Tag: Education

Higher education postcard: University of Greater Manchester

Greetings from Bolton. Definitely Bolton.

In 1824, a mechanics’ institute was established in Bolton. Mechanics’ institutes were a new phenomenon – the first was established in Scotland in 1821. They were, in essence, a subscription-based club which provided an opportunity for education, aimed at the better-off members of the working class.

As the 1857 advert in the Bolton Chronicle shows, it was still going fifty years later.

You can see the 1857 subscription fees in the advertisement. It’s hard to directly read across into today’s prices, because costs and wage structures change so much over the years. On a straightforward inflation calculation, using the Bank of England calculator, the annual fee would be about £50 today, which is a bit of a bargain. But comparing wages makes this feel different – for example, an average agricultural wage in 1857 was just shy of 11 shillings a week, so the subscription would be a quarter of a week’s wages. (And note also that the annual fee of ten shillings was just the quarterly fee multiplied by four. No discounts here for upfront payment.)

The curriculum looks good, but elementary: school rather than higher education. And this makes sense – many people would have had minimal schooling. Only about 70 per cent of the population could read and write. And so a good basic education didn’t hurt.

By the late 1880s there was a groundswell of opinion that Bolton needed better. As reported in the Bolton Evening News of 1 December 1886, the new chairman of the Mechanics’ Institute, Mr John Haywood MA, argued that:

In Manchester, they are content with one well-equipped technical school; whereas in Bolton we must, forsooth, have three struggling institutions, with the result, as far as the Mechanics’ is concerned, that the progress made is in the direction of increased debt.

The newspaper continued: “Mr Haywood thinks that Bolton has gone mad on sectarian and political distinctions when its young men cannot even sit on the same form to receive technical education.”

And so in 1887 the committee of the Mechanics’ Institute agreed to establish a technical school. A committee was established, which raised funds, but found itself short; and an appeal was made to the county council. And in 1891 the Bolton Technical School opened.

In 1926 Bolton Technical School became Bolton Technical College, and in 1941 a new building opened – that shown on the card – which enabled a broader range of courses to be offered. Engineering was, apparently, the most popular.

In 1964 the college bifurcated, splitting the lower and higher level education. Bolton Technical College focused on FE, and the Bolton Institute of Technology focused on higher studies.

A brief aside is now necessary, to introduce another institution, the Bolton Training College. This focused on training teachers for technical subjects and was one of three in the country doing this (the others being in Huddersfield and at Garnett College, in London). I’m afraid I can’t tell you when it was founded, but it is clear that there was a threat to close it in the 1950s, happily averted.

And in 1982 the Bolton Institute of Technology merged with the Bolton Training College to form the Bolton Institute of Higher Education. This gained taught degree awarding powers in 1992, research degree awarding powers in 1996 and became a university in 2004.

In December 2024 the university changed its name, becoming the University of Greater Manchester. And in what is becoming a bit of a busy year for the university, in governance terms, it was placed under enhanced OfS monitoring in February and suspended its vice chancellor in May. Let’s see what June and July bring for the university.

The postcard was sent in October 1961 to Miss Medley in Andover.

Dear Janet, Today I am going through to Blackpool to see “West Side Story”. The week has flown by, and tomorrow I shall have to return to the quiet South from the lively North. Love Jillian

And here’s the customary jigsaw – hope you enjoy it. Comment below if you can identify the cars.

Source link

May 22, 2025
‘A shell of itself’: Federal judge pauses efforts to wind down Education Department

This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.

The U.S. Department of Education is temporarily barred from carrying out an executive order to shut down the agency and must reinstate employees who were fired as part of a mass reduction in force in March, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

In the preliminary injunction in State of New York v. McMahon, U.S. District Judge Myong Joun ordered that the department be “restored to the status quo” prior to the day President Donald Trump retook office.

The agency’s actions since show no evidence that its workforce reductions have improved efficiency or that the agency is making progress in working with Congress to close the department, Joun said.

“The supporting declarations of former Department employees, educational institutions, unions, and educators paint a stark picture of the irreparable harm that will result from financial uncertainty and delay, impeded access to vital knowledge on which students and educators rely, and loss of essential services for America’s most vulnerable student populations,” his ruling stated.

Joun also said the Education Department is prohibited from carrying out President Donald Trump’s March 21 directive to transfer management of the federal student loans portfolio and special education management and oversight out of the Education Department.

“A department without enough employees to perform statutorily mandated functions is not a department at all,” Joun wrote. “This court cannot be asked to cover its eyes while the Department’s employees are continuously fired and units are transferred out until the Department becomes a shell of itself.”

The preliminary injunction requires the agency to submit a report to the court within 72 hours of the order, outlining all the steps it is taking to comply, and to do so “every week thereafter until the Department is restored to the status quo prior to January 20, 2025.”

