Tag: Education

  • Chat Bot Passes College Engineering Class With Minimal Effort

    Chat Bot Passes College Engineering Class With Minimal Effort

    Since the release of ChatGPT in 2022, instructors have worried about how students might circumvent learning by utilizing the chat bot to complete homework and other assignments. Over the years, the large language model has enabled AI to expand its database and its ability to answer more complex questions, but can it replace a student’s efforts entirely?

    Graduate students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s college of engineering integrated a large language model into an undergraduate aerospace engineering course to evaluate its performance compared to the average student’s work.

    The researchers, Gokul Puthumanaillam and Melkior Ornik, found that ChatGPT earned a passing grade in the course without much prompt engineering, but the chat bot didn’t demonstrate understanding or comprehension of high-level concepts. Their work illustrating its capabilities and limitations was published on the open-access platform arXiv, operated by Cornell Tech.

    The background: LLMs can tackle a variety of tasks, including creative writing and technical analysis, prompting concerns over students’ academic integrity in higher education.

    A significant number of students admit to using generative artificial intelligence to complete their course assignments (and professors admit to using generative AI to give feedback, create course materials and grade academic work). According to a 2024 survey from Wiley, most students say it’s become easier to cheat, thanks to AI.

    Researchers sought to understand how a student investing minimal effort would perform in a course by offloading work to ChatGPT.

    The evaluated class, Aerospace Control Systems, which was offered in fall 2024, is a required junior-level course for aerospace engineering students. During the term, students submit approximately 115 deliverables, including homework problems, two midterm exams and three programming projects.

    “The course structure emphasizes progressive complexity in both theoretical understanding and practical application,” the research authors wrote in their paper.

    They copied and pasted questions or uploaded screenshots of questions into a free version of the chat bot without additional guidance, mimicking a student who is investing minimal time in their coursework.

    The results: At the end of the term, ChatGPT achieved a B grade (82.2 percent), slightly below the class average of 85 percent. But it didn’t excel at all assignment types.

    On practice problems, the LLM earned a 90.4 percent average (compared to the class average of 91.4 percent), performing the best on multiple-choice questions. ChatGPT received a higher exam average (89.7 percent) compared to the class (84.8 percent), but it faltered much more on the written sections than on the autograded components.

    ChatGPT demonstrated its worst performance in programming projects. While it had sound mathematical reasoning to theoretical questions, the model’s explanation was rigid and template-like, not adapting to the specific nuances of the problem, researchers wrote. It also created inefficient or overly complex solutions to programming, lacking “the optimization and robustness of considerations that characterize high-quality student submissions,” according to the article.

    The findings demonstrate that AI is capable of passing a rigorous undergraduate course, but that LLM systems can only accomplish pattern recognition rather than deep understanding. The results also indicated to researchers that well-designed coursework can evaluate students’ capabilities in engineering.

    So what? Based on their findings, researchers recommend faculty members integrate project work and open-ended design challenges to evaluate students’ understanding and technical capabilities, particularly in synthesizing information and making practical judgements.

    In the same vein, they suggested that faculty should design questions that evaluate human expertise by requiring students to explain their rationale or justify their response, rather than just arrive at the correct answer.

    ChatGPT was also unable to grasp system integration, robustness and optimization over basic implementation, so focusing on these requirements would provide better evaluation metrics.

    Researchers also noted that because ChatGPT is capable of answering practice problems, instruction should focus less on routine technical work and more on higher-level engineering concepts and problem-solving skills. “The challenge ahead lies not in preventing AI use, but in developing educational approaches that leverage these tools while continuing to cultivate genuine engineering expertise,” researchers wrote.

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  • What’s in House Republicans’ Risk-Sharing Plan?

    What’s in House Republicans’ Risk-Sharing Plan?

    Under a new accountability measure recently proposed as part of a larger House budget bill, colleges would have to pay millions of dollars each year to reimburse the government for their students’ unpaid loans.

    The plan builds on an idea—known as risk-sharing—that lawmakers and policy analysts have been toying with since at least 2015. As the federal student loan portfolio grew, the goal was to require colleges to have some skin in the game and incentivize them to improve student outcomes.

    And while the concept has gained some bipartisan support in theory, higher education institutions have repeatedly argued that it is difficult to create a fair accountability system when many of the variables involved are out of an institution’s control and depend on the decisions of individual students and borrowers.

    So far, the higher ed lobby has successfully defeated proposed risk-sharing plans such as the one included in a Republican bill from the last Congress, known as the College Cost Reduction Act. But now, an almost identical proposal is back and at the heart of House Republicans’ plan to cut at least $330 billion from higher education programs over the next 10 years. The overall legislation, which aims to cut $1.5 trillion from the budget, could receive a vote on the House floor this week, though some lawmakers have threatened to block the measure amid concerns that it doesn’t include deeper cuts. Even if the bill fails, it serves as a marker of what House Republicans hope to accomplish moving forward.

    Many higher education policy experts warn that practically speaking, the latest risk-sharing plan relies on a complicated formula that’s essentially a black box. Released in late April, the proposal has not been tested enough to know its ramifications, they say, and the limited data available is inconclusive. Some analyses released by conservative groups say the program will be a financial boost for efficient public institutions and penalize bloated private ones. But one study conducted by a lobbying group suggests that public regional and minority-serving institutions that serve high populations of low-income students will get hit the hardest.

    “Fundamentally it’s an astonishing level of federal overreach to essentially lump in all institutions of higher education together—public, private, for-profit—and run a convoluted formula to determine winners and losers at the federal level and then redistribute funding,” said Craig Lindwarm, senior vice president of government affairs for the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities.

    Democratic politicians also argue that the purpose of the legislation is not truly to hold colleges accountable for student outcomes like graduation rates and income levels, but to crack down on what the government considers overly liberal institutions and fund President Donald Trump’s priorities.

    Even some conservative supporters acknowledge that it’s difficult to know the full scope of the bill’s potential impact this early. But they say risk-sharing is a necessary tool to penalize colleges that provide a poor return on investment and ensure the production of a well-prepared, financially stable workforce. They also suggest that the incentives such as additional grant funding to institutions that keep costs low and graduation rates high will offset the penalty for most public institutions.

    “With any policy change, we’re not going to be able to predict in advance 100 percent of how this is going to affect everyone, everywhere, all the time. But I don’t think that should be an excuse to not make policy changes,” said Preston Cooper, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute. “I still think the data we have gives us a general idea of which sorts of institutions would be affected and the magnitudes of the penalties involved.”

    So How Does It Work?

    The proposed risk-sharing plan would kick in for new loans starting in July 2027, said an aide for Republicans on the House Education and the Workforce Committee. That means colleges wouldn’t be penalized for disruptions to the student loan system that occurred during the pandemic or efforts during the Biden and Trump administrations to overhaul repayment.

