Tag: dont

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Going on Offense by Living Your Values

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Collective Spirit and Collaborative Action

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

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

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

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

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

    Room and Respect for Difference

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

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

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

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

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

    Do More Than ‘Doing School’

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

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

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

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

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

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  • Jimmy Kimmel is back, but don’t get complacent

    Jimmy Kimmel is back, but don’t get complacent

    This essay was originally published by The Dallas Observer on Sept. 26, 2025.

    Last week, ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel just hours after FCC Chair Brendan Carr directed a thinly veiled threat at the media giant over comments Kimmel made about Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

    “This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney,” Carr said on Benny Johnson’s The Benny Show. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”      

    Carr’s message was a clear example of a government pressure tactic known as “jawboning,” and though ABC reversed the suspension days later, returning Kimmel to the air with an emotional yet triumphant monologue on free speech, the damage had been done. Kimmel was off the air for three episodes, and President Donald Trump took the opportunity to encourage even more censorship, saying on Truth Social, “That leaves Jimmy [Fallon] and Seth [Meyers], two total losers, on Fake News [sic] NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!!”

    Why our critics’ whataboutery over Jimmy Kimmel is wrong

    Jimmy Kimmel wasn’t canceled by a mob — he was silenced after FCC pressure. Critics say we’re inconsistent, but we’ve opposed jawboning and cancel culture for years. This case is no different.


    Read More

    Consider the events that immediately followed Carr’s comments the same day. Nexstar, an Irving-based company that owns various ABC affiliate stations, suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live! from its programming. Sinclair, another media company that owns ABC affiliate stations, followed suit. Then Disney, which owns ABC, announced Kimmel’s indefinite suspension, thus shutting production down entirely.

    The justified backlash against Disney/ABC was swift, prompting them to switch sides. On Monday, the media giant announced that the show would return to the air. The show’s “welcome back” monologue amassed a record of over 14 million YouTube hits in 16 hours. CNN data analyst Harry Enten reported that a typical monologue on the show rakes in roughly 240,000 YouTube views. That’s over 5,000% growth, courtesy of the Streisand effect.

    Still, we must not let celebration temper our vigilance. As FIRE Chief Counsel Robert Corn-Revere said recently in a Washington Post op-ed, “The law denies the [FCC] ‘the power of censorship’ as well as the ability to impose any ‘regulation or condition’ that interferes with freedom of speech.”

    That Trump’s administration chilled protected speech notwithstanding the law is distressing. Jawboning is unconstitutional, as the Supreme Court unanimously held last year in NRA v. Vullo. In that case, the state of New York pressured financial institutions and insurance companies to sever ties with the gun rights organization in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the opinion, “Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors.”

    Yet that is exactly what happened here. We just witnessed the FCC attempt to coerce Disney to suppress Kimmel’s speech, just as New York attempted to coerce financial institutions to suppress the NRA’s advocacy.

    Carr’s influence wasn’t the only factor. Outrage over Kimmel’s remarks was already building. A New York Times analysis of “thousands” of posts and media mentions found that criticism started “as a whisper, then eventually as a shout.” Breitbart covered it, Newsbusters’ Alex Christy wrote an X post that drew 15 million views, Fox’s The Five picked it up, The Blaze host Auron MacIntyre called for Kimmel’s firing, another viral post demanded his “career completely destroyed,” and Elon Musk weighed in: “Jimmy Kimmel is disgusting.” But it was Carr’s podcast threat that pushed the outrage into overdrive. As the Times noted, the anger “became apoplectic” after his remarks. His intervention should have carried no weight, yet instead it was a force multiplier.

    Another cause for concern in this otherwise triumphant moment is that Trump made it abundantly clear his sights are still on Kimmel, according to a Truth Social post on Tuesday night.

    Trump continued, “He is yet another arm of the DNC and, to the best of my knowledge, that would be a major Illegal Campaign. I think we’re going to test ABC out on this. Let’s see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative. A true bunch of losers!”

    The First Amendment abuses do not stop there. On Sept. 15, Trump filed a shakedown lawsuit against The New York Times for $15 billion in response to unfavorable coverage. That same day, Attorney General Pam Bondi threatened to target Americans for “hate speech” — she then walked her comments back after conservative outrage.

    Moments like these are why our country needs an unflinching devotion to the First Amendment. They serve as a good reminder that, eventually, the shoe always ends up on the other foot. As Sen. Ted Cruz put it, “It might feel good right now to threaten Jimmy Kimmel, but when it is used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it.”

    That is no apocalyptic bluster. Under both Republican and Democratic leadership, FIRE has stood firm against First Amendment abuses regardless of which wing or team color it comes from. The tendency for power to target disfavored views or ideas transcends party lines and can only be contained with a consistent, principled application of the First Amendment. As FIRE President Greg Lukianoff wrote recently in a New York Times op-ed, “The weapon that you reach for today will be used against you tomorrow.”

    Kimmel’s return is worth cheering, but unless we resist each attempt at government-driven censorship, the next suspension may not be so brief.

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  • The incentives don’t work they just make growth worse

    The incentives don’t work they just make growth worse

    The UK’s economy looks particularly bad at the moment.

    There is a Jeremy Hunt view of the world that while the UK is in a muddle with its money the foundations are strong. After all, the UK is still one of the world’s largest economies. There is the City AM view that the UK is in many ways fundamentally broken. And, there is the Resolution Foundation that predicts that many households will endure another decade of lost earnings.

