Tag: Education

  • Education Department to reduce staff by nearly half

    Education Department to reduce staff by nearly half

    The Department of Education is expected to lay off nearly half its workforce as of Tuesday.

    J. David Ake/Getty Images

    The Education Department is moving to lay off nearly 50 percent of its more than 4,100 employees as of Tuesday evening, according to four sources inside the agency who were told about the plans.

    It’s not yet clear what specific departments or positions were affected, though officials planned to tell affected employees this evening, sources told Inside Higher Ed. The department previously offered employees buyouts to cut down the workforce. The goal to reduce staff by 50 percent includes prior reductions. Those affected will receive 90 days’ severance and will have 10 days to transfer their job duties to another staffer or political appointee, according to a longtime staffer with inside knowledge of the reduction-in-force details.

    The department said in its announcement that the employees will be placed on administrative leave, starting March 21, and that core programs such as distributing student loans and Pell Grants will continue.

    “Today’s reduction in force reflects the Department of Education’s commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement. “This is a significant step toward restoring the greatness of the United States education system.”

    The Washington Post reported that 1,315 employees would lose their jobs, in addition to the roughly 600 who took the buyouts. The reductions will bring the total workforce down to fewer than 2,200.

    Earlier on Tuesday, the department told staff that D.C. offices will be closed Wednesday and reopen Thursday for “security reasons,” according to an email obtained by Inside Higher Ed. One staffer said they were told by department officials that the closure was due to the reduction in force.

    The email instructed department staff to take their laptops home with them on Tuesday in order to telework Wednesday, and that they would “not be permitted in any ED facility on Wednesday, March 12th, for any reason.”

    Some department staff were notified of the impending layoffs during meetings with top department officials—including an acting deputy secretary—on Tuesday afternoon, according to sources inside the department who spoke with Inside Higher Ed on background.

    Sheria Smith, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents over 2,800 workers at the Department of Education, pledged to fight the cuts in a statement released Tuesday evening. Smith said that the Trump administration “has no respect for the thousands of workers who have dedicated their careers to serve their fellow Americans.”

    “We will not stand idly by while this regime pulls the wool over the eyes of the American people,” Smith added. “We will state the facts. Every employee at the U.S. Department of Education lives in your communities—we are your neighbors, your friends, your family. And we have spent our careers supporting services that you rely on.”

    The expected cuts are part of a governmentwide strategy to reduce the federal workforce. All federal agency officials were told last month to start preparing for a “large scale reduction in force” and to eliminate all “non-statutorily mandated functions.”

    While the government layoffs are far-reaching, President Trump has frequently targeted the Education Department for cuts, even vowing to shut down the agency. That would require congressional action, but Trump and McMahon can make deep cuts to the agency even if they don’t abolish it altogether.

    Trump is reportedly planning to sign an executive order directing McMahon to “take all necessary steps” to return authority over education to the states and facilitate closure of the Department of Education “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law,” according to draft text reviewed by Inside Higher Ed.

    Higher education groups and advocates have warned that cutting staff and programs at the department would be catastrophic for institutions and students, though critics say the agency is in need of a serious overhaul. State higher education officials, university administrators, nonprofit advocacy groups and students depend on the Education Department to oversee federal student aid, manage the student loan portfolio, investigate civil rights complaints and allocate billions of dollars in institutional aid, among other operations. The department, which has an $80 billion discretionary budget, issues about $100 billion in student loans every year and more than $30 billion in Pell Grants.

    The massive personnel cuts—the largest in the department’s history—will likely impact most agencies and offices in the department, including the Office of Federal Student Aid, sources say. Within FSA, the cuts will be most severe among teams that work directly on policy and higher education oversight, including the Ombudsman Office, which investigates complaints into student loan practices and financial aid.

    Staffers at the Education Department have been anticipating the reduction in force for the past week. Last Tuesday, department leaders called a meeting to discuss the impending layoffs but canceled at the last minute. Meanwhile, staff have been awaiting the executive order from Trump to close down the department since last Wednesday.

    “Everyone’s ready,” one exhausted staffer told Inside Higher Ed.

    Other federal agencies have started to lay off thousands of employees via a planned reduction in force, a process that should give them 60 days’ notice. At the Environmental Protection Agency, Trump expects 65 percent of the workforce to go, according to Government Executive, a trade publication tracking the layoffs. Last week, the Veterans Affairs Department said it was laying off 80,000 people.

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  • Higher Education Inquirer surpasses half-million views. Recent quarter numbers exceed 130,000.

    Higher Education Inquirer surpasses half-million views. Recent quarter numbers exceed 130,000.

    The Higher Education Inquirer (HEI) continues to show growth by appealing to students, consumers, and workers with interests in the higher education business. Our latest quarter shows approximately 132,000 views. The Higher Education Inquirer’s largest day for viewership was January 6, 2025, marking the fourth anniversary of Donald Trump’s failed attempted to overthrow the US government. While most of our views come from the US, HEI has an increasingly international reach. 

