Tag: Challenge

  • $100,000 H-1B visa fee draws third court challenge

    $100,000 H-1B visa fee draws third court challenge

    The coalition of states, led by California’s attorney general Rob Bonta, has argued Trump’s September proclamation bypasses required rulemaking procedures and exceeds the authority of the President’s executive branch.  

    They said the fee violates federal law which allows immigration authorities to collect only necessary fees to cover the cost of administering visa processes.  

    “The Trump administration thinks it can raise costs on a whim, but the law says otherwise,” declared Bonta on December 12. 

    “We are going to court to defend California’s residents and their access to the world-class universities, schools, and hospitals that make Californians proud to call this state home,” he said.  

    The plaintiffs argued the $100,000 fee required for certain H-1B petitions would put “unnecessary” and “illegal” financial burdens on public employers and providers of vital services, exacerbating labour shortages in key sectors.  

    The lawsuit filed last week in a federal court in Boston is the third to challenge Trump’s September 19 proclamation raising the cost of an H-1B visa petition to $100,000 – over 20 times the current cost which ranges between $2,000 and $5,000.  

    The H-1B visa enables US employers to temporarily hire international workers in “specialty occupations” from healthcare to computer science and financial analysis. California’s tech industry is particularly reliant on the visa stream.  

    A month after the initial proclamation, the administration clarified the controversial fee would not apply to international students and other visa holders changing status in the country – an update that commentators say will cause US companies to lean heavily into hiring US trained international students.  

    The White House previously said the fee would combat the “large-scale abuse” of the program which was replacing American workers and undermining the country’s economic and national security.

    The Trump Administration thinks it can raise costs on a whim, but the law says otherwise

    Rob Bonta, California Attorney General

    The states bringing the lawsuit are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin.

    Their legal action follows the US Chamber of Commerce bringing a case against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and an earlier case, Global Nurse Force v. Trump, challenging the policy on similar grounds to the most recent suit.  

    Plaintiffs in the Chamber of Commerce lawsuit are seeking a preliminary injunction that would temporarily ban the fee being imposed while the legality of the proclamation is litigated. A district court hearing is due to be held today (December 19) on the injunction.  

    In addition to the fee hike, businesses and prospective employers are keeping a close eye on government plans to overhaul the H-1B system in favour of higher wage earners. 

    A change of this sort is likely to have wide-reaching implications for global talent flows to the US, with over half of postgraduate students indicating in a recent survey that they wouldn’t have enrolled at US institutions if access to H-1B was determined by wage levels.  

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  • Whatever happened to the New Universities Challenge?

    Whatever happened to the New Universities Challenge?

    On a grey March morning in 2008, a ministerial stand-in cut the ribbon on a £25 million glass and steel building that was supposed to transform Southend-on-Sea.

    Then chief executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), David Eastwood had been hastily switched in as guest-of-honour to replace then-minister Bill Rammell.

    At the funding council, Eastwood had overseen the flow of millions in public money into this seaside town sixty miles east of London. Behind him was the University of Essex’s Gateway Building – six floors of lecture theatres, seminar rooms and local ambition.

    The name had been suggested by Julian Abel, a local resident, chosen because it captured both the building’s location in the Thames Gateway regeneration zone and its promise as “a gateway to learning, business and ultimate success.”

    Colin Riordan, the university’s vice chancellor, captured the spirit of the moment:

    While new buildings are essential to this project, what we are about is changing people’s lives.

    Local dignitaries toured the building’s three academic departments – the East 15 Acting School, the School of Entrepreneurship and Business, and the Department of Health and Human Sciences.

    They admired the Business Incubation Centre designed to nurture local start-ups. They inspected the GP surgery and the state-of-the-art dental clinic where supervised students from Barts and The London would provide free treatment to locals – already 1,000 patients in just eight weeks.

    This wasn’t just a university building. It was the physical manifestation of New Labour’s last great higher education experiment – the idea that you could transform left-behind places by planting universities in them – fixing “cold spots” and “left-behind places” with warm words and big buildings. It was as much economic infrastructure as it was education infrastructure.

    Once, Southend had been “a magnet for day trippers”, then a shabby seaside resort, then a town so deprived that it attracted EU funding. Into that landscape dropped a £26.2 million glass box with “amazing views of the Thames Estuary on one side and a derelict Prudential block on the other,” explicitly aiming to revive the town’s flagging economy.

    Riordan said the campus would “restore the physical fabric of the town centre” and act as a “magnet” for outsiders, while Eastwood supplied a line about a university being “global, national and local” at the same time – world-class research, national recruitment, local benefit.

    Initially, Southend grew beyond the Gateway. East 15 got Clifftown Studios in a converted church, giving the town a theatre and performance space. The Forum – a joint public/university/college library and cultural hub – opened in 2013 as a flagship partnership between Southend Council, Essex and South Essex College, widely lauded as an innovative three-way civic project. For a while, Southend genuinely felt like a university town – at least in the city-centre streets around Elmer Approach.

    But now seventeen years later, the University of Essex has announced it will close the Southend campus. The Gateway Building will be emptied, 400 jobs will go, and the town’s dream of becoming “a vibrant university town” may now end with recriminations about financial sustainability and falling international student numbers.

    The council leader, Daniel Cowan, says:

    …our city remains perfectly placed to play a major national role in higher education, business, and culture.”

    But does it?

    A gateway of excellence

    To understand how Southend’s university dream died, we need to understand how it was born – in the marshlands of Thames Gateway, in the policy papers of Whitehall, and in the peculiar optimism of Britain in the mid-2000s, when anything seemed possible if you just built it.

    In the dying days of the John Major years, to the east of London was a mess – dominated by derelict wharves, refineries and marshland – but it was also a potential route for the new Channel Tunnel Rail Link. In 1991, Michael Heseltine told MPs that the new line “could serve as an important catalyst for plans for the regeneration of that corridor” and announced a government-commissioned study into its potential.

    The thinking was formalised in 1995, when ministers published the Thames Gateway Planning Framework (RPG9a) – regional planning guidance for a “major regional growth area” extending from Newham and Greenwich in London to Thurrock in Essex and Swale in Kent. It was very much late-Conservative spatial policy – trying to capture South East housing and employment growth in a defined corridor while using new infrastructure and land-use policy to civilise what one background paper called the “largest regeneration opportunity in Western Europe.”

    New Labour scaled the whole thing up. In February 2003, John Prescott launched a Sustainable Communities Plan, which “set out a vision for housing and community development over the next 30 years”, with the Thames Gateway as its flagship growth area. Southend became the seaside town that would anchor the estuary’s eastern edge, absorb some of the new housing, and symbolise that this wasn’t just about London’s fringe – but about reviving places that had been left behind by deindustrialisation.

    2001’s Thames Gateway South Essex vision even identified Southend’s future role as the cultural and intellectual hub and a “higher education centre of excellence for South Essex.”

    In a 2006 Commons adjournment debate on “Southend (Regeneration)”, David Amess stitched the university and college expansions into promises of 13,000 new jobs and thousands of homes by 2021. Accommodating growth at the University of Essex Southend campus and South East Essex College, he argued, was key to turning the town centre into a “cultural hub”, alongside plans for a public and university library and performance and media centre.

    By the time John Denham published A New University Challenge: Unlocking Britain’s Talent in March 2008, Southend was the exemplar. In the South Essex case study the prospectus tells a neat story – Essex’s involvement began in 2001 via validated programmes at South East Essex College, evolved into a “distinctive” partnership pulling a research-intensive university into a major widening participation and regeneration project.