    The UK’s particular malaise is manifold. The IFS talks about it as a result of “Low investment, policy mistakes, political instability, and Brexit,” (Covid didn’t help either). The result is what former LSE president and now advisor to Keir Starmer Minouche Shafik and founder of the Resolution Foundation Clive Cowdery have called a “toxic combination of low growth and high inequality.” Their view is stagnation is because of low records of investment in staff by business, regional inequalities, and the overplaying of the UK’s manufacturing strengths at the expense of its actual strengths in services.

    New advisor old problems

    As the country has ambled through its decade and more of low growth the university sector has expanded rapidly. As I wrote about in a paper for the Post-18 Project this presents a fundamental problem for people like me that believe in the economic utility of universities.

    The best version of the story is that universities have genuinely transformed the economic fortunes of some parts of the country, if not the entire country. A recent Centre for Cities report suggests there are some places that have become more prosperous through all the economic goods a university attracts to their place including students, knowledge workers, and some kinds of innovation.

    The second sunniest version is that the country would be in an even greater mess were it not for its universities. The gloomiest picture is that despite the enormous amount of additional public funding, increases in turnover, new research schemes, capital builds, and other fiscal levers, universities have not been able to get the country out of its fiscal funk.

    The rejoinder to this is that universities don’t just exist for reasons of economic utility. The problem is, as Jane Robinson has pointed out for Wonkhe, university’s social contract and the funding that flows to them is increasingly about how they choose to invest, the partnerships they build, the ways in which they grow their economies, and their role in regional development. Their ability to meet the challenges Shafik and Cowdery have set out is the bargain for further funding.

    This is fair enough. It is unreasonable for universities to expect more public funding in a tight economy without offering something in return. The problem is the things that universities are doing are often going under the radar and the things they might do better are often beyond their control.

    It’s not that universities don’t want to contribute to economic growth, it is that it is hard and government policy often makes it harder. To demonstrate, let’s consider Shafik’sand Cowdery’s triangle of growth; skills (as a key part of productivity), regions, and maximising the UK’s strengths.

    Start, stop, go

    Universities generally produce people with the skills the economy needs. They do not produce as many people with the skills the economy needs at pre-degree level, because the curriculum is usually built around undergraduate degree level qualification, but there is no other game in town when it comes to producing the graduate workers an economy requires.

    Universities will probably never provide all the sheet metal workers the country requires or fill the massive gaps in the care system but they will provide a good number of the nuclear physicists, programmers, engineers, lawyers, accountants, and managers the industrial strategy requires.

    The problem is that universities have almost no incentive to teach the things that the industrial strategy says the country needs. They may do so for academic reasons, civic good, inertia, research profile, specialism, or something else, but teaching the future home students in high-cost programmes is the exact opposite way any sensible university financial planner would arrange their portfolio of programmes. Programmes at pre-degree level have students for less time on them, with a less obvious market, and comparable individual unit costs. An even worse deal.

    To look at this another way the university which aimed solely to meet the needs of their local and national labour markets would have to ignore the financial reality they exist within. My own view is that on narrow economic terms it’s a good thing universities teach broad based curricula because the labour market is unpredictable and benefits from a range of skilled people to draw upon. The government view is that it’s not only necessary to entirely reform the skills pipeline but to provide more specific skills in AI, engineering, cyber, and other STEM related fields.

    The government has therefore created a misalignment between financial incentives and the labour market outcomes they are trying to achieve. To address this the government could increase university funding generally through strategic grants (probably not going to happen), boost other forms of income through relaxing visa regulations (absolutely not going to happen,) or improve incentives to teach home students in high cost programmes (we might get some inflationary fee increases).

    The alternative is to recognise that an entirely student demand led model is going to lead to some skills gaps. Various attempts to nudge students into certain qualifications (remember the adverts on cyber?) don’t seem to have made an awful lot of difference. Through the Post-18 project my co-authors and I argued that some HE provision could be commissioned:

    The Devolution Bill should make provision for mayoral combined authorities to convene a post-18 education and skills provision group with a diversity of provider and industry representation that can draw on the insight from regional growth insight centres to develop post-18 pathways, provision and partnerships. These groups could initially propose business cases for reprofiling of funding but over time could be given direct commissioning powers and/or direct injections of public funding to catalyse new provision aligned to national or regional economic growth priorities.

    The government can find ways of boosting or redirecting teaching resources or the country, in the long term, can have fewer graduates in high-cost degrees. There is no path to more students studying more expensive things in line with government priorities without resources to do so.

    Regions

    Regional growth is another area where the incentives make absolutely no sense. The UK is unusually imbalanced where second cities are comparably unproductive to many other large economies. One way in which to rebalance economies is to increase investment and the supply of skilled human capital.

    The single most important measure of skilled human capital in the university sector is Graduate Outcomes. Graduate Outcomes measure whether a student is in highly-skilled employment fifteen months after they graduate. Universities are regulated and placed in league tables based on this metric. The incentive for universities is to place their graduates where there are the highest number of available highly skilled jobs which is London. Even building a spin-out outside of London only gives a 6/10 chance the spin-out won’t migrate to the capital anyway.

    Universities do not have golden handcuffs to their places and the economic geography of London can too easily pull their economic goods away. Research excellence and impact is not measured on a regional footprint. Infrastructure investment does not follow where there is the greatest latent potential. There is astoundingly little policy that is place sensitive.