     

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  • College campus counseling center usage and staffing

    College campus counseling center usage and staffing

    Counseling services are a key element of student retention in higher education due to elevated numbers of students reporting mental health conditions, but creating a sustainable practice that addresses students and staff needs remains a challenge, according to survey data from the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors (AUCCCD).

    The association’s annual report, published Feb. 25, highlights a tapering off of the increased demand for mental health services from students, but continued pressure to support clinician and nonclinical staff members through challenging work conditions.

    Methodology

    The survey includes responses from 367 counseling center directors from the U.S. and its territories and 14 from other countries. The majority of respondents work at four-year institutions and urban campuses. The reporting period ranges from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024.

    Student engagement: While students continue to report high levels of mental health concerns, some counseling centers are seeing a decline in student demand.

    The majority of respondents at four-year institutions reported a decline or no change in the number of unique clients seen (68 percent) and the number of appointments provided (58 percent). Among two-year colleges, 33 percent reported a decrease in the number of unique clients seen and 43 percent reported a decrease in overall appointments provided.

    One in four counseling center directors (24 percent) indicated their centers did not have trouble meeting demand for services.

    Around 11 percent of students at four-year institutions accessed counseling services, and just under 5 percent of students at community colleges received counseling center support. “Centers at smaller schools served, on average, much larger proportions (8 to 19 percent) of their enrolled populations than centers at larger schools (7 to 8 percent),” according to the report.

    Student data indicated a correlation between student success and counseling center usage: 73 percent of clients reported that counseling services positively impacted their academic performance, and 71 percent said it helped them stay in school.

    Staffing: The four-year college had 9.2 full-time-equivalent clinical employees, while the average for community colleges was 4.5 employees. Around 2 percent of centers were staffed by only one person, but this was a decline compared to the year prior, when 3.5 percent of directors indicated they were a one-person center.

    Diversity of directors who completed the survey continues to rise, with 30 percent of respondents identifying as a person of color, up from 16 percent in the 2012–13 survey.

    Staff turnover remains a concern for college counseling centers, with 12 percent of all nontrainee clinical positions and 10 percent of all nontrainee positions turning over in the past fiscal year. The top reasons staff left their roles were low salary (48 percent) and work conditions (32 percent), though fewer staff cited leaving the field as a reason for departure this year, compared to prior surveys.

    Embedded counseling services remain limited, with around 30 percent of institutions utilizing counselors assigned to work within other departments. Athletics was the most frequently reported area where embedded clinicians work, followed by a specific school, student affairs office and residence life.

    Services: Most clinical sessions were delivered in person (81 percent), followed by video (15 percent) and phone (3 percent). This mirrors the Center for Collegiate Mental Health’s data, published earlier this year, which found 64 percent of clients received exclusively in-person counseling and 13 percent received video-only care.

    While a slight majority of centers do not have formal session limits (55 percent), 43 percent of institutions limit the number sessions a student can access by year, with some flexibility in the model. Only 0.6 percent of respondents indicated their campus has a hard session limit with no exceptions.

    Teletherapy continues to be a popular offering among institutions, with 53 percent of four-year institutions and 35 percent of community colleges employing a third-party vendor to provide services. Use by students varies widely, even among similarly sized institutions, but the average number of participating students was 453.

    “Overall, regardless of the type of service provided by a third-party vendor, the majority of directors reported utilization was less than hoped for or met their expectations,” according to the report.

    The number of unique students who attended a crisis appointment averaged across centers was 125, and the average number of crisis appointments was 166. A majority (65 percent) offered psychiatric services within the counseling center, elsewhere on campus or in both locations.

    In addition, a majority of respondents indicated their center provides formal or informal consultation services to the community.

    Looking ahead: While the report focuses on the previous fiscal year, there remains a need to continue to provide accessible and high-quality counseling services, says Cindy M. Bruns, survey coordinator for AUCCCD. “By fostering a supportive campus culture and ensuring that mental health resources are available, colleges can help students navigate political and social environments while promoting resilience and well-being.”

    Some counseling directors have noticed students are experiencing “elevated levels of anxiety, uncertainty, threats to their sense of safety and belonging on campus” due to federal action under the second Trump administration, Bruns says, which could prompt an increase in the number of students seeking services.

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  • How standardized tests became part of the DEI debate

    How standardized tests became part of the DEI debate

    In the Education Department’s sweeping Dear Colleague letter last month, acting assistant secretary for civil rights Craig Trainor wrote that colleges must eliminate all race-conscious programs and policies, from scholarships and admissions practices to campus cultural groups and DEI training.

    One surprising mention: standardized testing policies.

    Trainor wrote that test-optional policies could be “proxies for race” to help colleges “give preference” to certain groups.

    “That is true whether the proxies are used to grant preferences on an individual basis or a systematic one,” he wrote. “It would, for instance, be unlawful for an educational institution to eliminate standardized testing to achieve a desired racial balance or to increase racial diversity.”

    Higher education leaders and researchers have long debated the pros and cons of standardized testing in admissions: Some believe they’re a meritocratic predictor of academic success, while others say they’re more aligned with family wealth. In recent years, those debates have become entangled with discussions of systemic racism in the American education system.

