Tag: costs

  • The high costs of cheap food

    The high costs of cheap food

    From New York to Jakarta, the scene is the same: Shelves overflowing with cheap, ultra-processed snacks and sugary drinks have become the new normal for millions of children. As a result, for the first time in history, more children are obese than underweight.

    UNICEF’s new Feeding Profit report explains why: Across the globe, cheap and intensely marketed ultra-processed foods dominate what families are able to put on the table, while nutritious options remain out of reach.

    Across the world, one in 20 children under five and one in five children and adolescents aged five to 19 are overweight. The number of overweight children and teens in 2000 almost doubled by 2022, with South Asia experiencing an increase of almost 500%. In East Asia, the Pacific, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, the increase was at least 10%.

    Ultra-processed foods and beverages, defined as industrially formulated, are composed primarily of chemically-modified substances extracted from foods, together with additives and preservatives to enhance taste, texture and appearance as well as shelf life.

    These foods — which are often cheaper, nutrient poor and higher in sugar, unhealthy fats and salt — are now more prevalent than traditional, nutritious foods in children’s diets.

    Can we wean ourselves off ultra-processed foods?

    Studies show there’s a direct link between eating a lot of ultra-processed foods and an increased risk of overweight and obesity among children and adolescents. Among teens aged 15-19 years, 60% consumed more than one sugary food or beverage during the previous day, 32% consumed a soft drink and 25% consumed more than one salty processed food.

    Today, children’s paths to healthy eating are shaped less by personal choice than by the food environments that surround them. Those are the places where and conditions under which people make decisions about what to eat. They connect a person’s daily life with the broader food system around them, and are shaped by physical, political, economic and cultural factors that help determine what foods are available, affordable, appealing and regularly eaten.

    Such environments are steering children toward ultra-processed, calorie-dense options, even when healthier foods are available.

    Around the world, countries are beginning to push back. In Mexico, where nearly four million children aged 4-10 are obese, the government took a bold step in March 2025. It banned the sale of ultra-processed foods and sugary drinks in schools.

    The new rules go beyond restriction: Schools must offer fresh, regional foods such as fruits, vegetables and seeds, promote water as the default beverage, and establish health education programs. The policy also calls for regular health monitoring, mandatory fortification of wheat and corn flours, and more opportunities for physical activity, with penalties for schools that fail to comply.

    Taking steps to slim down our diets

    In September 2025, Malaysia’s Ministry of Education followed similar steps. It now prohibits 12 categories of ultra-processed foods and drinks in school canteens, from instant noodles and skewered snacks to frozen desserts and candy.

    But even as countries rewrite their food policies, millions of families still face difficult choices at the market.

    Shauna Downs, associate professor of food policy and public health nutrition at Rutgers University, has seen firsthand how hunger and obesity can coexist within the same communities in her research on informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya.

    “People are able to find nutrient-rich foods, like leafy greens, fruits, and vegetables, and animal-source foods, but they’re often expensive, and what they can get that’s cheaper is things like mandazi [fried dough], which provide energy, and they taste good, but they’re not getting the nutrients they need,” she said.

    Families that want to buy the nutrient-rich foods are forced into heartbreaking choices, Downs said.

    “So now they’re making a decision between ‘Am I gonna buy this food from the market, which my family needs, or am I gonna pay for my child to go to school?’” she said.

    Looking at food environments

    By spotlighting the food environment, consumers and researchers alike can move past the tired “eat less, move more” narrative to fight childhood obesity and ask a better question: Why wasn’t the healthy plate the obvious, easy and most affordable choice in the first place?

    Long before ultra-processed foods flooded grocery shelves, they quietly took over another key part of children’s lives: school cafeterias. Back in 1981, the Reagan administration cut US$1.5 billion in U.S. school food funding, pushing public institutions to rely on convenience over nutrition.

    Pamela Koch, associate professor of nutrition and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, said that one of the things cut was for funding for schools  upgrade their kitchens.

    “That was the same time as the food supply was becoming more and more [saturated] with highly-processed food, and a lot of food companies realized, ‘Wait, we could have a market selling to schools. Schools don’t have money to buy supplies’,” Koch said.

    Companies began offering deals: Sign a long-term contract and receive a free convection oven to reheat ultra-processed foods. For schools facing budget cuts and limited staffing, the decision was simple. The cost of that convenience would echo for decades.

    Let’s start with school meals.

    The nonprofit Global Child Nutrition Foundation, highlights school meals as an essential lever for transforming food systems: Create demand for nutritious foods, improve the livelihoods of those working in the food system and promote climate-smart foods. However, the cost of scaling up national programs depends on the strength of supply chains, underlying food markets, logistics and procurement models.

    Countries that depend on imported food, already challenged by infrastructure and expensive trading costs, will face additional challenges in delivering healthy school meals.

    In much of the world, climate stress and weak infrastructure are making nutritious food both more difficult to grow and more expensive to purchase.

    Small-scale farmers, sheep and cattle farmers, forest keepers and fishers — known collectively as smallholder farmers — grow much of the food in low-income countries. They face worsening yields due to climate change, land degradation and lack of access to the technology and resources that support sustainable food production.

    At the same time perishable foods are becoming more expensive because the global supply chain — how food gets shipped from a farm in one country through distribution networks to store shelves in another country — is increasingly threatened by political tension, the lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change.

    Durability over nutrition

    Kate Schneider, assistant professor of sustainable food systems at Arizona State University, said that smallholder farmers grow food as their livelihood. “They’re not able to grow enough food, which is partly a story of climate change,” Schneider said. “Multiple generations now have been farming … year after year on the same land, but without external inputs –– fertilizers and modern, high-yielding seeds –– they are resulting in very low yields.”

    Even when fresh fruits and vegetables are available, logistical barriers make it easier to sell ultra-processed foods. Fresh produce is heavy, vulnerable to spoilage and expensive to move, especially in countries with poor transport networks.

    “When we’re thinking about fresh items, they’re perishable, and they need a cold chain,” Schneider said. “You’re paying, when you buy an apple, for the three that also rotted.”

    Meanwhile, ultra-processed products like soda avoid this problem entirely: “It’s cheaper for them to have a ton of different bottling plants around countries than to distribute long distances,” Schneider said.

    The result of these challenges is a global system that rewards durability over nutrition and continues to make healthy food increasingly out of reach.

    Connecting sustainability of diets and the environment

    The EAT-Lancet Commission 2.0, a scientific body redefining healthy and sustainable diets, offers a different view: The ultra-processed foods fuelling obesity are also pushing food systems beyond climate and biodiversity limits.

