paying the home undergraduate tuition fee.
There’s some very weird, strange and dangerous shit going on out there right now. In America, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now. — Bruce Springsteen (May 14)
Was “the Boss” being partisan there? Donald Trump thought so:
“This dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country, that’s just ‘standard fare.’ Then we’ll all see how it goes for him!”
Just goes to show that there are two sides, both of them “partisan.” The singer has his partisan views, and so does the suppressor. We just need to chill, get along, and hear both sides. Ah yes, a Kumbaya embrace — yuck!
The ‘Big Chill’
Do you remember those “nonpartisan” folks who were so outraged by what was going on in the cancel culture world of college campuses? How they lamented the way the censorial mindset was choking the First Amendment? Oh, those First Amendment champions were so incensed.
And fair enough, things were wildly out of control and those liberals responsible for supporting or allowing such censorship had to be called out. Again, fair enough. Of course, those who tolerated college censorship (dare I say “liberals”?) are now livid by what is going on. Rightfully so.
But where are those guardians of free speech (dare I say “conservatives”) now? When never a day goes by when the Trump administration does not abridge the First Amendment with wild abandon?
Censorship is censorship!
Given where we are today, I’m tired of such rhetorical gaming. Censorship is censorship, period! The hell with the thinking that one must walk on “nonpartisan” eggshells before speaking too loudly or too often against censorship when it is as constant as it is today under this administration.
Take heed: It was not partisan to boldly condemn John Adams or Woodrow Wilson or Joseph McCarthy for their crusades of suppression. And it was not partisan to call out their supporters who sat silently in the face of such tyranny. In such a world, there are not “two sides” such that the likes of Bill Maher could dine with “nonpartisan” delight with a “measured” opponent of free expression.
Seven free expression groups speak out — Yes!
Thus, I was delighted to learn that seven groups had written an open letter to “universities, media organizations, law firms, and businesses” to stand up against the “Trump administration’s multi-front assault on First Amendment freedoms.”
Before I say more, let me quote from the timely and important open letter that these seven groups just released. First this: “In little more than 100 days, President Trump and the agencies under his control have threatened First Amendment rights through a breathtaking array of actions.”
After that introduction, they listed an indictment of free speech abridgments, and in a style reminiscent of the indictment in the Declaration of Independence, they have delineated specific things the administration has done (I have added bullets to their text):
They have sought to control speech and association by imposing unconstitutional conditions on a wide range of federal grantees and contractors.
They have sanctioned lawyers for their representation of people whom the president views as political enemies.
They have arrested, detained, and threatened to deport international students — including lawful permanent residents — solely because of their participation in lawful political protest.
They have purged crucial datasets from government websites, gutted agency offices responsible for compliance with the Freedom of Information Act, and imposed new and indefensible restraints on public employees’ right to speak on matters of public concern.
They have invoked civil rights laws to justify extensive and unwarranted intrusions into universities’ autonomy and academic freedom.
Resurrecting a policy introduced during President Trump’s first term, they have barred legal scholars from providing information and expertise to the International Criminal Court.
They have banned the Associated Press from the White House press pool because it declined to update its stylebook to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.”
Books have been removed from U.S. military service academy libraries, and other federally operated educational institutions, because they do not conform to the administration’s ideological preferences, and federal funds are being used as a cudgel to censor curriculum and promote the administration’s viewpoints in schools.
The Federal Communications Commission has threatened to revoke the licenses of television and radio networks and stations whose reporting the administration disfavors.
As Professor Timothy Zick has so ably documented, the Trump administration’s assault on free expression is unprecedented. The following assessment from the seven groups echoes what is reliably set off in detailed form in Zick’s repository over at First Amendment Watch:
There have been other times in our nation’s history that witnessed sustained and misguided efforts to suppress speech. All of our organizations have opposed both Democratic and Republican administrations when they abridged First Amendment freedoms — as all of them, at various points, have done. But we share the view that the Trump administration’s actions, taken together, represent an extraordinary and in some ways unprecedented challenge to First Amendment rights and the values they embody [emphasis added]. These actions call for a forceful, uncompromising response. Some institutions have countered in exactly this way, to their credit.
Where the hell are other free speech groups and individuals?
Against that backdrop, I ask: where the hell are all those other groups, who when it came to campus censorship were so outspoken in defense of free expression? Why don’t they have their own open letters? Why are so many of those groups not openly endorsing the courageous assessments of those who, like Judge Michael Luttig, condemn the tyranny that is Trump? Too many conservative and liberal groups are afraid to speak out, afraid to put their names on the line.
Judge Michael Luttig
What we are witnessing today is a BIG CHILL effect of enormous magnitude. Some liberals (in law firms, universities, think tanks, and elsewhere) are afraid to speak out, lest they be attacked by one of the president’s executive orders. By the same token, some conservatives are afraid to speak out (on their blogs or elsewhere) for fear that they will lose stock in their ideological world, or fall victim to Trump’s wrath.
Bottom line: Tyranny is tyranny, and condemning it is not partisan — it’s American!
