Tag: Education

  • Five colleges Impacting Black Student Achievement

    Five colleges Impacting Black Student Achievement

    A recent report from the Campaign for College Opportunity notes strategies and programs that support graduation outcomes for students from historically underrepresented backgrounds.

    Tashi-Delek/E+/Getty Images

    Higher education can be an agent for positive change in students’ lives, providing personal, intellectual and socioeconomic growth opportunities. But not all of these outcomes are realized by every student.

    An April report by the Campaign for College Opportunity outlines some of the challenges Black students face in pursuit of higher education, as well as measures that colleges can take to address disparities in completion and persistence rates.

    What’s the need: Since fall 2019, Black enrollment in higher education has declined more rapidly than that of other races. Black students currently make up about 10 percent of all undergraduates enrolled in the U.S., but roughly 14 percent of the total U.S. population.

    Once enrolled, Black students are also less likely to complete a degree compared to their peers, which students of color say is tied to high costs, a lack of support and forms of racial discrimination, according to a 2023 survey.

    Among U.S. adults, about 32 percent of Black Americans have completed some college but have yet to earn a bachelor’s degree—four percentage points higher than the average American (28 percent) but roughly the same as people belonging to two or more races (32 percent), Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (32 percent), and American Indian and Alaska Native populations (34 percent).

    Despite the challenges students of color face while pursuing a degree, most learners say college is worth it in the long run for their careers. Still, balancing academics and other obligations, strains on mental health and feelings of isolation can be unexpected costs associated with college, according to a 2024 report from the Pell Institute.

    DEI Under Attack

    Since Trump retook office in January, his administration has sought to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion practices. A Feb. 14 Dear Colleague letter from the Department of Education to colleges and universities sought to issue guidance on which race-based practices besides those used in admissions—which the Supreme Court struck down in 2023—would no longer be permitted. The letter cited scholarships and programs that were exclusively available to students based on their race. An FAQ page from the department notes that race or cultural heritage education or celebrations are not prohibited, so long as they are open to everyone on campus.

    Federal courts blocked enforcement of the Dear Colleague letter in April.

    Recommendations: Based on existing research, the report authors outlined six strategies to improve Black student outcomes.

    1. Demystify the college experience. High school partnerships and pathway programs, including summer programs and dual-enrollment opportunities, can positively impact Black students’ college trajectories.  
    2. Improve transfer. Invest in two-year colleges as access points and transfer launchpads for Black students who may want to earn a bachelor’s degree at four-year institutions. Additionally, strong partnerships between two- and four-year colleges can address culture gaps and ensure the four-year institution is equipped to help Black and other transfer students thrive.  
    3. Address college affordability. Institutions should invest in avenues and resources to ensure Black students, and others, can pay for tuition, fees, technology, supplies, living experiences and other costs associated with college. “Having a robust portfolio of grants, scholarships and other financial support for Black and low-income students is essential,” according to the report. Students of color are also more likely to report basic needs insecurity, so creating holistic financial resources that ensure students have suitable food, housing and transportation is critical. 
    4. Invest in representation. Establishing “Black-affirming” spaces, including resource centers, honors colleges, studies programs and media and art collections can improve students’ sense of belonging on campus, as well as counter negative stereotypes regarding Black students. Similarly, ensuring Black students have a seat at the table for decision-making processes allows them opportunities to advocate for their needs. 
    5. Prioritize faculty development. Centers for teaching and learning can provide educators with resources and guidance on how to best serve underrepresented minority groups, including Black students. 
    6. Create co-curricular learning opportunities. Faculty-led research, pre-apprenticeship programs and workforce development programs can engage Black students on campus and give them the necessary skills to launch their careers.  

    Examples of success: In addition to highlighting initiatives that can promote student success, the report also names five institutions that have developed effective programs to improve Black student outcomes.