    If we don’t even understand how this works, why the heck are we passing it? I mean, it’s a concept, but I don’t think it’s the concept that people think it is.”

    Jason Delisle, nonresident senior fellow at the Urban Institute

    And because borrowers don’t have to start paying back their loans until six months after they graduate or stop out, institutions likely won’t have to pay a penalty until 2029 or 2030 at the earliest, the aide added.

    But from then on, institutional payments would be calculated annually—major by major—for each new cohort of borrowers and would continue until they’ve paid off their loans. The amount per cohort could change from year to year, depending on factors such as borrower behavior, postgraduation earnings and college costs. But it’s expected to grow as more and more cohorts are added to the lump sum.

    Under the bill, the amount per cohort would be calculated using a three-part formula, which is largely unchanged from what Republicans proposed last Congress in the CCRA.

    The first step is to determine a college’s risk-sharing liability, which is how much each institution owes the government. To do that, the formula looks at the difference between how much students were supposed to repay during a given year and how much they actually did. The calculation takes into account the value of any missed or partial payments as well as any interest that the government waived or principal contributions it matched, the committee aide said. It does not, however, include debt waived through programs like Public Service Loan Forgiveness, which was a concern for institutions.

    This is the part of the formula that raises the most questions for institutions, as the mechanics of exactly how the risk-sharing liability is calculated are not clearly outlined in the legislation or in a CCRA database published by the education committee Republicans in 2024. And even if it were, much of the data needed to run the formula is not publicly accessible.

    “How the formula works is the million-dollar question, and something that we’ve been trying to work on for a year and a half,” one policy expert said. “It’s very complicated and relies on metrics that aren’t publicly available.”

    House committee aides counter that colleges have access to student borrower data via the National Student Loan Data System, which can be used to predict future risk-sharing payments. They also point to a recent Dear Colleague letter reminding colleges of their responsibility to monitor borrower payments.

    But even then, higher ed lobbyists say, it’s not clear who will be responsible for calculating the liability. If any part of that responsibility falls to campus financial aid administrators, higher ed groups say the plan will increase the administrative burden on colleges.

    “If I were a lobbyist, I would just say to all of my members, go to your congressman and say, ‘We don’t know what this does,’” said Jason Delisle, a policy analyst who has worked at think tanks across the political spectrum but is now based at Urban Institute where he’s a nonresident senior fellow. “If we don’t even understand how this works, why the heck are we passing it? I mean, it’s a concept, but I don’t think it’s the concept that people think it is.”

    Incentives to Lower Costs

    Once that risk-sharing liability is known, the next step in the formula is to figure out how much of that liability fee a college will have to pay. That’s done using what the legislation calls an earning-price ratio, which compares students’ earnings to the federal poverty line and college cost. A higher EPR means a lower final payment. For example, if an institution’s EPR is 0.3, or 30 percent, then it has to pay 70 percent of the original liability.

    To further offset the risk-sharing penalty, colleges can also qualify for a new pot of funding proposed in the bill called the PROMISE Grant, which is the third step of the formula. How much a college would get in PROMISE funding depends on the total value of Pell Grants received and the graduation rate of Pell-eligible students. This grant is funded by other colleges’ risk-sharing payments.

    Rep. Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican and chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee, is leading the effort to cut billions from higher education programs.

    Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images

    So, according to data from the House committee, the State Technical College of Missouri should get $3,230,130.50 in PROMISE grants. But the community college would have to pay $9,688, bringing its net gain down to $3,220,442.50. Washington University in St. Louis, however, would receive no PROMISE Grant funding and lose about $3.5 million. (The House Committee data only lists the final risk-sharing payment—not original liability values or EPRs.)

    In theory, this data demonstrates how the EPR and the PROMISE Grant are supposed to support colleges that serve low-income students, but many higher ed lobbyists are worried the program will actually do the opposite. That’s largely because colleges can only receive a PROMISE Grant if they agree to lock in tuition rates for each new freshman class. If they can keep tuition costs low, then their EPR scores will only be strong. Some lobbyists say that neither is a feasible option for public colleges and minority-serving institutions, which rely heavily on funding from the state.

    “It’s not a coincidence that some of our schools that would get hit the hardest are in states that invest very little in public higher education. Some of our schools in Pennsylvania and Arizona, for example, would fare extremely poorly, and it’s by and large because tuition levels are such a determinative component as it relates to the penalty assessment,” said MacGregor Obergfell, director of governmental affairs at APLU. “To think of what traditional conservative orthodoxy is, it seems pretty unusual that a conservative position is using the federal government to punish state institutions for decisions made by their states.”

    Reward or Penalty?

    Some higher ed groups also noted that much of the formula either depends on or fails to acknowledge factors outside of a college’s control. Much of this has to do with unpredictable borrower behavior, but there are other factors at play, too; for example, when calculating discounts with the EPR, the formula doesn’t account for differences in the cost of living from college to college.

    “Institutions in higher-cost areas are at more of a disadvantage than other institutions,” said Karen McCarthy, vice president of public policy and federal relations for the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. “They have to charge higher prices to reflect higher costs of labor, maintaining facilities and all those types of things.”

    The burden of risk-sharing payments may be so high that colleges elect to opt out of the federal student loans program entirely, she added: “Ultimately it would have an impact on lower-income students who have a need both for a Pell Grant and a direct loan to help them meet their cost of attendance.”

    Of colleges that enrolled 70 percent or more low-income, Pell-eligible students, 96 percent would have to pay a risk-sharing penalty and 91 percent would lose money over all when PROMISE Grant is factored in, according to the American Council on Education’s analysis of the House data.

    The committee countered that finding with its own analysis of the data, sent to Inside Higher Ed, showing how colleges that enroll the highest share of low-income students should see about $99 more per student, while those that enroll the lowest share would lose about $66 per student.

    The ACE analysis as well as the committee’s data are among the few studies that show the estimated impact of the previously proposed risk-sharing plan. None have been updated yet to reflect the latest iteration.

    Another analysis from Cooper, the AEI fellow, estimated that public institutions as a whole should get more money under the plan, but private nonprofits are expected to face a substantial penalty.

    Although critics point to how the plan would affect individual institutions, particularly small, underresourced schools, proponents argue that the focus should be on the impact to higher education over all, and that colleges can lower their costs to see a payoff.

    “Because the net gains are significantly larger, the sector as a whole sees a net gain even though more institutions have net losses,” Cooper said. “So, the upside for institutions here is that there are significant rewards available to those which can improve their outcomes.”

    At the end of the day, it’s all about how you choose to look at the data.

    “I would just like to see [the formula of risk-sharing] play out for a couple of hypothetical colleges based on data that has some bearing on reality,” said Delisle from Urban Institute. “And that’s a hard thing to come by right now.”