Recent samples of the BIG CHILL in suppressive operation
The decision by nine of America’s biggest law firms to “bend the knee” to President Trump drew condemnation among lawyers across the political spectrum, including from attorneys inside the firms who quit or launched resistance campaigns. Others have chosen a less career-limiting form of rebellion.
That would be offering leaks to Above the Law, a pugnacious legal industry website best known for scoops about law firm annual bonuses, snarky coverage of legal news and salacious stories of barristers behaving badly. But since March, when Mr. Trump began targeting for retribution top law firms whose clients and past work he does not like, Above the Law has become a rage read for lawyers incensed at the firms that accommodated him.
Fueled by a stream of inside-the-conference-room exclusives, Above the Law delivers a daily public spanking to what it calls “The Yellow-Bellied Nine.” Those are the elite firms that pledged a collective $1 billion in free legal work to Mr. Trump after he signed executive orders threatening to bar their lawyers from federal buildings, suspend their security clearances and cancel their government contracts.
Coming next week on FAN: Timothy Zick on institutional independence and democratic backsliding
Although the Trump Administration’s agenda regarding freedom of expression can appear chaotic, one consistent strategy has been attacking institutions that are essential to checking executive power. It is no accident that many of President Trump’s Executive Orders and the agency actions they direct have targeted the media, universities and faculty, law firms, libraries, and museums. These and other entities are sometimes referred to as “First Amendment institutions” or “knowledge institutions,” because they contribute to and facilitate public discourse and are necessary to a free and open society.
‘[Re]Distributed for Conference’ — SCOTUS mantra in some First Amendment cases
Apparently, the Justices are so overworked with all the Trump emergency appeals that they have to continue to pause on what to do with some of the First Amendment cases on their docket. For example, consider the following petitions:
Jessica Levinson on Comey, protected speech, and DOJ investigation
Professor Jessica Levinson
Questions are swirling following the launch of a federal investigation into former FBI Director James Comeyover a now-deleted social media post of seashells arranged in the numbers “8647” on the beach. (“Eighty-six” is commonly understood to mean “get rid of.” President Trump is the 45th and 47th President of the United States.) Was Comey calling for the assassination of Trump? Or was he, as he has since stated, expressing a political opinion about Trump?
If Comey’s post amounted to a siren song, beseeching others to kill the president, he can be punished for his speech. But should Comey’s post be viewed as political advocacy, which I argue it should, he is entitled to the full protection of the First Amendment.
The genuine threat is not that a president’s life is in danger, but that the Trump administration is attempting to silence the speech of political adversaries. Even if it is unlikely that Comey faces anything more than a slap on the wrist for his post, the decision to open an investigation in and of itself should be worrisome. Comey has access to the media and resources to defend himself. Not everyone does. And the prospect of chilling political speech critical of government officials should concern all of us.
Statement from the Institute for Free Speech on party coordination limits
The Institute for Free Speech commends the Department of Justice’s decision in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC to acknowledge that federal limits on coordinated expenditures between political parties and their candidates violate the First Amendment. In a dramatic and unusual shift, the DOJ is now asking the Supreme Court to overturn its 2001 decision in Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee v. FEC (Colorado II).
“The Solicitor General’s recommendation that the Court grant the petition is a commendable move that acknowledges the First Amendment flaws in these limits,” said Institute President David Keating. “As we argued in our amicus brief, the factual basis underpinning Colorado II has been proven wrong by real-world evidence.”
The Institute’s brief demonstrated that over half the states allow unlimited party coordination, including 17 states that also restrict individual contributions—yet there is no evidence of these arrangements leading to corruption. The DOJ’s brief now acknowledges this reality, recognizing that the law represents a “prophylaxis-upon-prophylaxis approach” that fails heightened First Amendment scrutiny.
“When more than half the states manage to operate elections without restricting coordinated party expenditures and without giving rise to any relevant quid pro quo corruption, it is hard to believe that the law is ‘necessary to prevent the anticipated harm,’” noted the Institute’s brief.
The NRSC case challenges federal limits on how much political parties can spend in coordination with their candidates under 52 U.S.C. 30116(d). These restrictions severely burden the core function of political parties—to support and promote their candidates.
[ . . . ]
To read the Institute’s amicus brief in the case National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC, click here. To read the Solicitor General’s just-filed brief, click here. To read Institute Senior Attorney Brett Nolan’s expert analysis on the Sixth Circuit’s decision in NRSC, click here.
Claim: The ‘deluge of pornography has had a negative impact on modern society’
Christine Emba
It’s hard not to see a connection between porn-trained behaviors — the choking, slapping and spitting that have become the norm even in early sexual encounters — and young women’s distrust of young men. And in the future, porn will become only more addictive and effective as a teacher, as virtual reality makes it more immersive and artificial intelligence allows it to be customizable. (For a foretaste of where this might end up, you can read a recent essay by Aella, a researcher and sex worker, on Substack defending A.I. child porn.)