    1. Compton College provides no-cost food to students through a variety of ways, including an on-campus food pantry, a partnership with the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank and free meals at the Everytable Cafeteria on campus. The college also broke ground on its first student housing facility earlier this year, creating more opportunities to minimize the risk of housing insecurity or homelessness for vulnerable students.
    2. Last year Sacramento State University established the Black Honors College, which provides wraparound support for students interested in learning about Black history and culture. The program, which is open to all students, celebrates Black excellence through mentorship by hand-selected faculty and staff, designated housing and personalized support for participants.
    3. The City University of New York created the Black Male Initiative in 2005, an inclusive 15-project initiative focused on improving enrollment and graduation rates of students from underrepresented populations. Most recently, the program has evolved to include wellness and career development.
    4. Spelman College invested millions of dollars in promoting holistic student wellness, in part by creating a new fitness center and introducing fitness classes, cooking demonstrations and mental health workshops. The initiative is designed to address health concerns that disproportionately impact Black women, including high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, breast cancer and strokes.
    5. The University of California, San Diego, is home to the Black Academic Excellence Initiative, which strives to improve the experiences of Black students, faculty and staff members on campus. The initiative provides scholarship funds for students and has established a hub for historically Black fraternities and sororities, called the Divine Nine.

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  • Trump Sends Mixed Signals on Apprenticeship and Job Training

    Trump Sends Mixed Signals on Apprenticeship and Job Training

    President Trump issued an executive order last month instructing federal officials to “reach and surpass” a million new active apprenticeships. It was an ambitious target that apprenticeship advocates celebrated, anticipating new federal investments in more paid on-the-job training programs, in new industries and via a more efficient system.

    “After years of shuffling Americans through an economically unproductive postsecondary system, President Trump will refocus young Americans on career preparation,” federal officials wrote in a fact sheet on the order. They also emphasized that the federal government spends billions on the Workforce Investment and Opportunity Act, or WIOA, and Career and Technical Education, but “neither of these programs are structured to promote apprenticeships or have incentives to meet workforce training needs.”

    Ryan Craig, author of the book Apprenticeship Nation, managing director of Achieve Partners, co-founder of Apprenticeships for America and an occasional contributor to Inside Higher Ed, said it was the first time a president set a goal for the number of apprentices in the U.S., as far as he’s aware.

    Apprenticeships are “one of the few, perhaps the only area of education, of workforce development, where this administration has said, ‘We want more of this,’” he said shortly after the executive order dropped.

    But the excitement for an expanded apprenticeship model in the U.S. might be short-lived. Craig and other apprenticeship advocates worry that Trump’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 doesn’t reflect the executive order’s vision. The proposal doesn’t promise any significant new investments in apprenticeship and slashes workforce development spending over all.

    “The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing here,” Craig said. “It’s not the sea change that the executive order promised.”

    Mixed Signals

    Among many highlights for advocates, the order also calls for a workforce development strategy with a focus on scrutinizing workforce programs’ outcomes, which currently aren’t carefully tracked.

    Federal officials were given 90 days to review all federal workforce development programs and come out with a report on strategies to improve participants’ experiences, measure performance outcomes, identify valuable alternative credentials and reform or nix ineffective programs. The executive order also generally called for more transparent performance outcomes data, including earning and employment data, for such programs.

    Trump’s skinny budget makes good on his promise to consolidate workforce development spending and cut programs the administration deems ineffective, but it also offers apprenticeships a small slice of that shrinking pie.

    The proposal includes a $1.64 billion cut to workforce development funding under the Department of Labor and eliminates Job Corps, a free career training program for youth, and the Senior Community Service Employment Program, which offers job training and subsidized employment for low-income seniors. The administration also proposed a new program called Make America Skilled Again, or MASA. States would be required to spend 10 percent of their MASA grants on apprenticeships. Almost $3 billion, including WIOA funding, remains to fund the program, down from $4.6 billion, Work Shift reported.

    The budget promises to “give states and localities the flexibility to spend workforce dollars to best support their workers and economies, instead of funneling taxpayer dollars to progressive non-profits finding work for illegal immigrants or focusing on DEI.”

    Craig supports offering states more flexibility and cutting “train-and-pray programs that have little to no connection to employers or employment outcomes”—but he hoped money saved from those cuts would go toward apprenticeships, which are “by definition good jobs with career trajectories and built-in training.”

    He said a mere 10 percent of block grant funding directed to apprenticeships feels “inconsistent” with the bold goals laid out in the executive order. He had high hopes Trump would consider radically changing how apprenticeships are funded, moving away from time-limited, individual grants to a more robust federal funding structure. At the very least, he believes apprenticeships should get the “lion’s share” of workforce development funding.

    “My hope is it’s just the budget proposal and that things get worked out [to be] more consistent with the executive order,” he said, “but it was disappointing to see that.”