    With support from HEFCE, central and local government, it aimed to grow student numbers in the town from 700 to 2,000 by 2013 as “the beginning of a vision to make Southend a vibrant university town.”

    Regeneration tales

    There were plenty more. In “A New University Challenge,” Denham reminded readers that, since 2003, capital funding and additional student numbers had already gone into eleven areas – Barnsley, Cornwall, Cumbria, Darlington, Folkestone, Hastings, Medway, Oldham, Peterborough, Southend and Suffolk – with HEFCE agreeing support for six more – Blackburn, Blackpool, Burnley, Everton, Grimsby, and North and South Devon.

    He estimated that around £100 million in capital had been committed so far, with capacity for some 9,000 students when all the projects were fully functioning.

    Cornwall was another showcase. The Penryn (then Tremough) campus – developed through the Combined Universities in Cornwall scheme – used EU Objective One money and UK government funding via the South West RDA to build a shared site for Falmouth and Exeter in a county with historically low higher education participation and a fragile, seasonal economy.

    Subsequent evidence to Parliament from Cornwall Council was explicit that CUC was designed to deliver economic regeneration as much as access, focusing European investment on “business-facing activity” and experimentation in outreach to firms that had never worked with universities before.

    Cumbria got its own mini-origin story. Denham described the new University of Cumbria – launched in 2007 – as “a new kind of institution” with distributed campuses in urban and rural settings – designed to meet diverse learner needs and provide, with partners, the “skills that are essential” to create the workforce that would go on to decommission the Sellafield nuclear power plant.

    Later DIUS reporting, REF environment statements and parliamentary evidence on the nuclear workforce all reprise the same themes – Cumbria as an anchor institution, a regional skills engine and a piece of the civil nuclear skills jigsaw.

    Suffolk was presented as the archetypal “cold spot.” In 2005 UEA and Essex, backed by Suffolk County Council, Ipswich Borough Council, EEDA and the Learning and Skills Council, secured £15 million from HEFCE to create University Campus Suffolk on Ipswich Waterfront – a county of over half a million people with no university, low participation and significant planned growth.

    Denham sold UCS as both a response to education under-supply and an enabler of economic regeneration. Later coverage in The Independent made the same point in more colourful language – Ipswich finally had its own glamorous waterfront campus “full of thousands of students.”

    Barnsley, Oldham, Darlington and the like were framed more modestly – university centres in FE colleges that extended HE access to people “who might not otherwise consider participating in higher education.” In Barnsley’s case that meant a town-centre site opened in 2005 by Huddersfield, with investment from HEFCE, Yorkshire Forward and Objective 1 funds, later taken over by Barnsley College but still offering Huddersfield-validated degrees and hosting around 1,600 HE students.

    Folkestone, Hastings and Medway were presented as coastal or post-industrial variations on the theme – attempts to use university presence in under-served towns as a driver of creative-quarter regeneration, skills upgrading and image change. University Centre Folkestone, a Canterbury Christ Church/Greenwich joint venture, showed up in coastal regeneration reports as a way to tackle deprivation through improved skills and productivity in South Kent.

    The Universities at Medway partnership between Kent, Greenwich, Canterbury Christ Church and Mid-Kent College was talked up in SEEDA case studies as a £50 million dockyard campus replacing thousands of lost shipbuilding jobs and housing over 10,000 students.

    All of that was then plugged into the macro-economy story. Denham leaned on work suggesting that a one percentage point increase in the graduate share of the workforce raised productivity by around 0.5 per cent, and argued that higher education contributes over £50 billion a year to the UK economy, supporting 600,000 jobs.

    The logic was pretty simple – if you want a more productive, knowledge-intensive economy, you need more graduates in more places – and not just in the big cities.

    20 new universities

    In March 2008 Denham called the scattered activity the “first wave” – and then announced a competition for the next one:

    We believe we need a new ‘university challenge’ to bring the benefits of local higher education provision to bear across the country.

    He got his headlines. He asked HEFCE to consult not just institutions but also RDAs, local authorities, business and community groups on how to identify locations and shape proposals. The goals were twofold – “unlocking the potential of towns and people” and “driving economic regeneration.”

    HEFCE’s Strategic Development Fund was given £150 million for the 2008–11 spending review. Denham suggested that over six years the fund could support up to twenty more centres or campuses, with commitments in place by 2014 and roughly 10,000 additional student places once mature.

    The criteria for bids were revealing about the politics of the moment. Proposals had to demonstrate that they would widen participation, particularly among adults with level 3 who had never considered HE. They had to slot into local economic strategies – supplying high-level skills, supporting business start-ups and innovation, anchoring graduates who might otherwise leave. And they had to show strong HE/FE collaboration, buy-in from councils and RDAs, credible demand modelling, and the ability to manage complex multi-funded capital projects.

    HEFCE dutifully ran a two-stage process – statements of intent followed by full business cases. By late 2009, after sifting twenty-three initial bids, the funding council concluded that six were strong enough to develop further, subject to the next spending review. Those six were Somerset (with Bournemouth University), Crawley (Brighton), Milton Keynes (Bedfordshire), Swindon (UWE), Thurrock (Essex) and the Wirral (Chester).

    But the initiative wasn’t to last. The 2010 election brought a coalition government that scrapped RDAs, squeezed capital budgets and shifted the English HE settlement onto nine-thousand-ish fees and income-contingent loans. HEFCE’s Strategic Development Fund withered. “Alternative providers” became the policy fashion – and the idea of a central pot funding twenty shiny new public campuses was in the past.

    The promised headline – twenty new campuses, twenty new “university towns” – never happened. Instead we got a patchwork of university centres, joint ventures and re-badged FE HE hubs, while national rhetoric shifted from “unlocking towns and people” to “competition and choice.”

    Four directions

    If we look back now at the original seventeen, we find four basic trajectories.

    Barnsley and Oldham have settled into the HE-in-FE pattern. University Campus Barnsley, opened in 2005 by Huddersfield with HEFCE, Yorkshire Forward and Objective 1 support, transferred to Barnsley College in 2013 and now runs as the college’s HE arm, with Huddersfield still validating degrees. University Campus Oldham followed a similar route – opened in 2005 under Huddersfield’s banner and managed by Oldham College since 2012, delivering Huddersfield-validated awards alongside its own.

    Cornwall and Medway look closer to what Denham imagined. The Penryn campus now hosts around 6,000 students on a shared Falmouth–Exeter site, with Objective One and SWRDA funding widely credited as crucial to its development.

    Universities at Medway, established in 2004 at Chatham Maritime, has struggled – Canterbury Christ Church has all but pulled out, Kent’s numbers are small. The glossy case studies boasting of its £300 million boost to the local economy and its role in remaking a dockyard area that lost 7,000 jobs overnight look less glossy in 2025 – and now, of course, Kent and Greenwich are merging.

    Cumbria and Suffolk were the two that ended up as fully fledged universities. The University of Cumbria, established in 2007 from a merger of colleges and satellite campuses, describes itself in REF and internal strategy documents as an “anchor institute” created to catalyse regional prosperity and pride, while continuing to play a role in the nuclear skills ecosystem around Sellafield. University Campus Suffolk secured university title and degree-awarding powers in 2016, with official narrative and sector commentary stressing its success in “transforming the provision of higher education in Suffolk and beyond” – although a significant proportion of its students are franchised.