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  • Defense Department Caps Universities’ Indirect Cost Rates

    Defense Department Caps Universities’ Indirect Cost Rates

    The Department of Defense is planning to cap indirect cost reimbursement rates for higher education institutions at 15 percent, according to a May 14 memo signed by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. 

    “The Department of Defense (DoD) is the steward of the most critical budget in the Federal Government—the budget that defends our Nation, equips our warfighters, and secures our future. That stewardship demands discipline. It demands accountability. And it demands that we say no to waste,” wrote Hegseth.

    The memo directs the DOD to develop the new policy within 21 days, marking the fourth federal agency—including the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation—that has enacted a plan to cap indirect cost rates at 15 percent. For decades, universities have negotiated with the federal government to calculate bespoke indirect cost reimbursement rates to pay for research costs that support multiple grant-funded projects, such as facilities maintenance, specialized equipment and administrative personnel. (The paragraph has been updated.)

    Universities and their trade associations have already sued the NIH, DOE and NSF over these plans, arguing that capping indirect costs would hurt research production and compromise global competitiveness, all while violating multiple aspects of the Administrative Procedure Act, including bypassing congressional authority required to alter indirect cost rates. So far, federal judges have blocked indirect cost caps from taking effect at the NIH and DOE. The NSF agreed to pause the cap until June 13 in order to proceed to summary judgment, which is a way to resolve the case quickly without a full trial.

    Matt Owens, president of COGR, which represents research institutions, condemned the DOD’s newly announced plan. 

    “DOD research performed by universities is a force multiplier and has helped to make the U.S. military the most effective in the world. From GPS, stealth technology, advanced body armor, to precision guided missiles and night vision technology, university-based DOD research makes our military stronger,” Owens said in a statement. “A cut to DOD indirect cost reimbursements is a cut to national security. Less funding for research means less security for our nation.”

    Hegseth’s memo claimed that capping the Defense Department’s indirect cost rate for universities would “save up to $900 [million] per year on a go-forward basis,” while also claiming that the department’s “objective is not only to save money, but to repurpose those funds—toward applied innovation, operational capability, and strategic deterrence.” The NIH has also made similarly incompatible assertions. It touted on social media its indirect rate cap plan’s potential to save taxpayers more than $4 billion, while a lawyer for the NIH told a federal judge that the cut was simply a reallocation of funds. 

    The Defense Department’s plans “will not stop at new grants,” Hegseth wrote, adding that “meaningful savings can also be achieved by revisiting the terms of existing awards to institutions of higher education.” The memo directed the under secretary of defense for research and engineering to do the following within 30 days:

    • Initiate a departmentwide effort to renegotiate indirect cost rates on existing financial assistance awards to institutions of higher education. “Wherever cooperative, bilateral modification is possible, it shall be pursued.”
    • “Where bilateral agreement is not achieved, identify and recommend lawful paths to terminate and reissue the award under revised terms.”
    • “Complete renegotiations or terminations for all contracts by 180 days from the date of this memorandum.”

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  • How I Lost Faith in My University’s Mission (opinion)

    How I Lost Faith in My University’s Mission (opinion)

    I am currently chair of the philosophy department at the University of Utah. I have taught at “the U” for 32 years. We are a flagship but not an elite university; we admit 89 percent of applicants. Our students range from quite unprepared to extremely capable. For the most part, I have loved my job and have put my heart and soul into it. I have always been proud to be on this faculty helping students at all levels of academic readiness acquire skills in reading, writing, speaking and reasoning that enhance their lives and prepare them for virtually any job. But recently, my pride has evaporated and been replaced with feelings of grief and shame.

    This year—my first as chair—has seen profound upheaval. In January 2024, shortly before my term began, the State Legislature passed an anti-DEI bill, prohibiting, among other things, offices and programs related to diversity, equity or inclusion. Administrators were required to purge these three words from university websites and other documents, such as RPT—retention, promotion and tenure review—guidelines, and the university administration interpreted the law as requiring that the Women’s Resource Center, the Black Cultural Center and the LGBT Resource Center be shuttered.

    The state has also imposed a “bathroom bill” requiring trans university students to use locker rooms aligning with their sex assigned at birth, has banned Pride flags in public spaces (and in faculty offices if they can be seen through a window), and now requires faculty to post their syllabi in a publicly searchable database. It also prohibits university presidents from taking a stand on any issue that does not bear upon the “mission, role or pedagogical objectives” of the institution. And finally, as the coup de grâce for academic freedom and faculty expertise, it has funded and established the Center for Civic Excellence at Utah State University, mandating that all students take general education courses on the topics of Western civilization and the rise of Christianity. The law establishing the center identifies it as a pilot program to be rolled out to other Utah universities in the future.

    Then there is the state of Utah’s version of the national campaign against alleged “waste, fraud and abuse.” Recently passed laws dictate the process by which all post-tenure reviews of faculty must be conducted, curtail shared governance and cut state funds to all Utah public institutions by 10 percent ($60.5 million). Universities can have the funds “reallocated” if they use them for high-demand, high-wage majors. As a result, we lost our History and Philosophy of Science major, which drew some of our best students, many of them double majoring in STEM subjects and working toward careers in medicine and public health. To be clear, eliminating this major will reduce opportunities for students while producing no savings whatsoever; offering it requires no additional staff, advisers or courses beyond what is already in place for our philosophy major. These funding cuts also mean that tenure-line faculty in my department will receive a zero percent raise this year.

    In addition to the state’s actions, the upper administration—in seeming alignment with Facebook’s motto of “move fast and break things”—has instituted so many changes in such a short time it is hard to keep track. It abruptly revamped the advising system, brought four colleges under the umbrella of a Colleges and Schools of Liberal Arts and Sciences in a “shared services” arrangement, and keeps rolling out new “student success initiatives.” Whether these changes are wise or not, the pace at which they were made imposed a crushing amount of (mostly stultifying) work on deans and department chairs. Aside from refereeing a few manuscripts for journals, I have not read a piece of philosophy since I became chair, much less written one. In the midst of this, the dean of my college, a strong supporter of philosophy, resigned in the middle of the fall semester and was replaced by someone from outside our college, essentially putting us in receivership.

    While all this is happening, my youngest child, who is queer, is deciding where to attend college. He applied to the University of Utah, where he was admitted to the Honors College and received a scholarship. But how can I send him here? I fear for his safety no matter where he lives in our current hate-filled political climate, but still I hesitate to subject him to the environment on my own campus. I will likely incur a hefty bill, then, so he can attend a university out of state.

    I had more or less come to terms with this constraint, and was also managing to persevere in my job, when something happened that finally took the wind out of my sails: The president of the university announced, to the surprise of faculty, that returned missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be eligible to receive up to 12 college credits for their service to the church.