Thursday’s ruling is a setback to the Trump administration’s goals of reducing the size and scope of the federal government. The ambitions are to give more flexibility and decision-making power to the states, supporters of the administration action said.

Madi Biedermann, deputy assistant secretary for communications at the Education Department, said the agency will challenge the ruling “on an emergency basis.”

“Once again, a far-left Judge has dramatically overstepped his authority, based on a complaint from biased plaintiffs, and issued an injunction against the obviously lawful efforts to make the Department of Education more efficient and functional for the American people,” Biedermann said in an emailed statement Thursday.

Biedermann added, “This ruling is not in the best interest of American students or families.”

Higher education advocates, on the other hand, celebrated the ruling.

“Today, the court rightly rejected one of the administration’s very first illegal, and consequential, acts: abolishing the federal role in education,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, in a Thursday statement. Most Americans and states “want to keep the education department because it ensures all kids, not just some, can get a shot at a better life,” she said.

The legal challenge began March 13, when the attorneys general in 20 states and the District of Columbia sued the Education Department to halt the mass workforce reductions announced March 11.

About half of the agency’s 4,133 employees were let go or accepted buy outs. Almost a third of the affected employees had worked in one of three offices within the Education Department: Federal Student Aid, the Office for Civil Rights and the Institute for Education Sciences.

Later that month, Trump signed an executive order at a White House ceremony that directed U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin closing down the agency to the “maximum extent appropriate.”

“My administration will take all lawful steps to shut down the department,” Trump said at the March 20 signing ceremony. “We’re going to shut it down, and shut it down as quickly as possible.”

McMahon, during several appearances on Capitol Hill, has acknowledged that only Congress has the authority to close the agency and said she is working with lawmakers to do so.

Source link

May 22, 2025
Trump Administration Strips Harvard’s SEVIS Certification

Amid an ongoing legal showdown with Harvard University, the Trump administration has carried through on a recent threat to halt the private institution’s ability to host international students.

The move was first reported Thursday afternoon by The New York Times, then subsequently announced on social media by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.

“This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus. It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments,” Noem wrote in the announcement. “Harvard had plenty of opportunity to do the right thing. It refused.”

(Though much of the federal government’s recent focus on Harvard has concerned the university’s alleged failure to address antisemitism on campus, the Trump administration has also raised questions about collaboration with foreign researchers, particularly those with ties to the Chinese and Iranian governments.)

In her statement, Noem wrote that Harvard’s Student Exchange and Visitor Information System certification was being stripped “as a result of their failure to adhere to the law,” which she said should “serve as a warning to all universities” across the U.S.

Current international students would be required to transfer to maintain their visa status.

Noem added that Harvard would need to turn over demanded records within 72 hours if it would “like the opportunity of regaining” SEVIS certification “before the upcoming school year.”

A Harvard spokesperson called the action “unlawful” in an emailed statement.

“We are fully committed to maintaining Harvard’s ability to host international students and scholars, who hail from more than 140 countries and enrich the University—and this nation—immeasurably,” the spokesperson wrote. “This retaliatory action threatens serious harm to the Harvard community and our country, and undermines Harvard’s academic and research mission.”

Impact on Harvard

Harvard enrolled 6,793 international students last fall, according to university data. International students have made up about a quarter of Harvard’s head count over the last decade—a population that could disappear, along with their substantial tuition dollars, if the Trump administration’s directive holds.

Noem threatened to revoke Harvard’s SEVIS certification last month after the university pushed back on federal government demands to turn over “detailed records on Harvard’s foreign student visa holders’ illegal and violent activities by April 30.” That threat followed Harvard’s refusal to acquiesce to sweeping demands to overhaul its governance, admissions and hiring processes and more in response to allegations of antisemitic conduct. The university then sued the Trump administration over a federal funding freeze and other recent actions.

Revoking Harvard’s SEVIS certification is the second punch the government threw at the university this week, coming after the Department of Health and Human Services announced the termination of $60 million in multiyear federal grants, which officials attributed to concerns about campus antisemitism.

Other sources of federal funding are on hold. Altogether, the Trump administration has frozen at least $2.7 billion flowing to the private university, or about a third of Harvard’s federal funds.

A New Political Cudgel

The Student Exchange and Visitor Program’s process for revoking universities’ SEVIS status is usually a prolonged and complicated bureaucratic affair, typically preceded by a thorough investigation of the institution and the possibility of appeal.

Sarah Spreitzer, vice president and chief of staff for government relations at the American Council on Education, told Inside Higher Ed that the manner in which the federal government stripped Harvard’s SEVIS certification was unprecedented.