In her new book “Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves,” Sophie Gilbert critiques the mass culture of the 1990s and 2000s, noting how it was built on female objectification and hyperexposure. A generation of women, she explains, were persuaded by the ideas that bodies were commodities to be molded, surveilled, fetishized or made the butt of the joke, that sexual power, which might give some fleeting leverage, was the only power worth having. This lie curdled the emerging promise of 20th-century feminism, and as our ambitions shrank, the potential for exploitation grew.
[ . . . ]
[W]hile Ms. Gilbert is unsparing in her descriptions of pornography’s warping effect on culture and its consumers, she’s curiously reluctant to acknowledge what seems obvious: Porn hasn’t been good for us. While her descriptions of the cultural landscape imply that the mainstreaming of hard-core porn has been a bad thing, she pulls her punches.” (emphasis added)
Forthcoming scholarly essay on ‘Fascist Government Speech’
Professor G. Alex Sinha
On the day he was sworn in for a second term, President Trump issued pardons and commutations to all of his supporters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. This sweeping act of clemency gave legal effect to a longstanding grievance: Ever since the attack, which disrupted congressional certification of his 2020 election defeat, President Trump has consistently glorified the attackers and denounced their prosecutors. In defending the clemencies two days after issuing them, President Trump reiterated familiar themes — once more refusing to acknowledge that he lost the 2020 election, celebrating the patriotism of his supporters, and maligning those who pursued their accountability through what became the largest criminal investigation in U.S. history.
President Trump’s script was so familiar that it obscured a constitutional novelty. For most of the time between the January 6 attack and the subsequent clemencies, President Trump was not the president. He was a private citizen, and his speech about January 6 was protected by the First Amendment even to the extent that it was false or dangerous. But, by noon on January 20, 2025, he was once again President Trump—a government official, speaking on behalf of the government, and thus uttering government speech. Government speech is not protected by the First Amendment, but rather by an evolving set of Court-fashioned rules known collectively as the government-speech doctrine. In an instant, his comments took on an entirely new constitutional cast.
Ordinarily, this transition would be unremarkable; it occurs whenever a private citizen assumes a governmental role. But, combined with their content, President Trump’s statements — on this subject and many others — create a serious First Amendment problem. His remarks are deeply and distinctly illiberal, calibrated to undermine, falsely, the democratic legitimacy of a previous administration and to rewrite the history of an insurrectionist threat that would have allowed him to maintain power by violent and anti-democratic means. It is fascist speech, which invites wildly different constitutional analysis depending on its source.
Accordingly, this paper introduces and evaluates the concept of fascist government speech — a category we can no longer afford to ignore. Our First Amendment free-speech rights spring in substantial part from a commitment to self-governance, and the protections that follow generally extend to private fascist speech as part of a forceful commitment to free debate that courts and scholars have long believed would facilitate a robust democracy. By contrast, the basis of the government-speech doctrine is functional necessity, a recognition that our democratic self-governance would be rendered ineffective if the government could not spread its message. That backstory simply cannot justify protecting fascist government speech, which directly undermines the basis for governmental communicative prerogatives. Yet the doctrine, as constituted, ultimately does protect fascist government speech. Worse still, the doctrine operates to abrogate private free-speech claims, a result that is distinctly perverse when the abrogation functions to amplify fascist government speech. This paper therefore argues for significant revision to the government-speech doctrine to blunt the threat of fascist government speech.
2024-2025 SCOTUS term: Free expression and related cases
Cases decided
Villarreal v. Alaniz(Petition granted. Judgment vacated and case remanded for further consideration in light of Gonzalez v. Trevino, 602 U. S. ___ (2024) (per curiam))
Murphy v. Schmitt (“The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted. The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit for further consideration in light of Gonzalez v. Trevino, 602 U. S. ___ (2024) (per curiam).”)
TikTok Inc. and ByteDance Ltd v. Garland (9-0: The challenged provisions of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act do not violate petitioners’ First Amendment rights.)
Review granted
Pending petitions
Petitions denied
Emergency Applications
Yost v. Ohio Attorney General (Kavanaugh, J., “IT IS ORDERED that the March 14, 2025 order of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, case No. 2:24-cv-1401, is hereby stayed pending further order of the undersigned or of the Court. It is further ordered that a response to the application be filed on or before Wednesday, April 16, 2025, by 5 p.m. (EDT).”)
Free speech related
Mahmoud v. Taylor (argued April 22 / free exercise case: issue: Whether public schools burden parents’ religious exercise when they compel elementary school children to participate in instruction on gender and sexuality against their parents’ religious convictions and without notice or opportunity to opt out.)
Thompson v. United States (decided: 3-21-25/ 9-0 w special concurrences by Alito and Jackson) (interpretation of 18 U. S. C. §1014 re: “false statements”)
This article is part of First Amendment News, an editorially independent publication edited by Ronald K. L. Collins and hosted by FIRE as part of our mission to educate the public about First Amendment issues. The opinions expressed are those of the article’s author(s) and may not reflect the opinions of FIRE or Mr. Collins.