    I am galled by what all this says about who matters at my university. While students like my child can’t even have a designated room on campus to hang out in with like-minded others—and while the main symbol reminding us of the existence and dignity of students like him is banned from public spaces—returned LDS missionaries, who have an entire institute across from campus dedicated to their spiritual support, can get a full semester of credit, at a greatly reduced cost, essentially for going door to door trying to persuade people to join their church. This set of priorities is so wrong-headed that it verges, for me, on surreal. And yet the administration sees no irony or hypocrisy in naming its Office of Student Experience “U Belong.”

    Soon I will be hosting a retirement party for a wonderful colleague who joined the faculty one year before I did. In another era, I would have been sad to see him go but glad to be continuing in what I regard as my vocation. Now I feel nothing but envy. It is time for me, too, to retire, but, alas, that is not an option, because I have four years of out-of-state tuition to pay.

    Cynthia Stark is a professor and chair of the philosophy department at the University of Utah.

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  • International education in Australia needs an urgent rethink – Campus Review

    International education in Australia needs an urgent rethink – Campus Review

    The federal government’s recent decision to again raise the international student visa application fee to $2,000 has reignited concerns about the country’s approach to international education.

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  • It’s the Home Office that’s misselling UK higher education

    It’s the Home Office that’s misselling UK higher education

    On 23 May 2023, then home secretary Suella Braverman announced a package of measures to damp down the higher education sector’s contribution to net migration. The removal of the right for taught postgraduates to bring dependants dominated the headlines, and has loomed large over arguments about international recruitment ever since.

    One of the other changes that attracted less publicity – indeed, it was welcomed by the sector – was the elimination of international students’ ability to switch out of the student route onto a work visa before their studies have been completed (with the exception of PhD students, who would still be allowed to after 24 months, in recognition of the fact they may be employed by their university).

    This new policy was brought into effect by a statement of changes to the immigration rules on 17 July 2023. As set out by paragraphs 6.5 and 6.6 of the explanatory memorandum, the ban on “switching” came into effect at 3pm that same day, counter to usual practice of leaving at least 21 days before immigration rule changes apply. “The Government considers this departure from that convention to be necessary and proportionate,” it is noted, in order to “reduce the possibility of a large number of applications for […] switching being made in the 21 days usually available between Immigration Rules changes being laid and coming into force.”

    A petition opposing the change was launched, eventually gaining 15,579 signatures:

    We want Government to postpone the rule implemented on 17 July 2023 which prevents existing students from moving to a Skilled Worker without completing studies. We believe this rule should only be implemented on new students starting in January 2024.

    We believe this change is unfair and unjustified as when students came the rules allowed them to switch onto the Skilled Worker visa route without completing studies and existing students should not be prevented from switching in this way. The rule should be implemented to new students starting from January 2024.

    There should be no retrospective effect on law, it should be implemented on new students coming from January 2024 onwards.

    The Home Office was unmoved, saying in its response that “the student visa is for study” and that “we needed to crack down on broader abuse of the system and prevent people using the Student route as a backdoor to looking for work.”

    On the charge that this was a “retrospective” application of the law, the response said:

    When someone is switching immigration routes, the rules that apply are those in place at the time they switch, not the rules in place when they first entered the UK under a different route entirely.

    One student affected by the change was Ashraful Islam, from Bangladesh, who had come to the UK on a student visa in January 2023. On 20 July of that year – three days after the statement of changes – he applied to switch to a five-year skilled worker visa, with a plan to work in the care sector. He had a certificate of sponsorship from an employer dated 16 June.

    His application was rejected by the Home Office – and he applied for a judicial review. This was refused in both January and April 2024, so he went to the Court of Appeal. The case was rejected for a final time in April of this year.

    His case rested on a line in the new rules which said:

    An application which does not meet all the validity requirements for a Skilled Worker may be rejected as invalid and not considered.

    The argument was that the presence of may within the rules (“may be rejected”) left discretion to the Secretary of State to make a decision. He also pointed out that his certificate of sponsorship had been issued before the rule change, the rapid implementation of the new rule departed from convention, the application was made very shortly after the change came into force, he had not been aware of the change’s effect, and that he met all other criteria. Given these facts, were the Home Office empowered to exercise discretion there were a variety of reasons why it should choose to do so.

    The judges agreed that this was not a correct interpretation of what the word may was doing in this context – rather, the “natural and ordinary meaning” was that the Home Office is entitled to reject a non-compliant application “without any consideration whatever of the underlying merits of the application.”

    The court did however rule that the Home Office was not able to claim its legal costs from the appellant, as it had failed to submit an argument to the court until 17 March, two weeks before the hearing, despite permission to appeal having been granted in July 2024.

    Nobody cares

    The final tossing out of Ashraful Islam’s persistent attempts to get redress through the courts is probably the last glimmer of attention to a piece of immigration policy that nobody really cared about.

    You would get long odds on switching from student to work visas ever being allowed again in any future migration rules. In the run-up, Universities UK International spoke for most of the higher education sector when it said:

    We would welcome the proposals to end switching from student and work visas where students have not completed their course. This would close an unhelpful loophole and ensure that international students that choose the UK finish their programmes before they are able to move into full-time employment.

    Universities’ work was greatly complicated by international students who had seemingly applied solely in order to get to the UK and then immediately look for employment. There are a whole host of incentives to seek to prevent this from happening, from tuition fees being paid in instalments to UKVI compliance metrics penalising institutions with lower completion rates. And it somehow goes further than this, striking at a sense of what university study is for.

    It’s hardly good for students either, who are paying enormous amounts of upfront tuition fees, visa charges, and in many cases commission to recruitment agents, relative to the worth of the education they receive during a shortened time as a student in the UK.

    But you couldn’t quite imagine a world in which home students were legally prevented from dropping out of university and going into employment (though admittedly a regulatory focus on continuation along with a completely inflexible student finance system put plenty of pressure in the system to prevent this from happening). The government’s whole framing of international students in recent years has become dominated by a tension over whether or not they are supposed to be finding employment. Like this, not like that. And equally in the higher education sector, the change in tenor around an institution’s relationship with its international students that the reintroduction of post-study work permissions engendered has still not really played out in full.

    The corresponding rise in importance of international recruitment agents and sub-agents is a big part of this. The Financial Times’ splash last weekend on how students are being “lured” to the UK was a welcome bit of attention to the issue. One student had been told that they would be eligible for indefinite leave to remain after five years on the student and graduate route – neither qualifies. Another felt she had been misled over the availability and remuneration of part-time work. We’ve covered stories of much worse practice on Wonkhe in the past.

    Recruitment agents (and a wider ecosystem of peers, advisors and influencers) are undoubtedly encouraging and facilitating young people in other countries who would like to work in the UK to find ways to take advantage of student visas. One commentator is quoted over on University World News this week in pretty stark terms:

    One agent once told me that the student visa route, despite upfront tuition payments, was ‘cheaper and less risky than paying a people smuggler’.

