Tag: difference
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8 Tiny Japanese Habits That Make a Massive Difference (What’s The Next Level)
Higher Education Inquirer : 8 Tiny Japanese Habits That Make a Massive Difference (What’s The Next Level)
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Higher Education Inquirer : Teens Who Made A Difference: Barbara Rose Johns
History often portrays social change as the work of seasoned leaders, elected officials, or famous intellectuals. Yet again and again, it is young people—often teenagers with little formal power—who ignite movements that reshape institutions and force nations to confront injustice. Long before they could vote, hold office, or even graduate, these teens recognized wrongs that adults had normalized and acted with courage that altered the course of history.
Among the most consequential examples in U.S. education history is Barbara Rose Johns, a 16-year-old high school student whose leadership in 1951 helped set in motion events that would culminate in Brown v. Board of Education and the formal end of legalized school segregation.
In the spring of 1951, Johns was a junior at Robert Russa Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia. The school, designated for Black students under Jim Crow law, was overcrowded and severely underfunded. Students were taught in makeshift tar-paper shacks without adequate heat. Textbooks and supplies were outdated, and facilities bore little resemblance to those at the nearby white high school. For years, parents and community leaders had petitioned local officials for improvements, but their appeals were ignored.
Johns concluded that waiting for adults or authorities to act was futile. Acting largely on her own initiative, she secretly organized a student strike. On April 23, 1951, more than 450 students walked out of their classrooms. Johns had planned an assembly in advance, arranging for a speaker and framing the protest not as a request for cosmetic improvements but as a challenge to the underlying injustice of segregation itself. At just 16 years old, she demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of how institutional inequality operated and how public action could force change.
The strike quickly attracted attention beyond Prince Edward County. It led to involvement from the NAACP, including attorneys Spottswood Robinson and Oliver Hill, and later Thurgood Marshall. What began as a protest against unsafe and unequal facilities evolved into a direct legal challenge to segregated schooling. The resulting case, Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, became one of the five cases consolidated into the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which declared that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”
The personal consequences for Johns were severe. She and her family faced threats and intimidation, and she was sent to live with relatives outside Virginia for her safety. For decades, her role received relatively little public recognition, even as the Brown decision became one of the most celebrated rulings in American history. Yet without her initiative, one of the central cases behind Brown might never have existed.
Barbara Johns’ story underscores a broader truth about social change: teenagers are not merely passive recipients of policy decisions, especially in education. They experience institutional inequality firsthand, and when they organize, they often articulate moral truths that adults have learned to tolerate or rationalize. From desegregation to contemporary student movements challenging unequal funding, surveillance, gun violence, and climate inaction, youth activism has repeatedly forced institutions to confront contradictions between democratic ideals and lived reality.
More than seventy years after the Moton High School strike, American education remains deeply unequal. Schools are still segregated by race and income, facilities vary dramatically by zip code, and access to opportunity is uneven. Johns’ legacy remains relevant precisely because the conditions that provoked her action have not fully disappeared. Her story challenges educators, policymakers, and communities to ask why it so often falls to young people to demand justice—and why their leadership is so frequently overlooked.
Barbara Rose Johns did not wait for permission to make history. She organized, resisted, and changed the trajectory of American education while still a teenager. In remembering her, we are reminded that meaningful change often begins not in boardrooms or legislatures, but in classrooms where students decide that injustice is no longer acceptable.
Sources
Barbara Rose Johns, Wikipedia.
Smithsonian National Museum of American History, “The Moton School Strike, 1951.”
Library of Congress, Civil Rights History Project, Prince Edward County and Davis v. County School Board.
National Park Service, Robert Russa Moton High School National Historic Landmark.
Kluger, Richard. Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality. -
Students can make a real difference to educational opportunity in their regions through tutoring
Right now, improving access to educational opportunities for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds is high on the agenda of both universities and the UK government.