    Its newly published report says that nearly half the world’s population can’t afford a healthy diet, while the richest 30% generate more than 70% of food-related environmental damage.

    The planetary health diet suggests a plant-rich diet that consists of whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts and beans, with only moderate or small amounts of fish, dairy and meat.

    To build healthier and more just food systems, experts also recommend a whole list of other things: make nutritious diets more accessible and affordable; protect traditional diets; promote sustainable farming and ecosystems; reduce food waste.

    And all of this should be done with the participation of diverse sectors of the society.

    The responsibility of transforming food systems falls not only on governments but also on donors and financial partners, development and humanitarian organizations, academic institutions and civil society. The stakes are high, but so is the potential to change. With bold, coordinated action, the next generation of children can be nourished by healthy food, while building food systems that sustain both people and the planet. 

    Questions to consider:

    1. How is obesity connected to the environment?

    2. What are some governments doing to try to tackle the obesity crisis?

    3. What changes could you make to your diet to make it healthier?

     

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  • Why institutions must protect personal academic tutoring at all costs

    Why institutions must protect personal academic tutoring at all costs

    Join HEPI for a webinar on Thursday 11 December 2025 from 10am to 11am to discuss how universities can strengthen the student voice in governance to mark the launch of our upcoming report, Rethinking the Student Voice. Sign up now to hear our speakers explore the key questions.

    This blog was kindly authored by Dr Gary Jones, Dean of Student Success and Experience, Scholars School System, Dr Steve Briggs, Director of Learning, Teaching and Libraries, University of Bedfordshire, Professor Graeme Pedlingham, Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor for Student Experience, University of Sussex, Dr David Grey, UKAT Chief Executive Officer and Professor Abigail Moriarty, Pro Vice-Chancellor Education & Students, University of Lincoln.

    A recent analytic induction study (Grey & Bailey, 2020) defined personal academic tutoring in UK higher education as a “proactive, professional relationship between student and tutor sustained throughout the entire student journey.” This partnership involves “dialogue, metacognition, and a structured programme of activities” aimed at fostering student agency, self-efficacy, independent learning, and career and future goals.

    Personal academic tutors play a crucial role by supporting students to “assimilate to the university environment”, facilitating learning and decision-making, reviewing progress, and providing essential information. They enhance both academic ability and emotional well-being through holistic support during one-to-one or group meetings at key academic moments. Personal academic tutors are described as “knowledgeable, approachable, helpful, patient, caring, reliable and non-judgmental” staff members who possess the skills to actively listen, instruct, and advise. They play a crucial role in supporting student success and outcomes.

    HE size and shape is changing

    The increasingly perilous position of economic sustainability in the UK higher education sector has meant that a growing number of institutions are instigating reviews of their ‘size and shape’. In turn, many providers face some tough decisions around what should be prioritised. We anticipate that multiple university senior leadership teams may review academic workload plan allocations during the 2025/26 academic year to ensure that academic staff time can be optimised. As such, consideration may be given to changing time allocations to prioritise teaching preparation and delivery, assessment, and research over personal academic tutoring. We argue that teaching and research should not be treated as more important than personal academic tutoring when allocating time. Nor should teaching and research time be reduced in favour of personal academic tutoring. Rather, we argue for equivalency and that time allocation for personal academic tutoring is an activity institutions should seek to protect, not cut. 

    The value of university education has become a sharper and often more critical question in media narratives, as well as for people considering studying in higher education. With the increasing cost of living and studying at university, the question of how universities can make the benefits to students as visible as possible is understandably at the forefront of many of our minds. We argue that personal academic tutoring is a critical part of achieving this through a strategic, purposeful, proactive, and student-centred approach that is informed by data rather than risking falling into a reactive approach.

    The impact and benefit of personal academic tutoring

    Personal academic tutoring plays a fundamental role in enhancing attainment and impacts the Office for Students’ metrics, which determine institutional success (such as the Teaching Excellence Framework, National Student Survey and Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey). Effective tutoring can be measured in many ways, but not least of these is the positive benefits for helping students to stay on course and be successful, directly supporting those key B3 continuation and completion rates. Effective personal academic tutoring is therefore a virtuous circle for improving student outcomes and experience, and can help give direct evidence of value to both current students and potential applicants.

    Meaningful individualised relationships that encompass the entirety of a student’s learning journey are fostered through effective personal academic tutoring.  Successful tutors nurture a sense of belonging and mattering, aid in navigating the complexities of the higher education study experience, cultivate vital analytical and transferable skills, and impact student career aspirations and employability. At its best, personal academic tutoring transcends traditional teaching methods by facilitating purposeful, structured interactions outside of learning, empowering student agency and promoting the holistic development of all students. As highlighted by NACADA, teaching beyond the curriculum and discipline can help to bring together and contextualise students’ educational experiences in terms of extending aspirations, abilities and lives beyond campus boundaries and timeframes.  

    Academic workload planning and personal academic tutoring

    A recent UKAT senior leaders’ network group meeting provided a forum for discussions regarding allocating dedicated resources for personal academic tutoring in universities. Here, we explored the variation and inconsistencies across the sector regarding how universities operate their personal academic tutoring in terms of academic workload planning. Members reported that across institutions, resource allocation was often determined locally but was driven by central university policy. As the group engaged in thought-provoking dialogue, a critical question emerged: If we genuinely value the importance of learning beyond the traditional subject curriculum, why is personal academic tutoring often not prioritised to the same extent as other activities in the initial stages of academic workload allocation?

    The case for a personal academic tutoring first mindset

    Recognising there are institutional differences, possible common ways of addressing this challenge were discussed, considering the aforementioned financial constraints facing the HE sector. Abi presented to attendees a cup metaphor for academic workload planning based on her previous work. This suggests that, given the significance of personal academic tutoring on student outcomes, personal academic tutoring time should be the first thing built into an academic’s workload plan. She noted, however, that this is often not the case and time allocation for personal academic tutoring may be the last thing added into the workload ‘cup’ (behind teaching, assessment and research), in turn causing the cup to overflow and damaging the significance associated with personal academic tutoring. There was an overwhelming consensus that we should all adopt a personal academic tutoring first ethos in terms of academic workload planning. Accordingly, we encourage readers who will be undertaking academic workload plan reviews over the coming months to reflect on how they allocate personal academic tutoring time, particularly if personal academic tutoring has not historically been the first pour into the workload cup.