    Vinz Koller, vice president of the Center for Apprenticeship and Work-Based Learning at Jobs for the Future, said he similarly felt hopeful about the executive order’s messaging, in particular its commitment to “further protect and strengthen” registered apprenticeships.

    The wording represented a shift in approach.

    During Trump’s previous term, the president sought to create industry-recognized apprenticeships, an entirely separate apprenticeship system to sidestep what he viewed as inefficiencies in the current system and excessive federal regulation. Koller was glad to see Trump interested in reforming and investing in the current system this time rather than making plans to “throw out the rule book.”

    But the proposed budget isn’t “backing it up,” he said.

    His organization recently put out a policy blueprint for expanding and improving apprenticeship—including calling for stronger incentives for employers and more investment in intermediary organizations that offer programs’ support—but those strategies aren’t possible without more federal funding, Koller said. The policy blueprint points out that in fiscal year 2024, the federal government spent at least $184.35 billion on higher education, while the Department of Labor’s apprenticeship budget was just $285 million.

    But Koller also doesn’t believe slashing higher ed spending is the answer, and he’s worried about the proposed cuts to workforce training and to higher ed in the administration’s proposal. He said the goal is to give learners “choice-filled pathways,” including apprenticeships and other forms of work-based learning, not to “rob Peter to pay Paul.”

    Grant consolidation and streamlining can be “positive,” he said, but “we just want to make sure that the support is there to actually do what is needed on the ground,” across program types. “We don’t want to dismantle the other aspects of a healthy educational workforce infrastructure as we build the new parts.”

    Kerry McKittrick, co-director of the Project on Workforce at Harvard University, said the budget poses a double threat to workforce development funding. Not only would the proposal cut more than a billion dollars, but the budget would also dole out the remaining funds in block grants to states, a funding structure that has been shown to lack oversight and generally decrease funding over time.

    The project’s research found “governors do want more flexibility,” she said. “At the same time, we continue to hear from them that the lack of resources is really the biggest problem with the workforce system and meeting workforce needs … There’s no way we’ll see an expansion in apprenticeship with such a massive cut.”

    Lingering Hopes

    Some apprenticeship proponents remain optimistic.

    John Colborn, executive director of Apprenticeships for America, agreed the skinny budget doesn’t seem like “a recipe for substantial growth of apprenticeship,” but he isn’t giving up on the possibility of bold changes just yet.

    He noted that the budget makes no mention of other possible funding sources for apprenticeship mentioned in the executive order fact sheet, such as career and technical education funds, so there may be plans for other funding streams in the works.

    The proposed budget also alludes to a “reallocation” of adult education funding struck from the Education Department to “better support the innovative, workforce-aligned, apprenticeship-focused activities the Department seeks to promote,” though it doesn’t go into further detail.

    He said, based on the executive order, federal officials still have time to draft a plan, and he’s going to wait until they do before arriving at any final conclusions about how apprenticeships will fare under a second Trump term.

    “It’s probably a mistake to look at the skinny budget as a blueprint for the funding of an apprenticeship growth initiative,” he said. He plans “to take it seriously, because it’s a statement of intent from the president, but to not look to it as a constraining document for how we might be thinking about growing apprenticeships going forward.”

    Shalin Jyotishi, managing director of the Future of Work and Innovation Economy Initiative at the left-wing think tank New America, emphasized that “any administration’s policy direction on apprenticeships should be judged on actions, not only words.”

    He pointed out that multiple executive orders, including a recent one on artificial intelligence education, have called for expanding apprenticeships, but some such programs have also undergone cuts under Trump. He wants to instead see renewed investments, like those Trump made in degree-connected apprenticeships during his first term, and argued the field is “ripe” for such efforts.

    “It’s heartening to see the administration emphasize the importance of registered apprenticeships,” Jyotishi wrote to Inside Higher Ed, “and education and workforce leaders will be looking for follow-through through actions, implementation, and resources.”

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  • Higher Education franchising is not the problem. Rogue providers and regulatory gaps are

    Higher Education franchising is not the problem. Rogue providers and regulatory gaps are

    • By Charlie Tennant, Vice Principal at the London School of Science & Technology.