    The Home Office’s approach to policymaking has become a whack-a-mole for these instances of unintended consequences – with the result that the majority who would actually like a fulfilling university experience followed by a successful professional life, whether in the UK or elsewhere, are constantly having their experiences made more tawdry and more unfair. And this is to say nothing of the fact that constantly changing how the visa system works creates a perfect state of flux, confusion and misinformation for unscrupulous actors to take advantage of.

    If it was just about switching, that would be one thing. But the changes to the post-study work landscape have proliferated in the last three years – and despite what the government may protest, it is one retrospective change after another if you are an international student.

    Now wait for last year

    From 6 February 2024 the Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS) main rate rose from £624 to £1,035 a year, a 66 per cent increase. This had at least been announced in July 2023 – with the rationale of funding an NHS pay rise – along with an increase to visa fees. The cost of a graduate visa, for example, rose by 15 per cent to £822.

    In neither case did we see quite the level of haste from the Home Office that had been the case with banning switching. But there is still a clear “retrospective” element to it, given that many students moving onto post-study work would have already signed up for their student visa before the changes had been made – in some cases, long before. It doesn’t really make any odds whether those on student visas are given a handful of hours, or 21 days, or several months – they are a captive audience.

    The increase in visa fees and health surcharge also applied to the skilled worker route (with the exception of certain healthcare occupations for the IHS) – again, those moving from study or graduate visas into work visas were charged far in excess of what they could have expected would be the case. For those with dependants, yet more. The IHS is an annual charge, but all years are payable in advance.

    If we consider an international student’s time at university and subsequent entry into the labour market as one “product”, then this would be a clear example of drip-pricing – showing the purchaser an initial price and then including additional, unavoidable charges later in the purchase process. Elsewhere on Wonkhe, Jim has written regularly about how universities themselves are required to avoid this in their marketing and contractual arrangements with students, especially under more stringent CMA guidance which is in effect as of this year.

    The counter-argument would then be that study and work are two separate things – going back to the Home Office response to the switching petition, it’s a “different route entirely” – as well as the fact that the government is not selling a product, it’s operating the country’s border system. But as the international education strategy and many other policy papers spell out, post-study work arrangements are designed to attract students to study in the UK, despite all the subsequent handwringing. They are part of the package. The Home Office might be safe from judicial review here, but that doesn’t mean it’s right.

    The changes last year went far beyond price-gouging. From April the baseline minimum salary for skilled worker visas was increased from £26,200 to £38,700, and the minimum salary specific to particular jobs (the “going rate”) was also substantially increased. Student and graduate visa holders benefit from a discount rate here, but this was still a massive inflation-busting restriction on the jobs that students would be able to get sponsorship for. For many, this was a large part of the reason to come to the UK to study – to progress from university into a career, in the same way that it is for domestic students. For plenty, this was essentially the only reason they had chosen the UK higher education system over international rivals – let’s be honest.

    Again, for international students already at university in the UK, and a large swathe of graduate visa holders, the changes were implemented far too quickly for there to be any possibility of them getting onto skilled work routes before the cut-off (let’s remember, “switching” is banned, and morally suspect). James Cleverly’s statement to Parliament in December was clear this was not retrospectively unfair on those already here:

    Those already in the Skilled work route, and applications made before the rules change, will not be subject to the new £38,700 salary threshold when they change employment, extend, or settle.

    So that’s alright then. Unless you are a student, or a graduate route visa holder not yet in a position to find permanent long-term employment.

    The raised salary threshold was well in excess of the average salary for typical graduate roles in many parts of the UK. It’s unsurprising that both the Scottish and Welsh governments have been hammering the point that two years of graduate route (unsponsored) work is unlikely to allow young people to progress to a point in their careers where they are being paid enough to qualify for the skilled worker visa, given average wages in both nations. The same is true in many parts of England. If you wanted to design a policy to encourage graduates to head to London (and, longer-term, to start their educational journeys at random newly-opened branch campuses in the capital), it would probably look a lot like this.

    So now international students will be paying much more in immigration charges than they could have realistically expected upon coming to the UK to study. And the kinds of work available to them for longer-term settlement have completely changed, as has its geography. Could it get any worse?

    There’s no way this white paper’s CMA compliant

    The latest round of proposed changes to migration policy, as heralded in last Monday’s white paper, represent a new low in terms of changing the rules of the game while it’s already in motion.

    We don’t yet know when the reduction in length of the graduate route will come into effect (for UG and PGT) – next January feels most likely if you had to guess. The detail remains to be seen, but it feels wholly plausible that many students currently studying on courses which finish after this date will see themselves with a smaller post-study work entitlement than they expected when they signed up.

    But as much as this change and the prospect of a fee levy may have caught the sector’s attention – for their as-yet-unknown impact on recruitment and institutional finances – there are much more flagrant examples of rug-pulling in what the government’s proposing.

    Really it’s a cumulative effect. Labour’s overall plan to link up skills and migration is premised on a lot of additional charges and eligibility changes for work visas. For example, the Immigration Skills Charge which employers must pay when sponsoring a skilled worker visa is being hiked by 32 per cent to more than £1,300 a year (for medium and large employers). This (further) discourages companies from sponsoring anyone on the graduate route – ironically, students going directly to the skilled worker visa on completion of their course are exempt, further calling into question how the graduate route is being conceptualised.

    Visa thresholds for skilled work, already massively hiked in 2024, are likely to rise further in many professions that international graduates might have been planning to go into. The planned abolition of the immigration salary list, which provides salary discounts for certain occupations, will see to this – though we don’t know the detail yet. Many occupations will be removed from eligibility altogether. The Migration Advisory Committee has also just said that it would like to further review the “new entrant” discount rate for students (and presumably graduate visa holders):

    The impacts of arrangements for new entrants since the 2024 salary threshold increase are uncertain and would be worth reviewing in more detail.

    All these policy measures and the question marks hanging over them greatly complicate the ability of current students to plan where they are going – and represent a fundamental break with how the system was working when they signed up to study in the UK.

    Worst of all is the change to routes to citizenship and indefinite leave to remain – again, ill-defined and uncertain in its exact implementation for the moment. But the white paper promises that in the future it will take 10 years to qualify for settlement, rather than the current five. For one thing, indefinite leave to remain brings with it eligibility for home tuition fees – groups like Hong Kong Watch are already highlighting how this may mean young people on BN(O) visas needing to wait an extra five years to qualify. In England, at least – the Scottish government has already changed the rules to allow them to qualify after three years’ residency.

    And for all the young people from around the world who at some point in the last few years made the decision to plan for a long-term career in the UK? One graduate route visa holder greeted last Monday’s white paper announcements with the following post on social media:

    It’s official: UK graduate visas are a £3000 worth scam. To anyone who’s reading this and pondering about where to study out of the European countries: do not repeat my mistakes and waste your time, energy, and money on boosting the UK economy for nothing in return.