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  • The Hidden Costs of College Beyond Tuition

    The Hidden Costs of College Beyond Tuition

    College affordability conversations tend to focus on tuition. But it’s the total cost of attendance (COA) that can catch many students off guard and derail their progress toward a degree. A new deep dive report from Inside Higher Ed—“Beyond Tuition: The Hidden Costs of College and Their Disproportionate Impact”—reveals how inaccurate COA disclosures and unexpected costs, from mandatory meal plans to technology fees to rising rents, can blindside students and threaten their success.

    Join the Discussion

    On Wednesday, Dec. 17, at 2 p.m. Eastern, Inside Higher Ed will host a live webcast discussion based on the report. Register for that here. Download “Beyond Tuition: The Hidden Costs of College and Their Disproportionate Impact” here.

    Drawing on data from Inside Higher Ed’s Student Voice surveys and other research, plus interviews with dozens of experts, student advocates and students themselves, the report notes that just 27 percent of undergraduates fully understand their institution’s cost of attendance—and that, for some, even an unexpected $100 expense could threaten their enrollment. Hidden costs hit lower-income, first-generation, parenting, international and other student groups especially hard, the report also finds.

    Examining efforts to improve COA accuracy and transparency, and zooming in on students and change-makers in California, New York and Texas, the report calls for colleges to provide more accurate COA data, expanded emergency aid and clearer communication to help students plan for the full cost of college, not just the tuition bill.

    “The public doesn’t think about living costs, although you have to cover them when you go to school. They also think tuition is skyrocketing when it really hasn’t,” said Robert Kelchen, professor and department head of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. “To some extent we’re focused on the wrong problem.”

    This independent editorial report is written by Melissa Ezarik, with support from the Gates Foundation. The findings and conclusions contained in the report are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect positions or policies of the Gates Foundation.

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  • Net tuition rises at colleges, but costs are far below their peaks

    Net tuition rises at colleges, but costs are far below their peaks

    Dive Brief:

    • The average tuition and fees paid by students and their families after aid rose slightly for the 2025-26 academic year but remain well below historic peaks, according to the latest higher education pricing study from the College Board. 
    • At public four-year colleges, net tuition and fees for first-time, full-time students increased just 1.3% to $2,300 from last year, when adjusted for inflation, according to the College Board’s estimates. That figure is down 48.3% from the peak in 2012-2013. 
    • At private nonprofits, net tuition and fees for first-time, full-time students rose 3.7% annually to $16,910 in the 2025-26 year, when adjusted for inflation. By comparison, that’s down 14.6% from the peak for private colleges in 2006-07.

    Dive Insight:

    Despite widespread debate over the cost of college, in real terms those costs have largely decreased for students over the past two decades. Grants from both public and institutional sources can defray those costs and often significantly reduce college sticker prices. 

    In 2024-25, grant aid rose an inflation-adjusted 5.4% to $173.7 billion, according to the College Board. Much of that increase comes from a 19% spike in Pell Grant aid, which went to nearly 1 million more students during the 2024-25 year. Enrollment in the program rebounded and eligibility expanded under the FAFSA Simplification Act. 

    Last year’s 7.3 million Pell recipients still fell well below the program’s height of 9.3 million in 2010-11. Total government spending on Pell, at $38.6 billion in 2024-25, was down about one-fourth from its peak in 2010-11 after inflation. 

    Institutional aid plays a significant role in reducing sticker prices as well, and increasingly so as colleges wrestle with enrollment pressures and competition. Grant aid from colleges made up 33% of the $205.2 billion in total student aid, which includes federal loans, for undergraduates in 2024-25. That’s compared to 23% a decade earlier, according to the College Board study. 

    That has reduced the burden for students. Average student debt for bachelor’s degree recipients in 2023-24 was $29,560, about $6,000 less than it was 10 years prior, according to the report.

    While sticker prices have been rising, adjusting for inflation tempers the price growth. Before inflation, tuition and fees for residents rose 2.9% at four-year public colleges in 2025-26, while sticker prices rose 4% at private nonprofits. After factoring in inflation, those sticker price increases were 1% and 1.4%, respectively. 

    Still, the public often focuses on sticker price, and tuition discounting often muddies the college cost picture. Although tuition discounting often helps colleges recruit students, some experts say high sticker prices can scare off those not attuned to the complexities of college pricing and can distort the public conversation around cost. 

    The College Board also found that college enrollment has rebounded from a pandemic-era dip. Fall enrollment hit 18.9 million students in 2023, up from 18.5 million in 2022 and 18.6 million in 2021. However, that figure is down 9.6% from peak enrollment in 2011. 

    Enrollment pressures are likely to increase amid projected declines in high school graduates in the coming years.

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  • The time for change is now: reducing pension costs in post-92 universities

    The time for change is now: reducing pension costs in post-92 universities

    This blog was kindly authored by Jane Embley, Chief People Officer and Tom Lawson, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost, both of Northumbria University.

    It is welcome that the government’s recent white paper acknowledges the very real funding pressures on the university sector and outlines some measures to address them. It is rather disappointing, however, that one of the causes of that financial pressure recognised by both employers and trade unions – is somewhat sidestepped – namely the crisis in the post-92 institutions caused by the Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS). While the government has pledged to better understand the problem, this will presumably lead to a period of consultation before any new proposals come forward. The cost of TPS compounds the financial difficulty of many institutions, and the severity of the current situation means the moment for change is now.

    The TPS cost crisis

    At the beginning of 2025, we wrote a piece for this website that outlined the problem in general terms, and particularly, for Northumbria University. To briefly summarise, post-92 institutions are all required to enrol their staff who are engaged in teaching in TPS. The cost of TPS for employers (and employees) is rising, and having historically been similar to other pension schemes in the sector is now much more expensive than schemes such as the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) or the local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS). TPS employer contributions are now 28.68% whereas for USS they are 14.5%, and for Northumbria’s LGPS fund are 18.5%.

    This means that for an academic salary of £57,500, in addition to NI costs, the employer pension cost is £8,300 per annum for USS, but for a TPS employee it is £16,500. Put simply, it is now considerably more expensive to employ a member of staff to do the same job in one part of the sector than another.

    The figures are striking. For every 1,000 staff, an institution would face more than £8M per annum of additional costs if their colleagues were members of TPS rather than USS. For Northumbria, given the number of colleagues we have in TPS, the additional cost of this scheme compared to USS is more than £11M per annum. To put it another way, the fees of more than 800 Northumbria students are fully consumed by paying the additional cost of TPS, versus USS.

    Why alternatives fall short

    There are ways that universities can find alternatives to TPS – institutions can take steps to employ their academic staff via subsidiary companies and reduce pension costs by using defined contribution schemes. This has multiple disadvantages for individuals as well as institutions – not least because colleagues employed by that mechanism are not counted within the HESA return, for example, and as such are not eligible for participation in the Research Excellence Framework or for Research Council funding. As such, colleagues employed via such mechanisms cannot fully contribute across teaching and research and may find it difficult to progress their careers or move between institutions in the future.