    In supporting the UK’s strengths universities are not often the primary beneficiaries of the economic growth they support. There is lots of stick for them to do good economic things but the carrots for supporting growth, particularly in local economies, tend to be the odd grant and bit of underspend like the Regional Innovation Fund. The government cannot be surprised about investment and talent flight where regional educational incentives are non-existent.

    Leave alone

    It can feel like the role of universities in the economy is both over- and understated. On the one hand they are not designed to, never will, and should not be expected to solve every problem with the economy.

    They will not bring back manufacturing, they will not rebalance regions on their own, and they will not fill all of the gaps in the labour market. At the same time they do a lot of good stuff as employers, innovators, anchors, coalition builders, contributing to clusters, attracting knowledge workers, and through educating students.

    The bit where the incentives do work is producing students for the knowledge economy. The part of the UK’s economy that has grown as manufacturing has declined. Universities have a reliable (if not predictable) income, their graduate outcomes are regulated (how well is a different question), and parts of the economy make good use of their graduate skills. If university marketing departments are to be believed this good employment is also one of their major selling points which through student recruitment then puts more funding back into the system. The incentives just line up a bit better.

    The problem is that universities are not only not always supported to get on with the job but they aren’t left alone to do so. It would perhaps be too much to hope for but welcome that the reshuffle leads to clear direction on what universities are expected (or maybe even regulated or incentivised to do) in the local economy, recognition for their national role and how they will continue to be supported to do so, and a clear sense of where they will be given a little boost but mostly left alone to keep doing the good things they are doing.

    Refiring the economy does not have to be about doing new things. It might be about doing old things in a more joined up, properly funded, and regionally focussed way. As growth goes to the top of the agenda, let’s not forget the work universities are already doing.

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  • Don’t Wait for Permission to Write for the Public

    Don’t Wait for Permission to Write for the Public

    Welcome to the first installment of my monthly column, “The Public Scholar,” in which I invite academics and other experts to step forward—thoughtfully, clearly and with purpose—to help shape public conversations that matter. In this space, I’ll offer practical, field-tested strategies for turning academic expertise into public impact, including how to know if an idea is op-ed–worthy, how to turn a classroom anecdote into publishable prose, how to know when it’s time to query a literary agent about your book idea and more.

    I’m Susan D’Agostino, a mathematician whose stories have been published in The Atlantic, the BBC, Scientific American, The Washington Post, The Financial Times, Wired, Quanta and other leading publications. (You may recall that I wrote with some frequency about math and technology for Inside Higher Ed a couple of years ago.) My last book, How to Free Your Inner Mathematician (Oxford University Press, 2020), won the Mathematical Association of America’s Euler Book Prize for an exceptionally well-written book with a positive impact on the public’s view of math. My next book, How Math Will Save Your Life, to be published by W. W. Norton, makes the case for harnessing mathematical thinking in the face of personal and global crises.

    But none of that came easily or automatically. A decade ago, I was a tenured mathematics professor who had spent years honing proofs and lectures. Yet amid lagging public math literacy, I felt an unshakable urge to reach beyond the walls of academia and write for the public. Still, I hesitated. Was my voice or expertise welcome outside of peer-reviewed journals? Did I have the authority to write for readers I could not picture in a seminar room? Did I even know how?

    That transition—from academic to public scholar—was bumpy. I made mistakes. I received more rejections than I care to count. (Stay tuned for a future column about all those rejections!) I had to unlearn some academic habits and relearn how to communicate with clarity for broad audiences. But step by step, I found my way.

    You don’t need to leave higher ed to write for the public. And you certainly don’t need permission. Academia often trains scholars to seek approval—through grants, press offices and peer-reviewed publications. But the reality is that institutional support often follows after a scholar gains visibility. You already have the credentials to write for the public in your area of expertise. Now you need the courage and practical tips for doing so.

    Maybe you’re a historian who sees how your field illuminates today’s political divides. Or a scientist concerned about climate change, misinformation or public health. Or an artist reflecting on what the arts can—and do—offer society. Or a literary scholar exploring how stories shape our moral imaginations. Or an educator with hard-won insights into what learning looks like in today’s classrooms. If you feel the tug to engage beyond campus gates, this column is for you.

    Many academics assume that public writing takes time away from scholarship. But making your work accessible to a wide audience forces you to think harder, not less. How can you distill the central argument of your research so that an intelligent friend with no training in your field can understand? Why should they care? Honing translation skills is an art. Your goal is to show up with clarity and generosity.

    As a bonus, crafting the occasional op-ed can energize your research and teaching—not distract from it. You can clarify your ideas and receive real-time feedback on your argument and may even attract collaborators. Public writing can also be personally restorative. It reconnects you with the real-world questions that made you fall for your field. Your op-ed may even catch the eye of a literary agent or editor who’s interested in discussing book ideas. Also, your willingness to be a novice again may offer credibility among students, as that’s what many are wrestling with in your classroom.

    When I began writing in public-facing newspapers and magazines, I felt newly connected to issues that mattered beyond academia. While campus conversations are vital and intellectually rich, I found that engaging the broader public offered a different kind of clarity and urgency—to respond to a moment unfolding in real time and to make research relevant to people’s lives.

    Scholars across disciplines have watched with rising unease as the Trump administration has terminated research grants, dismissed government scientists without cause and wielded funding as a cudgel against universities. In this atmosphere, it can be tempting to self-censor or to wait for more hospitable times.

    But the cost of silence must be weighed against the consequences of inaction. Public conversations—about health care, history, science, democracy, libraries, public art and education—unfold every day, with or without scholars who can offer nuance, evidence and context.