This article includes a free, open-access resource for educators: What Your Students Aren’t Telling You: Listening, Learning, and Leading with Empathy. The book, co-authored with students, offers actionable strategies and insights to help create more inclusive and humane learning environments. Download it here: https://publish.illinois.edu/gist-partnerships/what-your-students-arent-telling-you/
In higher education, we often track student success through grades, credit hours, and retention rates. But behind those metrics are untold stories—narratives of resilience, confusion, silence, and strength. This project started with a deceptively simple question: What aren’t our students telling us?
After years of teaching, I noticed how often students carried academic, emotional, and personal burdens without sharing them. Not because they lacked courage, but because they didn’t feel invited to speak. Their stories, while occasionally requested, were rarely acted upon. I wanted to change that—not just by asking better questions, but by building an open-access platform that would amplify student voices and inform actionable change.
From Curiosity to Campuswide Inquiry
The project began in two large general education courses I teach at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: FSHN 101: The Science of Food and FSHN 120: Contemporary Nutrition. These courses enroll a diverse cross-section of the student body, creating the perfect environment to listen broadly and learn deeply.
Over multiple semesters, more than 2,000 students voluntarily participated in IRB-approved surveys and follow-up interviews. These were not standard end-of-semester evaluations. The surveys included over 20 demographic questions—covering areas like housing, food security, disability status, and employment—followed by 15–40 experience-based questions exploring academic confidence, mental health, study habits, and perceptions of inclusion.
To capture both breadth and nuance, the surveys incorporated multiple question formats, such as Likert scales, rankings, multiple select, and open-ended prompts. Each semester, the surveys were refined based on student feedback and changing classroom dynamics.
We also conducted one-on-one interviews with select students, allowing them to share the context behind the data—what it feels like to study while housing-insecure, to navigate a disability without accommodations, or to sit in a classroom where your identity is invisible.
Building a Cross-Disciplinary Team
To guide this growing body of student insight into something useful for faculty, I turned to trusted collaborators with expertise across student development, pedagogy, and educational innovation.
Bonnie Hemrick, Director of Mental Health Promotion at Oregon State University, helped frame issues of student well-being and resilience. Dr. Emily Tarconish, a teaching professor in the College of Education, contributed her deep knowledge of Universal Design for Learning and accessible course design. Amy Leman, professor in Human Development and Family Studies, helped navigate the IRB process providing insight and guidance. Dr. Tony Zhang from Gies College of Business offered perspective on AI, ChatBot technology, and ethical academic support tools. Ann Fredricksen, a dedicated advocate with Disability Resources and Educational Services, kept disability at the center of our equity framework—not as an afterthought, but as a foundation.
Together, we weren’t just evaluating survey results. We were reframing how we think about student-centered learning.
Empowering Students as Authors and Analysts
One of the most powerful dimensions of this work was who got to tell the story. From the beginning, students weren’t just research subjects—they were research partners. Many were enrolled in leadership-focused sections of FSHN 101 and 120 and took on active roles in the analysis, writing, and design of the final open-access book: What Your Students Aren’t Telling You.
Their contributions weren’t theoretical. They were rooted in lived experience. Alysha Haverkos grounded our understanding of food insecurity and student basic needs. Ananya Mani shared honest, often-overlooked realities of international student life. Samarth Jain brought data visualization to life, uncovering trends and turning them into stories. Sheza Shaikh centered mental health and belonging in her writing. Tessa Wolf strengthened our commitment to inclusive course design.
These students didn’t just support the work—they shaped its voice. Each of them served as a reminder that students are not passive recipients of education. They are co-creators of it.
Key Takeaways That Changed Our Classrooms
Through data analysis, interviews, and student authorship, a set of clear—and deeply human—patterns emerged:
Timed, high-stakes assessments caused the highest levels of stress, especially for students managing disabilities or mental health concerns.
Flexibility in format and modality—such as recorded lectures, alternative assignments, or extended deadlines—made students feel supported, capable, and seen.
Textbook format and cost mattered. Students appreciated transparency and choice when it came to required materials.
Inclusive language, representation, and proactive instructor support all contributed to students’ sense of belonging and trust.
These findings don’t argue against academic rigor. Rather, they ask us to pair rigor with relevance and compassion. Many of the most impactful changes were not labor-intensive. A reworded syllabus, an anonymous feedback survey, or a mid-semester check-in can shift a student’s entire trajectory.
A Free, Open-Access Resource for Faculty
The insights we gathered are now published in What Your Students Aren’t Telling You, a free and open-access resource designed to support faculty, advisors, instructional designers, and anyone working to make higher education more humane and inclusive.
The book is both research-informed and experience-driven. Each chapter is co-authored with students who lived the realities we discuss. Their stories—of being brilliant but burned out, passionate but unheard, capable but unseen—bring the data to life.
You’ll find practical strategies, institutional recommendations, and reflective questions to help you translate student voices into action.