“In a normal world, Harvard is supposed to actually get a notice that their SEVIS certification is being revoked, and then there is an appeals process,” Spreitzer said. “It doesn’t seem that DHS is following any of the regular requirements that are included in statute for taking this action.”

In late March, Trump officials first proposed revoking SEVIS status from institutions that they believed fostered antisemitism on campus, aiming their threats specifically at Columbia and the University of California, Los Angeles, which were home to major pro-Palestinian protests in 2024. In mid-April they threatened Harvard with decertification.

Clay Harmon, director of AIRC: The Association of International Enrollment Management, told Inside Higher Ed in March that historically, SEVP investigations are conducted when universities are suspected of delivering less-than-bona-fide degree programs, using shady coursework as a way to essentially sell student visas to would-be immigrants who want a fast way to enter the country.

“It is the government’s primary way of ensuring that international student visas are not granted for diploma mills, fake institutions or institutions that are not adequately financially supported,” Harmon said. “I’ve never heard of a fully accredited, reputable institution—whether it’s Columbia or Bunker Hill Community College—being subjected to some kind of extraordinary SEVP investigation outside of the standard recertification process.”

The initial process of certification, Harmon added, is intensive and can take institutions months or even longer to complete, which is one reason why decertification is so rare. Wielding the organization’s oversight powers as a tool for leverage in a larger political battle, he said, would be “a significant departure from past practices and established precedents.”

“It is clear that the administration is putting forward new interpretations of laws and powers that have not been established through case law or regular practice,” Harmon said.

In an email to Inside Higher Ed on Thursday, Harmon said the administration’s decision to use decertification against Harvard “imposes real, immediate, and significant harm on thousands of students for reasons outside their control and unrelated to their own actions.”

“This action may have broad and long-term negative impacts—well beyond Harvard and well beyond 2025—to the educational experience and financial health of U.S. institutions,” he wrote.

Revocation of Harvard’s SEVIS certification prompted sharp reactions online.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, wrote on social media that Noem’s actions are “likely illegal” and her letter showed no evidence of Harvard’s violations.

“Nothing in here alleges ANY specific violation of the Student and Exchange Visitor Program. Nothing. She cites no law violated, no regulation broken, no policy ignored,” Reichlin-Melnick wrote. “I don’t care what you think of Harvard; this is clear weaponization of government.”

Will Creeley, legal director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, called the government’s revocation of Harvard’s ability to host international students “retaliatory and unlawful.”

In a statement posted on X, he assailed the Education Department’s demands that Harvard hand over footage of international students protesting on campus.

“This sweeping fishing expedition reaches protected expression and must be flatly rejected,” Creeley wrote. “The administration’s demand for a surveillance state at Harvard is anathema to American freedom … This has to stop.”

But some officials in the MAGA camp celebrated the move.

“This is a remarkable first step,” Republican senator Ashley Moody of Florida wrote on X. “I applaud the administration for taking a stand to rid our universities of malign foreign influence.”

Source link

May 22, 2025
‘A shell of itself’: Federal judge pauses efforts to wind down Education Department

This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.

The U.S. Department of Education is temporarily barred from carrying out an executive order to shut down the agency and must reinstate employees who were fired as part of a mass reduction in force in March, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

In the preliminary injunction in State of New York v. McMahon, U.S. District Judge Myong Joun ordered that the department be “restored to the status quo” prior to the day President Donald Trump retook office.

The agency’s actions since show no evidence that its workforce reductions have improved efficiency or that the agency is making progress in working with Congress to close the department, Joun said.

“The supporting declarations of former Department employees, educational institutions, unions, and educators paint a stark picture of the irreparable harm that will result from financial uncertainty and delay, impeded access to vital knowledge on which students and educators rely, and loss of essential services for America’s most vulnerable student populations,” his ruling stated.

Joun also said the Education Department is prohibited from carrying out President Donald Trump’s March 21 directive to transfer management of the federal student loans portfolio and special education management and oversight out of the Education Department.

“A department without enough employees to perform statutorily mandated functions is not a department at all,” Joun wrote. “This court cannot be asked to cover its eyes while the Department’s employees are continuously fired and units are transferred out until the Department becomes a shell of itself.”

The preliminary injunction requires the agency to submit a report to the court within 72 hours of the order, outlining all the steps it is taking to comply, and to do so “every week thereafter until the Department is restored to the status quo prior to January 20, 2025.”

Thursday’s ruling is a setback to the Trump administration’s goals of reducing the size and scope of the federal government. The ambitions are to give more flexibility and decision-making power to the states, supporters of the administration action said.

Madi Biedermann, deputy assistant secretary for communications at the Education Department, said the agency will challenge the ruling “on an emergency basis.”

“Once again, a far-left Judge has dramatically overstepped his authority, based on a complaint from biased plaintiffs, and issued an injunction against the obviously lawful efforts to make the Department of Education more efficient and functional for the American people,” Biedermann said in an emailed statement Thursday.