    “Opinions are most malleable before they are fully formed,” wrote Lisa Fazio, a psychology professor at Vanderbilt whose federal grant for misinformation research was terminated. “We must not shy away from the spotlight.”

    Fazio’s warning is especially resonant now, as academics face mounting pressure from funding threats to political scrutiny. These pressures are real, and they are unevenly distributed. As University of Washington computer scientist Kate Starbird, also a target for her work on misinformation, told Science magazine, “I never had the option of keeping my head down.”

    And yet: Sharing knowledge, humanizing data and contextualizing history are profound acts of public service in consequential times. The OpEd Project puts it plainly: “If you say things of consequence, there may be consequences. The alternative is to be inconsequential.”

    Here’s some good news: Editors at newspapers and magazines want academic voices in the mix, and they’re often willing collaborators in helping your ideas rise above the noise. Editors want assurance that you are trained in your area of expertise, but they are less concerned with titles or tenure than your academic colleagues. Whether you’re a graduate student, an adjunct, new on the tenure track or a full professor, what matters is your voice, your argument and your ability to meet the moment.

    Ready to begin? Here are a few prompts to spark your first (or next) op-ed:

    • What’s one thing people misunderstand about your field, and why does it matter?
    • What recent news headline made you think, “If only they understood this about my field …?”
    • What conversation is already happening in the news, online or in your community that your research can help reframe, complicate or clarify?
    • What’s one counterintuitive idea from your work that could shift how people think?
    • Has your research or teaching ever changed how you see the world, and could it do the same for others?
    • Where is your field falling short in meeting a public need, and what would it take to change that?

    You don’t need to have all the answers. Often, a strong op-ed starts with one sharp insight, thoughtfully delivered and timed to the news cycle.

    Try drafting a few notes in your phone during your commute, between classes or even while multitasking in that faculty meeting (I won’t tell). Write as if you’re talking to a smart, curious friend. Make it clear, specific and real. Proofread like your reputation depends on it, because for the editor you’re pitching, it does. Make it short, too! Aim for 800 words max.

    And if you’d like more help along the way, sign up for my monthly newsletter. You’ll get notice of each new article in “The Public Scholar,” practical writing tips, behind-the-scenes insights from my work and inspiration from other academics finding their voice in public spaces. Your expertise is hard-won. What might happen if you shared what you know more broadly?

    Susan D’Agostino is a mathematician whose stories have been published in The Atlantic, the BBC, Scientific American, The Washington Post, Wired, The Financial Times, Quanta and other leading publications. Her last book, How to Free Your Inner Mathematician (Oxford University Press, 2020) won the Mathematical Association of America’s Euler Book Prize for an exceptionally well-written book with a positive impact on the public’s view of math. Her next book, How Math Will Save Your Life, will be published by W. W. Norton. She has been a journalism fellow at Oxford University’s Reuters Institute, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and the Mila-Quebec AI Institute. For notice of each new article in Susan’s Inside Higher Ed column, “The Public Scholar,” practical writing tips, behind-the-scenes insights from her work and inspiration from other academics finding their voice in public spaces, sign up for her free, monthly newsletter here.

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  • The Numbers Don’t Lie: HSI Funding Delivers Results

    The Numbers Don’t Lie: HSI Funding Delivers Results

     Dr. William Casey Boland A lawsuit challenging Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) federal funding represents another figurative bomb lobbed in the current war on U.S. higher education. Galvanized by the President’s blitzkrieg on social funding and education, this assault on the alleged reverse racism of HSI funding reflects the ugly political tenor of the times in the U.S. It also conveniently ignores the evidence of the positive impact of such governmental support. 

    l’ll acknowledge my bias: I teach at a large urban college that recently received an HSI grant. Nearly all my students are students of color, with roughly half being Hispanic. Many are the first in their families to enroll in college. Most of their parents were not born in the U.S.  We are amongst the 20% of all colleges in the U.S. that are eligible to apply for an HSI grant, which are made available through the Higher Education Act of 1965 (Title III and Title V). 

    Why did we apply for this grant? State funding per student to public HSIs is $6,396.59 compared to $15,526.13 for non-HSIs. The ongoing disparities in postsecondary educational attainment based on race and ethnicity reveal more about a deficit in public policy to address the equitable distribution of resources and less about the ability of students of color to obtain a college degree. Despite modest gains over time, gaps in attainment continue. 28% of the Hispanic population in the U.S. received an associate degree or higher compared to 48% of the white population. The average graduation rate in four-year postsecondary institutions was 52% for Hispanic students compared to 65% for white students. HSI grants are made available in part to narrow this gap in college outcomes amongst Hispanic students.

    What is my college doing with its HSI grant? To advance retention, persistence, and specific course completion, the grant will improve the First Year Seminar, provide professional develop with a focus on culturally responsive pedagogy, integrate tutoring, peer mentoring, academic and career coaching, and target intervention in gateway courses.

    Many HSI-eligible colleges look like mine, but not all. They are two and four-year public and private non-profit institutions that are under-resourced, become eligible to apply when their undergraduate enrollment reaches 25% Hispanic and at minimum 50% receive some form of financial aid. The rising number of colleges eligible for HSI grants reflects the growth of the Hispanic population in the U.S. Between 2010 and 2022, the Hispanic population accounted for 34 percent of the overall increase in the U.S. population. Hispanic participation in colleges and universities rose from 14 percent in 2010 to 20 percent in 2022.