    During the COVID-19 pandemic, the vast majority of colleges waived test requirements for applicants. Five years later, most have retained their test-optional policies—though a year ago some selective institutions began returning to score requirements, reigniting a charged debate about the role of standardized tests in admissions.

    After the Supreme Court banned affirmative action in 2023, experts said test-optional policies could serve as race-neutral measures to help colleges maintain diversity in their applicant pools. They cited research showing that colleges with test-optional policies enrolled 10 to 12 percent more students from underrepresented racial backgrounds; other studies found that doing away with test requirements simplified the application process and thus removed barriers for first-generation and other underserved students. The Biden administration even included test-optional policies in its guidance for colleges adjusting to the court ruling.

    If colleges cited such research in keeping their test-optional policies, Trainor’s letter implied it could be grounds for a civil rights investigation.

    In a Frequently Asked Questions document meant to clarify the broad scope of the Dear Colleague letter, OCR made no mention of testing policies. But in response to multiple questions from Inside Higher Ed about how the department views test-optional policies, Trainor left the door open to federal scrutiny.

    “This isn’t complicated,” he wrote. “When in doubt, every school should consult the [Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard] legal test contained in the [Dear Colleague letter]: ‘If an educational institution treats a person of one race differently than it treats another person because of that person’s race, the educational institution violates the law.’”

    Harry Feder, executive director of FairTest and an outspoken critic of standardized testing, said assessments like the SAT have long been embroiled in debates about racial equity in education, but the discourse grew more prominent as attacks on DEI and affirmative action intensified.

    “The SAT has racial bias baked into it from its origins as an early IQ test to keep out the riffraff,” he said. “What Republicans are now saying is, that’s an objective measure of merit, and if white and Asian kids do better on them over all, then colleges not considering those scores is a form DEI run amok.”

    John Friedman, an economics professor at Brown University, has published numerous influential studies on the effects of standardized testing policies, including those cited by the majority of Ivy League institutions that decided to return to test requirements. He said he understands where the Education Department’s skepticism comes from.

    “Schools might be tempted to continue test-optional policies to make it easier to maintain diverse classes, even if that makes it harder to assess students’ academic preparation,’” Friedman said. “I think that’s where some of the angst comes from, as part of a larger concern about higher education moving away from the traditional sense of meritocracy.”

    At the same time, he said the department should consider how institutions use test scores in admissions, which can vary widely.

    “The point is not that you can’t go test-optional. It’s that you shouldn’t if your goal is an end run around the SFFA decision,” Friedman said. “It would be bad to force institutions that decided thoughtfully that test requirements are not best for them to adopt those policies anyway.”

    Dominique Baker, associate professor of education and public policy at the University of Delaware, said she doesn’t believe it should matter whether colleges are considering racial diversity in deciding on their testing policies. The truth, she said, is that research on how testing policies affect applicant diversity is murky, and many of the colleges where the policies could have a demonstrable impact have already returned to requiring scores.

    For her, the mention of testing policies alongside other DEI initiatives is “head-scratching.”

    “The places the administration cares about have largely already returned to testing, or are certainly poised to do so soon. So who is this for?” Baker said. “It’s bananas that testing is even in here.”

    Reversing the Test-Optional Tide?

    So far, the letter hasn’t had any effect on institutions’ testing policies. But colleges are starting to respond to the Dear Colleague letter’s guidance in other ways, changing the names of student service offices, scrubbing mentions of race and equity from their websites, eliminating race-conscious programs, and canceling affinity group events.

    “It would be naïve to believe that certain institutions wouldn’t, at the very least, strongly consider changing their testing policies in order to fly under the radar with the administration,” Baker said.

    Some colleges are pushing ahead with their test-optional policies regardless. Last Thursday the University of Vermont announced that its test-optional policy, put in place during the pandemic, would become permanent.

    Jay Jacobs, vice president for enrollment management at Vermont, told Inside Higher Ed the decision was based on years of research that found that removing test requirements not only had little effect on students’ academic performance and persistence, but also helped UVM achieve its goal of enrolling more local and first-generation students.

    He said the university did not take racial diversity into account when measuring the policy’s enrollment impact—“we didn’t want that to be construed as the reason,” he explained—but said that whatever the rationale, he doesn’t believe the Education Department’s guidance should have any influence.

    “No external party should have a say in dictating institutional policy,” Jacobs said.

    Meanwhile, leaders in the assessment industry have remained largely silent about the Trump administration’s promotion of their exams as part of the war on DEI.

    The College Board, which owns and administers the SAT, did not release a public statement about the letter, nor did ACT, Educational Testing Services or any other major assessment organization.

    College Board communications director Holly Stepp wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed that the organization believes testing can promote college access, but it does not usually comment on policy matters.

    “College Board provides access and opportunity to millions of students from every background through programs that are mission-driven, evidence-based, and nonpartisan,” Stepp wrote. “We do not set policies around how our exam is used by higher education institutions and scholarship providers.”