We are teaching in a time of complexity—rising mental health challenges, widening equity gaps, and ongoing uncertainty in higher education. But we’re also teaching in a time of possibility.
Students are more willing than ever to share what they need—if we create the space to listen. They’re asking us not to fix everything, but to see them, to ask good questions, and to respond with care.
This project reinforced what many of us already know: better is possible. But it takes intentionality. It takes listening. And it takes the courage to rethink not just what we teach, but how we teach and why.
Final Thoughts: A Call to Listen and Lead
The most transformative teaching moments rarely come from perfectly delivered lectures. They come from real connection—from the moments we pause, ask, and truly hear our students.
The students in this project didn’t ask for perfection from faculty. They asked to be heard. And in return, they gave us tools, stories, and solutions that can reshape the future of our classrooms.
Let this be your starting point.
Explore the book. Share it with a colleague. Invite conversation in your next department meeting. And if it resonates with you, I welcome you to reach out. Let’s talk, collaborate, and keep learning from the people who know our classrooms best—our students.
This article includes a free, open-access resource for educators: What Your Students Aren’t Telling You: Listening, Learning, and Leading with Empathy. The book, co-authored with students, offers actionable strategies and insights to help create more inclusive and humane learning environments. Download it here: https://publish.illinois.edu/gist-partnerships/what-your-students-arent-telling-you/
In higher education, we often track student success through grades, credit hours, and retention rates. But behind those metrics are untold stories—narratives of resilience, confusion, silence, and strength. This project started with a deceptively simple question: What aren’t our students telling us?
After years of teaching, I noticed how often students carried academic, emotional, and personal burdens without sharing them. Not because they lacked courage, but because they didn’t feel invited to speak. Their stories, while occasionally requested, were rarely acted upon. I wanted to change that—not just by asking better questions, but by building an open-access platform that would amplify student voices and inform actionable change.
From Curiosity to Campuswide Inquiry
The project began in two large general education courses I teach at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: FSHN 101: The Science of Food and FSHN 120: Contemporary Nutrition. These courses enroll a diverse cross-section of the student body, creating the perfect environment to listen broadly and learn deeply.
Over multiple semesters, more than 2,000 students voluntarily participated in IRB-approved surveys and follow-up interviews. These were not standard end-of-semester evaluations. The surveys included over 20 demographic questions—covering areas like housing, food security, disability status, and employment—followed by 15–40 experience-based questions exploring academic confidence, mental health, study habits, and perceptions of inclusion.
To capture both breadth and nuance, the surveys incorporated multiple question formats, such as Likert scales, rankings, multiple select, and open-ended prompts. Each semester, the surveys were refined based on student feedback and changing classroom dynamics.
We also conducted one-on-one interviews with select students, allowing them to share the context behind the data—what it feels like to study while housing-insecure, to navigate a disability without accommodations, or to sit in a classroom where your identity is invisible.
Building a Cross-Disciplinary Team
To guide this growing body of student insight into something useful for faculty, I turned to trusted collaborators with expertise across student development, pedagogy, and educational innovation.
Bonnie Hemrick, Director of Mental Health Promotion at Oregon State University, helped frame issues of student well-being and resilience. Dr. Emily Tarconish, a teaching professor in the College of Education, contributed her deep knowledge of Universal Design for Learning and accessible course design. Amy Leman, professor in Human Development and Family Studies, helped navigate the IRB process providing insight and guidance. Dr. Tony Zhang from Gies College of Business offered perspective on AI, ChatBot technology, and ethical academic support tools. Ann Fredricksen, a dedicated advocate with Disability Resources and Educational Services, kept disability at the center of our equity framework—not as an afterthought, but as a foundation.
Together, we weren’t just evaluating survey results. We were reframing how we think about student-centered learning.
Empowering Students as Authors and Analysts
One of the most powerful dimensions of this work was who got to tell the story. From the beginning, students weren’t just research subjects—they were research partners. Many were enrolled in leadership-focused sections of FSHN 101 and 120 and took on active roles in the analysis, writing, and design of the final open-access book: What Your Students Aren’t Telling You.
Their contributions weren’t theoretical. They were rooted in lived experience. Alysha Haverkos grounded our understanding of food insecurity and student basic needs. Ananya Mani shared honest, often-overlooked realities of international student life. Samarth Jain brought data visualization to life, uncovering trends and turning them into stories. Sheza Shaikh centered mental health and belonging in her writing. Tessa Wolf strengthened our commitment to inclusive course design.
These students didn’t just support the work—they shaped its voice. Each of them served as a reminder that students are not passive recipients of education. They are co-creators of it.
Key Takeaways That Changed Our Classrooms
Through data analysis, interviews, and student authorship, a set of clear—and deeply human—patterns emerged:
Timed, high-stakes assessments caused the highest levels of stress, especially for students managing disabilities or mental health concerns.
Flexibility in format and modality—such as recorded lectures, alternative assignments, or extended deadlines—made students feel supported, capable, and seen.
Textbook format and cost mattered. Students appreciated transparency and choice when it came to required materials.