    Higher education franchising is once more in the limelight for the wrong reasons, as many in the sector again question its benefits, the risks it poses to public funds and the use of it by niche, emerging and/or for-profit higher education providers. However, the stories and discourse miss the key factors that have allowed for abuse of the franchise model. It is gaps in higher education regulation that have led to franchising being scapegoated for what is, at its core, abuse by rogue providers that do not represent the vast majority of those engaged in franchising.

    Franchising is a model through which UK universities have delivered higher education for over two decades. Internationally, this forms part of many forms of Transnational Education (TNE), that as seen in Universities UK International (UUKi)’s Scale of UK Higher Education Transnational Education reports, continues to grow in scale. Locally, providers have adopted the franchise model since the mid-2000s, although since then, the market for many of those providers has changed from international students to local students. This change meant the number of students at these providers who were eligible for Student Loans Company (SLC) funding has grown. The model allows institutions that have found new approaches, differentiated courses, or cold spots of higher education to develop and expand their provision, with a significant portion of them hoping to one day gain their own Degree Awarding Powers (DAPs).

    However, the regulation of domestic franchise provision has not been as robust as it could be. The onus has rightly been put on the universities that are franchising their courses to ensure academic quality and standards of the franchise delivery, although there is currently no direct regulation of higher education franchise providers. Therefore, while some blame can be apportioned to universities engaged in franchising, it can be argued that the Department for Education (DfE) and policymakers’ approach to regulating higher education franchises has led to gaps open to abuse by rogue providers. Furthermore, routes for franchise providers to gain DAPs have been prolonged and made complex by the pause in processing of registration applications by the Office for Students (OfS). Now, the abuse of SLC funding by particular providers of the franchise model, reported by the Sunday Times in an article on 22nd March 2025 and in several articles since then, has brought the reputation of all franchise providers into disrepute, and connected the abuse to use of recruitment agents and the settled Romanian population in the UK.

    In a January 2025 press release for their consultation on franchise provision regulations, the Government outlined the benefits of franchising when done right, and its intention to crack down on rogue higher education providers. Professor Nick Braisby’s HEPI blog published in response to the consultation, rightly welcomes the Government’s new proposals, but asks for the sector to remain critical. This blog therefore proposes three ways in which to ensure the Government and the OfS achieve what they hope to through the crackdown.

    Firstly, the DfE, policymakers and the OfS need to enable quicker routes for franchise providers to join the regulator’s Register. This will allow greater scrutiny at an earlier stage in the lifecycle of an emerging higher education provider (which make up the majority of providers delivering franchised courses) and introduce a focus on their governance structures. Since the set-up of the OfS Register, providers have experienced long lead times for joining the Register, and on top of this, from December 2024, the regulator paused applications for the Register, DAPs and changes of registration category, thus exacerbating the issue of missing opportunities to directly regulate more franchise providers. This is counterintuitive given the OfS’s remarks around the risks associated with an over-reliance by both universities and franchise providers on partnership provision in their Insight Brief regarding subcontractual arrangements in higher education published just two months prior to the pause. The OfS’ Register of providers has the potential to be a great tool for transparency, but the current lead times and design of the approach lead to gaps in regulation that can be exploited by rogue providers.

    Secondly, instead of considering an outright ban, the DfE should implement a robust quality framework for domestic student recruitment agents. As a blueprint, they should draw from the established Agent Quality Framework (AQF) developed by the British Council, Universities UK International (UUKi), and the UK Council for International Student Affairs (UKCISA). As with international student recruitment, the unregulated use of agents for domestic recruitment presents significant risks. By adopting a structured quality framework, the DfE and OfS can mitigate these risks and foster greater transparency and accountability. Agents, when operating under clear ethical guidelines and quality standards, can play a crucial role in widening participation, particularly by reaching communities historically underserved by traditional university outreach, for example, the UK’s settled Romanian population. A tailored framework can help to ensure transparency, effective governance and the establishment of professional standards of agents.

    Finally, the DfE, policymakers and the OfS need to engage more with franchise providers and their university partners jointly. So far, engagements have been disjointed, with either a university or one of their partner franchise providers engaged separately. This creates barriers to collaboration, which would otherwise aid in the pursuit of greater transparency, oversight and the maintenance of academic quality and standards. Bringing both universities and franchise providers together when engaging will enable the Government to find ways to both demonstrate the benefits of franchise provision, as well as develop regulatory approaches and guidance collaboratively with stakeholders. This joint engagement with universities and their partner franchise provider could pave the early steps towards a sector-wide code of practice, an idea discussed in HEPI and Buckinghamshire New University’s Debate Paper on franchising. This could then sit alongside collaboratively developed regulations that would ensure rogue providers cannot abuse regulatory gaps. It will also help to establish a more balanced burden of regulation between universities and their franchise provider partners, and safeguard the reputation of franchise provision.