    At Northumbria, as a research-intensive institution, we did not consider the above to be a path we could take. As there are no clear proposals forthcoming from government we have had to seek recourse to a different solution.

    Northumbria’s strategic response

    As we predicted in our previous blog, individual institutions have no choice but to take control of the total cost of employment. Since then, at Northumbria, we have been thinking about how we might do just that. We have settled on an approach that follows a three-part solution, something which we believe offers flexibility and choice while managing the University’s pension costs down to an acceptable level in the medium to long term.  

    First, we are offering colleagues in TPS an attractive alternative – the main pension scheme in the sector, USS, following a recent agreement to change our membership terms. Over 200 colleagues at Northumbria are already members (having joined Northumbria with existing membership), and going forward, USS membership will be available to all our academic colleagues. Of course, we acknowledge that there are differences in the membership benefits of each scheme. USS is a hybrid scheme with defined benefits up to a threshold and then defined contributions beyond that. TPS is a career average defined benefit scheme. We will help our TPS members with this transition by providing personalised, independent financial information and guidance, as pensions are complex and any decision to move from TPS to USS will need careful consideration.

    However, we do need to be confident that we can address the very high cost of TPS employer pension contributions, and have recently begun discussions within our university about moving to a total reward approach to remuneration.

    Using the two pension schemes, we want to provide colleagues with the choice as to how much of their total reward they receive as income now and how much we pay in pension contributions.

    For each grade point in our pay structure, we are aiming to establish a reward envelope, based on the total cost of salary plus employer pension contributions, reflecting USS rather than TPS rates. As such, a colleague remaining in TPS would have no reduction in their salary, although they will, initially, have a total reward package that exceeds the envelope for their grade point.

    Our goal will be to increase the total reward envelope for each grade point each year by the value of the pay award determined via national collective pay bargaining. In this model, the cost of the total reward envelope will be the same, but colleagues will be able to choose how they construct their reward package based on their own personal preference or circumstances. Salaries for colleagues who are members of USS will increase in line with the rest of the sector. Those colleagues who choose to remain in TPS will not see an increase in their take-home pay, as this, plus the cost of their pension contributions, exceeds the envelope for their grade point. However, over time, when the value of the total reward envelope for colleagues in USS and TPS has equalised, the salaries for those choosing TPS will increase again.

    Looking ahead: a fairer, sustainable future

    We understand that many of our colleagues might find this change unpalatable; however, we feel the additional monthly cost of almost £1M cannot be justified. While to some this will be controversial, ultimately, our proposed approach will mean that over time (likely to be up to seven years) the reward envelope (or cost) for USS and TPS employees will have equalised and as such we will have eliminated the differential costs of employing these two groups of colleagues undertaking the same roles, and be on an equal footing with other universities.

    We anticipate that by adopting this approach USS will, in time, become the normalised pension scheme for our academic staff, as it already is across the pre-92 universities. Along with competitive pay, colleagues will be members of an attractive sector-wide scheme, with lower personal contribution levels resulting in higher take-home pay. Of course, we will keep the whole approach under review as the employer pension contribution rates change over time, and we will be actively engaging with our colleagues over the coming months to seek their views on our proposal and to shape our future plans.  

    Finally, we are also encouraging our colleagues to consider carefully whether to opt out of TPS and join USS now. In order to gain traction and make earlier progress, we are offering existing salaried staff in TPS the choice to move early, with the University recognising this decision via a one-off payment, which shares the longer-term financial benefit of this with the University. Colleagues may receive the value of the savings made over the first year – typically between £5,800 and a maximum of £10,000 – as a taxable payment or via a payment into their pension, subject to a number of conditions in relation to their future employment.

    As we have outlined, the time for change is now, and we cannot wait for the outcome of a consultation or for the government to decide how it will seek to address this obvious disparity in the sector. Ultimately, we believe that moving towards a total reward approach, as outlined above, is advantageous for both the University and for our colleagues. It provides choice – no one will be forced to leave TPS, and as such, colleagues can continue to choose to receive the benefits of that scheme by more of their total reward being paid in pension contributions than salary. Or colleagues can choose to access more of their total income now in their salary, while joining a hybrid pension scheme that is already in place across the sector and which delivers defined benefits, and defined contribution benefits for higher earners. We believe that this is a novel approach to what has been, for some time, an intractable problem in the sector.

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  • How districts can avoid 4 hidden costs of outdated facilities systems

    How districts can avoid 4 hidden costs of outdated facilities systems

    Key points:

    School leaders are under constant pressure to stretch every dollar further, yet many districts are losing money in ways they may not even realize. The culprit? Outdated facilities processes that quietly chip away at resources, frustrate staff, and create ripple effects across learning environments. From scheduling mishaps to maintenance backlogs, these hidden costs can add up fast, and too often it’s students who pay the price. 

    The good news is that with a few strategic shifts, districts can effectively manage their facilities and redirect resources to where they are needed most. Here are four of the most common hidden costs–and how forward-thinking school districts are avoiding them. 

    How outdated facilities processes waste staff time in K–12 districts

    It’s a familiar scene: a sticky note on a desk, a hallway conversation, and a string of emails trying to confirm who’s handling what. These outdated processes don’t just frustrate staff; they silently erode hours that could be spent on higher-value work. Facilities teams are already stretched thin, and every minute lost to chasing approvals or digging through piles of emails is time stolen from managing the day-to-day operations that keep schools running.  

    A centralized, intuitive facilities management software platform changes everything. Staff and community members can submit requests in one place, while automated, trackable systems ensure approvals move forward without constant follow-up. Events sync directly with Outlook or Google calendars, reducing conflicts before they happen. Work orders can be submitted, assigned, and tracked digitally, with mobile access that lets staff update tickets on the go. Real-time dashboards offer visibility into labor, inventory, and preventive maintenance, while asset history and performance data enable leaders to plan more effectively for the long term. Reports for leadership, audits, and compliance can be generated instantly, saving hours of manual tracking. 

    The result? Districts have seen a 50-75 percent reduction in scheduling workload, stronger cross-department collaboration, and more time for the work that truly moves schools forward.

    Using preventive maintenance to avoid emergency repairs and extend asset life

    When maintenance is handled reactively, small problems almost always snowball into costly crises. A leaking pipe left unchecked can become a flooded classroom and a ruined ceiling. A skipped HVAC inspection may lead to a midyear system failure, forcing schools to close or scramble for portable units. 