    £3000 is roughly the graduate visa fee plus two years of the immigration health surcharge. The particular policy change that had spurred the post was the change to long-term residency:

    I’m so mad at myself right now! I spent a huge amount of money and time on looking for a sponsored position in this country only to find out that I won’t be able to do it and that if I do land a sponsored role, it won’t mean my whole life isn’t in a precarious situation for 10 YEARS.

    They go onto say that they now regret having studied in the UK, and that they will now do their best to warn off other prospective students and graduates (as well as hoping to “magically land an incredibly high-paying job” in the window before further changes come into effect).

    And in the middle

    Plenty of international students will be confused right now – or furious. Most if not all international applicants will not be sure about exactly what they would be getting into if they came to the UK to study in the next year.

    Into the information void inevitably swoops networks of recruiters and advisors, many acting on slices of commission from higher education institutions, to over-promise and distort what post-study work in the UK is like – or at least to act as if they have the answers.

    Universities are stuck in the middle. Agents will still be keen to “lure” students to the UK, and in the worst parts of the industry this will continue to involve outright deception. And the government is once again making changes to post-study work that retrospectively affect students, in ways that would have affected their decision-making if they had known. There will be a generation of graduates going back to their home countries with cautionary tales of how international education is not how it was promised to them.

    This isn’t to say that the higher education sector is entirely divorced from both these acts of misselling. The behaviour of agents should be within the sector’s gift to improve, and some steps appear to be being taken, though without more transparency it’s hard to know to what extent it’s just talk. As for the Home Office, it would be nice if the impact of changes on current students would feature much more prominently in the sector’s lobbying efforts, as compared to hypothetical applicant numbers.

    But practically, the next few years look set to have continued moral challenges for universities around international students, not just financial ones. UKVI might be cracking the whip, but increased scrutiny of international students’ attendance and progress cannot be allowed to become an intrusive refrain echoing through their lives on campus. The graduate route has changed and could change further, and realistically will not be a route into permanent work in the UK for many – so universities need to think how their graduates can actually get something fulfilling out of it, and evaluate whether this is working.

    International students and applicants alike will need clear, honest advice about how the visa system works – from the university itself, rather than those with a financial stake in the ensuing decisions – as well as honesty when things are shit and honesty when what’s coming down the line is not clear.

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  • In an era of permacrisis, higher education needs to get better at coming up with solutions

    In an era of permacrisis, higher education needs to get better at coming up with solutions

    Readers of Wonkhe need no reintroduction to the storm surge of bad news that, wave after wave, is washing over the sector’s defences and causing the majority of UK institutions to take drastic financial evasive action.

    Given that the government’s response to the growing financial crisis in UK higher education seems to be “let’s do a ranking of vice chancellor salaries compared to graduate salaries” and “let’s introduce an international student levy that the Australian Government decided was a bad idea,” it also seems pretty clear that the sector isn’t exactly cutting through with its political affairs arguments.

    In other words, the sector has to generate our own solutions to the problems we face.

    On the back foot and retreating

    On 25 June The Venn University Leaders Forum will convene senior academic and professional service leaders from across the sector to provide them with the space, inspiration and facilitation needed to help develop these solutions.

    The Venn will feature interactive sessions focused on geopolitical scenario response, unconferences, challenges “from the vice chancellor’s desk” and perspectives from North America and from outside higher education. Most importantly it will take the conversations in the margins’ of conferences that so many of us find the most valuable part of these forums – and provide the space and format for that to happen during the main programme.

    We need a better playbook

    In adjusting to permacrisis, one of the challenges universities and the sector has as a whole is that we risk spending all our time and energy raising the shield to fend off each individual wave of issues; and wielding the sword only in a defensive, reactive measures to trim staff numbers, cut courses and reduce expenditure.

    There are two risks to this approach. First, institutions can’t “take a breath” to think about how they adapt to the new reality, leading to constant reactive churn, burnout of staff, and leadership feeling under siege. This reminds us of that moment in about February 2021 when the adrenaline of dealing with successive Covid impacts and new variants started to seriously ebb away from those within universities, and institutional leaders started to think longer term about how to turn ‘crisis-response mode’ into ‘crisis-as-usual’.

    Second, the sector misses the tsunami lurking on the horizon and fails to invest in measures that either avert or prepare for a much larger impact. Given that on almost every occasion in the last decade we’ve said, “oh, that couldn’t possibly happen” only for the Darkest Timeline to be victor – it’s now odds-on that a Farage-Badenoch ticket will sweep to victory in the next General Election. How is higher education preparing for this possibility?

    “Telling people what do” isn’t working

    When I was in the US recently as part of the CASE Global Leaders Programme, a senior representative from one of the US university associations said they had a shared bingo card with their colleagues that they used every time a university president said “we just need to tell our story better… we need a ‘Got Milk’ campaign.” But we’ve been trying versions of that for a while, and nothing has changed. It’s no longer sufficient for higher education to “tell” better. It needs to “do” better.

    For universities, the question is now no longer “how do you do more with less?” Instead, it is becoming “how do you do less with less?” – and what do you stop doing entirely? As difficult as the current situation may seem, the sector still has the resources, political capital and ingenuity to make bold, impactful choices about what it does differently. This includes new models of delivery that might change the public and political narrative, shift the dial financially and maybe even divert the worst case scenario. Critically it has the opportunity to look at what is happening around the world – most strikingly in the US – and learn what to do (and what not to do).

    This article is published in association with The Venn – find out more about The Venn and apply to attend here. Wonkhe is partnering with The Venn to create a dialogue between the event and our upcoming Festival of Higher Education on 11–12 November – early bird tickets are now on sale.

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  • Florida A&M Hires DeSantis Ally as President

    Florida A&M Hires DeSantis Ally as President

    Florida A&M’s Board of Trustees voted 8 to 4 Friday to hire Marva Johnson as president.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Jemal Countess/Getty Images for NOBCO | JHVEPhoto/iStock/Getty Images

    Following a contentious selection process, Florida A&M University hired a new president with no experience working in higher education but long-standing ties to Republican governor Ron DeSantis.

    Marva Johnson, a lobbyist for Charter Communications, faced sharp opposition from students and alumni, who dubbed her “MAGA Marva.” But despite questions about her lack of experience, Florida A&M’s board voted 8 to 4 in a Friday meeting to make her the next president.

    Johnson was also criticized by community members and board chair Kristin Harper for her salary demands, which included base pay of $750,000 plus performance bonuses. (Two other candidates requested compensation in the $500,000 range, while one other was negotiable.)

    Harper was one of the four trustees who voted against hiring Johnson.

    “In an age of merit-based hiring decisions, how can one justify settling for a candidate who does not meet all of the position criteria? Or turning a blind eye to exceptionally qualified candidates?” Harper asked.