    Grimsby, Blackburn, Blackpool, Burnley, and the Devon centres fall into the “quietly important” category. The £20 million University Centre Grimsby opened in 2011 and now offers a large suite of higher-level programmes in partnership with Hull and through the TEC Partnership’s own degree-awarding powers. Grimsby Institute marketing describes it as a “dedicated home” for HE and one of England’s largest college-based providers. Similar stories play out in Blackburn, Blackpool and Petroc/South Devon – college-based university centres that rarely appear in the national HE debate but matter enormously for local progression and skills.

    Folkestone and Hastings show us the fragility of hanging regeneration hopes on small coastal campuses. University Centre Folkestone operated from 2007 to 2013 as a Canterbury Christ Church/Greenwich initiative, featuring in coastal regeneration studies as a way to address deprivation and skills deficits and energise the creative quarter. But by the early 2010s it had wound down its HE offer, with the buildings folded into Folkestone’s broader cultural infrastructure.

    Hastings saw an original centre replaced in 2009–10 by the University of Brighton in Hastings as the university’s fifth campus – itself the subject of fierce local protest when Brighton decided in 2016 to close the site and move provision into a partnership “university centre” model with Sussex Coast College.

    Peterborough was a late-blooming outlier. The original University Centre Peterborough, developed with Anglia Ruskin, is now joined by ARU Peterborough – a campus opened in 2022 with significant “levelling up” funding and endlessly described by ministers as addressing a higher education cold spot and boosting local productivity. It was, in many ways, Denham’s model revived under a different party label – but few like it are left.

    As for the “Universities Challenge” push, in Somerset, Bridgwater & Taunton College developed University Centre Somerset, offering degrees validated by HE partners. In Crawley, what had been imagined as a bid for a campus manifested as higher-level technical and university-level provision in Crawley College and the Sussex & Surrey Institute of Technology.

    Milton Keynes’ ambitions funnelled into University Centre/Campus Milton Keynes, now part of the University of Bedfordshire, with periodic political chatter about eventually having a fully fledged MK university. On the Wirral, Wirral Met’s University Centre at Hamilton Campus offers degrees accredited by Chester, Liverpool and UCLan as part of a broader skills and regeneration role. Thurrock saw South Essex College expand its University Centre presence – exactly the sort of FE-based HE model Denham said he wanted.

    Elsewhere, Chester has pulled out of Telford. Gloucestershire is winding down Cheltenham. The University College of Football Business (UCFB) no longer operates in Burnley. Man Met sold Crewe to Buckingham. USW is no longer in Newport, UWTSD is closing Lampeter, Durham is out of Stockton, and Cumbria has mothballed Ambleside.

    It turns out that on that grey March morning in 2008, David Eastwood was right. To sustain a full-fledged university campus – with all of the spill out benefits often envisaged – you need international students, national recruitment of home students and local students. Immigration policy change has made the first harder. A lack of deliberate student distribution has made the second harder. And closures like Southend’s leave local students like this.

    I personally chose Southend due to being a single parent, wanting to build my career in nursing whilst getting that extra time with my little girl.

    A new universities challenge

    In its “National Conversation on Immigration” in 2018, citizens’ panels for British Future saw real benefits of international students – it called for student migration and university expansion to be used “to boost regional and local growth in under-performing areas,” and for any major expansion of student numbers to be government-led with the explicit aim of spreading the benefits more widely, including via regional quotas on post-study work visas and new institutions in cold spots.

    It talked of “a new wave of university building” and said institutions should be located in places that have experienced economic decline, have fewer skilled local jobs, or are social mobility “cold spots” – with criteria including distance from existing universities and socio-economic need. They then give a worked list of ten suggested locations – Barnstaple, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Chesterfield, Derry-Londonderry, Doncaster, Grimsby, Shrewsbury, Southend and Wigan.

    But as we’ve covered before, immigration policy – both during expansion and contraction – is almost always place-blind.

    The Resolution Foundation’s Ending stagnation A New Economic Strategy for Britain makes a similar point – it rejects making existing campuses ever larger, and instead calls for new ones able to serve cold-spots “like Blackpool and Hartlepool.” It cites evidence that increasing the number of universities in a region – a 10 per cent rise – is associated with around a 0.4 per cent increase in GDP per capita.

    This Tony Blair Institute paper from 2012 – surely the inspiration for Starmer’s 66 per cent target speech – calls for new universities in “left-behind regions” as a way to reduce spatial disparities and break intergenerational disadvantage. Chris Whitty’s 2021 report that highlighted the “overlooked” issues in coastal towns suggested shifting medical training to campuses in deprived towns.

    And at a Policy Exchange event on the fringe of Conservative Party Conference that year, Michael “Minister for Levelling Up” Gove was asked about the potential for new universities to bring economic benefits to “places like Doncaster and Thanet.” Gove simply said: “I agree.”

    The current Labour government’s Post-16 education and skills white paper makes familiar noises about addressing “cold spots in under-served regions.” But there’s no money for new campuses, no Strategic Development Fund, no New University Challenge. Instead, there’s a working group. And around the edges, we’re watching the geographical distribution of higher education shrink.

    Without deliberate planning, sustained funding and political will, clustering will continue to cluster. Universities will consolidate in cities where mobile students want to study and where critical mass already exists. The cold spots will get colder.

    OfS talks of universities needing “bold and transformative action.” It doesn’t mean transforming places – it means surviving financially. Even mergers save little money unless they lead to campus closures. And campus closures mean communities losing not just current educational provision but future possibility – the chance that their children might stay local and still get a degree, that their town might attract the businesses and cultural institutions that follow universities, that they might be something more than a void on the educational map.

    The Robbins expansion of the 1960s worked because it created entire new institutions with sustained funding and genuine autonomy. The polytechnic expansion of the 1970s worked because it built on existing technical colleges with deep local roots. The conversion of polytechnics to universities in 1992 worked because it recognised existing success rather than trying to create it from nothing. But most attempts since to plant universities in cold spots through satellite campuses and partnership arrangements have struggled – because the system stubbornly refuses to pull levers based on place.

    Promises of change

    Once a university exits stage left, the impacts can be devastating. Despite promises that the merger and rebranding of the university into the University of South Wales in 2013 would not reduce campuses or student numbers, the 32-acre campus in Newport was closed in 2016 – when a largeish slice of arts and media courses moved to the Cardiff Atrium campus.

    Student numbers in the city collapsed from around 10,000 in 2010/11 to just 2,600 a decade later – a drop that left the city, in the words of one local councillor, as “a poor man’s Pontypridd” when it comes to higher education.

    The campus had been the city’s third highest employer – now the economic contribution of higher education to the local economy has all but evaporated. As one local put it:

    There’s a lot of hate for students until they’re gone.

    The Southend closure announcement came with promises too. The university would “support students through the transition.” The local council would “explore options for the site.” The MP would “fight for the community.”

    Some will point the finger at the university. But we would be very foolish indeed to blame universities for shutting down campuses that they can’t sustain in a market-led model.

    Doing so obscures the fundamental question – if universities are as crucial to regional development as everyone claims, why do we leave their geographical distribution to market forces? Why do we build campuses with regeneration money then expect them to survive on student fees? Why are we place-specific with our physical capital but place-blind with our human capital? Why do we keep repeating the same mistakes?

    The answer is uncomfortable – because we’ve never really believed in geographical equity in higher education. We’ve played at it, thrown money at it during boom times, made speeches about it. But when times get hard, when choices must be made, the cold spots are always first to lose out.

    The 1960s planners who chose Canterbury over Ashford and Colchester over Chelmsford understood that university location was too important to leave to chance. They made deliberate choices about where to invest for the long term. They understood that some places would need permanent subsidy to sustain provision, and they accepted that as the price of geographical equity.