    Several characteristics are common across institutions designated as HSIs. First, Hispanics tend to enroll in HSI-designated colleges more than non-HSIs. This is largely due to Hispanic students wanting to enroll in a college close to their community. Second, Hispanic students attending HSIs are often the first in their family to seek a college degree. Third, Hispanic students enrolled in HSIs on average graduated from high schools with large classroom sizes, disproportionate levels of racially minoritized student populations, and lower standardized test scores. Many argue that HSIs offer such students an opportunity to participate in postsecondary education that they would not otherwise have.

    Evidence-based research demonstrates the ROI on the federal government’s investment in HSIs. When colleges receive HSI grants, there is a positive effect on Hispanic students. I found that grant receipt increases Hispanic bachelor’s degree completion by nearly 30 percent and associate degrees by almost 25 percent. In another study, we found a 10% increase in Hispanic students obtaining STEM associate’s degrees. We also found benefits for non-Hispanic students, with an 11% increase in the number of those students receiving STEM associate’s degrees. This echoes another study focusing on the initial year HSI STEM grants were awarded with the authors finding HSI STEM grant receipt directly led to an 8% increase in Hispanic students receiving such degrees in community colleges. 

    I doubt the architects of this recent lawsuit challenging HSI funding have ever spoken to someone who graduated from an HSI. I teach a graduate course on minority serving institutions (MSIs). Nearly all my students are students of color from the New York City metropolitan area. Most attended different MSIs as undergraduates. While experiences vary, most extol the virtues of having attended an MSI. They speak to the level of support they received, the power of being surrounded my others who shared their background, the willingness of HSIs and other MSIs to welcome students’ families and community to campus, amongst many other characteristics that made them glad they chose an HSI or MSI over a PWI.

    It is important to evaluate the effectiveness of postsecondary programs funded through tax-payer dollars. Yet recent political antagonism directed towards higher education looks more like red meat being tossed to appease the red base as opposed to thoughtful, evidence-based decision-making. Acknowledging the effectiveness of HSI funding and similar efforts would weaken the core animating principle of the current Republican mission to decimate political support for such programs and reduce the existence of government more broadly.

    Dr. William Casey Boland is an assistant professor in the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at Baruch College-City University of New York.

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  • Don’t believe the hype: the Government and state school admissions to Oxford University

    Don’t believe the hype: the Government and state school admissions to Oxford University

    • HEPI Director, Nick Hillman, looks at the latest row on admissions to the University of Oxford.

    In a speech on Friday, the Minister for Skills, Baroness Smith, strongly chastised her alma mater, the University of Oxford, for taking a third of their entrants from the 6% of kids that go to private schools.

    In a section of the speech entitled ‘Challenging Oxford’, we were told the situation is ‘absurd’, ‘arcane’ and ‘can’t continue’:

    Oxford recently released their state school admissions data for 2024.

    And the results were poor.

    66.2% – the lowest entry rate since 2019.

    I want to be clear, speaking at an Oxford college today, that this is unacceptable.

    The university must do better.

    The independent sector educates around 6% of school children in the UK.

    But they make-up 33.8% of Oxford entrants.

    Do you really think you’re finding the cream of the crop, if a third of your students come from 6% of the population?

    It’s absurd.

    Arcane, even.

    And it can’t continue.

    It’s because I care about Oxford and I understand the difference that it can make to people’s lives that I’m challenging you to do better.  But it certainly isn’t only Oxford that has much further to go in ensuring access.

    This language reminded me of the Laura Spence affair, which produced so much heat and so little light in the Blair / Brown years and which may even have set back sensible conversations on broadening access to selective higher education.

    I wrote in a blog over the weekend that the Government are at risk of forgetting the benefit of education for education’s sake. That represents a political hole that Ministers should do everything to avoid as it could come to define them. Ill-thought through attacks on the most elite universities for their finely-grained admissions decisions represent a similar hole best avoided. Just imagine if the Minister had set out plans to tackle a really big access problem, like boys’ educational underachievement, instead. The Trump/Harvard spat is something any progressive government should seek to avoid, not copy.

    The latest chastisement is poorly formed for at least three specific reasons: the 6% is wrong in this context; the 33.8% number does not tell us what people tend to think it does; and Oxford’s current position of not closely monitoring the state/independent split is actually in line with the regulator’s guidance.

    1. 6% represents only half the proportion (12%) of school leavers educated at independent schools. In other words, the 6% number is a snapshot for the proportion of all young people in private schools right now; it tells us nothing about those at the end of their schooling and on the cusp of higher education.
    2. The 33.8% number is unhelpful because 20%+ of Oxford’s new undergraduates hail from overseas and they are entirely ignored in the calculation. If you include the (over) one in five Oxford undergraduate entrants educated overseas, the proportion of Oxford’s intake that is made up of UK private school kids falls from from something like one-third to more like one-quarter. This matters in part because the number of international students at Oxford has grown, meaning there are fewer places for home students of all backgrounds. In 2024, Oxford admitted 100 more undergraduate students than in 2006, but there were 250 more international students – and consequently fewer Brits. We seem to be obsessed with the backgrounds of home students and, because we want their money, entirely uninterested in the backgrounds of international students.
    3. The Office for Students dislikes the state/private metric. This is because of the differences within these two categories: in other words, there are high-performing state schools and less high-performing independent schools. Last year, when the University of Cambridge said they planned to move away from a simplistic state/independent school target, John Blake, the Director of Fair Access and Participation at the Office for Students, confirmed to the BBC, ‘we do not require a target on the proportion of pupils from state schools entering a particular university.’ So universities have typically shied away from this measure in recent times. If Ministers think it is a key metric after all and if they really do wish to condemn individual institutions for their state/independent split, it would have made sense to have had a conversation with the Office for Students and to have encouraged them to put out new guidance first. At the moment, the Minister and the regulator are saying different things on an important issue of high media attention.