    She added that FAMU community members “have been very clear” with their feedback.

    But other trustees emphasized Johnson’s experience in the political world. Jamal Brown, the Faculty Senate president, who sits on the board, argued that FAMU needed a president who has “access and political connections” to ensure the university’s financial success. In voting for Johnson, he argued that “this moment calls for someone who understands the systems that fund and govern us, because right now our survival depends on how we navigate those systems.”

    While Johnson has never worked in higher education in any capacity, she spent eight years on the Florida State Board of Education, including time as chair. During the hiring process, critics highlighted her lack of experience, as did some trustees who voted against her.

    Johnson beat out Donald Palm, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Florida A&M, who received four votes. Other candidates included Rondall Allen, provost and vice president for academic affairs at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, and Gerald Hector, senior vice president for administration and finance at the University of Central Florida.

    Palm, the internal candidate, was overwhelmingly endorsed by FAMU’s alumni association.

    At a tense meet-and-greet with Johnson on Wednesday, the candidate assured the university community she was “not a Trojan horse” and promised she “would fight and win for FAMU.”

    However, critics have argued she failed to articulate a clear vision for the university.

    Additional drama accompanied the hire when the board cut Harper out of contract negotiations. While board chairs have traditionally negotiated the contract with incoming presidents at Florida A&M, trustees voted to delegate that responsibility to another member at Friday’s meeting.

    “I take personal offense at what is happening,” Harper said during that discussion.

    Another controversy arose earlier in the search amid speculation that Johnson was added to a list of three finalists at the last minute. Last month trustee Ernie Ellison called to restart the search, arguing, “There are too many clouds hanging over this process.” He stepped down earlier this month and was quickly replaced by a new DeSantis appointee, who then voted to hire Johnson.

    Johnson steps into the FAMU job, which is currently held by an interim, after Larry Robinson, who led the university from 2017 to 2024, resigned amid controversy over a fraudulent gift.

    Last spring Florida A&M announced at commencement that the university had received a $237 million donation from Greg Gerami, a relatively unknown businessman with no connection to the institution. Florida A&M appeared to ignore warning signs that Gerami had also pledged $95 million to Coastal Carolina University in 2020, despite having no ties to CCU other than previously dating an employee. Gerami walked that donation back due to what he viewed as disrespect by officials at Coastal Carolina. Gerami’s FAMU donation was later invalidated.

    Despite the opposition to her candidacy, Johnson fits the profile favored in recent years by the governing boards at Florida’s public institutions, which have emphasized nontraditional applicants. Johnson is one of multiple presidential hires with ties to DeSantis or the GOP since 2022, when the State Legislature passed a bill allowing universities to shield applicant identities until the end of the hiring process, breaking with a long-standing tradition of making those names public. State lawmakers recently proposed injecting more transparency into searches, but that effort failed.

    Other political hires include Ben Sasse, a former Republican U.S. senator from Nebraska, who had a short-lived presidency at the University of Florida; former Florida lieutenant governor Jeanette Nuñez at Florida International University; and former state lawmakers Adam Hasner at Florida Atlantic University and Richard Corcoran at New College of Florida, among several others. Former GOP lawmaker Ray Rodrigues was also hired to lead the State University System of Florida in 2022.

    The University of Florida is currently in the process of replacing Sasse with an interim appointed to the job after his abrupt departure. Sole finalist Santa Ono, a traditional academic who left the University of Michigan to take the Florida job, marks a reversal of course compared to recent hires. However, Ono’s candidacy has sparked criticism from some conservative power players.

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  • ICE Warns International Students of More SEVIS Terminations

    ICE Warns International Students of More SEVIS Terminations

    Immigration officials sent letters to international students on short-term work visas Thursday night, threatening to terminate their legal status in the Student Exchange and Visitor Information System and remove them from the country. The number of affected students is still unknown, but Inside Higher Ed can confirm at least 35.

    It’s the first sign that the Trump administration is resuming its campaign to deport student visa holders, weeks after restoring the statuses of thousands of students. ICE recently released an updated policy that significantly expands the agency’s authority to terminate students’ SEVIS status and pave the way for deportation proceedings. 

    This time, they’re targeting students on Optional Practical Training visas, or OPTs, which allow international postgraduates the opportunity to work in a field relevant to their study on a short-term extension. Students on OPT are allowed a total of 90 days of unemployment every 12 months before falling out of compliance. It’s still not known whether any of the affected students were on a special visa extension known as OPT for STEM, awarded to graduates in high-demand technology, science and engineering fields. 

    One international student adviser, who spoke with Inside Higher Ed on the condition of anonymity, said 28 of his institution’s students on OPT received the letter in the past day, and he expects that number will grow. 

    In a copy of one letter received by an international student and obtained by Inside Higher Ed, Immigration and Customs Enforcement warned those who have not reported employment status within 90 days of starting their OPT visa that they must do so in 15 days. If they don’t, the Student Exchange and Visitor Program “will set your SEVIS record to ‘terminated,’” the letter reads, which “may result in the initiation of immigration proceedings to remove you from the United States.”

    The letter is nearly identical to those sent by officials during the first Trump administration in 2020. The only difference: Back then, the Student Exchange and Visitor Program was the letter’s sole signatory. This time, ICE and the Department of Homeland Security are also named. 

    The 2020 letters were sent two years after officials issued an update to designated school officials informing them that the administration had begun a review of OPT students’ employment status to find noncompliant visa holders. But that notice also said SEVP would not automatically terminate students’ SEVIS status for going over the 90-day unemployment limit before notifying students. 

    It’s not clear whether immigration officials engaged in a review process before beginning to notify students of potential SEVIS terminations this week. Spokespeople for ICE and DHS did not respond to questions in time for publication. 

    It was also not immediately clear if OPT students’ SEVIS terminations would result in subsequent visa revocations, which are the purview of the State Department. A spokesperson for the State Department wrote in an email that they “cannot preview future visa-related decisions, which are made on a case-by-case basis, based on the individual facts relevant to the case,” and deferred other questions sent by Inside Higher Ed to DHS.

    In an internal communication sent to international student advisers and support specialists, NAFSA, an organization of international educators, urged college officials to regularly check the SEVIS database for notices of OPT students’ compliance with “accrued unemployment days” and to reach out to any students who are over the 90-day limit as soon as possible. 

    Immigration officials began systematically terminating thousands of students’ SEVIS statuses along with their visas in late March, an unprecedented move that threw international student support offices into chaos and left students scrambling to avoid deportation. 

    Last month, immigration officials restored the SEVIS statuses of more than 5,000 international students after losing dozens of court cases challenging the legality of efforts to revoke foreign students’ legal residency at a breakneck pace.

    The anonymous international student adviser said students on OPT often forget to report their employment details before the 90-day deadline. Many are distracted by graduations and finals well after they receive approval for the visa and forget, he said; in other cases, the lapse can be due to technical issues within SEVIS.