    We’ve lost that understanding. We’ve replaced planning with market mechanisms, strategy with initiatives, and long-term thinking with political cycles. Places like Southend are the ones that will pay the price – and sadly, it won’t be the last.

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  • The promise and challenge of AI in building a sustainable future

    The promise and challenge of AI in building a sustainable future

    It is tempting to regard AI as a panacea for addressing our most urgent global challenges, from climate change to resource scarcity. Yet the truth is more complex: unless we pair innovation with responsibility, the very tools designed to accelerate sustainability may exacerbate its contradictions.

    A transformative potential

    Let us first acknowledge how AI is already reshaping sustainable development. By mapping patterns in vast datasets, AI enables us to anticipate environmental risks, optimise resource flows and strengthen supply chains. Evidence suggests that by 2030, AI systems will touch the lives of more than 8.5 billion people and influence the health of both human and natural ecosystems in ways we have never seen before. Research published in Nature indicates that AI could support progress towards 79% of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), helping advance 134 specific targets. Yet the same research also cautions that AI may impede 59 of those targets if deployed without care or control.

    In practice, this means smarter energy grids that balance load and demand, precision agriculture that reduces fertiliser waste and environmental monitoring systems that detect deforestation or pollution in real time. For a planet under pressure, these scenarios offer hope to do less harm and build more resilience.

    The hidden costs

    Even so, we must confront the shadows cast by AI’s advancements. An investigation published earlier this year warns that AI systems could account for nearly half of global data-centre power consumption before the decade’s end. Consider the sheer scale: vast server arrays, intensive cooling systems, rare-earth mining and water-consuming infrastructure all underpin generative AI’s ubiquity. Worse still, indirect carbon emissions tied to major AI-capable firms reportedly rose by 150% between 2020 and 2023. In short, innovation meant to serve sustainability imposes a growing ecological burden.

    Navigating trade-offs

    This tension presents an essential question: how can we reconcile AI’s promise with its cost? Scholars warn that we must move beyond the assumption that ‘AI for good’ is always good enough. The moment demands a new discipline of ‘sustainable AI’: a framework that treats resource use, algorithmic bias, lifecycle impact and societal equity as first-order concerns.

    Practitioners must ask not only what AI can do, but how it is built, powered, governed and retired. Efficiency gains that drive consumption higher will not deliver sustainability; they may merely escalate resource demands in disguise.

    A moral and strategic imperative

    For educators, policymakers and business leaders, this is more than a technical issue; it is a moral and strategic one. To realise AI’s true potential in advancing sustainable development, we must commit to three priorities:

    Energy and resource transparency: Organisations must measure and report the footprint of their AI models, including data-centre use, water cooling, e-waste and supply-chain impacts. Transparency is foundational to accountability.

    Ethical alignment and fairness: AI must be trained and deployed with due regard to bias, social impact and inclusivity. Its benefits must not reinforce inequality or externalise environmental harms onto vulnerable communities.

    Integrative education and collaboration: We need multidisciplinary expertise, engineers fluent in ecology, ethicists fluent in algorithms and managers fluent in sustainability. Institutions must upskill young learners and working professionals to orient AI within the broader context of planetary boundaries and human flourishing.

    MLA College’s focus and contribution

    At MLA College, we recognise our role in equipping professionals at this exact intersection. Our programs emphasise the interrelationship between technology, sustainability and leadership. Graduates of distance-learning and part-time formats engage with the complexities of AI, maritime operations, global sustainable development and marine engineering by bringing insight to sectors vital to the planet’s future.

    When responsibly guided, AI becomes an amplifier of purpose rather than a contraption of risk. Our challenge is to ensure that every algorithm, model and deployment contributes to regenerative systems, not extractive ones.

    The promise of AI is compelling: more accurate climate modelling, smarter cities, adaptive infrastructure and just-in-time supply chains. But the challenge is equally formidable: rising energy demands, resource-intensive infrastructures and ungoverned expansion.

    When responsibly guided, AI becomes an amplifier of purpose rather than a contraption of risk

    Our collective role, as educators and practitioners, is to shape the ethical architecture of this era. We must ask whether our technologies will serve humanity and the environment or simply accelerate old dynamics under new wrappers.

    The verdict will not be written on lines of code or boardroom decisions alone. It will be inscribed in the fields that fail to regenerate, in the communities excluded from progress, in the data centres humming with waste and in the next generation seeking meaning in technology’s promise.

    About the author: Professor Mohammad Dastbaz is the principal and CEO of MLA College, an international leader in distance and sustainability-focused higher education. With over three decades in academia, he has held senior positions including deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Suffolk and pro vice-chancellor at Leeds Beckett University.

    A Fellow of the British Computer Society, the Higher Education Academy, and the Royal Society of Arts, Professor Dastbaz is a prominent researcher and author in the fields of sustainable development, smart cities, and digital innovation in education.

    His latest publication, Decarbonization or Demise – Sustainable Solutions for Resilient Communities (Springer, 2025), brings together cutting-edge global research on sustainability, climate resilience, and the urgent need for decarbonisation. The book builds on his ongoing commitment to advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals through education and research.

    At MLA College, Professor Dastbaz continues to lead transformative learning initiatives that combine academic excellence with real-world impact, empowering students to shape a sustainable future.

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  • Games for Change Opens 2026 Student Challenge to Game Creators and Innovators Ages 10–25

    Games for Change Opens 2026 Student Challenge to Game Creators and Innovators Ages 10–25

    The annual global game design awards $20,000 in grand prizes for creative and impactful games that advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals

    NEW YORK, NY — [NOV 10, 2025] — Games for Change (G4C), the leading nonprofit that empowers game creators and innovators to drive real-world change, today announced the kick off of the 2025- 2026 Games for Change Student Challenge, a global game design program inviting learners ages 10–25 years old to tackle pressing world issues that address the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, through creativity, play, and purposeful design.

    Now in its eleventh year, the Student Challenge has reached more than 70,000 students and almost 2,000 educators and faculty across 600cities in 91 countries, inspiring the creation of over 6,600 original student-designed games that connect learning to action. From November to April 2026, participants will design and submit games for consideration in regional and global competitions, with Game Jams taking place worldwide throughout the season.

    “The G4C Student Challenge continues to show that when young people design games about real-world issues, they see themselves not just as players, but as problem solvers and changemakers,” said Arana Shapiro, Chief Operations and Programs Officer at Games for Change. “Through game design, students learn to think critically, collaborate, and build solutions with purpose. In a world shaped by AI and constant change, durable skills like problem solving, critical thinking, and game design will allow all learners to thrive in their communities and worldwide.”

    This year, students will explore three new themes developed with world-class partners to inspire civic imagination and problem-solving:

    Two grand-prize winners will receive a total of $20,000 in scholarships, generously provided by Take-Two Interactive and Endless. Winners and finalists will be celebrated at the Student Challenge Awards on May 28, 2026, in recognition of exceptional creativity, social impact, and innovation in student game design.

    “With 3.4 billion players worldwide, the video games industry has an unprecedented ability to reach and inspire audiences across cultures and our next generation of leaders,” said Lisa Pak, Head of Operations at Playing for the Planet. “We’re excited about our collaboration with Games for Change, empowering students to use their creativity to spotlight the threats to reefs, rainforests, and our climate. Together, we’re transforming play into a powerful tool for awareness, education, and action.”

    “More than 319 million people face severe hunger around the world today,” said Jessamyn Sarmiento, Chief Marketing Officer at World Food Program USA. “Through the ‘Outgrow Hunger’ theme, we’re giving the next generation a way to explore the root causes of food insecurity and imagine solutions through research, game design, and play. This collaboration helps students connect their creativity to one of the most urgent challenges of our time—ending hunger for good.”