    Ultimately, effective regulation of the broader higher education student journey, streamlined registration, and collaborative engagement are crucial. By addressing these systemic gaps and promoting transparency, the policymakers, DfE, OfS, and the higher education sector can restore faith in franchising and ensure its legitimate benefits are realised.

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  • Everything in the immigration white paper for higher education

    Everything in the immigration white paper for higher education

    The Home Office immigration white paper – Restoring control over the immigration system – has arrived, and there are some seriously consequential decisions for international students and the higher education sector.

    The graduate route will be cut from two years (for undergraduates and master’s students) to 18 months. A range of new measures that will make visa sponsorship duties more onerous for higher education providers are coming into effect. There are steps to attract “top scientific talent.”

    And most unexpectedly of all, the idea of introducing a levy on international student tuition fees is floated, “to be reinvested into the higher education and skills system.”

    Mood music

    For all that there are some serious, significant changes to student and graduate visas contained within the white paper, the last few years of policy turmoil has demonstrated that much of the impact of migration policy on student recruitment is determined by how changes are interpreted by prospective students weighing up their choices between different destination countries.

    After having spent a couple of months in office making more positive noises about international students – and repeatedly patting themselves on the back about it – Labour has since plunged back into the murky waters of “talking tough on migration”, with students a political football yet again. How much this resonates abroad, and with what tenor the press in key recruiting countries reports on all of this, will probably have the greatest overall effect on what follows for the sector.

    But the white paper itself is pretty bullish on international students – more so than we might have expected. There’s plenty of language that would have not looked out of place in a Conservative policy document, had Rishi Sunak not scrambled for an election instead of providing a proper response to the MAC review. So the Home Office tells us:

    In recent years, we have seen an increase in students staying in the UK following their studies. Alongside this, we have also seen an increase in sponsored study visas for lower-ranking education institutions.

    And that:

    We have also seen a series of problems involving misuse and exploitation of student visas, where visas are used as an entry point for living and working in the UK without any intention to complete the course, and increasing numbers of asylum claims from students at the end of their course, even though nothing substantive has changed in their home country while they have been in the UK.

    Home secretary Yvette Cooper’s introduction even tries to paint the last government as recklessly pro-international recruitment (our bolding):

    Immigration policy during the last Parliament replaced free movement with a free-market experiment which incentivised employers to freely recruit from abroad rather than train at home, allowed education institutions to pursue unlimited expansion of overseas students without proper checks in place, and directly encouraged the NHS and care organisations to bring in far more staff from abroad while still cutting support or training places in the UK.

    The Office for National Statistics’ recent finding that more than half of students arriving in 2020 still held leave after three years gets an airing – a point which those in the sector who have repeatedly been arguing that the vast majority of international students return home after graduating would do well to heed.

    We’d also note that the white paper’s observation that growth in international recruitment has been particularly pronounced in those institutions further down the international rankings (made up as they are in the main of research output and spurious reputation surveys) is particularly inane, and yet another of those examples of the Home Office weighing in on education policy and the size and shape of the sector. It has its roots in the last government’s response to the MAC review, but it’s profoundly depressing to see it taken forward as a stick to beat teaching-intensive universities with.

    The graduate route

    The post-study work visa’s reduction in length will likely generate the most headlines, at home and abroad. Drawing on a new piece of evaluation conducted last spring, the Home Office concludes that:

    Too many graduates allowed to stay in the UK following the successful completion of their studies are not moving into the graduate level roles for which the Graduate visa route was created.

    A survey of just under 3,000 visa holders saw only 30 per cent report being in “professional” occupations, with others either not giving a straightforward answer to the question or (31 per cent) being in occupations whose entry requirements are likely to be A level equivalent or lower.

    The build-up to the white paper’s publication was accompanied by a somewhat ludicrous debate over whether the (non-sponsored) graduate visa would somehow be limited to graduate-level work or salary – regardless of the fact that this would have meant turning it into a completely different visa with a heavy overlap with the skilled worker route.