    Are independently educated pupils overrepresented at Oxbridge? Quite possibly, but the Minister’s stick/schtick, while at one with the Government’s wider negative approach to independent schools, seems a sub-optimal way to engineer a conversation on the issue. Perhaps Whitehall wanted a headline more than it wanted to get under the skin of the issue?

    we do not require a target on the proportion of pupils from state schools entering a particular university

    John Blake, Director for Fair access and participation

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  • How To Motivate Yourself To Study When You Don’t Feel Like It

    How To Motivate Yourself To Study When You Don’t Feel Like It

    Maintaining the motivation to study is a difficult task. Sometimes, you can find yourself down in the dumps, with no motivation and completely unproductive.

    However, having these peaks and dips in motivation and productivity is completely normal. Even the best and most productive students lose motivation sometimes!

    As an affiliate partner of various brands and sponsored content, we may earn commission on qualifying purchases. Disclaimer | Advertise With Us

    But what successful students do differently is that they recognize their lack of motivation and take steps to get back on track.

    If you’ve had trouble staying or getting motivated to study, then this is the post for you. Learn the most effective steps to motivate yourself to get back to studying, and become a more successful student today!

    Give yourself a pep talk

    Sometimes, a small pep talk is the most effective way to cheer yourself up and calm yourself down. If your demotivation is because of stress and overwhelm, a pep talk could be all that you need to get back on your feet.

    So when you find yourself procrastinating and avoiding your studies, sit back and give yourself a small pep talk. Think of your goals and how you’d like to achieve them, and repeat affirmations like “I can do it, this is simple, this will get me closer to my goals,” etc.

    Make a list or two

    If you are overwhelmed by seemingly a lot of things to do, try making a to-do list. Break down all the big tasks into smaller, actionable steps, and list out everything you need to tackle.

    Be careful not to under-list (where you don’t put some tasks because they’re relatively small) or over-list (where you list out every single thing you do during the day). 

    Instead, simply list out the things you need to do that are not daily habits or routines. For example:

    • Homework assignments
    • Part of a long-term project
    • An important email you have to reply to
    • An application you need to fill out
    • Plans you have to make
    • Anything specific and important

    If you’d like to go the extra mile, you can also create a not-to-do list to prevent distractions. On this list, you’ll write down possible distractions like:

    • Watching a drama
    • Going on Instagram
    • Going on YouTube
    • Oversnacking
    • Taking a nap

    Though it may seem overwhelming to have a (potentially large) list of things you need to do, once you complete it– and you will, it will give you a great sense of achievement. All you need to do is get started.

    YOU’LL LOVE THIS POST: 10 New Habits To Build This School Semester

    Work with a friend

    Working in a group can sometimes be distracting, but other times, it can be extremely beneficial. Your friends– especially if you’re working on similar tasks– can act as a source of motivation and increase your productivity while still being relaxed.

    Simply host a study session at a library or café (or even on FaceTime or Discord if you have to stay virtual), bring your homework and supplies, and study together.

    Having a friend next to you can be comforting and motivating, and you can help each other out when you come across difficult problems.

    Lastly, a friend can help keep you focused on your work. Whenever either or any of you get distracted, the other(s) can point it out and get you back on track.

    Set up a workspace

    Sometimes, facing a cluttered and disorganized desk is all it takes to demotivate you from studying. If your workspace is a mess, you’ll not only have trouble physically finding enough space to do work, but mentally struggle to focus, too.

    Therefore, make it a habit to routinely clean and organize your workspace. Use desk organizers to store pens and highlighters, and shelves and trays to place small items. Throw away all the useless things and organize everything else.

    Your study space should be a comfortable place for you to stay in, especially since you’ll be doing high-maintenance work there for long periods of time. So figure out how you could customize it to your liking, and keep it so!

    If you’d like to see a detailed guide with exact steps to organize your desk, check out this post:

    Take a break

    If you’re feeling unmotivated due to burning out and overworking yourself, it’s time to take a break. Even the most productive students take breaks routinely, and you need to learn how and when to take breaks to be more productive overall.

    While studying, you can implement the Pomodoro method – study for 25 minutes, and rest for 5. I like to customize this a little, where I complete one or two tasks on my to-do list (that will take be 25-40 minutes), then take a small break.

    Find what system works best for you (it will take some trial and error), then follow it strictly. Taking breaks is totally okay, but you just have to learn how to manage your time correctly to maximize productivity while taking breaks.

    Just do it

    Lastly, if all else fails, you simply need to start. Forcing yourself to study is almost never a good idea, but for some people and at certain times, it’s the only method that works.

    If you’ve been procrastinating for a long time, realize that you need to stop, yet just can’t bring yourself to do it, take a deep breath and just do it.

    Force yourself to sit down at your desk (or wherever you need to be) and put away your phone or other distracting items, and get working. 

    I’ve tried this method before, and I found that once you start and persist for 10 minutes, you can usually push through until you complete what needs to get done.

    Find study motivation when you don't feel like it

    Conclusion

    I hope this post was helpful and that you managed to learn a new way of motivating yourself to study! Remember that having highs and lows in motivation and productivity is completely normal, and all you need to do is to build the right habits and follow the right steps.