    These emergencies don’t just drain budgets; they disrupt instruction, create safety hazards, and erode trust with families. A more proactive approach changes the narrative. With preventive maintenance embedded into a facilities management software platform, districts can automate recurring schedules, ensure tasks are assigned to the right technicians, and attach critical resources, such as floor plans or safety notes, to each task. Schools can prioritize work orders, monitor labor hours and expenses, and generate reports on upcoming maintenance to plan ahead. 

    Restoring systems before they fail extends asset life and smooths operational continuity. This keeps classrooms open, budgets predictable, and leaders prepared, rather than reactive. 

    Maximizing ROI by streamlining school space rentals

    Gymnasiums, fields, and auditoriums are among a district’s most valuable community resources, yet too often they sit idle simply because scheduling is complicated and chaotic. Paper forms, informal approvals, and scattered communication mean opportunities slip through the cracks.

    When users can submit requests through a single, digital system, scheduling becomes transparent, trackable, and far easier to manage. A unified dashboard prevents conflicts, streamlines approvals, and reduces the back-and-forth that often slows the process. 

    The payoff isn’t just smoother operations; districts can see increased ROI through easier billing, clearer reporting, and more consistent use of unused spaces. 

    Why schools need facilities data to make smarter budget decisions

    Without reliable facilities data, school leaders are forced to make critical budget and operational decisions in the dark. Which schools need additional staffing? Which classrooms, gyms, or labs are underused? Which capital projects should take priority, and which should wait? Operating on guesswork not only risks inefficient spending, but it also limits a district’s ability to demonstrate ROI or justify future investments. 

    A clear, centralized view of facilities usage and costs creates a strong foundation for strategic decision-making. This visibility can provide instant insights into patterns and trends. Districts can allocate resources more strategically, optimize staffing, and prioritize projects based on evidence rather than intuition. This level of insight also strengthens accountability, enabling schools to share transparent reports with boards, staff, and other key stakeholders, thereby building trust while ensuring that every dollar works harder. 

    Facilities may not always be the first thing that comes to mind when people think about student success, but the way schools manage their spaces, systems, and resources has a direct impact on learning. By moving away from outdated, manual processes and embracing smarter, data-driven facilities management, districts can unlock hidden savings, prevent costly breakdowns, and optimize the use of every asset. 

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  • For students, the costs of failure are far too high

    For students, the costs of failure are far too high

    Back in May, I argued that the UK’s “pace miracle” – the system that produces the youngest, fastest-completing graduates in Europe – is damaging students’ learning and health.

    Our system’s efficiency, I suggested, comes at the cost of pressure, exhaustion, and a creeping normalisation of distress.

    But what happens when students fall behind in that miracle? What happens when someone breaks the rhythm that the entire funding and regulatory framework assumes to be normal?

    For our work with SUs, Mack Marshall and I have been looking in detail at the rules and funding that surround “retrieval”.

    From what we can see, UK higher education doesn’t just expect rapid completion – it punishes deviation from it.

    When students stumble, the architecture designed to retrieve them from failure taxes disadvantage and rewards privilege.

    The illusion of generosity

    Pretty much every university we’ve looked at has policies designed to look fair. There is almost always a promise of one reassessment opportunity, and increasingly a public line about not charging resit fees. On paper, that sounds humane – but in practice, the design is economically brutal.

    When a student fails a module and resits within the same academic year, the direct cost may be zero. But there’s no maintenance support for any extra study they need to do. And if that student is placed on reassessment-only status for the following year – allowed to resit assessments without attending teaching – they become ineligible for maintenance funding for much, much longer.

    That means no support for rent, bills, or food for months. The student who can rely on family help revises in comfort. The student who can’t works full-time through summer and fails again, or drops out entirely.

    The sector calls the resit “free” and congratulates itself on removing barriers. But the barrier was never the invoice – it was the maintenance cliff.

    This is not a marginal anomaly – it’s the structural product of the same system that glorifies pace. It’s a logic that insists most degrees must be achieved within three years – one that also dictates that recovery from failure must happen outside the funded frame.

    To understand what happens to students who fail, students need to navigate a maze of regulations, finance policies, visa rules, and handbooks – each written in its own dialect of compliance.

    Students from professional families likely know where to look and what questions to ask. They have the vocabulary, the contacts, the confidence, while first-generation students rarely do. They may well discover “compensation” rules only after exam boards meet, and learn about extenuating circumstances after the deadline passes.

    The result is an information economy that mirrors the class system. The retrieval framework may be universal, but its navigation costs are socially distributed.

    The poverty penalty v pedagogy

    When students pass a module on reassessment, their mark is often capped at the pass threshold – 40 per cent for undergraduates, maybe 50 per cent for postgraduates. The principle sounds rigorous, but the reality is punitive.

    A student who failed once because they were caring for a parent, working nights, or suffering mental ill-health can never escape the academic scar tissue unless it’s a complex and approved mit-circs application. The capping rule converts a temporary difficulty into a permanent credential penalty.

    It is the same ideology that underpins the pace miracle – a meritocracy of difficulty that romanticises struggle and treats rest as weakness. Only it is encoded in assessment policy rather than culture.

    For international students, the same logic takes on a bureaucratic form. Those who fail a single module often face a choice between reassessment-only status – which ends their visa – or repeating with attendance purely to remain sponsored.

    Repeating with attendance can cost thousands of pounds in tuition and visa fees. Many have no realistic option but to pay. The system enforces what looks like a market choice – but is in practice compulsion.

    The Lifelong Learning Entitlement – fix or mirage

    In England at least, the forthcoming Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) ought to usher in flexibility. Funding will finally be linked to credits rather than years. Students will be able to study, pause, and return across their lifetimes. In theory, that should dismantle the rigid three-year cage.

    But in practice, everything will depend on how universities classify students, and how they’re allowed to resit. If reassessment-only learners are still coded as “not in attendance”, they still fall outside maintenance entitlement. The policy will have modernised the vocabulary of exclusion without addressing its cause.

    And even when students do qualify, the LLE’s promise of proportional maintenance means something subtle but serious – flexibility is offered as additional debt, not as forgiveness. Students who fall behind because of illness or bereavement will borrow more, not owe less.

    Unless maintenance is reconceived as a right to recovery rather than a privilege of progression, the LLE risks becoming a faster, more efficient version of the same trap.

    Across Europe, completion frameworks are slower and more forgiving. Some countries permit students a decade to complete a bachelor’s degree without financial penalty. Temporary setbacks don’t trigger existential crises – because variations in time are built into the design.