    Additionally, G4C is expanding its educator support with the launch of the G4C Learn website, the world’s largest online resource library featuring lesson plans, tutorials, and toolkits to guide students, teachers, and faculty on topics like game design, game-based learning, esports, career pathways, and more. In partnership with Global Game Jam, educators worldwide can receive funding, training, and support to host Student Challenge Game Jams in their classrooms and communities.

    “Games turn learning into challenges students actually want to take on,” said Luna Ramirez, CTE teacher at Thomas A. Edison CTE High School based in New York City. “When students design games to tackle pressing global problems affecting their communities, they become curious about the world around them, experimenting, and bringing ideas to life. The best learning happens when students take risks, fail forward, and collaborate, and that’s exactly what the Games for Change Student Challenge empowers.”

    Educators, parents, and learners ages 10–25 can now registerfor the 2026 Games for Change Student Challenge and access free tools and resources at learn.gamesforchange.org.

    This year’s Student Challenge is made possible through the generous support of key partners, including Endless, General Motors, Verizon, Motorola Solutions Foundation, Take-Two Interactive, World Food Program USA, Playing for the Planet, Unity, and Global Game Jam.

    About Games for Change

    Since 2004, Games for Change (G4C) has empowered game creators and innovators to drive real-world change through games and immersive media, helping people learn, improve their communities, and make the world a better place. G4C partners with technology and gaming companies, nonprofits, foundations, and government agencies to run world-class events, public arcades, design challenges, and youth programs. G4C supports a global community of developers using games to tackle real-world challenges, from humanitarian conflicts to climate change and education. For more information, visit: https://www.gamesforchange.org/.

    Media contact(s):

    Alyssa Miller

    Games for Change

    [email protected]

    973-615-1292

    Susanna Pollack
    [email protected]

    Latest posts by eSchool News Contributor (see all)

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  • Adopting AI across an institution is a pressing leadership challenge

    Adopting AI across an institution is a pressing leadership challenge

    Artificial intelligence is already reshaping higher education fast. For universities aiming to be AI-first institutions, leadership, governance, staff development, and institutional culture are critical.

    How institutions respond now will determine whether AI enhances learning or simply reinforces existing inequalities, inefficiencies and, frankly, bad practices. This is not only an institutional or sector question but a matter of national policy: government has committed to supporting AI-skills at scale, and the UK has pledged an early ambition that a “fifth of the workforce will be supported with the AI skills they need to thrive in their jobs.” Strategic deployment of AI is therefore a pressing HE leadership question.

    Whole institution AI leadership and governance

    Universities will benefit from articulating a clear AI-first vision that aligns with their educational, research and civic missions. Leadership plays a central role in ensuring AI adoption supports educational quality, innovation and equity rather than focusing purely on operational efficiency or competitiveness. Cultivating a culture where AI is viewed as a collaborative partner helps staff become innovators shaping AI integration rather than passive users (as the jargon frames it, “makers” not “takers”). Strategic plans and performance indicators should reflect commitments to ethical, responsible, and impactful AI deployment, signalling to staff and students that innovation and integrity go hand in hand.

    Ethical and transparent leadership in AI-first institutions is vital. Decision-making, whether informed by student analytics like Kortext StREAM, enrolment forecasts, budgeting, or workforce planning, should model responsible AI use. The right governance structures need to be created. Far be it from us to suggest more committees, but there needs to be governance oversight through ethics and academic quality boards to oversee AI deployment across the education function.

    Clear frameworks for managing data privacy, intellectual property, and algorithmic bias are essential, particularly when working with third-party providers. Maintaining dialogue with accreditation and quality assurance bodies including PSRBs and OfS ensures innovation aligns with regulatory expectations, avoiding clashes between ambition and oversight. This needs to be at individual institution, but also at sector and regulator level.

    Capability and infrastructure development

    Staff capability underpins any AI-first strategy. This needs to be understood through taking a whole institution approach rather than just education-facing staff. Defining a framework of AI competencies will help to clarify the skills needed to use AI responsibly and effectively, and there are already institutional frameworks, including from Jisc, QAA, and Skills England, that do this. Embedding these competencies into recruitment, induction, appraisal, promotion and workload frameworks can ensure that innovation is rewarded, not sidelined.

    Demonstrating AI literacy and ethical awareness could become a requirement for course leadership, or senior appointments. Adjusting workload models to account for experimentation, retraining, and curriculum redesign gives staff the space to explore AI responsibly. Continuous professional development – including AI learning pathways, ethics training, and peer learning communities – reinforces a culture of innovation while protecting academic quality.

    Investment in AI-enabled infrastructure underpins an AI-first institution. We recognise the severe financial challenges faced by many institutions and this means that investments must be well targeted and implemented effectively. Secure data environments, analytics platforms, and licensed AI tools accessible to staff and students are essential to provide the foundation for innovation. Ethical procurement practices when partnering with edtech providers promote transparency, accessibility, and academic independence. Universities should also consider the benefits and risks of developing their own large language models alongside relying on external platforms, weighing in factors such as cost, privacy, and institutional control. See this partnership between Kortext, Said Business School, Microsoft and Instructure for an example of an innovative new education partnership.

    Culture and change management

    Implementing AI responsibly requires trust. Leaders need to communicate openly about AI’s opportunities and limitations, critically addressing staff anxieties about displacement or loss of autonomy. Leadership development programmes for PVCs, deans, heads of school, and professional service directors can help manage AI-driven transformation effectively.

    One of the most important things to get right is to ensure that cross-functional collaboration between IT, academic development, HR, and academic quality units supports coherent progress toward an AI-first culture. Adopting iterative change management – using pilot programs, consultation processes, and rapid feedback loops well – allows institutions to refine AI strategies continuously, balancing innovation with oversight.

    AI interventions benefit from rigorous quantitative and qualitative evaluation. Indicators such as efficiency, student outcomes, creativity, engagement, and inclusion can offer a balanced picture of impact. Regular review cycles ensure responsiveness to emerging AI capabilities and evolving educational priorities. Publishing internal (and external) reports on AI impacts on education will be essential to promote transparency, sharing lessons learned and guiding future development. It almost goes without saying that institutions should share practice (what has worked and what hasn’t) not only within their organisations, but also across the sector and with accrediting bodies and regulators.

    An AI-first university places human judgment, ethics, and pedagogy at the centre of all technological innovation. AI should augment rather than replace intellectual and creative capacities of educators and students. Every intervention must benefit from assessment against these principles, ensuring technology serves learning, rather than it becoming the master of human agency or ethical standards.

    Being an AI-first institution is certainly not about chasing the latest tools or superficially focusing on staff and student “AI literacy.” It is about embedding AI thoughtfully in every part of the university. Leaders need to articulate vision, model ethical behaviour, build staff capacity and student ability to become next generation AI leaders. Staff and students need time, support and trust to experiment responsibly. Infrastructure and external partnerships must be strategic and principled. There must also be continuous evaluation to ensure that innovation aligns with strategy and values.

    When implemented carefully, AI can become a collaborative partner in enhancing learning, facilitating creativity and reinforcing the academic mission rather than undermining it.

    This article is published in association with Kortext. Join Janice and Rachel for Kortext LIVE on 11 February in London, on the theme of “Leading the next chapter of digital innovation” to continue the conversation on AI and data. Keynote speakers include Mark Bramwell, CDIO at Said Business School. Find out more and secure your spot here. 