    Leave a comment below with how you motivate yourself to study when you don’t feel like it! And if you’re looking for more posts like this, check these out:

    How to motivate yourself to study when you don't want to
    ultimate life planner

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  • Don’t Fall for Trump’s Trade School Trojan Horse (opinion)

    Don’t Fall for Trump’s Trade School Trojan Horse (opinion)

    In one of his all-too-frequent rants on Truth Social last month, President Trump posted, “I am considering taking Three Billion Dollars of Grant Money away from a very antisemitic Harvard, and giving it to TRADE SCHOOLS all across our land.” It’s a transparent and cynical ploy: pit one segment of the education community against another—rich Harvard versus poor “trade schools”—and watch the divisions take hold. But make no mistake: This strategy only works if institutions, elite or otherwise, fall for the bait.

    We’re not sure what the president means by “trade schools” but suspect he’s referring to the nation’s 1,000-plus community and technical colleges— institutions that educate about a third of all U.S. undergraduates. We’ve both spent our careers making the case for greater investment in these colleges, including through the Project on Workforce, the cross-Harvard initiative we helped found six years ago to forge better pathways between education and good jobs.

    (And for the record: Trump’s accusation that Harvard is “very antisemitic” rings hollow coming from the man who hosted a Holocaust-denying white nationalist at Mar-a-Lago. It’s certainly unrecognizable to us—two Jews who, between us, have spent more than 40 years as Harvard students, staff and faculty.)

    If Trump actually cared about funding “trade schools,” he would start by telling congressional leaders to strip the provision in his so-called Big Beautiful Bill that raises the credit-hour threshold for Pell Grant eligibility. Community colleges serve the bulk of low-income students, and most of them have to work while in school. This proposed change proffered by the House, which was not included in the Senate version of the reconciliation bill, could cut off aid for 400,000 students a year and force many to drop out.

    But the threat isn’t just in proposed legislation: Community colleges are already the targets of Trump’s politically motivated grant cancellations. For example, just last month, his administration revoked awards from six Tech Hubs, created by bipartisan legislation to boost innovation, job creation and national security. These included projects in Alabama, where a community college would expand biotech training; in Idaho, where a community college planned to train aerospace workers; and in Vermont, where a community college was preparing a new semiconductor workforce.

    And the cuts don’t stop there. If the president was really serious about supporting the U.S. skilled technical workforce, he would expand, not gut, programs like the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technological Education initiative, which has provided $1.5 billion to more than 500 community and technical colleges to develop cutting-edge training in fields like advanced manufacturing and robotics. Instead, his budget proposes cutting NSF by 55 percent, including deep reductions to education and workforce programs. The president’s budget also proposes eliminating all Perkins Act funding for community colleges (approximately $400 million), limiting the funding to middle and high schools and thereby cutting off a key source of federal support for technical training beyond secondary school.

    If by “trade schools” Trump means education for trades jobs, his hostility toward immigrants undermines the very students he claims to support. Eight percent of community college students are not U.S. citizens, with much higher shares on some campuses. They are just as vital to America’s future as the researchers in Harvard’s labs. In 2024, immigrants made up more than 30 percent of construction trades workers and 20 percent of U.S. manufacturing workers. Closing America’s doors won’t just harm colleges: It will weaken our ability to build, make and compete.

    Last week, we joined more than 12,000 Harvard alumni in signing an amicus brief to pledge our commitment to defend not only Harvard but the broader higher education enterprise from the Trump administration’s bullying attacks. Over the past month, we also spoke with community college leaders from around the country whose work we profiled in our 2023 book, America’s Hidden Economic Engines. Without exception, these leaders expressed deep concern, understanding that if Harvard, with all of its resources, could be forced to bend to the will of a tyrannical government, what chance would less resourced institutions have to defend academic freedom and maintain independence from governmental intrusion?

    If elite universities and community and technical colleges stand together, we can defend not just education, but democracy itself. Challenging as it will be for Harvard to weather this unprecedented assault on its independence, and that of higher education, it has no choice but to stand firm. Unlike many more vulnerable victims of Trump’s bullying—immigrants, civil servants, USAID grantees, the trans community—Harvard has the resources to fight back. Ultimately its rights, along with the rights of others targeted, will likely be vindicated by the courts. But in the interim, a lot of needless damage will be done to the lives of affected people and institutions. Most Americans may not speak often of such abstractions as academic freedom, due process and the fate of democracy. But they know a bully when they see one.

    Rachel Lipson, a co-founder of the Harvard Project on Workforce, was a senior adviser on workforce at the CHIPS Program Office at the U.S. Department of Commerce. She recently returned to Harvard Kennedy School as a research fellow.

    Robert Schwartz is a professor of practice emeritus at Harvard Graduate School of Education. Before joining the Harvard faculty in 1996, he had a long career in education and government.

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  • People want AI regulation — but they don’t trust the regulators

    People want AI regulation — but they don’t trust the regulators

    Generative AI is changing the way we learn, think, discover, and create. Researchers at UC San Diego are using generative AI technology to accelerate climate modeling. Scientists at Harvard Medical School have developed a chatbot that can help diagnose cancers. In Belarus, Venezuela, and Russia, political dissidents and embattled journalists have created AI tools to bypass censorship.

    Despite these benefits, a recent global survey from The Future of Free Speech, a think tank where I am the executive director, finds that people around the world support strict guardrails — whether imposed by companies or governments — on the types of content that AI can create.