    As I referenced here, the HEDOCE project found that students in systems with longer completion horizons are less likely to drop out entirely and more likely to recover from setbacks. Those systems treat time as a pedagogical resource, not an efficiency problem.

    In contrast, our compressed model leaves no room for error. Once you stumble, the treadmill doesn’t slow down – it throws you off.

    Beyond efficiency

    Our systems for “retrieval” are not an isolated bureaucracy. They’re the endpoint of a philosophy – the same one I explored in the “pace miracle” piece. Both the speed and the punishment are symptoms of a culture that prizes output over understanding, and throughput over humanity.

    When the system is calibrated around efficiency, every deviation becomes failure, and every failure becomes costly. The student who needs time is framed as wasteful – and the institution that supports them risks financial loss.

    I suspect that is why academic pressure now appears so often in mental health reviews. The structure of funding itself generates the anxiety we later medicalise – what looks like individual struggle is really systemic design.

    If we genuinely wanted a system that supports learning rather than policing pace, we would start by aligning time, funding, and compassion.

    Maintenance support would continue for students on reassessment-only status. Resit marks would reflect achievement, not past misfortune. Compensation and extenuating circumstances policies would be clear, accessible, and generous.

    And more profoundly, universities would stop treating recovery as inefficiency. Every student who fails and returns would be evidence of persistence, not profligacy.

    In England, the LLE could be a turning point – a framework that finally recognises learning as cyclical and non-linear. Or it could simply re-brand the same cruelty in the language of flexibility.

    When I wrote about the UK’s “pace miracle”, I argued that we have built a higher education system that prizes speed and punishes delay – a model that achieves impressive completion rates at the cost of wellbeing, mastery, and fairness.

    Our retrieval systems are the mirror image of that miracle. One governs what happens when students move too slowly during the race – the other governs what happens when they fall altogether. Both reveal the same problem – UK HE mistakes motion for progress, and speed for success.

    A humane higher education system would not just help students recover from failure – it would stop treating recovery as failure in the first place.

    Until then, our miracle of efficiency will continue to hide a quiet cruelty. The students least able to afford failure will remain those the system punishes most heavily – not because they lacked talent or effort, but because we built a structure that makes time itself the privilege they can rarely get a loan for.

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  • Students Struggle With Surprise Costs, Don’t Know About Help

    Students Struggle With Surprise Costs, Don’t Know About Help

    Students link trust in higher education to affordability and financial stress to their academic performance. A new round of results from Inside Higher Ed’s Student Voice survey series, out today, delves deeper into the connection between students’ finances and their success. One key finding: Most students report some level of surprise with the full cost of attending college, including but not limited to tuition and other directly billable expenses. At least a quarter of students have trouble budgeting as a result.

    In another set of findings, 36 percent of students say that an unexpected expense of $1,000, or even less (see breakdown below), could threaten their ability to stay enrolled. Another 22 percent say the same of an expense between $1,001 and $2,500. This is the kind of need that many emergency aid programs are designed for, but 64 percent of respondents don’t even know if their institution offers such assistance.

    About the Survey

    Student Voice is an ongoing survey and reporting series that seeks to elevate the student perspective in institutional student success efforts and in broader conversations about college.

    Look out for future reporting on the main annual survey of our 2025–26 cycle, Student Voice: Amplified. Future reports will cover health and wellness, college involvement, career readiness, and more. Check out what students have already said about trust, artificial intelligence and academics.

    Some 5,065 students from 260 two- and four-year institutions, public and private nonprofit, responded to this main annual survey about student success, conducted in August. Explore the data captured by our survey partner Generation Lab here and here. The margin of error is plus or minus one percentage point.

    Mordecai Ian Brownlee, president of Community College of Aurora in Colorado, is walking 71 miles over three days next month to raise awareness of his own college’s emergency fund—specifically, to get community members to match a $71,000 donation. The fund started at just $8,000 during the pandemic, Brownlee said, but the college’s students frequently face unanticipated medical, utility, transportation and other costs. Without a way to bridge those gaps, their persistence is at risk. Even the standard grant of $250 can make a big difference, he said, though many of the college’s students are more chronically food- and housing-insecure.

    Because need is a spectrum and many needs overlap, the college offers multiple forms of assistance and tries to build awareness of each where possible: Staff at the college food bank advertise the emergency grant fund, academic advisers act as case managers and so on. There’s also a community component: The college partners with a local nonprofit to offer students in need free groceries, and it recently got a city bus stop reinstated outside its primary campus so students wouldn’t have to spend money on rideshares, especially in the winter months.

    “Previously, higher education was really seen as this transactional interaction of sorts, where you’re just focusing on delivering the learning outcomes—the wholeness and care of a person wasn’t necessarily a part of these institutional issues,” Brownlee said. “Yet if that person is in that classroom and hungry, there will be no retention, there will be no persistence, there will be no completion.”

    Helping students realize social and economic mobility means addressing financial crises, food and housing insecurity, mental health and mentorship needs, and more, he added: “These are people who have a dream but may not have a network.”

    Bahar Akman Imboden, managing director of the Hildreth Institute, which is focused on state-level practices and policies that enhance affordability, access and student success, said the new Student Voice findings reinforce how “lack of clarity around the true cost of attendance can derail students.” They also resonate with policy discussions in Massachusetts, where Hildreth is based, she said, as the state recently cut stipends for low-income students after the semester had started, reducing eligibility by up to $400 in some cases.

    “We’ve struggled to communicate that even what may seem like a small amount can completely upend a student’s education,” Imboden said, and the new data “will be incredibly helpful in making that case to decision-makers.”

    Students on Cost of Attendance, Emergency Aid and More

    Here are more details about this newest round of survey results from our main annual Student Voice survey of more than 5,000 two- and four-year students.

    1. Just 27 percent of students have a clear understanding of the full cost of attendance.

    Asked about their grasp of the full cost of attending college, including tuition and fees but also housing, course materials, transportation, food and more, just over a quarter of students say they have a solid understanding that allows them to budget appropriately. This increases to 29 percent among students who have never seriously considered stopping out of college and decreases to 21 percent among students who have seriously considered stopping out—aligning with prior research identifying college costs as a top reason students do not persist.

    The plurality of all Student Voice respondents, 47 percent, understand most costs, but not all. The remainder have less to no understanding and face various degrees of surprise about associated costs, challenging their ability to budget or pay for things they need.

    2. A majority of students report that surprise costs, in some cases as little as $100, could put their enrollment at risk.