While Labour draws up plans to break the link between background and success, universities continue to invest significant time and resources into creating and implementing widening participation initiatives. If these efforts are to be successful, it’s vital that more young people are given access to tailored tutoring support during their time in compulsory education.
The advantage gap in achieving GCSE English and maths at age 16 is at its widest since 2011, with over half of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds leaving school without these crucial qualifications. Missing these qualifications limits young people’s opportunities to progress in education. A 2021 study for the Nuffield Foundation primarily of the 2015 GCSE cohort found that young people who left school without GCSE English and maths are much less likely to study for a qualification higher than GCSE the following year, and even fewer pursue A levels.
The 16-19 attainment gap persists in post-16 education. On average, young people facing economic disadvantage are over three grades behind their peers across their best three subjects by the time they leave compulsory education. The gap is even wider for those in long term poverty, at almost four grades behind.
Tutoring has long been recognised as one of the most effective ways to boost attainment. Research by the Education Endowment Foundation suggests targeted tutoring leads to an average of five months additional progress when delivered one-to-one and four months additional progress when delivered in a small group.
Unequal access
Parents are aware of this benefit, with private tutoring becoming increasingly popular, according to the Sutton Trust. But low-income families are often priced out of accessing this kind of support should their child fall behind.
This unequal access is something that was addressed by The National Tutoring Programme and the 16-19 Tuition Fund – both government-funded tutoring schemes that ran in state schools and colleges between 2020–24. These programmes were created in response to the pandemic, to help young people catch up on lost learning. During the lifetimes of these programmes, the Sutton Trust examination of the tutoring landscape found that the gap in access to tuition between poorer and wealthier families in England all but disappeared.
A new report published this week from Public First – Past lessons, future vision: evolving state funded tutoring for the future – finds that schools and colleges have struggled to maintain tutoring beyond the end of the dedicated funding provided by these schemes. despite the strong evidence base for tutoring, its popularity among parents and government plans for tutoring to become a “permanent feature of the system” provided by these schemes.
The report compiles lessons learned from the National Tutoring Programme and the 16-19 Tuition Fund and uses these to create a blueprint for what the future of state-funded tutoring should look like. Based on interviews and focus groups with teachers, it reveals that many school leaders see relying on Pupil Premium funding to sustain tutoring as unrealistic. Schools face competing pressures on this funding, including the need to cover gaps in their core budgets.
Funding for tutoring programmes in colleges is even more limited. Unlike younger pupils, disadvantaged students in further education receive no equivalent to the Pupil Premium, despite still being in compulsory education. As a result, there is no dedicated funding for initiatives that could help bridge the attainment gap.
This is particularly troubling when you consider that young people in this phase have the shortest time left in compulsory education, and that the majority of students who resit their GCSEs in English and maths – subjects that are crucial for accessing higher level study – do so in FE colleges.
Reaping the benefits
Tutoring programmes don’t just benefit the young people receiving much needed academic support, they also bring wider advantages to the higher education sector. By partnering with local schools and colleges to deliver tuition programmes, higher education institutions can take a leading role in advancing social mobility, delivering on their access and participation priorities, and strengthening ties with their local communities.
These programmes also create valuable job opportunities for undergraduate and postgraduate students. At Get Further – a charity that supports students from disadvantaged backgrounds to succeed in their GCSE resits through small-group tuition – 61 per cent of our tutors in 2023–24 were students: 23 per cent postgraduate and 38 per cent undergraduate.
When recruiting new tutors, we prioritise offering opportunities to students at our partner universities, providing them with comprehensive training and ongoing personal development. This enables them to build transferable skills in a paid role while making a meaningful contribution to widening participation, enriching both their own educational experience and that of the learners they support.
Similarly, the University of Exeter tutoring model has had success with its literacy programme for 12-13 year olds – a scheme delivered entirely by undergraduate tutors, who are either paid for their time or earn credits towards their degree. Programmes like these provide students with the opportunity to develop skills in communication, mentoring, adaptability, and critical thinking. This is all while taking on a flexible role that fits around their studies, supports their finances and makes a positive impact on their local communities.