    Instead, the government has concluded that it should be reduced to 18 months – it appears that this applies only to undergraduate and master’s students, who currently are entitled to two years, rather than PhDs.

    It’s not really spelled out how this new length has been arrived at – the charitable interpretation would be that this is sufficient time to allow graduates who are going to find graduate-level work to indeed find it, while those who are either unable to or were never really serious about doing so (in the government’s eyes) will be obliged to leave sooner.

    This Home Office’s statement of the problem is that “the intention behind the Graduate route was to support the economy.” No mention is made of enhancing the UK’s attractiveness as a study destination, which was also a strategic objective at the route’s launch, and part of the international education strategy. The government no longer seems to want to have this conversation.

    The survey that (in parts) provides the evidence base for the curtailment of the route also notes that 65 per cent of users said that gaining work experience was one of the most important reasons to engage in post-study work. But – as we’ve observed before – this function of the graduate route gets increasingly ignored. The Home Office frames all graduate route holders as needing to acquire graduate-level roles, as quickly as possible, and then disapproves of the contribution to net migration that this begets.

    Diving a bit deeper into the graduate route evaluation that is, in theory, the justification for the changes, we again see the Home Office continuing to divide up the sector in terms of Russell Group and non-Russell Group, despite the fact that DfE under Labour has discontinued this practice in school performance management.

    The majority of Graduate route users graduated from a non-Russell Group university (72%), while a quarter (26%) graduated from a Russell Group university.

    While this finding doesn’t get a mention in the white paper itself, it’s of a piece with the pronouncements elsewhere that too many students seem to be coming through those less prestigious universities for the Home Office’s liking.

    So what’s the upshot? Yet again, the impact modelling deployed in government to assess the effects of visa changes on the higher education sector is pretty pathetic. A student route evaluation published alongside the white paper sees 66 per cent of survey respondents say they were aware of the Graduate route (this gets us down to n = 1,265). Of these, 73 per cent said it influenced their decision. Of these, 29 per cent said they would not have come if it wasn’t available. Blithely multiplying these percentages together leads to an assumption (in the white paper’s technical annex) that 14 per cent of applicants would be put off if the graduate route were abolished.

    Of course, the Home Office didn’t ask about reducing it by six months – it’s almost as if this decision was thrashed out in Whitehall horse-trading rather than a pragmatic example of policy implementation. As they are lopping a quarter of the graduate route, they have – genuinely – divided 14 per cent by four to get 3.5 per cent. This would equate to around 12,000 students a year if by some stroke of dumb luck the assumption turned out to be true. But what really comes across is that they have no idea.

    For international students who are not put off, the result of shortening the route will be either to reduce the amount of time they have to accrue valuable work experience or – for those who are hoping to build a career in the UK – accelerated pressure on the job hunt. Institutions will need to get even more serious about advice, careers support, and evaluation. This is especially the case given all the other wholesale changes to work visas that the white paper detonates – students will need support in navigating a system that each year is a little different to how it was when they started thinking about where to apply.

    Compliance

    In a lengthy section entitled “responsible recruitment”, the white paper sets out some serious reforms to how UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) will manage compliance among those higher education institutions sponsoring students. It’s argued that current thresholds are “too lenient” and “have left the route open to abuse and exploitation.”

    We saw promises to make compliance standards stricter in the last government’s response to the MAC review, so there is a sense that some of what’s proposed in the white paper has been held back over the autumn to be made public here. UKVI has already been subjecting certain institutions to enhanced scrutiny for the last few months – but what’s proposed here goes quite substantially beyond that, and could be extremely challenging for some (especially small) institutions.

    The current metrics used to determine whether a sponsoring higher education provider is fulfilling its duties are – via the annual basic compliance assessment, or BCA – having a visa refusal rate of less than 10 per cent, a course enrolment rate of at least 90 per cent, and a course completion rate of at least 85 per cent.

    The white paper reveals that all of these measures will be made five percentage points stricter. To get an indication of how substantive such changes would be, it is noted that:

    Data from the 2023–24 BCA suggests that 22 HEIs would not have met at least one of the tightened criteria set out in this paper. These institutions sponsored approximately 49,000 students while refusing 400 during their 12-month assessment period.