    Juan Elizondo, ACT’s strategic communications director for government and public relations, told Inside Higher Ed that the company stands behind institutions’ freedom to set their own testing policies.

    “ACT respects the authority of our higher education partners to decide the admission standards that are right for their institutions,” he wrote.

    Failing the Logic Test

    As colleges like Yale, Harvard and MIT returned to test requirements last year, many cited the same new research: a study from Opportunity Insights that found that test-optional policies made it more difficult for selective institutions to admit students who could succeed academically—and to find qualified applicants from diverse racial and economic backgrounds. Statements from both Yale and Dartmouth said that test scores could “help expand access” for underrepresented groups, including students of color.

    So if both test-optional and test-mandatory policies can promote racial diversity depending on the institution, how will the Trump administration enforce its guidance?

    When asked this question, Trainor did not respond directly but implied that any institution using racial diversity as a justification for any policy, or even citing it as a potential benefit, could be in violation of the current Education Department’s views on civil rights law.

    Friedman, one of the researchers who produced the Opportunity Insights study, said his research showed that for some highly selective colleges, requiring test scores could help “a little bit” with diversity in the selection process. The argument is that by providing a standardized measure of academic preparedness, selective colleges can find a “diamond in the rough”—applicants from underresourced high schools who would struggle to stand out otherwise.

    “For some schools, going back to requiring testing may help improve diversity, but my sense is that improving diversity is not the primary motivation behind this policy change,” he said.

    Feder agreed but had a different prediction.

    “If I’m at the OCR and an Ivy League college is saying, ‘We went back to test requirements because it’s good for diversity,’ even if that’s not really the case, I’d go investigate them,” he said. “By their own logic, they’d have to.”

    Baker said there hasn’t been enough research to determine whether test-optional policies make a huge difference in promoting diversity. Many of the colleges that have kept them in place, she said, have also made more holistic changes to their admissions process that could account for diversity gains. But she believes ending the experiment early by government coercion would be a major step backward.

    “Researchers in the field are doing some real deep dives to better understand the effects of test-optional policies themselves. The people writing the [Dear Colleague] letter have no clue about any of that; they just read about how these policies are part of an anti-white war on meritocracy,” she said. “They’re just throwing spaghetti at the wall.”

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  • Higher ed must be proactive

    Higher ed must be proactive

    Sonny Ramaswamy retired from his role as president of the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities in February, concluding an almost seven-year run at the accrediting body.

    His retirement comes after a lengthy career in higher education, which included stints at Cornell University, Mississippi State University, Kansas State University, Purdue University and Oregon State University before former president Barack Obama appointed him as director of the National Institute for Food and Agriculture in 2012. Ramaswamy also served for roughly 18 months during Donald Trump’s first presidential term before returning to higher education as the head of NWCCU, a post he held from July 2018 until earlier this year, when he stepped down.

    In his retirement, he plans to continue serving on nonprofit boards, particularly those in the world of food and agriculture, an area where much of his career was focused. Ramaswamy also plans to write, starting with an illustrated book of poetry to help children learn about the environment.

    Ramaswamy spoke with Inside Higher Ed about his retirement plans, his experience as an accreditor, the challenges facing the sector and the need for a robust defense of higher education.

    This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

    Q: First, tell me about your retirement. What prompted you to step down early?

    A: I came on board in 2018 and had a five-year agreement. June 2023 is when the agreement would have ended, and then our commissioners pleaded with me, saying, “You’ve got to stay on with all the uncertainties with the impending elections next year, etc., etc.” Plus we were going through our [National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity] recognition process. Well, another year comes and goes and they asked if I could stay for some more time, past the elections. We were all expecting the elections to go in a certain way, but who would have thought that the Democrats would self-destruct? But that’s another story.

    I reluctantly said OK. We had talked about staying on the whole year, but they left it to me to make the determination of when I would step out. Then the 2024 elections happened and we started seeing the handwriting on the wall, and it concerned me tremendously. I thought, “I can do a lot more being outside of the system as a spokesperson for education.”

    Q: What initially interested you in the NWCCU job?

    A: This was not something on my radar. My life has been about food and agriculture. I’m an entomologist. My passion is hunger, being that I was hungry growing up in India at a time when India could not feed itself. And my path was through academics, food and agricultural sciences.

    I was headhunted [while director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture] and went through some interviews with a couple of land-grant universities for the presidency. I was all set to become president of a land-grant university, then I was headhunted by the Northwest Commission, and [their recruiter] said, “You’ve got to do this—you bring exquisite leadership skills, and that’s what they’re looking for. I said, “But I’ve not done anything related to accreditation,” and she said, “That’s not the point—what they want is somebody that can be a leader.” What they were looking for was somebody to set the ship in the right direction and create a compelling vision.

    Q: What was the hardest part about the job?

    A: The hard part was the complaints that we would receive about our colleges and universities. On some of those, there’s egregiousness on the part of the institutions, ignoring their own policies and things like that. We also got complaints that basically were frivolous. We created, I think, an excellent way to handle the complaints with the processes and procedures that we put together. But the hardest part was to see policies and procedures being ignored. I don’t know if those were ignored purposefully and wantonly, or it was just that some institutions are so huge, and that the bureaucracy is so huge that the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.