Creating tutoring jobs for university students could also create a pipeline into teaching – a critically understaffed profession. In 2024, a survey of Get Further tutors revealed that 68 per cent of our tutor pool either were interested or might be interested in pursuing a career in teaching, and 67 per cent said that they were more likely to consider pursuing a career in teaching having tutored on our programme.
Investing in tutoring isn’t just about closing the attainment gap – it’s about expanding opportunity at every stage of education. By making high-quality tuition accessible to all young people, regardless of background, we can remove barriers to higher education while also creating valuable work experience for university students.
The Past lessons, future vision report sets out a clear blueprint for a sustainable, national tutoring programme. The evidence is compelling, the need is urgent, and the potential impact is transformative. The government must act to reinstate state funding so that this vital support remains available to those who need it most.
In the meantime, universities have a crucial role to play. By embedding tutoring within their widening participation efforts, they can not only support young people facing disadvantage but also strengthen ties with local colleges and schools, enhance student employability, and help shape a fairer, more ambitious education system.
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The difference between commuting by choice versus necessity
Plenty has been written in the last few years that discusses the way the pandemic and the cost-of-living and housing crisis have driven the rise in commuter students across the sector.
And as the commuter student series has demonstrated, universities and student unions can take steps to better meet the needs of this community.
We know they are less engaged, more financially constrained, exhausted, and more likely to have lower degree outcomes compared to campus students.
And yet despite knowing all of this, it sometimes feels like we are circling the drain when it comes to implementing better policies for commuter students.
And part of the issue is that we are still framing students’ decision to commute as a choice rather than a necessity when it comes to decision making.
While some may argue this is semantics and that the two words are interchangeable, the difference in experience between choice commuters and necessity commuters is something to interrogate.
Spot the difference
Last year, I read the Blackbullion Student Money & Wellbeing 2024 report and for students who identified themselves as commuters they were asked, “Is this by choice or a necessity?”
319 students identified by choice and 234 by necessity.
While the difference in word choice might seem minor, the data presented throughout the report revealed their experiences were in fact quite different.
For example, non-commuter students need about £577 a month more than what they currently have compared to £671 for commuters by choice and £782 for commuters due to necessity.
Recognising these financial differences as well as others could help universities provide more targeted support.
Things like commuter friendly timetables, better event planning and reducing hidden course costs benefit all students, but it could also potentially provide a noticeable financial reprieve for those who commute due to necessity.
To better support different student groups the sector needs a deeper understanding of the nuances within their student population and the impact on attendance, engagement, and belonging in order to design effective interventions.
Our commuters
At Royal Holloway, 40 per cent of our students are commuters.
And this year the students’ union is running a policy inquiry to examine their academic experience, seeking feedback from current commuter students through online surveys and qualitative activities like a paid in-person focus group and a journaling activity.
We followed Blackbullion’s lead and asked students whether they commuted by choice or necessity in our term one online survey which received 654 responses.
58 per cent of respondents identified as necessity commuters, 39 per cent were choice commuters and three per cent preferred not to say.
The patterns across year groups revealed undergraduates in earlier year groups were more likely to commute by choice while late-year undergraduate and postgraduate students commuted due to necessity.
When asked to explain in more detail why they commuted, the top reasons given were often financially motivated around expensive accommodation, the cost-of-living crisis, not wanting to take out a maintenance loan, and the fact they could not justify the expense of living out when they had close transport links to the university.
Sticky campus
We also wanted to better understand commuter travel patterns.
Looking at the data we learned that 72 per cent of overall commuters come to campus only on the days they have teaching, 17 per cent come to campus more days than they have scheduled teaching and 11 per cent come less days than they have teaching.
Within the 17 per cent who come to campus more days, 63 per cent of those students are commuters by necessity compared to 33 per cent of commuters by choice.