Inclusive language, representation, and proactive instructor support all contributed to students’ sense of belonging and trust.
These findings don’t argue against academic rigor. Rather, they ask us to pair rigor with relevance and compassion. Many of the most impactful changes were not labor-intensive. A reworded syllabus, an anonymous feedback survey, or a mid-semester check-in can shift a student’s entire trajectory.
A Free, Open-Access Resource for Faculty
The insights we gathered are now published in What Your Students Aren’t Telling You, a free and open-access resource designed to support faculty, advisors, instructional designers, and anyone working to make higher education more humane and inclusive.
The book is both research-informed and experience-driven. Each chapter is co-authored with students who lived the realities we discuss. Their stories—of being brilliant but burned out, passionate but unheard, capable but unseen—bring the data to life.
You’ll find practical strategies, institutional recommendations, and reflective questions to help you translate student voices into action.
We are teaching in a time of complexity—rising mental health challenges, widening equity gaps, and ongoing uncertainty in higher education. But we’re also teaching in a time of possibility.
Students are more willing than ever to share what they need—if we create the space to listen. They’re asking us not to fix everything, but to see them, to ask good questions, and to respond with care.
This project reinforced what many of us already know: better is possible. But it takes intentionality. It takes listening. And it takes the courage to rethink not just what we teach, but how we teach and why.
Final Thoughts: A Call to Listen and Lead
The most transformative teaching moments rarely come from perfectly delivered lectures. They come from real connection—from the moments we pause, ask, and truly hear our students.
The students in this project didn’t ask for perfection from faculty. They asked to be heard. And in return, they gave us tools, stories, and solutions that can reshape the future of our classrooms.
Let this be your starting point.
Explore the book. Share it with a colleague. Invite conversation in your next department meeting. And if it resonates with you, I welcome you to reach out. Let’s talk, collaborate, and keep learning from the people who know our classrooms best—our students.
Professor Pete Kosek was a leading voice for the faculty at Sterling College — a small, private Christian college in central Kansas — when negotiating changes to the college’s employee handbook. Ken Troyer, another Sterling professor, spoke out as well, including statements to the media about concerns he had with Sterling administrators’ communication with faculty and about a vote of no confidence in the college’s president.
For these exercises of basic faculty expressive rights, Sterling has now punished them both for exhibiting “behavior that is fundamentally inconsistent” with Sterling’s mission. But it’s these punishments that are “fundamentally inconsistent” with Sterling’s promises that its faculty enjoy “free expression, on and off campus.”
FIRE wrote to Sterling on April 3, 2025, articulating our concerns. Its administration ignored us, so today we’re writing to the college again as well as its board of trustees, urging them to reverse the punishments of Kosek and Troyer.
College clashes with faculty over revisions to the employee handbook
In 2023, Sterling faculty received a new version of Sterling’s employee handbook. Faculty voiced concerns about whether faculty were obligated to sign the handbook’s acknowledgement, which appeared to require that faculty affirm Sterling’s institutional stance on marriage, life, gender identity, and human sexuality. For example, a provision in the handbook stated: “[m]arriage is designed to be the lifelong uniting of one man and one woman in a single, biblical, covenant union as delineated by Scripture.”
Concerned that this may adversely impact faculty who were divorced, Kosek led a group of faculty members in negotiating changes to the handbook. Over the course of a year, he went back and forth with Sterling administrators about making sure the handbook could be modified so that it didn’t single out divorced faculty for adverse action.
On Aug. 21, 2024, Kosek emailed a large group of faculty members informing them he believed he and anyone else would be fired if they did not sign the handbook acknowledgement. Kosek also told the administration that while he would abide by the terms of the handbook, he disagreed with how the administration went about communicating with faculty and instituting the new handbook. Two days later, the administration clarified that while faculty were expected to abide by the terms of the handbook, they would not be terminated for not signing it. Kosek subsequently clarified this to the rest of the faculty. The situation seemed resolved, right? Wrong.
Months later, on Feb. 25 of this year, administrators summoned Kosek to a meeting and gave him a disciplinary warning. They told him that it was because he allegedly misrepresented the college when he told other faculty that he believed he and others would be fired over not signing the handbook’s acknowledgement. Sterling provided Kosek no real opportunity to defend himself from the charge.
Troyer, meanwhile, received a nearly identical disciplinary warning on the same day as Kosek, purportedly because of his comments to the media criticizing Sterling’s poor communication with faculty. (This poor communication was a major reason why a group of faculty supported a no-confidence vote in Sterling’s leadership.) Troyer had also discussed the inclusion of non-Christian students at the college, and how that inclusion related to Sterling’s Christian mission.
Similar to Kosek, Troyer had no real opportunity to defend himself. He was just expected to take the disciplinary warning and keep his mouth shut.