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  • Federal judge dismisses legal challenge to gainful employment rule

    Federal judge dismisses legal challenge to gainful employment rule

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    Dive Brief: 

    • A federal judge dismissed a case Thursday that challenged the legality of the Biden administration’s gainful employment rule, which aims to ensure that graduates of career education programs earn enough to pay off their student loan debt. 
    • U.S. District Judge Reed O’Conner — a George W. Bush appointee — rejected arguments from cosmetology school groups that the gainful employment rule overstepped the U.S. Department of Education’s authority and violated their constitutional rights. 
    • Although the Biden-era rule survived the legal challenge, the Trump administration is considering potential changes to the gainful employment regulations in the coming months. 

    Dive Insight: 

    The Biden administration finalized the gainful employment rule in 2023. Under the rule, career education programs must prove that they provide graduates with an earnings bump and don’t leave borrowers with more debt than they can manage. 

    To do so, the gainful employment rule establishes two separate tests. Under one, the median program graduate must pay no more than 8% of their annual earnings or 20% of their discretionary income toward their debt. Under the other, at least half of a program’s graduates must outearn workers in their state with only a high school diploma. 

    College programs that fail either of these metrics in two out of three consecutive years risk losing access to federal financial aid. The rule primarily impacts programs at for-profit colleges, but also applies to certificates at all institutions. 

    Thursday’s ruling addresses two consolidated lawsuits against the rule. The cosmetology school groups had argued that the Education Department had overstepped its authority when issuing the regulations, as the Higher Education Act doesn’t define gainful employment.

    However, O’Connor wrote that the Education Department’s rule follows the plain meaning of the statute. 

    “Although the 2023 Rule is in the form of an equation, it no less does the same work as the words ‘gainful employment,’ by ensuring the programs lead to profitable jobs, instead of loan deficits,” O’Connor wrote. 

    The plaintiffs had also alleged that they would be unfairly penalized by the rule, arguing that a large share of income in the cosmetology industry goes unreported because it is earned through cash tips. Because of that, they said, the Education Department’s calculations would fail to accurately capture how much their graduates earn. 

    O’Connor rejected those arguments, noting that the Education Department had cited studies showing that underreporting is not widespread. 

    National Student Legal Defense Network, an advocacy and legal group for students, praised the ruling Thursday. 

    “Higher education is supposed to offer students a path to a better life, not a debt-filled dead end,” Student Defense Vice President and Chief Counsel Dan Zibel said in a statement. “The 2023 Gainful Employment Rule reflects a common-sense policy to ensure that students are not wasting time and money on career programs that provide little value.”

    Jason Altmire, president and CEO of Career Education Colleges and Universities, an association that represents the for-profit college sector, decried Thursday’s ruling but sounded optimistic about forthcoming regulatory changes under the Trump administration. 

    “Although we strongly disagree with the ruling today, we look forward to this issue being revisited by the current Department of Education,” Altmire said in a statement that day. “We are confident the Biden Gainful Employment Rule will be revised to incorporate a fairer accountability measure that will apply equally to all schools, ensuring all students can benefit.”

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  • We Don’t Need to Retreat From the Challenge of AI in Schools

    We Don’t Need to Retreat From the Challenge of AI in Schools

    One of the chief pleasures of traveling to schools and campuses to talk about More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI and my approaches to how we should approach the teaching of writing is getting the chance to see what other places are doing with the challenge of working in a world of generative AI technology.

    My travels so far this semester have been very encouraging. It seems clear that we are in a new phase of reasoned consideration following on an earlier period of worry and uncertainty. I never saw outright panic, but there was a whiff of doom in the air.

    There may be a selection bias in terms of the institutions that would invite someone like me to come work with them, but there is a clear impulse to figure out how to move forward according to institutional values, rather than being stuck in a defensive posture.

    As I declared way back in December 2022, “ChatGPT can’t kill anything worth preserving.” The work of what must be preserved and how is definitely underway.

    I want to share some impressions of what I think is working well at the institutions that are moving forward, so others may consider how they might want to do this work on their own campuses.

    Going on Offense by Living Your Values

    One clear commonality for successfully addressing the current challenges is by identifying the core institutional values and then making them central to the ongoing discussions about how instruction and institutional operations must evolve.

    As one example, at my recent visit to Iona University, I was introduced to their framework of agency, expression and responsibility.

    “Agency” is one of my favorite words when talking about learning, period, and in this case it means communicating to students that it is ultimately the students themselves who must choose the path of their own educations, including the use of AI technology. I’ve recently been speaking more and more about AI in education as a demand-side issue, where students need to see the pitfalls of outsourcing their learning. Agency puts the responsibility where it belongs: on students themselves.

    Expression represents a belief that the ultimate goal of one’s education is to develop our unique voice as part of the larger world in which we work and live. Writing isn’t just producing text but using the tools of expression—including text—to convey our points of view to the world. Where LLMs use substitutes for or obscure our personal expression, they should be avoided.

    Responsibility is related to agency in the “with great power comes great responsibility” sense. Students are encouraged to consider the practical and ethical dimensions of using the technology.

    At other stops I’ve seen similar orientations, though often with wrinkles unique to local contexts. One common value is rather than retreating to assessments that can be monitored in order to prevent cheating, the goal is to figure out how to give life to the kinds of educational experiences we know to be meaningful to learning.

    If you start with the values, things like policy can be evaluated against something meaningful and enduring. The conversations become more productive because everyone is working from a shared base.

    I know this can be done, because I’ve been visiting institutions working on this problem for more than 18 months, and the progress is real.

    Collective Spirit and Collaborative Action

    Another common sign of progress is institutional leadership that communicates a desire to take a collective approach to tackle the issues and then puts specific, tangible resources behind this call to make collaborative action more possible and effective.

    Several institutions I’ve visited have carved out spots for some version of AI faculty fellows, where these fellows are given freedom to explore the technology and its specific implications to their disciplines, before coming back to a group and institutional setting where this learning is shared.

    To work, these must be more than groups tasked to figure out how to integrate AI technology into the university. I have not visited any institution that has done this—they are unlikely to invite someone like me—but I have been corresponding with people whose institutions are doing this who are looking for advice, and it seems like a sure route to a divided institution.

    At my Iona visit, they took this approach to the next level by putting on a one-day conference and inviting community educators from all walks to hear not just yours truly, but also the AI fellows and other faculty discuss a variety of issues.

    These conferences don’t solve every problem in a day, but simply demonstrating to the broader public that you’re working the problem is deeply encouraging.

    Room and Respect for Difference

    One of my favorite parts of my visits is the chance to talk with the faculty on a campus who have been wrestling with the same challenges I’m spending my time on. At the base level, we share the same values when it comes to what learning looks like and the importance of things like agency and transparency to achieving those things.

    But when it comes to the application and use of generative AI technology to achieve these outcomes, there are often significant differences. I share my perspective, they share theirs, and while I don’t think we necessarily change each other’s minds, a great appreciation for a different perspective is achieved.

    It’s a model of what I always based my courses in, the academic conversation, where the goal of writing and speaking is to gradually increase the amount of illumination on the subject at hand. We’re having a discussion, not a “debate.”

    I am far more skeptical and circumspect about the utility of generative AI when it comes to teaching and learning than many. I often point out that anyone who is using the technology productively today established a whole host of capacities (or what I call a “practice”) in the absence of this technology, so it stands to reason that we should still be educated primarily without interacting with or using the technology.

    But I’ve also seen tangible demonstrations of integrating the capacities of generative AI tools in ways that seem to genuinely open potential new avenues. These people need to keep experimenting, just as those of us who want to find ways to do our work in the absence of AI should be empowered to do so.