Despite extending their time on campus, 60 per cent of necessity commuters reported that their commute negatively impacts their ability to socialise with other students compared to about 41 per cent of commuters by choice who felt this way.
In terms of forming friendships, commuters by choice felt more positively with 67 per cent feeling they have had good opportunities to form friendships and foster a sense of belonging within the student community versus 55 per cent of commuters by necessity.
These differences extend into their academic socialisation, and 55 per cent of choice commuters agreed to an extent they felt part of an academic community compared to 48 per cent of necessity commuters.
Our survey highlighted that managing their studies was a major barrier which impacted daytime socialisation for commuter students. 85 per cent of choice commuters stated they found their workload manageable versus 72 per cent of necessity commuters.
A high proportion of respondents indicated they manage their workload, but they compensate by studying during their commutes or teaching breaks, limiting their time to socialise.
Taking all of this into account it is no surprise that necessity commuters were more likely to report their commute affects their physical or mental well-being at 37 per cent compared to 17 per cent of choice commuters.
Where do we go from here?
When it comes to commuting by choice or by necessity, necessity commuters face greater financial, academic and social challenges.
Once universities and students’ unions reframe their thinking around commuting as a necessity rather than a choice, they can create more targeted support to support this community.
Things that might alleviate the pressures commuters face include commuter-friendly timetables, hybrid teaching options, travel bursaries or affordable overnight accommodation options to reduce exam stress or attendance at late-night events.
We also need to reach out and ask what types of commuter-friendly events and initiatives they would like and what would work for them to build better social inclusion on their terms.
Right now, commuter students feel left behind and invisible when they’re on campus. But we can change this narrative if we rethink our perception of this community and create more targeted policies to support them across their student journey by first understanding the nuance.
This blog is part of our series on commuter students. Click here to see the other articles in the series.
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Why doesn’t higher education make a difference?
by Amir Shahsavari and Mohammad Eslahi
This blog is based on research reported in Shahsavari, A, & Eslahi, M (2025) ‘Dynamics of Imbalanced Higher Education Development: Analysing Factors and Policy Implications’ in Policy Reviews in Higher Education.
Our study addresses the paradox of expanding higher education, particularly in Iran, failing to translate into substantial societal impact. We adopted an interpretive research paradigm to explore participants’ experiences and perspectives, emphasising qualitative inquiry. Specifically, we applied a basic qualitative research approach, focusing on thematic data analysis to understand underlying meanings and patterns. We conducted semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 23 professionals from Iran’s higher education system, including executive experts and academic scholars. The data was analysed using qualitative theme analysis with the thematic network approach. It highlights the interplay of internal and external factors driving this imbalance and offers practical recommendations for policymakers and university administrators. The study identifies multiple external and internal factors contributing to the imbalanced development of Iranian higher education.
External Factors:
- Conflicting Political Discourse: Political divisions create inconsistent policy directions that hinder higher education reform. The resulting instability restricts universities from pursuing coherent strategies for social development.
- Deficient Decision-Making Structures: Inefficient policy frameworks restrict universities’ ability to align with national development goals. This limits their capacity to engage in long-term planning, research commercialization, and innovation.
- Lack of Social and Cultural Cohesion: Weak societal integration reduces higher education’s ability to contribute to social progress. Universities struggle to connect their knowledge outputs to broader societal needs without a shared cultural framework.
- Low Demand for Science and Technology in the Economy: Limited integration of scientific advancements into economic sectors hinders universities’ relevance. Weak industry-university linkages prevent research outcomes from driving innovation and economic growth.
- International Sanctions: Economic constraints and restricted access to global knowledge networks impede higher education progress. This isolation limits opportunities for research collaboration, technological exchange, and funding access.
Internal Factors:
- Limited Engagement with National and Local Ecosystem Needs: Universities lack meaningful interaction with regional industries and communities. This disconnect limits their ability to address localized development challenges.