Biedermann added, “This ruling is not in the best interest of American students or families.”

Public school supporters, on the other hand, celebrated the ruling.

“Today, the court rightly rejected one of the administration’s very first illegal, and consequential, acts: abolishing the federal role in education,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, in a Thursday statement. Most Americans and states “want to keep the education department because it ensures all kids, not just some, can get a shot at a better life,” she said.

The legal challenge began March 13, when the attorneys general in 20 states and the District of Columbia sued the Education Department to halt the mass workforce reductions announced March 11.

About half of the agency’s 4,133 employees were let go or accepted buy outs. Almost a third of the affected employees had worked in one of three offices within the Education Department: Federal Student Aid, the Office for Civil Rights and the Institute for Education Sciences.

Later that month, Trump signed an executive order at a White House ceremony that directed U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin closing down the agency to the “maximum extent appropriate.”

“My administration will take all lawful steps to shut down the department,” Trump said at the March 20 signing ceremony. “We’re going to shut it down, and shut it down as quickly as possible.”

McMahon, during several appearances on Capitol Hill, has acknowledged that only Congress has the authority to close the agency and said she is working with lawmakers to do so.

Source link

May 22, 2025
Judge Orders Education Department Employees Reinstated

On Thursday a judge ordered more than 2,000 fired employees of the Education Department reinstated.

Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Tierney L. Cross/Getty Images | Matveev_Aleksandr and raweenuttapong/iStock/Getty Images

A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from firing thousands of employees at the Department of Education in a decisive rebuke of this spring’s sweeping reduction in force and the executive branch’s efforts to weaken the Education Department.

Judge Myong Joun rejected the administration’s argument that the layoffs, which affected half of the department’s workforce, were part of a “reorganization” aimed at improving efficiency and said evidence showed the administration’s “true intention is to effectively dismantle the Department without an authorizing statute.” His order also prevents the department from implementing President Donald Trump’s March directive to dismantle the agency.

Joun of the District of Massachusetts also said the injunction to rehire the fired staffers was necessary in order to restore the department’s ability to accomplish its core functions and statutorily mandated responsibilities.

“Not only is there no evidence that Defendants are pursuing a ‘legislative goal’ or otherwise working with Congress to reach a resolution, but there is also no evidence that the RIF has actually made the Department more efficient,” Joun wrote in his 88-page ruling. “Plaintiffs have demonstrated that the Department will not be able to carry out its statutory functions—and in some cases, is already unable to do so.”

Reports of systemic failings and overloaded staff have streamed out of the beleaguered department ever since the March layoffs, from an untouched backlog of complaints at the Office for Civil Rights to the piling up of applications for student loan repayment and forgiveness plans.

The injunction, handed down Thursday morning, means the administration must reinstate more than 2,000 Education Department employees and reopen regional offices that were shuttered during the reduction in force.

The administration has already said it has issued a challenge to the ruling. Madi Biedermann, the department’s deputy assistant secretary for communication, said the administration has already appealed.

In an email to Inside Higher Ed, Biedermann decried the decision, calling Joun a “far-left judge” who “dramatically overstepped his authority” and maintaining that the layoffs were “lawful efforts to make the Department of Education more efficient and functional.”

“President Trump and the Senate-confirmed Secretary of Education clearly have the authority to make decisions about agency reorganization efforts, not an unelected Judge with a political axe to grind,” she wrote.

A spokesperson for the Association of American University Professors, one of the plaintiffs in the case, wrote in a statement that they were “thrilled” with the decision.

“Eliminating the [Education Department] would hurt everyday Americans, severely limit access to education, eviscerate funding for HBCUs and [tribal colleges and universities] while benefiting partisan politicians and private corporations,” they wrote.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon defended the layoffs at a budget hearing just a day prior to the ruling. She said the goal was to “wind down the bureaucracy” of the department, and that while she hoped to have congressional support to dismantle it eventually, the administration did not intend to so on its own.

Joun’s decision undercuts that defense. In the budget hearing, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat of Connecticut, told McMahon that the cuts were “unlawful” and a usurpation of congressional authority.

“As long as you continue to deliberately and flagrantly defy the law, you will continue to lose in court,” DeLauro said.

The injunction is the latest in a string of court orders challenging the Trump administration’s rapid cuts to federal agencies in its first 100 days, often under the supervision of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. DOGE was responsible for the vast majority of the Education Department layoffs, according to McMahon’s House testimony Wednesday.

Joun’s ruling wasn’t the only one aimed at undoing the administration’s Education Department cuts. Judge Paul Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia also ordered that the department restore grant funding to a Southern nonprofit that has helped further school desegregation efforts since the 1960s. The grant had been defunded as part of the administration’s push to eliminate spending on diversity, equity and inclusion.