    Q: What was the most rewarding aspect of the job?

    A: What surprised me the most was how archaic the system was [at NWCCU]. It was thousands of pages of documentation being printed. I thought, “We need to come up with a way to use data to inform decisions, to look at how institutions are making progress and hold them accountable based on evidence and data, and not just the fact that they write these hundreds of pages of narrative.” It’s like the old adage that if you can’t bedazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit. So I worked with our commissioners and our staff and went around America, listening to what needs to be done [to revise] our standards. My gosh, we had eight standards and 142 substandards, and the word “student” was invoked in the very last standard. It was pathetic.

    So I said, “We have to focus on the students.” We did listening sessions and people gave us an earful [including think tanks], so we brought that back and went through the listening sessions and surveys, and we went from eight standards and 142 substandards to two standards. No. 1: Students, that’s where they’re supposed to be. And No. 2 is all the other stuff about compliance and governance and other issues. We changed all of that to focus on students.

    The most rewarding piece was to see those changes take place.

    Q: There seems to be a changing of the guard at accrediting bodies, with turnover at the top. What advice do you have for anyone stepping into that job in the current political climate?

    A: Go into it thinking, “What is the value proposition we want to demonstrate?” I’m paraphrasing Pogo: I have seen the enemy and he is us. Accreditors are as much to blame as the institutions in that we have never been able to provide that compelling value proposition. To be accused by various individuals that there’s an accreditation cartel, that everything is done behind closed doors like the Wizard of Oz, that we impose diversity, equity and inclusion on these institutions—it’s all a false narrative. None of us have imposed critical race theory on our institutions. It’s a false narrative that has been grabbed by [anti-DEI activists] like Chris Rufo and Scott Yenor.

    We pat ourselves on the back, saying, “We’re holding universities accountable.” But when a bit more than one out of every two students graduate, there’s something wrong with that picture.

    Use your critical thinking and problem-solving skills and put the students at the core of your mission and demonstrate that value proposition, demonstrate why education is critically important for America, and the accountability piece of it that the accreditors bring to the effort.

    Q: What do you think the near future holds for accreditation? Do you expect any big changes?

    A: I’m reading the tea leaves, and it’s like our investment advisers tell us: Past results have no bearing on future returns. I worked in the Trump administration for a year and a half, and I saw a lot of things in there. But it means nothing, because now they’ve come in with a much better thought-out process, a blueprint. Hope springs eternal, but there’s going to be some changes.

    But before whatever it is that’s coming down the pike, let us as educators, let us as accreditors demonstrate that value proposition [and] tell the story. Don’t wait. Get college presidents, students and alumni to speak to the value of higher education. All these companies—the people that are hiring our graduates—should be extolling America’s higher education system, which is why people like me came to this country from overseas. There has to be a concerted effort by everybody. The accreditors have a secondary role, since the primary role is going to be institutional leadership and alumni and board members and others to speak to why the accountability system that we have is important. Be proactive, don’t be reactive, don’t wait for the winter or fall to go to work.

    And if we don’t do it, shame on us and we deserve what we get.

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  • How do care-experienced students view their time in higher education?

    How do care-experienced students view their time in higher education?

    Last Thursday 6th March, TASO shared its report on Pathways into and through higher education for young people with experience of children’s social care. It found that young people with experience of care are four times less likely to attend higher education by age 22 and more than twice as likely to drop out as their peers without experience of care.

    It builds on a growing body of literature in this area, including analysis by the Unite Foundation and evaluations of its own scholarships with Jisc.

    Through the annual Student Academic Experience Survey (SAES), HEPI and Advance HE collect data on the experiences and attitudes of care-experienced students. We are in a constant process of iterating and improving the SAES, and in 2024, a close reading of our data from previous years suggested a higher number of respondents than expected were saying they had experience of care. To make sure we were capturing the right students, we refined the question as follows:

    Have you been in care? Select yes if you’ve ever lived in public care or as a looked-after child, including:

    • with foster carers under local authority care
    • in a residential children’s home
    • being ‘looked after at home’ under a supervision order
    • living with friends or relatives in kinship care

    Note: This does not refer to time spent in boarding schools, working in a care or healthcare setting, or if you are a carer yourself.

    In 2024, nearly 900 of the roughly 10,300 respondents to the SAES – still quite a high number, but significantly fewer than the previous year – said they had experience of care. What do the data say about their experiences in higher education? (Note that the margin of error for any subset will be higher than the margin for the whole survey sample, which is around 1%.)

    On subject choices, care-experienced students in the SAES were somewhat more likely to be studying Medicine and Dentistry and subjects allied to Medicine, which is consistent with sector-level data. They were also more likely to be studying Engineering and less likely to be studying Business, Social Studies and creative subjects.

    In addition to the challenges faced by having experienced care, these students were also less likely to come from the highest quintiles of participation in higher education (POLAR) than other students and more likely to have a disability (45%, compared to 30% of other students) but less often described themselves as first in family (25%, compared to 32% of other students).