- Insufficient Attention to Territorial Advantages in Development Planning: Universities often fail to leverage local strengths and opportunities, weakening their contribution to regional economic development.
- Weak Endogenous Creativity: Overreliance on Western educational models stifles innovative academic approaches. As a result, Iranian universities struggle to develop unique solutions suited to local challenges.
- Promotion of Emigration: University environments inadvertently encourage student and faculty migration, reducing local impact. This trend diminishes the human capital available to drive national innovation.
This study contributes new insights by highlighting the interplay between external political pressures and internal university strategies. While previous studies have emphasized government interventions and economic constraints, this research reveals the disruptive effects of conflicting political ideologies and weak social cohesion. Additionally, the study expands on the “quadruple helix” model by illustrating the absence of place-based leadership and strategies as critical gaps in Iranian higher education. The study also introduces a framework for integrating participatory governance models into university decision-making processes, enhancing institutions’ responsiveness to societal needs. The study emphasizes three key strategies for improving higher education’s societal impact:
- Promoting National Dialogues via Universities: Encouraging open dialogue among academic leaders and policymakers can bridge ideological divides, fostering consensus on long-term educational goals. This step is vital to mitigate political interference and improve strategic planning for university development. Higher education can contribute to national stability and long-term planning by positioning universities as mediators in political debates.
- Increasing Science and Technology Demand: Policymakers should enhance economic incentives for scientific research integration. Encouraging industrial partnerships and market-driven research will amplify universities’ role in economic growth. By creating a more dynamic innovation ecosystem, universities can expand their influence on industry practices and economic modernization.
- Developing Science and Technology Diplomacy: Expanding diplomatic ties to bypass sanctions can enhance Iranian universities’ access to global scientific collaboration, fostering innovation and knowledge exchange. Such efforts include developing partnerships with international research centers and increasing participation in global academic networks.
The study to address internal factors recommends:
- Expanding participatory teaching models, such as service learning, to connect universities with community development. These models empower students to engage with social challenges directly, enhancing their sense of responsibility and practical skills.
- Aligning government support for universities based on regional strengths, promoting competition, and enhancing educational quality. By linking funding models to regional priorities, universities can better tailor their strategies to local economic and social needs.
- Supporting creative teaching and research initiatives to foster academic innovation. This includes incentivising faculty to develop unconventional teaching methods and interdisciplinary research projects.
- Encouraging initiatives that promote national pride and social responsibility among students and faculty, mitigating emigration trends. Universities can strengthen students’ connection to local development through values-based education and encourage talent retention.
The study highlights a critical limitation: its participants were drawn solely from the supply side of the science and technology ecosystem (university faculty and administrators). Future research should include stakeholders from the demand side, such as industry leaders, policymakers, and civil society representatives, to develop a more comprehensive understanding of higher education’s role in societal development. Exploring the interplay between social values, economic incentives, and political frameworks would provide deeper insights into higher education’s transformative potential.
This research underscores the need for a holistic approach to higher education reform. By addressing internal and external challenges, policymakers can create an educational landscape promoting social, economic, and political progress. Universities must evolve beyond expanding access to higher education and focus on fostering creativity, engagement, and accountability to enhance their contributions to society. Developing partnerships with industry, embracing participatory governance, and promoting inclusive dialogues will empower universities to become key drivers of social and economic transformation.
Amir Shahsavari is an Assistant Professor of Higher Education at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, Iran. His academic interests lie in higher education policy, academic management and planning, and teaching and learning, mainly focusing on higher education studies in Iran. Drawing on his research, he seeks to contribute to a deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing Iranian universities to inform policy and improve educational practices. [email protected]
Mohammad Eslahi holds a PhD in Higher Education from the University of Tehran, Iran, specializing in Educational Administration and Planning. His research interests focus on the economics of higher education and the economics of university research. He is a lecturer and research assistant at the University of Tehran, actively contributing to teaching and scholarly endeavors in these fields. [email protected]