Source link

May 22, 2025
Data breach reporting lags in education, study finds
This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.

Dive Brief:
- It took the education sector 4.8 months on average to report data breaches following ransomware attacks between 2018 and 2025, according to a report released last week by Comparitech.
- Colleges and schools had the highest average reporting time for ransomware data breaches when compared to the business, government and healthcare sectors, Comparitech found in its analysis of over 2,600 U.S. ransomware attacks.
- At the same time, education companies — counted separately from colleges and schools — saw even higher reporting times at 6.3 months. Waiting months to disclose a data breach is dangerous, given that stolen data can be on the dark web before victims even know a breach happened, wrote the researchers for Comparitech, a cybersecurity and online privacy product review website.
Dive Insight:

Delayed reporting of data breaches comes at a time when schools and ed tech companies alike are grappling with the ongoing threat of ransomware attacks.

Illustrating the prolonged response times for ransomware breaches, the latest Comparitech report pointed to Texas’ Alvin Independent School District confirming just this month that a June 2024 data breach impacted nearly 48,000 people. The data involved names, Social Security numbers, credit and debit card numbers, financial account information, medical and health insurance information, and state-issued IDs.

Organizations often wait to disclose a data breach because they are unsure if data was stolen following a ransomware attack until the hacker posts the stolen information on the dark web, Comparitech said.

“Data theft is a common component of ransomware attacks, so it’s not unreasonable for companies to assume hackers stole data, even if there isn’t any evidence to suggest data theft at first,” researchers wrote. “The worst thing to do is to jump to the conclusion that data hasn’t been stolen.”

The FBI also advises against paying threat actors following a ransomware attack. If organizations pay a ransom, it still doesn’t guarantee any data will be recovered, the agency’s website states, adding that ransom payments can actually encourage more attacks.

K-12 school districts have been especially concerned about a widespread breach of student and staff data across North America following a December 2024 ransomware attack on ed tech provider PowerSchool.

Though PowerSchool disclosed the cybersecurity incident about a week later, the company allegedly told districts not to worry about sensitive student and staff information being exposed. Five months later, however, PowerSchool publicly confirmed that, despite paying a ransom to threat actors, multiple school districts were being extorted with the same information stolen in the December incident.

Since then, over 100 school districts — including Tennessee’s largest school system, Memphis-Shelby County Schools — have sued PowerSchool for negligence, breach of contract and false advertising.
Source link
May 22, 2025
Trump Adviser Blames “Scientific Slowdown” on DEI, Red Tape

President Donald Trump’s science adviser and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy believes the recent, seismic cuts to federal research funding offer “a moment of clarity” for the scientific community to rethink its priorities, including the government’s role in supporting research.

Michael Kratsios, who is pushing for increased private sector support of research, said that federal investment in scientific research—much of which happens at universities—has yielded “diminishing returns” over the past 45 years.

“As in scientific inquiry, when we uncover evidence that conflicts with our existing theories, we revise our theories and conduct further experiments to better understand the truth,” Kratsios, a former tech executive with ties to tech titan and conservative activist Peter Thiel, said at a meeting of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday. “This evidence of a scientific slowdown should spur us to experiment with new systems, new models, new ways of funding, conducting and using science.”

But some experts believe Kratsios’s comments mischaracterized trends in the nation’s academic research enterprise, which has been faced with decades of declining federal funding.

“Kratsios may have things exactly backward. Our growth has slowed down over decades—the same decades where we have been funding science less and less as a share of GDP,” Benjamin Jones, an economics professor at Northwestern University and former senior economist for macroeconomics for the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said in an email to Inside Higher Ed. “Federally supported research is near its lowest level in the last 70 years. If the U.S. really wants to be ‘first’ in the world, the key will be how fast we advance. Cutting science is just a huge brake on our engine.”

A wide body of literature confirms that federally funded research and development continues to produce enormous social returns. A 2024 paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas showed that rates of return on nondefense R&D spending range from 140 to 210 percent. Another report from United for Medical Research determined that for every dollar the National Institutes of Health spent on research funding in 2024, it generated $2.56 of economic activity. And yet another science policy expert has estimated that an additional dollar of government-sponsored R&D generates between $2 and $5 in public benefits via economic growth.

But those facts were absent from Kratsios’s remarks, which accused scientists of focusing on “trying to score political points” and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives instead of so-called gold-standard science. “Spending more money on the wrong things is far worse than spending less money on the right things,” he said. “Political biases have displaced the vital search for truth.”

Kratsios also cited “stalled” scientific progress despite “soaring” biomedical research budgets and “stagnated” workforce training as proof that “more money has not meant more scientific discovery, and total dollars spent has not been a proxy for scientific impact.” Since 1980, he specified, “papers and patents across the sciences have become less disruptive,” and since the 1990s, “new drug approvals have flatlined or even declined.”