    This probably informs many of their responses throughout the survey. For example, like other students taking courses like these, care-experienced students have more contact hours and do more hours of independent work (a total of 41.5 hours) than students without experience of care (36 hours on average). Likewise, more than half of care-experienced students use AI at least once a week, compared with less than a third (30%) of other students. This is as expected, given that saving time is a primary reason students use AI tools.

    Perhaps surprisingly, care-experienced students report higher scores on wellbeing measures, like happiness and life satisfaction. (For example, they average 7.08 out of 10 for whether the things they do are worthwhile, compared to 6.74 for other students.) However, they also report higher rates of anxiety and loneliness than students without experience of care, averaging 5.29 out of 10 for feeling anxious compared with 4.48 for other students.

    Care-experienced students are more likely to have considered withdrawing: 38% compared with 24% of all students. When asked for their main reason why, they cite mental health as the primary challenge, but at a lower rate than students without experience of care. Instead, they were more likely to mention workload – either a higher or lower volume than expected – or their physical health.

    chart visualization

    These data also suggest that care-experienced students face an altogether more challenging context. Some 58% of care-experienced students say they travel 10 miles or more to get to university, compared with only 31% without experience of care travelling the same distance. This may be because the benefits some care-experienced students get can be contingent on living within a particular local authority. Care-experienced students reported living alone or with family at higher rates than other students.

    chart visualization

    Additionally, care-experienced students may need to remain at home to provide for family members at higher rates. Almost all care-experienced students (80%) do some paid work during term-time, compared with 55% of other students. This is most often to supplement their income. But more than one-third of care-experienced students (35%) work to support friends or family financially.

    A third (33%) say the cost-of-living crisis has affected them ‘a lot’, compared with 27% of other students. Care-experienced students are also nearly twice as likely to depend on scholarships or bursaries to cover their costs, which could also show that such funds are being effectively targeted towards students who need them.

    In summary, care-experienced students are more likely to take certain Health and Science subjects, live further from their institution, are more likely to be working to support their families and are affected more by cost-of-living difficulties. These challenging findings help to explain why care-experienced students withdraw from higher education at higher rates.

    Clearly there is more that institutions and government can do to support this group of students. The TASO report recommends, for example, working closely with local authorities to ensure care-experienced students have reliable access to accommodation, both during and outside of term-time. And as Paige Mackenzie wrote for us in 2022, the holidays can be a ‘really lonely time’ for care-experienced and estranged students and it helps when staff reach out.

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  • How does the higher education sector sustain digital transformation in tough times?

    How does the higher education sector sustain digital transformation in tough times?

    Higher education institutions are in a real bind right now. Financial pressures are bearing down on expenditure, and even those institutions not at immediate risk are having to tighten their belts.

    Yet institutions also need to continue to evolve and improve – to better educate and support students, enable staff to do their teaching and research, strengthen external ties, and remain attractive to international students. The status quo is not appealing – not just because of competitive and strategic pressures but also because for a lot of institutions the existing systems aren’t really delivering a great experience for students and staff. So, when every penny counts, where should institutions invest to get the best outcomes? Technology is rarely the sole answer but it’s usually part of the answer, so deciding which technologies to deploy and how becomes a critical organisational capability.

    Silos breed cynicism

    Digital transformation is one of those areas that’s historically had a bit of a tricky reputation. I suspect your sense of the reason for this depends a bit on your standpoint but my take (as a moderately competent user of technology but by no means expert) is that technology procurement and deployment is an area that tends to expose some of higher education’s historic vulnerabilities around coordinated leadership and decision-making, effective application of knowledge and expertise, and anticipation of, and adaptability to change.

    So in the past there’s been a sense, not of this exact scenario, but some variation on it: the most senior leaders don’t really have the knowledge or expertise about technology and are constantly getting sold on the latest shiny thing; the director of IT makes decisions without fully coordinating with the needs and workflows of the wider organisation; departments buy in tech for their own needs but don’t coordinate with others. There might even be academic or digital pedagogy expertise in the organisation whose knowledge remains untapped in trying to get the system to make sense. And then the whole thing gets tweaked and updated to try to adapt to the changing needs, introducing layer upon layer of complexity and bureaucracy and general clunkiness, and everyone heaves a massive sigh every time a new system gets rolled out.

    This picture is of course a cynical one but it’s striking in our conversations about digital transformation with the sector how frequently these kinds of scenarios are described. The gap between the promise of technology and the reality of making it work is one that can breed quite a lot of cynicism – which is the absolute worst basis from which to embark on any journey of change. People feel as if they are expected to conform to the approved technology, rather than technology helping them do their jobs more effectively.

    Towards digital maturity

    Back in 2023 Jisc bit the bullet with the publication of its digital transformation toolkit, which explicitly sought to replace what in some cases had been a rather fragmented siloed approach with a “whole institution” framework. When Jisc chief executive Heidi Fraser-Krauss speaks at sector events she frequently argues that technology is the easy bit – it’s the culture change that is hard. Over the past two years Jisc director for digital transformation (HE) Sarah Knight and her team have been working with 24 institutions to test the application of the digital transformation framework and maturity model, with a report capturing the learning of what makes digital transformation work in practice published last month.