    Do More Than ‘Doing School’

    Maybe this belongs as part of the first point of “going on offense,” but the successes I’ve seen have come from a willingness to fundamentally question the system of schooling that has resulted in students primarily viewing their educations through a transactional lens.

    In many cases, generative AI outputs satisfy the transaction of school in ways that mean students learn literally nothing. We’ve all read the viral articles about students using AI for everything they do.

    But I can report from my visits to many different institutions and talking to people working at many more that this is not universally true. Many students are eager to engage in activities that help them learn. It then becomes the responsibility of schools and instructors to give students something worth doing.

    Retreating to analog forms because they can be policed is a missed opportunity to rethink and redo things we know were not working particularly well.

    There is not endpoint to this rethinking. Frankly, I find this energizing, and it’s clear lots of others do, too. This energy is something we can use to help students.

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  • We cannot address the AI challenge by acting as though assessment is a standalone activity

    We cannot address the AI challenge by acting as though assessment is a standalone activity

    How to design reliable, valid and fair assessment in an AI-infused world is one of those challenges that feels intractable.

    The scale and extent of the task, it seems, outstrips the available resource to deal with it. In these circumstances it is always worth stepping back to re-frame, perhaps reconceptualise, what the problem is, exactly. Is our framing too narrow? Have we succeeded (yet) in perceiving the most salient aspects of it?

    As an educational development professional, seeking to support institutional policy and learning and teaching practices, I’ve been part of numerous discussions within and beyond my institution. At first, we framed the problem as a threat to the integrity of universities’ power to reliably and fairly award degrees and to certify levels of competence. How do we safeguard this authority and credibly certify learning when the evidence we collect of the learning having taken place can be mimicked so easily? And the act is so undetectable to boot?

    Seen this way the challenge is insurmountable.

    But this framing positions students as devoid of ethical intent, love of learning for its own sake, or capacity for disciplined “digital professionalism”. It also absolves us of the responsibility of providing an education which results in these outcomes. What if we frame the problem instead as a challenge of AI to higher education practices as a whole and not just to assessment? We know the use of AI in HE ranges widely, but we are only just beginning to comprehend the extent to which it redraws the basis of our educative relationship with students.

    Rooted in subject knowledge

    I’m finding that some very old ideas about what constitutes teaching expertise and how students learn are illuminating: the very questions that expert teachers have always asked themselves are in fact newly pertinent as we (re)design education in an AI world. This challenge of AI is not as novel as it first appeared.

    Fundamentally, we are responsible for curriculum design which builds students’ ethical, intellectual and creative development over the course of a whole programme in ways that are relevant to society and future employment. Academic subject content knowledge is at the core of this endeavour and it is this which is the most unnerving part of the challenge presented by AI. I have lost count of the number of times colleagues have said, “I am an expert in [insert relevant subject area], I did not train for this” – where “this” is AI.

    The most resource-intensive need that we have is for an expansion of subject content knowledge: every academic who teaches now needs a subject content knowledge which encompasses a consideration of the interplay between their field of expertise and AI, and specifically the use of AI in learning and professional practice in their field.

    It is only on the basis of this enhanced subject content knowledge that we can then go on to ask: what preconceptions are my students bringing to this subject matter? What prior experience and views do they have about AI use? What precisely will be my educational purpose? How will students engage with this through a newly adjusted repertoire of curriculum and teaching strategies? The task of HE remains a matter of comprehending a new reality and then designing for the comprehension of others. Perhaps the difference now is that the journey of comprehension is even more collaborative and even less finite that it once would have seemed.

    Beyond futile gestures

    All this is not to say that the specific challenge of ensuring that assessment is valid disappears. A universal need for all learners is to develop a capacity for qualitative judgement and to learn to seek, interpret and critically respond to feedback about their own work. AI may well assist in some of these processes, but developing students’ agency, competence and ethical use of it is arguably a prerequisite. In response to this conundrum, some colleagues suggest a return to the in-person examination – even as a baseline to establish in a valid way levels of students’ understanding.

    Let’s leave aside for a moment the argument about the extent to which in-person exams were ever a valid way of assessing much of what we claimed. Rather than focusing on how we can verify students’ learning, let’s emphasise more strongly the need for students themselves to be in touch with the extent and depth of their own understanding, independently of AI.

    What if we reimagined the in-person high stakes summative examination as a low-stakes diagnostic event in which students test and re-test their understanding, capacity to articulate new concepts or design novel solutions? What if such events became periodic collaborative learning reviews? And yes, also a baseline, which assists us all – including students, who after all also have a vested interest – in ensuring that our assessments are valid.

    Treating the challenge of AI as though assessment stands alone from the rest of higher education is too narrow a frame – one that consigns us to a kind of futile authoritarianism which renders assessment practices performative and irrelevant to our and our students’ reality.

    There is much work to do in expanding subject content knowledge and in reimagining our curricula and reconfiguring assessment design at programme level such that it redraws our educative relationship with students. Assessment more than ever has to become a common endeavour rather than something we “provide” to students. A focus on how we conceptualise the trajectory of students’ intellectual, ethical and creative development is inescapable if we are serious about tackling this challenge in meaningful way.

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  • Kamehameha Schools’ Admission Policies May Face Legal Challenge – The 74

    Kamehameha Schools’ Admission Policies May Face Legal Challenge – The 74


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    A conservative mainland group whose lawsuit against Harvard University ended affirmative action in college admissions is now building support in Hawaiʻi to take on Kamehameha Schools’ policies that give preference to Native Hawaiian students.

    Students for Fair Admissions, based in Virginia, recently launched the website KamehamehaNotFair.org. It says that the admission preference “is so strong that it is essentially impossible for a non-Native Hawaiian student to be admitted to Kamehameha.”

    “We believe that focus on ancestry, rather than merit or need, is neither fair nor legal, and we are committed to ending Kamehameha’s unlawful admissions policies in court,” the website says.

    Kamehameha’s Board of Trustees and CEO Jack Wong said in a written statement that the school expected the policy would be challenged. The institution — a private school established through the estate of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop to educate Hawaiians — successfully defended its admission policy in a series of lawsuits in the early 2000s. The trustees and Wong promised to do so again.

    “We are confident that our policy aligns with established law, and we will prevail,” the statement said.

    The campaign also drew criticism from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, established in the late 1970s for the betterment of Native Hawaiians. OHA’s Board of Trustees called it an “attack on the right of Native Hawaiians to care for our own, on our own terms.”

    “These attacks are not new — but they are escalating,” the trustees said in a written statement. “They aim to dismantle the hard-won protections that enable our people to heal, rise, and chart our future.”

    Several groups have tried and failed in the past to overturn Kamehameha’s admissions policy. Federal courts, siding with Kamehameha, have ruled that giving preference to Native Hawaiians helps alleviate historical injustices they faced after the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893.

    In the 2006 decision upholding Kamehameha Schools’ admissions policy, a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel pointed to longstanding challenges Native Hawaiian students have faced in schools. 

    “It is clear that a manifest imbalance exists in the K-12 educational arena in the state of Hawaiʻi, with Native Hawaiians falling at the bottom of the spectrum in almost all areas of educational progress and success,” Judge Susan Graber wrote in the majority opinion. 

    These disparities persist. Just over a third of Native Hawaiian students in public schools were proficient in reading in 2024, compared to 52% of students statewide. Less than a quarter of Native Hawaiian students were proficient in math.

    The state education department has also fallen short of providing families with adequate access to Hawaiian language immersion programs, according to two lawsuits filed against the department this summer. The Hawaiian immersion programs are open to all students, not just those of Hawaiian ancestry.  