    A slight plurality of students, 24 percent, say that an unforeseen cost exceeding $2,500 would challenge their ability to stay enrolled, while 19 percent say no surprise cost could threaten their persistence. But the remainder indicate that various expenses below $2,500 could push them out of college: Roughly one in five each say this of a $500 to $1,000 expense and of a $1,001 to $2,500 one. Particular differences emerge between continuing- and first-generation students, with 29 percent of the former and 46 percent of the latter indicating that amounts of $1,000 or less could challenge their ability to stay enrolled. The pattern is similar for four-year versus two-year students and for private nonprofit versus public institution students, with community college and public institution students significantly more likely than their respective counterparts to report that an unforeseen expense of $1,000 or less could threaten their persistence.

    According to Trellis Strategies’ most recent Student Financial Wellness Survey, 56 percent of students would have trouble obtaining even $500 in cash or credit to meet an unexpected expense, and 68 percent have run out of money at least once since the beginning of the year. Many emergency grant programs are capped at $500 or less, but all these numbers can help local aid efforts.

    3. Awareness of available aid is lacking.

    Nearly two in three Student Voice respondents don’t know if their institution offers emergency aid, and just 5 percent have accessed emergency aid at their college. Just about one in 10 students each say that they know the criteria for eligibility for such aid, or that they know how to apply for it. Black (9 percent) and Hispanic students (7 percent) are somewhat more likely to have accessed such aid than white (4 percent) and Asian American and Pacific Islander students (3 percent).

    A 2016 survey by NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education found that three in four institutions offered emergency aid of some kind, including one-time grants, loans and completion scholarships of less than $1,500 for students facing unexpected financial crises, as well as food pantries and housing and transportation assistance. The pandemic put a spotlight on student financial insecurity and brought new, if temporary, funding opportunities. Taken together, these data points suggest a large gap between available assistance and students’ awareness of it.

    4. Some students are more stressed about finances than they are about academics.

    Balancing academics with personal, family or financial responsibilities, including work, remains a top source of stress for students, at 50 percent, compared to 48 percent in last year’s main Student Voice survey. Some 38 percent of students also cite paying for college as a top stressor in 2025, up from last year’s 34 percent. Fewer, but still a significant share—22 percent—flag paying for personal expenses. Private nonprofit students are actually less likely than their public institution peers to say paying for college is a top stressor, at 22 percent versus 42 percent, respectively. The four-year–versus–two-year split here is narrower, at 37 percent versus 43 percent.

    Some 37 percent of all students say short-term academic pressure is a top issue, while 38 percent cite job and internship searches. These are both more traditional stressors associated with college, but the latter has a clear financial dimension.

    Addressing Higher Ed’s Cost Transparency Problem

    Anika Van Eaton, vice president of policy at uAspire, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing economic mobility for underrepresented students, said that even financial aid offers don’t always include the full cost of attendance, citing a 2022 federal Government Accountability Office report finding that 91 percent of colleges do not provide accurate information in these letters. According to the report, colleges should include a net price that includes all key costs, subtracting only grants and scholarships—though many don’t include information on books, off-campus housing and meals, and other living expenses. Some colleges also “make their net price seem cheaper by factoring in loans that students will eventually have to repay,” the office found, while about a quarter don’t even include information on tuition and fees. Forthcoming research from uAspire suggests that colleges are improving in this area, Van Eaton said, but, ultimately, “we need standardized financial aid offers using the same terminology that show a complete cost picture so students are guaranteed to receive this crucial information up front.”

    Students also need to understand college costs “beyond just seeing the numbers,” she added. One implication: High schools have an important role to play in educating and supporting soon-to-be graduates as they “navigate deciding their postsecondary plans and making what is likely one of the largest financial decisions of their lives.”

    Sarah Austin, a policy analyst at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, said students tend to focus more on direct costs, or what “they actually see on their bill,” versus all the indirect costs that go along with attending college. NASFAA, which has a voluntary College Cost Transparency Initiative, seeks to promote accuracy and clarity in financial aid offers by encouraging even small shifts, such as colleges using standard terminology, “or making it clear what is loan aid versus gift aid—things like that. Because students are, in fact, not clear on what their total cost is in many situations,” Austin added.

    Realistic indirect costs estimates are also crucial—and these are “are tricky for many schools to construct,” she said. Forthcoming research from NASFAA examines how institutions are calculating indirect costs and cost of attendance in general, in part to identity best practices. “Some schools have super robust cost of attendance construction processes where they’re surveying students, looking at, maybe, local data that they have access to, and putting that together every year,” Austin said. “Other schools maybe just have a set amount—they don’t review it annually, or they just blanket increase it because they know costs are going up.”

    A provision in the FAFSA Simplification Act passed in 2020 allowed the Education Department to begin regulating cost of attendance, but it hasn’t exercised that power, and experts are divided on whether that is the best approach.

    Congress continues to take interest in cost transparency. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee last month published a request for information on ways to improve transparency to lower costs. “Americans want the most value for their hard-earned money,” wrote Senator Bill Cassidy, the committee’s Republican chair. “They are used to shopping for products where prices are clearly labeled and information on quality is readily available. But when they shop for a college—one of the biggest financial decisions of their lives—it’s much harder to compare price and value across the available options.”

    Student photo Alyssa Manthi

    Alyssa Manthi

    Student Voice respondent Alyssa Manthi, a first-generation, fourth-year undergraduate studying history and religious studies at the University of Chicago, said she used to think attending a private nonprofit institution like hers was financially out of reach. That’s until a high school counselor—and her mother—pushed her to apply to a scholarship program through which she received a full ride to Chicago, including a cost-of-living stipend that Manthi said generally reflects the indirect costs of attendance.

    Finances did become less predictable when Manthi was studying in Paris during her sophomore year, however. She’d had to front the payment for her plane ticket and spent much of her savings to replace a damaged computer during finals week before she left. Once abroad without a meal plan for the first time, and without a campus job, she ran out of cash with a few weeks left in the term.

    Luckily, she was able to access emergency aid through the university, she recalled.

    “They have it through the bursar’s office, where you can fill out an emergency aid application,” she said. “I was like, ‘Hey, I just need to be able to get food for the next two weeks before I go home,’ and I provided the proof that my laptop broke, since a lot of that was the money I was going to spend.”

    Manthi said she does sometimes worry about what might happen if she needs significant additional emergency aid before she graduates, since it’s such a limited resource. Complications around costs and housing also effectively stymied her tentative plan to study abroad for another term. Still, she said she credits the university’s Odyssey Scholars cohort model and Center for College Student Success with connecting her to resources and peers who have made navigating college’s hidden financial curriculum easier. This includes information about various emergency aid resources and job listings.