If Sterling’s mission required absolute and unquestioning obedience to the administration, this might be understandable. But these punishments cannot be squared with the policies actually laid out in Sterling’s faculty handbook. That handbook does not demand unthinking fealty, but imposes on “students, faculty members, administrators and trustees” the obligation “to foster and defend intellectual honesty, freedom of inquiry and instruction, and free expression on and off campus.” As if anticipating the exact scenario facing both Kosek and Troyer, Sterling adds in the handbook, “administrators should respect the right of faculty members to criticize and seek revision of institutional regulations.”
FIRE’s first letter explained why the college could not square its punishment of Kosek with Sterling’s written commitments. Under First Amendment jurisprudence and at most private colleges (like Sterling) faculty members retain the right to comment on matters of public concern — and one of those concerns is how the college is being run. Indeed, faculty members are often among the most important voices regarding how colleges and universities operate since they witness firsthand the impacts of institutional policies.
Sterling blew FIRE off. So now we’re taking this up the chain and writing to the Board of Trustees as well as the college. When a private institution like Sterling makes promises in its handbooks to faculty, it must keep those promises. To violate them with impunity is to undermine trust and credibility.
By Edward Venning, Managing Partner at Six Ravens Consulting.
Not for the first time, an interventionist Secretary of State stands ready to help English universities. Not surprisingly, every item in her agenda – from regional engagement to business models – will place conditions of ‘wide-scale reform’ upon universities.
We should reasonably worry. Not because of Bridget Phillipson, but because we have traded away our self-determination for years.
The debate about autonomy has a certain monotheistic quality. Everyone agrees autonomy is the rock upon which knowledge is built, while vigorously sinning against it. Different governments tie finance to reform, as with Phillipson, or attempt the oxymoron of regulating academic freedom. Meanwhile, universities accept cash with strings attached from government, major donors and international students. Government generally cops the blame for this too, while we appeal to inalienable protections in the Higher Education Reform Act (HERA).
But autonomy is not absolute or inviolable. It is not determined by functional independence or private status. It is a behaviour. It comes from actively managing a complex web of power relationships and trade-offs while protecting our control over key functions. It is built through organisational design, concerned with incentives, accountability and dynamic relationship management. The more robustly we design, the less likely our autonomy will be tested.
As nations have found throughout history, autonomy is far from inalienable. Anton Muscatelli points out that this complex negotiation requires constant attention and re-calibration. It must be promoted through the active management of three forces:
to comply with state direction and societal expectation;
to conform with sector and industrial norms; and
to copy each other’s strategies.
The three forces are not in themselves good or bad for autonomy. A minimal level of regulation protects the student interest. Good standards add value. Some strategies deserve emulation. They are forces for good to the extent to which we use them to improve our engagement with the world. These forces become toxic through neglect, uncritical or anticipatory compliance and inept execution.
And our approach to university autonomy could certainly do with an upgrade. The defensive case is given a thorough outing by James Tooley and John Drew, in Cry Freedom: The regulatory assault on institutional autonomy in England’s universities (2024). In this entertaining beasting of the Office for Students, they draw invidious comparisons between what the regulator is supposed to do and what it actually does. They devastate Susan Lapworth’s claim that institutional autonomy can be overridden. Only a lawyer might improve (or rebut) their analysis of regulatory overreach, even if the reader wonders what, short of class action, would induce DfE and OfS to accept their recommendations.
The sector shackles itself
Equally, a fair-minded judge would accept that the sector’s supine approach to autonomy undermines their case for change. Our surrender of autonomy to the state for money is part of a wider readiness to sell the pass in exchange for benefit.
No one can blame the government (or indeed any major industry or donor) for offering a Faustian pact. It is in their nature to seek control. Nor should universities be blamed for seeking patronage from the state, the market or indeed non-state actors. No one, as Jo Johnson recently argued in his report about the China question, would seriously suggest universities should disengage from the world. Instead, we need a robust, dynamic framework for engagement, exerting maximum self-determination in some areas while accepting constraints in others.
It is worth remembering that HERA busies itself with a single dimension of autonomy. This is founded on the precept of the ‘self-critical, cohesive community of scholars’. While of central importance, academic autonomy is one of four dimensions of autonomy recognised by the European University Association. The other three dimensions (organisational, financial and staffing) represent the soft underbelly of autonomy, absent the legitimacy of the academic.
We lack the toolkit to recognise and manage trade-offs across all four of the EUA’s dimensions. Regulatory interest in academic freedom is a clear-cut incursion on academic autonomy. The same is true of staff and student demands to end relationships with Israeli universities. Pressure on non-academic autonomy is often ostensibly internal. The University and College Union’s (UCU) Four Fights, #MeToo and Black Lives Matter have all successfully targeted the non-academic dimensions of autonomy. In fact, there is almost always a dynamic connection between internal and external forces. After all, the 1968 protests began with the right of male and female students to sleep together and ended by permanently altering university governance.
Away from the academic space, autonomy is lost in less obvious ways.