    I book in a call with Sarah because I’m curious about how institutions are pursuing their digital transformation plans against the backdrop of financial pressure and reductions in expenditure. When every penny counts, institutions need to wring every bit of value from their investments, and technology costs can be a significant part of an institution’s capital and non-staff recurrent expenditure.

    “Digital transformation to us is to show the breadth of where digital touches a university,” says Sarah. “Traditionally digital tended to sit more with ‘digital people’ like CIOs and IT teams, but our framework has shown how a whole-institution approach is needed. For those just starting out, our framework helped to focus attention on the breadth of things to consider such as digital culture, engaging staff and students, digital fluency, capability, inclusivity, sustainability – and all the principles underpinning digital transformation.”

    Advocating a “whole institution approach” may seem counter-intuitive – making what was already a complicated set of decisions even more so by involving more people. But without creating a pipeline of information flow up, down and across the institution, it’s impossible to see what people need from technology, or understand how the various processes in place in different parts of the university are interacting with the technologies available to see where they could be improved.

    “The digital maturity assessment brought people into the conversation at different levels and roles. Doing that can often show up where there is a mismatch in experience and knowledge between organisational leaders and staff and students who are experiencing the digital landscape,” says Sarah.

    Drawing on knowledgeable voices whose experience is closer to the lived reality of teaching and research is key. “Leaders are saying they don’t need to know everything about digital but they do need to support the staff who are working in that space to have resources, and have a seat at table and a voice.”

    Crucially, working across the institution in this way generates an evidence base that can then be used to drive decision-making about the priorities for investment of resources, both money and time. In the past few years, some institutions have been revising their digital strategies and plans, recognising that with constrained finances, they may need to defer some planned investments, or sequence their projects differently, mindful of the pressures on staff.

    For Sarah, leaders who listen, and who assume they don’t already know what’s going on, are those who are the most likely to develop the evidence base that can best inform their decisions:

    “When you have leaders who recognise the value of taking a more evidence-informed approach, that enables investment to be more strategically targeted, so you’re less likely to see cuts falling in areas where digital is a priority. Institutions that have senior leadership support, data informed decision making, and evidence of impact, are in the best place to steer in a direction that is forward moving and find the core areas that are going to enable us to reach longer term strategic goals.”

    In our conversation I detect a sense of a culture shift behind some of the discussions about how to do digital transformation. Put it like this: nobody is saying that higher education leaders of previous decades didn’t practice empathy, careful listening, and value an evidence base. It’s just that when times are tough, these qualities come to the fore as being among the critical tools for institutional success.

    Spirit of collaboration

    There’s a wider culture shift going on in the sector as well, as financial pressures and the sense that a competitive approach is not serving higher education well turns minds towards where the sector could be more collaborative in its approach. Digital is an area that can sometimes be thought of as a competitive space – but arguably that’s mistaking the tech for the impact you hope it will have. Institutions working on digital transformation are better served by learning from others’ experience, and finding opportunities to pool resources and risk, than by going it alone.

    “Digital can be seen as a competitive space, but collaboration outweighs and has far more benefits than competition,” says Sarah. “We can all learn together as a sector, as long as we can keep sharing that spirit of internal and external collaboration we can continue that momentum and be stronger together.”

    This is especially relevant for those institutions whose leaders may secretly feel they are “behind the curve” on digital transformation and experience a sense of anxiety that their institution needs to scramble to “catch up”. The metaphor of the race is less than helpful in this context, creating anxiety rather than a sense of strategic purpose. Sarah believes that no institution can legitimately consider itself “ahead of the curve” – and that all should have the opportunity to learn from each other:

    “We are all on a journey, so some might be ahead in some aspects but definitely not all,” says Sarah. “No-one is behind the curve but everyone is approaching this in a slightly different way, so don’t feel ‘we have to do this ourselves’; use networks and seek help – that is our role as Jisc to support the sector.”

    Jisc is hosting Digifest in Birmingham on 11-12 March – sign up here for online access to sessions.

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  • What Republican voters want for higher ed

    What Republican voters want for higher ed

    Republican voters believe in the value of college degrees but harbor concerns about accountability and affordability, according to a new national survey conducted by Third Way, a center-left think tank, and GS Strategy Group, a Republican polling group.

    The survey of 500 Republican voters found that most respondents, 63 percent, view four-year degrees as valuable—including 60 percent of voters who have “very favorable” perceptions of President Trump. Trade schools and community colleges enjoy particularly robust support; 91 percent and 87 percent of respondents, respectively, view them favorably. By comparison, 69 percent hold favorable views of four-year colleges and universities, and 37 percent feel positively toward for-profit universities.

    At the same time, Republicans surveyed believe the most needed reforms in higher ed today are greater accountability and greater affordability.