    Moses Haia III, a lawyer and former director of the Native Hawaiian Legal Corp., said that improving outcomes for Hawaiian students is Kamehameha’s primary reason for existing. He said this new challenge appears to be based on ignorance of Hawaiʻi’s history.

    “Ultimately, what I see is these people being uneducated,” Haia said of the mainland group. “Not knowing the history of Hawaiʻi, not knowing the reasons for Kamehameha’s existence, and just once again trying to push Hawaiians into this box… and wanting to be on top.”

    Past Challenges 

    The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that private schools can’t discriminate based on race in a case called Runyon v. McCrary, which involved Black school students trying to gain admission to private schools that had yet to integrate non-white students.

    An anonymous student sued Kamehameha in 2003, invoking the 1976 ruling and alleging that the school’s policy of giving preference to Hawaiian children was discriminatory. The case eventually landed in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

    A majority of the appeals court judges sided with Kamehameha. They used a part of the Civil Rights Act that prohibits discrimination in the workplace as a legal framework for looking at the admissions policy.

    Judge Graber wrote that a preference for Native Hawaiian students “serves a legitimate remedial purpose by addressing the socioeconomic and educational disadvantages facing Native Hawaiians, producing Native Hawaiian leadership for community involvement, and revitalizing Native Hawaiian culture, thereby remedying current manifest imbalances resulting from the influx of western civilization.”

    But it was a narrow victory for Kamehameha, an 8-to-7 vote. Dissenting judges wrote that admitting mostly Hawaiian students didn’t create a diverse student body; others said that the policy was clearly discriminatory.

    The anonymous student appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. But Kamehameha entered a $7 million settlement with the student and their mother before the court decided whether to take up the case.

    While the settlement safeguarded the admission policy from a ruling by the nation’s highest court it also meant lawyers punted the issue.

    Another group of anonymous students challenged the admissions policy a few years later and again took that case to the Supreme Court. But the court declined to take up that case in 2011.

    Students for Fair Admissions previously brought two landmark cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, arguing that the two schools’ race-conscious admissions policies discriminated against Asian American and white applicants. The Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that colleges cannot use race as a factor in their admissions, although the decision didn’t specify what this could mean for K-12 schools.

    Last fall, the number of Black students enrolled at both universities fell, although some researchers cautioned that colleges might not see the full impact of the Supreme Court ruling until a few admissions cycles have passed. 

    The challenge to Kamehameha Schools’ admissions policies comes amid national pushback on efforts to promote diversity in schools. In February, the U.S. Department of Education said any colleges and K-12 schools using race-based practices in hiring and admissions could lose federal funding, although a court subsequently prevented the department from enforcing those requirements. 

    Kamehameha receives no funding from the federal government, according to its tax filings. The school, which is the state’s largest private landowner, has assets valued at about $15 billion.

    This story was originally published on Honolulu Civil Beat.


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  • Cracking the South Asia recruitment challenge – why the right partner matters

    Cracking the South Asia recruitment challenge – why the right partner matters

    For international universities and colleges, South Asia – and particularly India – represents one of the largest and fastest-growing student recruitment markets in the world. The potential is undeniable, but the reality is complex.

    Navigating multiple languages, diverse cultures, varied academic systems, and rapidly shifting student trends requires more than just an occasional visit or a handful of agent agreements.

    Finding the right partner in this environment is not just important – it’s essential.

    The challenge: a crowded and complex market

    South Asia’s education recruitment ecosystem is vast. Students are spread across metropolitan hubs and smaller regional cities, each with different aspirations, financial capabilities, and destination preferences. The agent network is equally varied – from well-established consultancies to smaller, informal setups.

    For many institutions, this creates two critical challenges:

    1. Transparency – Ensuring that the institution’s brand is represented accurately and ethically across the market.
    2. Visibility – Reaching the right students, in the right regions, with the right message.

    Without an in-market presence and strong, vetted networks, institutions often struggle to build trust and sustain engagement at scale.

    Why a local strategic partner is essential

    Working with a dedicated South Asia marketing partner bridges this gap. The right partner acts as the institution’s eyes, ears, and voice on the ground – maintaining brand integrity while expanding outreach.

    A strong local partner can:

    • Streamline agent management – Recruiting, training, and monitoring a reliable network of student recruitment agents.
    • Strengthen market visibility – Ensuring the institution’s programs are consistently promoted to the right audience across multiple regions.
    • Provide real-time market intelligence – Sharing insights on policy changes, student preferences, and competitor activity.
    • Enhance conversion rates – By ensuring that marketing efforts and agent networks are well-aligned with institutional goals.

    Navigating multiple languages, diverse cultures, varied academic systems, and rapidly shifting student trends requires more than just an occasional visit or a handful of agent agreements

    Landmark Global Learning — one roof, complete solutions

    With over 18 years of experience, Landmark Global Learning offers international universities and colleges a single-window solution for the South Asia market. Our approach is built on:

    • Established networks – A trusted, long-standing network of trained recruitment agents across India and other South Asian countries.
    • Transparent operations – Clear reporting, ethical representation, and measurable results to ensure partner confidence.
    • Regional expertise – Deep understanding of both Tier-1 and Tier-2 cities, allowing institutions to tap into emerging student segments.
    • Targeted outreach – Combining on-ground events, digital campaigns, and institutional tie-ups to maximise visibility.

    Whether a university is entering the South Asia market for the first time or looking to strengthen its footprint, Landmark provides the infrastructure, relationships, and market knowledge to make it happen efficiently.

    Maximising visibility in the right way

    One of the biggest pain points for international institutions is getting noticed by the right students. Many spend time and resources on generic campaigns that fail to reach high-intent applicants.

    At Landmark, we focus on:

    • Localised marketing strategies tailored to different student demographics.
    • Partnerships with schools, colleges, and education fairs that bring direct engagement opportunities.
    • Digital targeting that aligns with student search behaviour in the region.

    The result? Increased brand presence, better-qualified leads, and stronger enrolments.

    A partnership for long-term growth

    In an increasingly competitive global education market, institutions cannot afford to be invisible in a region as critical as South Asia. The right partner ensures not only market entry but also sustained growth, brand protection, and student success.

    With its proven track record, extensive network, and commitment to transparency, Landmark Global Learning stands ready to be that partner – delivering all the solutions international universities need, under one roof.

    A journey of impact and vision

    From a small consultancy in Punjab to being the first student recruitment company listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange, Landmark Global Learning’s journey is a testament to resilience, vision, and a relentless focus on student success.

    With over 35,000 successful admissions and partnerships across 200+ global institutions, our mission remains clear: to bridge the gap between talent and opportunity. What started 18 years ago with a single office is today a network of 15+ branches across India, making international education accessible even in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities.

    For me personally, education has never been just a business – it’s a passion to transform lives. I began this journey as a young professional balancing multiple jobs, driven by a belief that ‘education is not just about admissions – it’s about creating futures.’ That belief continues to guide us as we embrace innovation, whether through AI-driven counseling tools, school partnerships from Grade 9 onwards, or full-spectrum student support covering admissions, accommodation, education loans, and career guidance.

    At Landmark, we don’t just send students abroad; we shape futures — with integrity, innovation, and care.

    About the author: Jasmeet Singh Bhatia is the founder and director of Landmark Immigration, with over 18 years of experience in international education and immigration consulting. A study visa expert and PR strategist, he has mentored thousands of students in achieving academic and career goals abroad. Known for his principle-based approach and strong industry partnerships, he continues to shape global futures through personalised guidance and strategic insight.

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