    The technical annex also assumes that, of these 22, five would not be able to become compliant and therefore lose sponsorship rights, for at least a year. It puts the impact at between 9,000 and 14,000 fewer student visa grants, given that some students will be squeezed out of the system, whereas other genuine applicants will find alternative study destinations. It’s very much a guesstimate though – but the vastly increased requirements will put enormous pressure on higher education institutions to play it extremely safe with recruitment and agent partnerships, and to subject applicants to even more rigorous checks.

    There’s more as well – UKVI will roll out new interventions for sponsors “close to failing metrics”, sign-up to the Agent Quality Framework will be mandated – a measure that has been proposed about a hundred times by this point, and the framework is already widely subscribed to – and a new RAG rating will be used to rate each sponsoring institution’s compliance. On this latter point, it’s mentioned that this will help the public assess institutions’ compliance, raising the intriguing possibility that we are about to get a lot more transparency from UKVI than was ever the case. And massively ramping up the pressure on universities (and, especially, smaller providers) to avoid falling foul of the rules.

    It’s also worth not losing sight of the impact on international students themselves of all this bearing down on compliance – a measurably more bureaucratic study experience and, if not well implemented by providers, one that reinforces a sense of unwelcomeness as they are repeatedly asked to jump through hoops that home students do not face.

    But probably the most important measure contained within the proposals – and, if implemented properly, an extremely welcome one – is obliging a provider who wants to request a larger CAS allocation to “demonstrate that they are considering local impacts when taking its decision on international recruitment.” There’s no further information on what this would look like, but housing must clearly be front and centre of the government’s thinking here – it’s something Yvette Cooper has mentioned on a number of occasions.

    Asylum claims

    In the run-up to the white paper’s publication, leaks to the press made it clear that one area where international higher education was in the Home Office’s crosshairs was over the proportion of asylum claims generated by those who had arrived in the UK on student visas – as we’ve recently written about on Wonkhe, this hit 16,000 in 2024, almost 15 per cent of all claims in the year.

    The white paper says that this number has been increasing “at pace”, and also reveals that the majority of the students claiming asylum “do so as they approach their visa expiry date” – a fact which is ascribed to students making claims to stay in the UK, rather than due to changes in their own country.

    It had been briefed to the media that applications for work and study visas by those deemed most likely to overstay and claim asylum would face higher rejection rates, through some of “pattern spotting” – a predictive measure that would inevitably face legal challenges, it should be noted. The white paper doesn’t, in fact, get too much into the detail here, rather setting out towards the end a “series of further measures” that will be explored.

    One of these seems likely to be the use of international students’ proof of funds as evidence that they should not be eligible for asylum. We also get reference to potential “financial measures, penalties and sanctions” for sponsoring institutions – which would include universities. Detail on all this is going to come at a later point.

    An international student levy?

    When the Australian government commissioned a wholesale review of higher education – the Accord – one of the ideas that generated most pushback from the sector was for a levy on international students. It came out of the Accord commission’s interim report – then education minister Jason Clare said it was analogous to a “sovereign wealth fund” for the sector, and could be spent on infrastructure or research.

    Australia’s research-intensives – the Group of Eight – called it a “damaging international student tax”. It was absent from the Accord’s final recommendations, replaced by a “futures fund” with joint contributions from universities and government. It still wasn’t popular and, like much of the Accord’s long-term thinking, there hasn’t been any sign of policymakers picking it up.

    And yet – completely out of the blue, something similar has cropped up in today’s white paper:

    The Government will explore introducing a levy on higher education provider income from international students, to be reinvested into the higher education and skills system. Further details will be set out in the Autumn Budget.

    The Home Office wants to stress that this is not a final policy position – indeed, it is not something that one government department could move forward with on its own. The technical annex gives the “illustrative” example of a six per cent levy on tuition (and also notes that it would likely be passed on to students in higher fees).

    A six per cent levy would generate something in the order of £570m, if we generously take into account the reductions in recruitment that the Home Office has modelled (the levy’s putative effects are transmogrified into assumptions about changes to student demand based on some work from London Economics that was only focused on students from the EU, but it’s not even worth getting into that).

    There’s no way to reliably say which universities would lose out in terms of paying the levy – the government appears to be assuming that the students that won’t now come are the ones that they don’t want to come, which would likely hit less prestigious providers with more international students. You might imagine that some part of the levy would have to be used to prop up otherwise struggling providers in deprived areas – as we would otherwise lose them.