The White House OSTP did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for Kratsios’s sources of information, but some outside experts said those specific claims have merit, even if they lack additional context.

A 2023 paper in Nature shows that patents and papers are indeed becoming less “disruptive” over time. But the authors themselves said the slowdown is “unlikely to be driven by changes in the quality of published science, citation practices or field-specific factors,” but rather “may reflect a fundamental shift in the nature of science and technology,” which is presenting increasingly difficult and complex problems for researchers. The authors also called on federal agencies to “invest in the riskier and longer-term individual awards that support careers and not simply specific projects.”

(Many of the federal research grants the Trump administration has terminated in recent months supported those aims, including funding for graduate and postdoctoral students and multiyear projects that weren’t yet complete.)

And even though new inventions may be decreasingly likely to push science and technology in new directions, as the Nature paper indicated, federally funded research has nonetheless expanded its reach to consumers since 1980—the same time frame Kratsios claims has been marked by diminishing returns that warrant an overhaul of federal research policy.

Prior to the 1980s, the government owned the intellectual property of any discoveries made using federal research dollars. The policy gave universities little incentive to find practical uses for inventions, and fewer than 5 percent of the 28,000 patents held by federal agencies had been licensed for use, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

That changed when Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980, allowing universities, not-for-profit corporations and small businesses to patent and commercialize federally funded inventions. Universities began transferring inventions to industry partners for commercialization. Between 1996 and 2020, academic technology transfers in the U.S. contributed $1.9 trillion in gross industrial output, supported 6.5 million jobs and resulted in more than 126,000 patents awarded to research institutions, according to data from the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM).

As for Kratsios’s claim that drug approvals have “flatlined,” Matt Clancy, a senior research fellow at Open Philanthropy, said that’s a matter of interpretation. “If you think it means discovery is dead and not happening, that’s clearly false,” he said, noting that while drugs had been getting steadily more expensive to develop in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, costs have started falling over the past decade. “If you think it means the rate of discovery has not increased in proportion to the increase in spending, I think that is correct.”

‘The Enemy of Good Science’

Kratsios also tied those alleged declines in innovation to the assertion that researchers have fallen victim to a misguided “professional culture” and to “social pressures.” As an example, he pointed to the scientific community’s insistence on keeping schools closed to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus as an example of scientists’ unwillingness to question dominant viewpoints. “Convention, dogma and intellectual fads are the enemy of good science,” he said.

Administrative burdens have also hamstrung the scientific enterprise, he added.

“The money that goes to basic and blue-sky science must be used for that purpose, not to feed the red tape that so often goes along with funded research,” Kratsios said. “We cannot resign our research community and the laboratory and university staff who support them to die the death of a thousand 10-minute tasks. To assist the nation’s scientists in their vocation, we will reduce administrative burdens on federally funded researchers, not bog them down in bureaucratic box checking.”

Expanding the role of private funders is part of Kratsios’s solution.

“In particular, in a period of fiscal constraints and geopolitical challenges, an increase in private funding can make it easier for federal grant-making agencies to refocus public funds on basic research and the national interest,” he said at the NAS meeting, which was attended by university lobbyists and senior administrators.

“Prizes, challenges, public-private partnerships and other novel funding mechanisms can multiply the impact of targeted federal dollars. We must tie grants to clear strategic targets while still allowing for the openness of scientific exploration and so shape a general funding environment that makes clear what our national priorities are.”

According to Kratsios, private industry is well positioned to step in. He claims the sector spends “more than three times on R&D than does the federal government,” though it’s not clear from where he drew that statistic. Data from AUTM shows that in 2023, industry expenditures made up just 6.8 percent of all research spending in the United States, compared to 56.6 percent from the federal government. (Inside Higher Ed has previously reported on the challenges of looking to private funders to meaningfully make up for the Trump administration’s current and proposed cuts to academic research.)

Shalin Jyotishi, senior adviser for education, labor and the future of work at the left-leaning think tank New America, said that while some of the issues that Kratsios raised regarding federal science policy have merit, the administration hasn’t put forth a clear vision for reform.

“Instead, what we are seeing is ‘creative destruction’ playing out across the federal research enterprise—without the ‘creative’ part,” he said. “It’s not too late. The administration can and should still salvage the federal research enterprise and enact reform to make it even better.”

Source link

May 22, 2025
Pasco-Hernando Taps DeSantis Ally as Interim President

Weeks after Pasco-Hernando State College president Jesse Pisors resigned abruptly, the board named Florida Department of Juvenile Justice secretary Eric Hall interim president Tuesday.