    Because of that, they’re often given some leeway, and he said he’s never seen or heard of a student having their SEVIS status terminated for not reporting employment details on time, including the last time these letters were sent in 2020. Then again, much of the Trump administration’s treatment of student visa holders is unprecedented, and he’s worried this could be a real danger for them.

    “There’s a lot of panic and uncertainty as our students are waiting to see what will happen, and we’re waiting to see if they’ll really go through with it,” he said. “I think this is the real deal.”

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  • HESA’s AI Observatory: What’s new in higher education (May 16, 2025)

    HESA’s AI Observatory: What’s new in higher education (May 16, 2025)

    Highlight from a Canadian PSI

    New AI Research Assistant available in library search

    April 25th, 2025. University of Manitoba. 

    UManitoba recently announced the launch of their new AI Research Assistant (beta), a GenAI tool to help with library searches and to help gather initial insights on research topics. Functions include providing summarized responses to research questions, recommending relevant publications from the libraries’ collections, and suggesting additional question prompts to expand the research topic.

    AI Policy

    Encadrement de l’IA en enseignement supérieur: des syndicats d’enseignants déplorent la lenteur de Québec à agir

    Dion-Viens, Daphnée. Le Journal de Montréal. April 24th, 2025.  

    “Québec a annoncé l’automne dernier la création d’une instance de concertation sur l’intelligence artificielle en enseignement supérieur, dont les travaux ont débuté en octobre. Le bilan des travaux devait être présenté en avril, mais cet échéancier a été repoussé à la fin de l’été. Un cadre de référence pour l’intégration de l’IA dans les cégeps et les universités devrait être présenté à la rentrée. La Fédération nationale des enseignantes et enseignants du Québec (FNEEQ-CSN) déplore ce report. Le temps presse puisque plusieurs établissements attendent ces lignes directrices pour agir. »

    Universities have a chance to lead in shaping AI’s future

    Kaya-Kasikci, S. et al. University World News. April 23th, 2025.

    The authors of a recent academic analysis of national AI policies share their thoughts about how the diverse AI policy approaches and perspectives around the world might impact the future of post-secondary education.   

    Transformation of Education

    Are You Ready for the AI University?

    Latham, S. The Chronicle of Higher Education. April 8th. 2025. 

    “What’s happening in higher education today has a name: creative destruction. The economist Joseph Schumpeter coined the term in 1942 to describe how innovation can transform industries. That typically happens when an industry has both a dysfunctional cost structure and a declining value proposition. Both are true of higher education.“

    AI is unable to outpace higher education

    Lumina Foundation. April 29th, 2025. 

    “Leaders from academia, economic development, and industry discuss how universities and colleges are advancing research and equipping students with the skills to lead in an AI-powered future. From addressing social inequities to preparing cities for the economy of the future, the conversation highlights the transformative potential of AI when nurtured within higher education, and the tradeoffs that must be made in an education system wired for the past.“

    Gen Z says AI has made their college degrees irrelevant

    Torres, R. April 29th, 2025. Higher Ed Dive.

    “The ongoing push to deemphasize college degree requirements in job postings has led half of Gen Z job seekers to view their degrees as a waste of time and money”, according to a recent Indeed report that surveyed 772 US adulted workers and job seekers with an associate’s degree or higher.

    Workforce readiness

    Labor Market Disruption and Policy Readiness in the AI Era

    McGrath, E. and Burris, M. The Century Foundation. April 29th, 2025.

    Policy recommendations to prepare current and future workforce for AI.

    Teaching and Learning

    Here is how experiential learning can save colleges from AI

    McKeen, S. University Business. April 30th, 2025.

    “If knowledge is now universally accessible, what remains of higher education’s value? (…) The traditional college lecture is obsolete. Why should students pay thousands in tuition to sit in a lecture hall when AI can summarize complex theories in seconds? The world no longer rewards passive knowledge absorption. Employers want graduates who can think critically, collaborate effectively, and apply knowledge in complex, unpredictable environments. Experiential learning isn’t just an educational trend— it’s a survival strategy.“

    Is AI Enhancing Education or Replacing It?

    Shirky, C. The Chronicle of Higher Education. April 29th, 2025.

    “The fact that AI might help students learn is no guarantee it will help them learn. […] The teacher can advance learning only by influencing the student to learn.Faced with generative AI in our classrooms, the obvious response for us is to influence students to adopt the helpful uses of AI while persuading them to avoid the harmful ones. Our problem is that we don’t know how to do that.“

    Teaching Writing in the Age of AI

    Mintz, S. Inside Higher Ed. May 2nd, 2025. 

    « As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly capable of generating polished, grammatically correct text that meets academic standards, educators face a critical challenge: How can we teach students to write authentically and effectively? » This author talks about the challenges of teaching writing in the AI era, and provide tips on how to move beyond these challenges.

    3 Laws for Curriculum Design in an AI Age

    Chaudhuri, A. and Trainor, J. Inside Higher Ed. April 30th, 2025.

    The authors share « a framework for thinking about how to address AI technology in the curriculum at all levels, from the individual classroom to degree-level road maps, from general education through graduate courses. »

    When GenAI resets the assessment baseline

    Jones, C. Times Higher Education. April 29th, 2025. 

    A visiting lecturer at Regent’s University London, Kingston University and more shares how he reassessed his assignment to mitigate students using AI to do all the work for them. His initial plan was to have ChatGPT create a « baseline » output against which he could mark his students assignments, but he was surprised to realize that the ouptut was better than most undergraduate students would have delivered. He had to review his approach, and shares his strategy in this article.

    Research

    AI Summary ‘trashed author’s work’ and took weeks to be corrected

    Ross, J. Times Higher Education. April 24th, 2025.

    AI research summaries ‘exaggerate findings’, study warns

    Ross, J. Times Higher Education. April 16th, 2025.

    « Dutch and British researchers have found that AI summaries of scientific papers are much more likely than the original authors or expert reviewers to ‘overgeneralise’ he results. (…) AI summaries – purportedly designed to help spread scientific knowledge by rephrasing it in ‘easily understandable language’ – tend to ignore ‘uncertainties, limitations and nuances’ in the research by ‘omitting qualifiers’ and ‘oversimplifying’ the text. Read the academic paper here. 

    AI Literacy

    Using peer networks to integrate AI literacy into liberal arts

    McMurtrie, B. The Chronicle of Higher Education. April 24th, 2025.

    Read how an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Texas at San Antonio is teaching students about effective AI use.

    Urgent Need for AI Literacy

    Schroeder, R. April 30th, 2025. Inside Higher Ed. 

    « As we approach May, alarm bells are ringing for all colleges and universities to ensure that AI literacy programs have been completed by learners who plan to enter the job market this year and in the future. »

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