    “Just making sure that students have access to that information from the get-go was very helpful to me,” she said. Of her funding package generally, which includes a federal Pell Grant dollars and other institutional aid, Manthi added, “Knowing that I have that backing has relieved a lot of stress that I think I would have felt the past three years.”

    Knowing that I have that backing has relieved a lot of stress that I think I would have felt the past three years.”

    —Student Voice respondent Alyssa Manthi

    In terms of college cost transparency, Manthi said her biggest outstanding concern is that many prospective students may not understand that private nonprofit institutions, even highly selective ones, could be financially within reach. She said she’d be paying significantly more to attend the Illinois public institution to which she was also accepted, for example.

    High sticker prices that are often deeply discounted are another part of the cost transparency conversation, with some experts warning that this practice is sowing further distrust in higher education. Institutions are expensive to run, and college pricing is complex, but leaders may not recognize the extent of the public dissatisfaction of this practice, at least concerning their campus: According to Inside Higher Ed’s 2025 Survey of College and University Chief Business Officers with Hanover Research, 88 percent agreed that their own institution is transparent about the full, net cost of attendance, but just 42 percent said the same of colleges and universities as a whole.

    Most CBOs also agreed their institution is sufficiently affordable. Yet more than half were at least moderately concerned about the sustainability of their institution’s tuition discount rate, with private nonprofit college and university CBOs especially concerned. About the same share were concerned about sticker price increases. And some 65 percent of all CBOs said their institution had increased institutional financial aid/grants in the last year to address affordability concerns.

    One notable exception to the high-price, high-discount trend is Whitworth College, which is in the middle of a tuition reset.

    “What I do wish students knew is, don’t write off the private institutions just because of the high sticker cost, because that’s what I did to start,” Manthi said. “It was just so ingrained that those places weren’t for us, or it didn’t feel like it was accessible.”

    This independent editorial project is produced with the Generation Lab and supported by the Gates Foundation.

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  • University of Chicago braces for job cuts amid effort to shed $100M in costs

    University of Chicago braces for job cuts amid effort to shed $100M in costs

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    Dive Brief:

    • The University of Chicago is looking to cut $100 million in expenses after two years of deficits and “profound federal policy changes” under the Trump administration, according to university President Paul Alivisatos. 
    • In community messages Thursday, Alivisatos said that goal requires staff reductions. This year, the university plans to eliminate 100 to 150 staff jobs, including through layoffs, mostly tied to discontinuing university programs and activities. 
    • The institution also plans to reduce senior leadership roles, pause admissions for over a dozen Ph.D. and master’s programs, decrease the number of spots for doctoral students, scale back capital projects, and review its research spending with an eye toward potentially cutting some academic centers.

    Dive Insight:

    Like many university presidents in recent months, Alivisatos pointed to the past eight months of policy disruption under the Trump administration as having “created multiple and significant new uncertainties and strong downward pressure on our finances.”

    In that environment, “steps ahead have become much steeper in the face of proximate challenges,” Alivisatos said in a message to staff.

    University of Chicago already faced financial pressure from rising expenses before the year began. In fiscal 2024, the institution reported a $193.7 million operating deficit — even as its revenue grew. That shortfall represented an improvement from the year before, when it posted a $201.7 million deficit.

    “Despite important progress that all of you worked so hard to contribute to over the last two years, our annual income still falls short of our expenses,” Alivisatos said in a message to faculty. “That is not something that we can allow to persist.”

    The university is taking a kitchen sink approach to its budget, reducing spending in multiple areas while also trying to ensure its core operations and services remain strong. But employee compensation remains the university’s largest expense and a major area for cutting. 

    University of Chicago Provost Katherine Baicker noted Thursday that the latest round of budget cuts will build on previous institutional efforts to reduce costs, which included voluntary retirements, layoffs and hiring freezes.

    The staffing cuts will be tied to specific activities and programs that the institution plans to end, rather than an across-the-board cut, the university said in a FAQ on the operational restructuring. 

    “The aim is to do fewer things well, rather than doing the same things with fewer people,” it said.

    The university is not planning any faculty cuts, instead opting to maintain the current number after past years of growth. 

    However, the University of Chicago will pause Ph.D. enrollment of 19 programs for the 2026-27 academic year — nearly all of them in the liberal arts and humanities, including anthropology, political economics, English, theater, art history and public policy. The move has garnered national attention amid concerns the reduction could harm the academic landscape at the university and beyond.

    The University of Chicago is also rethinking its approach to campus construction. The institution can no longer afford to build primarily via debt financing, and newly established rules require philanthropic or other external support for building projects before starting them, according to Alivisatos. The university has “substantially” scaled down plans for a new engineering and science building, Alivisatos said.

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  • Week in review: UCLA and other colleges move to cut costs

    Week in review: UCLA and other colleges move to cut costs

    Most clicked story of the week:

    A federal judge struck down the U.S. Department of Education’s Feb. 14 guidance that threatened to revoke federal funding for colleges and K-12 schools that practiced diversity, equity and inclusion efforts it considers illegal. In her decision, the judge ruled that the guidance unconstitutionally put viewpoint-based restrictions on academic speech and used overly vague language about what was prohibited.

    Number of the week: 6,000+

    The number of international student visas the U.S. Department of State has revoked so far this year. The agency terminated between 200 and 300 of the visas over allegations of support for terrorism, a spokesperson said.

    Staffing and investigations at the Education Department:

    • The Education Department will reinstate over 260 laid-off Office for Civil Rights employees in small groups every other week, following a federal judge’s order. The restoration of staff will take place from Sept. 8 through Nov. 3, according to court filings.
    • Almost three-quarters of financial aid administrators reported “noticeable changes” in the Federal Student Aid office’s communications and processing speed since the massive Education Department layoffs earlier this year, according to a survey from the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. 
    • Despite the decrease in staff, the department has continued to open civil rights investigations, announcing one last week at Haverford College. The agency cited allegations that the small Pennsylvania institution hadn’t done enough in response to campus antisemitism. A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against Haverford over similar allegations earlier this year.

    Budget cuts and restructuring: 

    • The University of California, Los Angeles paused faculty hiring through spring 2026 amid increasing attacks from the Trump administration and preexisting budget shortfalls. The public university is also consolidating its information technology teams, though it did not say if the process will include layoffs.
    • The University of Louisiana at Lafayette will cut its operational and auxiliary spending by 5%, a move its interim president cast as proactive rather than reactive, KADN reported. While the university’s revenue is strong, he said, costs exceed it. 
    • Milligan University, in Tennessee, will cut six academic programs this fall to keep pace with a changing college market, the private institution’s president told WJHL. The affected programs enrolled 28 students.

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