Republican governor Ron DeSantis appointed Hall to the department in late 2021. Prior to that role, Hall served as senior chancellor of the Florida Department of Education from early 2019 to late 2021. Before that appointment, his educational experience was largely in the K-12 space.

Hall was a finalist in the 2023 PHSC presidential search that ended with Pisors in the top job.

Pisors resigned after less than 18 months as president. His departure followed the release of a critical report by Florida’s version of the Department of Government Efficiency, which indicated the college was among the worst in the state in terms of student growth and retention. Board members alleged that they had not been made aware of those numbers, despite requests.

However, The Tampa Bay Times reported that there has been skepticism around the validity of the report, which some critics argued was a flawed analysis of PHSC’s student outcomes.

The newspaper also noted that DeSantis appointed Hall to a government efficiency task force in late 2023, an effort that was ultimately a forebear of the state’s DOGE apparatus.

Hall is one of multiple DeSantis allies hired to lead a public institution in Florida this year. Others include Marva Johnson, a lobbyist, hired to lead Florida A&M University last week, and former Florida lieutenant governor Jeanette Nuñez at Florida International University, as well as former state lawmaker Adam Hasner at Florida Atlantic University, both of whom were hired in February. (Nuñez was hired as an interim but has since been named sole finalist for the job.)

Prior political hires include Ben Sasse, a former Republican U.S. senator from Nebraska, who briefly led the University of Florida before stepping down amid a spending scandal, and former state lawmaker Richard Corcoran at New College of Florida. Another former GOP lawmaker, Ray Rodrigues, was hired as chancellor of the State University System of Florida in 2022.

Source link

May 22, 2025
Trends in Hiring, 2025 Graduate Readiness for the Workforce
The Class of 2025 is prioritizing location, job stability and benefits when considering their first job postgraduation.

SDI Productions/E+/Getty Images
Commencement season brings excitement to college campuses as community members look to celebrate the accomplishments of the graduating class and usher them into their next chapter of life.

The Class of 2025, however, is gearing up to enter a challenging environment, whether that’s a competitive application cycle for gaining admission to graduate school or a tighter job market compared to previous years.

Inside Higher Ed compiled 25 data points regarding the Class of 2025 and the workforce they will enter, including levels of career preparedness, challenges in the workplace and the value of higher education in reaching career goals.
1. Over half of seniors feel pessimistic about starting their careers because they worry about a competitive job market and a lack of job security.
2. Seventy-eight percent of students rank job stability as a “very important” attribute in potential employers, followed by a healthy workplace culture.
3. Eighty-eight percent of college juniors and seniors believe their coursework is adequately preparing them for entry-level roles in their chosen fields.
4. Eight out of 10 soon-to-be graduates plan to start work within three months of graduating.
5. Hiring for college graduates is down 16 percent compared to last year, and 44 percent below 2022 levels.
1. Starting salaries are up 3.8 percent year over year, outpacing inflation’s growth of 2.4 percent, as of March.
2. Seventy-nine percent of young adults say health benefits are a “high” or “very high” priority for them when considering a job opportunity.
3. Desired location is a top priority for 73 percent of 2025 graduates in deciding which jobs to apply for, followed by job stability (70 percent). Over two-thirds said they’re looking for a job near their family.
4. If they choose to relocate for work, cost of living is the most pressing issue for new graduates (90 percent), followed by a diverse and tolerant community (64 percent). Ninety-eight percent of young adults say cost of living is their No. 1 money stressor, as well.
5. Flexibility remains key for graduates, with 43 percent looking for hybrid work, defined as being on-site for two or three days a week. Forty-four percent cited the ability to work from home as an important benefit, and over half want more than two weeks of vacation or paid time off in their first year of work.
1. Roughly half of entry-level job postings employers plan to create will be hybrid, and about 45 percent will be for fully in-person roles.
2. Engineering students are expected to be the highest paid of all the majors pursued by the class of 2025, earning an average of $78,731 this year.
3. Recent college graduates who participated in experiential learning while in college earn on average $59,059, compared to their peers without internships, who earn an average of $44,048.
4. As of last fall, only half of first-generation students in the Class of 2025 had completed an internship, compared to 66 percent of their peers.
5. About 12 percent of students have not participated in an internship and do not expect to do so before finishing their degree—lower than the average of 35 percent of workers who enter the workforce without an internship or other relevant work experience.
1. Ninety-eight percent of employers say their organization is struggling to find talent, but nearly 90 percent say they avoid hiring recent grads—in part, as 60 percent noted, because they lack real-world experience.
2. One-third of hiring managers say recent graduates lack a strong work ethic, and one in four say graduates are underprepared for interviews.
3. Over half (57 percent) of HR departments expect to increase spending on training and development in the year ahead.
4. As of March, nearly 6 percent of recent graduates (ages 22 to 27 who hold a bachelor’s degree or higher) were unemployed, compared with 2.7 percent of all college graduates. The unemployment rate for all young workers (ages 22 to 27) is approximately 7 percent.
5. Twenty-five percent of young adults are struggling to find jobs in their intended career fields; 62 percent aren’t employed in the career they intended to pursue after graduation.
6. Nearly 90 percent of students chose their major with a specific job or career path in mind.
7. Finding purposeful work is critical to Gen Z’s job satisfaction, and more than half say meaningful work is important when evaluating a potential employer.
8. One-quarter of young adults already have a side hustle, and 37 percent of Gen Z want to start a side hustle.
9. Ninety-seven percent of human resources leaders say it’s important that new hires have a foundational understanding of business and technology, including in such areas as artificial intelligence, data analytics and IT.
10. Gen Y and Gen Z workers are more likely than their older peers to worry they will lose their job or their job will be eliminated by generative AI.
We bet your colleague would like this article, too. Send them this link to subscribe to our newsletter on Student Success.
Source link
May 22, 2025
For those in HE cold spots, higher education isn’t presenting as a good bet