    Most respondents, 87 percent, support increased accountability for higher education institutions. And many believe the government should play various roles to ensure that principle is upheld. Seventy-one percent agree that the federal government should require transparency from institutions and accredit them based on their value to students. The same share believe there should be federal guardrails to prevent “bad actors” from charging students for low-quality degrees. And nearly half agree taxpayer dollars should be withheld from colleges that don’t offer a sufficient return on students’ investment.

    Toward that end, 83 percent of Republicans support the financial value transparency rule, which requires colleges to report program-level information like the total cost of attendance and the amount of private education loans disbursed to students. To make college more affordable, 81 percent of Republicans are in favor of Pell Grants, federal financial aid for low-income students, and 79 percent support the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program and income-driven repayment for student loans. Almost 70 percent favor borrower defense to repayment, allowing students who attended fraudulent institutions to have their student loans discharged.

    The report notes that many of these same policies “are being considered for cuts as budget reconciliation heats up.”

    “As Congress considers where to trim the budget this year, it’s important to remember that Republican voters aren’t looking for higher education cuts but rather a renewed emphasis on making it more affordable and holding institutions to the line for delivering a return on investment,” the report concludes.

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  • Ohio University puts Black alumni reunion weekend on hold

    Ohio University puts Black alumni reunion weekend on hold

    Ohio University has postponed its annual Black alumni reunion weekend while it reviews the event in light of the Office for Civil Rights’ Feb. 14 Dear Colleague letter, which declared illegal virtually all race-based activities at public institutions.  

    While the Black alumni reunion “has always been open to all individuals who have an interest in the event,” read a statement from the university, “based on OCR’s recent guidance related to Title VI compliance, some of the programming historically included in the event may need to be reimagined. The University is obligated to follow OCR’s guidance in order to protect our access to critical federal funding, including students’ continued access to federal financial aid.”

    The statement also cited the impact of “proposed State of Ohio legislation,” without specifically mentioning SB 1, a bill the Senate has passed that calls for the elimination of DEI statements, offices and trainings.

    “Without question, should this bill pass the House in its current form and be signed into law by the Governor, it will bring changes for all of us,” university president Lori Stewart Gonzalez wrote in an earlier message to the campus community. “However, to define today the specific changes we might make would preempt the legislative process on a bill that is not finalized.”

    Still, all signature events planned for Black alumni reunion weekend, which was scheduled for April 10–13 in Athens, were canceled.

    “While this is difficult news to share, we remain committed to honoring the legacy and accomplishments of Ohio University’s Black alumni,” said planning committee co-chairs Terry Frazier and Jillian Causey in the statement. “We will continue working with the University to develop a plan that aligns with evolving federal and state guidelines while preserving the significance of this gathering.”

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  • ADL, other pro-Israel groups condemn AAUP Palestine webinar

    ADL, other pro-Israel groups condemn AAUP Palestine webinar

    The Anti-Defamation League and four other pro-Israel groups accused the American Association of University Professors of “demonizing Israel” in its framing of and publicity around a webinar titled Scholasticide in Palestine.

    Scholasticide is the intentional eradication of an education system. In a joint letter Thursday, the same day as the webinar, the ADL, the Academic Engagement Network, Hillel International, the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Federations of North America condemned the event’s use of this term.

    “Language used in the event’s description—including ‘scholasticide’ and ‘exterminationist’—suggests the adoption and promotion of a one-sided and inflammatory narrative which deviates from the mission of the AAUP,” the letter said. The groups said there’s “no evidence of any intent by Israel to ‘systemically destroy’ the education system in Gaza or elsewhere. The destruction of institutions, including educational ones, is a tragic byproduct of war, exacerbated when terror groups like Hamas embed their operations within school buildings and other civilian centers.”

    Six months into the latest war in Gaza, a group of independent United Nations experts said in a news release, “It may be reasonable to ask if there is an intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system.” By then, the release said, the last Gazan university had already been destroyed and “more than 5,479 students, 261 teachers and 95 university professors have been killed in Gaza, and over 7,819 students and 756 teachers have been injured.”

    Miriam Elman, the Academic Engagement Network’s executive director, provided Inside Higher Ed with an email from Donna Murch, a member of the AAUP’s elected national council, inviting members to the webinar. Murch said the event would feature “academics and right-to-education organizers who have experienced, documented and challenged Israel’s ongoing and systematic destruction of the education system in Palestine.”

    An AAUP spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed, “We are not aware that anyone who is objecting to AAUP’s programming actually attended the event, which is part of an extended series of conversations about diverse topics of interest to our members. We take antisemitism very seriously and plan our programming consistent with the principles of academic freedom and academic responsibility that AAUP vigorously defends.”

    The pro-Israel groups also criticized the AAUP event’s promotional material for not mentioning Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israelis. The letter says, “We note with dismay that this divisive event is taking place within a wider context of the AAUP being perceived as increasingly moving in a virulently anti-Israel direction.”

    The AAUP has received criticism for its council’s August decision to abandon the group’s nearly 20-year categorical opposition to academic boycotts—such as those often called for against Israel.

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