For example, universities cede considerable organisational autonomy through voluntary commitments to a wide range of charters, benchmarks and league tables. But each external assurance scheme concedes executive room for manoeuvre. Almost worse for a knowledge institution, they concede expertise to a third party. The schemes are regressive because they create a planning burden that small institutions cannot service. And the goalposts move without our input – all assurance schemes ratchet their criteria over time. Sometimes this means that compliance may seem tantamount to wishful thinking. Even critics get confused. At one point, the last government was simultaneously asking universities to leave some schemes (such as Stonewall’s famous Diversity Champions Programme and Athena Swan) and adopt others (such as the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-semitism).
Ganging up
Autonomy can be defined as a type of managed interdependence. It is possible to collaborate with third parties and still maintain self-determination. Indeed, this may be the only way most universities can achieve the scale necessary to confront the most monumental tasks.
Active, relational autonomy is central to effective partnership with government, industry and civil society in complex, interconnected challenges. For example, some of the biggest bets in biotech and STEM have been made as joint ventures.
At the operational level, control over admissions and technology is rightly seen as foundational, and yet we are content for UCAS and Jisc to manage critical processes and infrastructure. Meanwhile, numerous universities have spent millions trying to build a proprietary full-stack online learning offer, while Silicon Valley spends billions on the same task. Arguably, our autonomy is weakest when we go it alone.
This will become increasingly pressing as stressed universities contemplate the possibility of forced merger. What mechanisms will sustain their autonomy, identity and distinctiveness in the arms of a bigger institution?
As shown by Gill Evans, much of the sector used to operate within much larger non-academic organisations, such as local government. Even the most autonomous parts of the sector were interdependent. The collegiate traditions of Oxford and Cambridge demonstrate how shared governance protects autonomy while enabling scale. Royal Charters were mostly awarded to institutions which were (then or subsequently) members of a bigger university. Group structures and formal partnerships between institutions provide varying degrees of freedom to their constituent parts, above a critical threshold of autonomy. These arrangements distribute risk and create safety in numbers, mitigating the hierarchy that makes some institutions more vulnerable than others.
Asserting autonomy
The sector needs more muscular collective action. Individual institutions struggle to resist pressure from regulators, funders and other stakeholders. A stronger sector voice could help establish red lines while engaging constructively with reform agendas.
As argued in my recent debate paper, the overall ability of the sector to exert its autonomy is low compared to other sectors. This has several solutions. We need to establish a strong, leadership body across the tertiary ecosystem, robustly managing the big picture on resource distribution and regulatory burden. We need more sophisticated uses of corporate form, not just the blunt instrument of M&A. But above all, we need to recover an assertive self-confidence.
Let’s be inspired by the private sector and our own history. The original English universities were guilds, muscular and monopolistic in behaviour. Commercial autonomy is not abstract or passive, nor does it derive in a mystical way from the capitalist impulse. It is a self-generating, assertive precondition for entering the market. If universities cannot make a positive case for self-determination, and are not inclined to exercise it, we cannot expect the government of the day – or anyone else – to respect our autonomy. Instead, we need dynamic, structured engagement with external and internal forces. Autonomy will be the result.
New research from CUPA-HR on the state of the faculty workforce in higher education shows that despite some growth in representation among tenure-track women and faculty of color in new hires, advancement to higher faculty ranks remains a barrier. What’s more, these promotion gaps are found in every faculty discipline.
CUPA-HR’s research team analyzed data from the Faculty in Higher Education Survey, a comprehensive data source that collects salary and demographic data by tenure status, rank, and faculty discipline, to evaluate representation and pay equity for women and faculty of color from 2016-17 to 2022-23.
In addition to the finding that women and faculty of color are not being promoted to senior faculty ranks at the same rate as White men, the data also show that women, Black, and Hispanic or Latina/o faculty are better represented in non-tenure-track than in tenure-track positions, and that pay gaps in non-tenure-track positions persist for these groups. Combined with the fact that these groups are less likely to be promoted to higher ranks in tenure-track positions, the result is that a substantial segment of faculty, primarily women and people of color, are employed in positions that pay lower salaries throughout their careers.
Other Findings
Tenure-track faculty positions are on the decline. There has been a decline in tenure-track positions and a corresponding increase in non-tenure-track positions over the past seven years. In 2016-17, tenure-track roles accounted for 73% of faculty, but by 2022-23, this proportion fell to 66%, with a marked increase in non-tenure-track positions over the last two years. Additionally, the percentage of new tenure-track assistant professor hires dropped in recent years, indicating a trend toward more new non-tenure-track hires.
The representation of women and people of color in tenure-track faculty positions is increasing, yet challenges remain. There was a notable increase in the representation of tenure-track (TT) women and faculty of color from 2016-17 to 2022-23. In 2022-23, more than one-fourth (26%) of TT faculty were people of color. This marks a 28% increase over the span of seven years, compared to 2016-17, when faculty of color constituted closer to one-fifth (21%) of all TT faculty. However, the growth in racial/ethnic representation still lags when compared to the demographic composition of U.S. doctoral degree holders. Further, despite strides toward pay equity for tenure-track faculty of color, White women in tenure-track positions still face persistent pay gaps in 2022-23.