Bridget Phillipson has said she wants to work with universities to widen access, and participation for those from lower income backgrounds is one of the government’s five priorities for higher education.

But the words of a 17-year-old trainee legal assistant in Doncaster reveals how much of a challenge it will be to overcome the scepticism towards the value of a university education in a “cold spot”’ town;

I love jobs and I can’t wait to get another job, because I just love getting paid. I want to go to uni, to live on my own and to get drunk all the time – the uni party lifestyle, right? But if I do it just for that, then I’m getting into debt. If I just go straight into work, then I don’t have anything to pay back.

This quote underlines the findings from the opening paper of the UPP Foundation’s inquiry into widening participation, which showed how alongside gender- and class-based inequalities in rates of progression to HE, there are huge gulfs in the rate at which young people progress to university at 18 across different areas of the country. Almost 70 per cent of Wimbledon 18-year-olds go to university, compared to just 25.9 per cent of those in Houghton and Sunderland South – Bridget Phillipson’s own constituency.

With some local authorities lacking a university and also exhibiting rates of progression to HE lower than one might expect based on young people’s academic attainment, our new paper, published today, sets out how and why these “cold spots” for progression to HE struggle to inspire young people to go to university.

Daunted by costs

During our research trip to Doncaster – one of England’s worst-performing local authorities for progression to university at eighteen, and a case study for cold spots as a result – the scepticism towards university that our trainee legal assistant exhibited came up time and time again. None of the eight parents in our focus group selected university as their preferred post-18 option for their children, and only one of the 16-18 year olds we spoke to in our focus group intended to apply to university. The primary objection was cost.

Parents, young people, and adults of all ages that we spoke to in our immersive work thought that university was simply too great an expense for most people in the area to justify. Among those who had been to university, or knew those who had, it seemed that everyone had a horror story to tell about a friend or relative who had been burned by astronomical living expenses, or resented being mired in debt after doing a degree that had only passing relevance to their eventual career.

Even when the long-run opportunities that university provides seem enticing, the mounting cost of maintaining an undergraduate degree is a daunting prospect to many. Few thought that universities, colleges or schools had done a good job of making pathways through higher education seem clear, achievable and valuable.

Crowd in communities

The challenge for places like Doncaster is that the opportunities that university provides are anything but obvious. Residents were at pains to stress that Doncaster is a place that feels like the economy has left it behind, with jobs few and far between and graduate careers a luxury seemingly reserved for other places.

As one woman we spoke to put it: “The jobs in Doncaster, a lot of them you don’t require a degree for – we’re an industrial type of town.” Across our conversations in the area, it became clear that since the job market could not provide the security, stability and prospects that people wanted, family and community took on that role instead.

In this context, then, going to university is a double-edged sword: the aspirational youngsters we spoke to were excited by the opportunities that university could provide, but they recognised that this probably meant getting out of Doncaster and staying out. To many people we spoke to, leaving home, and one’s hometown, was a hidden psychological cost heaped on top of the very real financial burden of university.

With all this in mind, the ambivalence of cold spot residents towards university seems not reckless, but rational. If we think of university as a “bet” that people make on the understanding that the “payoff” is a higher graduate salary in the long run, then it is easy to see why those in areas with no university and few graduate jobs would be reluctant to make that sort of commitment.

If the government wants to make good on its commitment to widen university participation, it will require a multifaceted approach that crowds in whole communities, not just bright teenagers with good prospects. They will need to work with schools, colleges, universities and local employers to make the value of university clear across generations. Cold spots can make university feel like a reckless gamble – it’s up to the government to make it a good bet.

This article is published in association with the UPP Foundation.

Source link

May 21, 2025