    These findings were part of a broader survey that ranked 33 countries on overall support for free speech, including on controversial but legal topics. In every country, even high-scoring ones, fewer than half supported AI generating content that, for instance, might offend religious beliefs or insult the national flag — speech that would be protected in most democracies. While some people might find these topics beyond reproach, the ability to question these orthodoxies is a fundamental freedom that underpins free and open societies.

    This tension reflects two competing approaches for how societies should harness AI’s power. The first, “User Empowerment,” sees generative AI as a powerful but neutral tool. Harm lies not in the tool itself, but in how it’s used and by whom. This approach affirms that free expression includes not just the right to speak, but the right to access information across borders and media — a collective good essential to informed choice and democratic life. Laws should prohibit using AI to commit fraud or harassment, not ban AI from discussing controversial political topics.

    The second, “Preemptive Safetyism,” treats some speech as inherently harmful and seeks to block it before it’s even created. While this instinct may seem appealing given the potential for using AI to supercharge harm production, it risks turning AI into a tool of censorship and control, especially in the hands of powerful corporate or political actors.

    As AI becomes an integrated operating system in our everyday life, it is critical that we not cut off access to ideas and information that may challenge us. Otherwise, we risk limiting human creativity and stifling scientific discovery.

    Concerns over AI moderation

    In 2024, The Future of Free Speech analyzed the policies of six major chatbots and tested 268 prompts to see how they handled controversial but legal topics, such as the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports and the “lab-leak” theory. We found that chatbots refused to generate content for more than 40% of prompts. This year, we repeated our tests and found that refusal rates dropped significantly to about 25% of the time.

    Despite these positive developments, our survey’s findings indicate that people are comfortable with companies and governments erecting strict guardrails on what their AI chatbots can generate, which may result in large-scale government-mandated corporate control of users’ access to information and ideas.

    Overwhelming opposition to political deepfakes

    Unsurprisingly, the category of AI content that received the lowest support across the board in our survey was deepfakes of politicians. No more than 38% of respondents in any country expressed approval of political deepfakes. This finding aligns with a surge of legislative activity in both the U.S. and abroad as policymakers rush to regulate the use of AI deepfakes in elections.

    At least 40 U.S. states introduced deepfake-related bills in the 2024 legislative session alone, with more than 50 bills already enacted. China, the EU, and others are all scrambling to pass laws requiring the detection, disclosure, and/or removal of deepfakes. Europe’s AI Act requires platforms to mitigate nebulous and ill-defined “systemic risks to society,” which could lead companies to preemptively remove lawful but controversial speech like deepfakes critical of politicians.

    Although deepfakes can have real-world consequences, First Amendment advocates who have challenged deepfake regulations in the U.S. rightly argue that laws targeting political deepfakes open the door for governments to censor lawful dissent, criticism, or satire of candidates, a vital function of the democratic process. This is not a merely speculative risk.

    An open society cannot thrive if its digital architecture is built to exclude dissent by design.

    The editor of a far-right German media outlet was sentenced to a seven-month suspended prison sentence for sharing a fake meme of the Interior Minister holding a sign that ironically read, “I hate freedom of speech.” For much of 2024, Google restricted Gemini’s ability to generate factual responses about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, after the Indian government accused the company of breaking the law when its chatbot responded that Modi had been “accused of implementing policies some experts characterized as fascist.”

    And despite panic over AI-driven disinformation undermining global elections in 2024, studies from Princeton, the EU, and the Alan Turing Institute found no evidence that a wave of deepfakes affected election results in places like the U.S., Europe, or India.

    People want regulation but don’t trust regulators

    A recent Pew Research Center survey found that nearly six in 10 U.S. adults believed the government would not adequately regulate AI. Our survey confirms these findings on a global scale. In all countries surveyed except Taiwan, at least a plurality supported dual regulation by both governments and tech companies.

    Indeed, a 2023 Pew survey found that 55% of Americans supported government restrictions on false information online, even if it limited free expression. But a 2024 Axios poll found that more Americans fear misinformation from politicians than from AI, foreign governments, or social media. In other words, the public appears willing to empower those they distrust most with policing online and AI misinformation.

    A new FIRE poll, conducted in May 2025, underscores this tension. Although about 47% of respondents said they prioritize protecting free speech in politics, even if that means tolerating some deceptive content, 41% said it’s more important to protect people from misinformation than to protect free speech. Even so, 69% said they were “moderately” to “extremely” concerned that the government might use AI rules to silence criticism of elected officials.

    In a democracy, public opinion matters — and The Future of Free Speech survey suggests that people around the world, including in liberal democracies, favor regulating AI to suppress offensive or controversial content. But democracies are not mere megaphones for majorities. They must still safeguard the very freedoms — like the right to access information, question orthodoxy, and challenge those in power — that make self-government possible.

    We should avoid Preemptive Safetyism

    The dangers of Preemptive Safetyism are most vividly on display in China, where AI tools like DeepSeek must enforce “core socialist values,” avoiding topics like Taiwan, Xinjiang, or Tiananmen, even when released in the West. What looks like a safety net can easily become a dragnet for dissent.

    Speech being generated by a machine does not negate the human right to receive it, especially as those algorithms become central to the very search engines, email clients, and word processors that we use as an interface for the exchange of ideas and information in the digital age.

    The greatest danger to speech often arises not from what is said, but from the fear of what might be said. An open society cannot thrive if its digital architecture is built to exclude dissent by design.

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