    What that would amount to is a word we’ve not heard from any government for a good few years – redistribution. Though the idea of the sector as a single set of accounts is familiar among headline writers and UCU campaigners, in practice there’s been little deviation from the idea that the market is the fairest means to distribute resources (“the funding follows the student”) with the exception of a very small amount of funds for “world class” small and specialist providers.

    Of course, by mentioning that the levy would be spent on “higher education and skills” opens the door to the money going elsewhere in the tertiary space. And, as with the apprenticeship levy, there’s no guarantee that the funds would not be top-sliced by the Treasury. There is absolutely no doubt that such a system, in the event that it came to pass, would be the subject of policy instability for many subsequent years, with everyone and their dog coming up with tweaks, fiddles and overhauls in how it should best be deployed.

    We’ve noted that the Home Office vaguely intimates that the cost of the levy would be borne by students (via increased fees) rather than by higher education providers. This may well not be the case. The last decade has shown that providers will set the fees at the level where they think they can recruit, rather than with reference to cost of provision (or home fees). If fees could comfortably go up six per cent, then they already would have. So expect a serious lobbying effort from universities against any further plans to introduce this levy.

    There are also substantial issues around devolution here. International student fees are really not there for the Home Office to grab and claim that they are a reserved matter, in the way that visas are. Presumably what’s being considered here would apply England-only – unless the devolved governments suddenly think this is worth going along with.

    All the other stuff

    Given that higher education is so intimately interconnected with both the visa system and the labour market, there’s barely a page of the white paper that doesn’t have some degree of consequence for the sector. Here’s a rundown.

    Global talent: the one area where there is a commitment to increasing migration is “very high talent routes.” There is talk of simplifying the use of the global talent visa to recruit top scientific talent, as well as possibly doubling the number of overseas universities whose graduates qualify for the high potential individual work visa route. Eligibility here is based on international university rankings, and consequently is a complete mess.

    Student dependants: there will be a new English language requirement for all adult dependants, at A1 on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). It’s also noted that the intention is to increase this over time.

    Short-term study visas: the government has already increased scrutiny of these visas for students coming on short (six to eleven month) English language courses, but there will also be a review of accreditation bodies, due to a very high refusal rate.

    Immigration skills charge: This charge for companies sponsoring those on skilled worker visas (currently £1,000 a year for medium or large sponsors) will be increased by 32 per cent. It’s one of those things that sounds good on paper – reinvesting visa fees into the skills system – but has never been implemented properly, with money just vanishing into the Treasury. In theory, that’s now going to change, with the spending review to announce “skills funding for priority sectors” paid for out of these funds.

    We should also note that higher education institutions are currently exempt from paying this charge for many categories of scientist, research managers and teaching professionals – so worth keeping an eye on the detail of the changes here when they do appear.

    The Labour Market Evidence Group: this body, which had previously been referred to as “the quad”, is to be made up of the industrial strategy advisory council, the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), Skills England (and the devolved nations’ skills bodies, to the extent the government will properly involve them rather than dumping policy on them), and the DWP. We don’t learn much that wasn’t in the MAC’s annual report, but this group’s evidence will be used to inform workforce strategies for sectors that have high levels of overseas recruitment.

    The Immigration Salary List: this set of occupations eligible for discounts on skilled worker visa salary premiums is to be abolished. This was until recently known as the shortage occupation list, to give you a sense of how much churn successive governments have instituted in migration policy. Instead, the MAC is going to conduct a review of how discounts are used, with the result that the exact salary requirements for different jobs – which universities may want to recruit onto, or international graduates might want to progress to – are up in the air again. Currently those on student or graduate visas are entitled to a discount in the required salary for sponsorship.

    International education strategy refresh: Nope, no mention of this. The last we heard this was due for “early spring”, and presumably now the white paper has landed the DfE and the business department have a freer hand to get it launched.

    It’s hard to see how some of the original IES targets around diversification can persist, given the increased pressure on compliance (stay out of “risky” markets), potential plans to profile certain nationalities, and the fearmongering about students attending less prestigious institutions. A student number target feels a million miles away from how Labour is trying to position itself politically. And education export objectives, without any detail on what aspects on international activity the government is OK with increasing, are pretty meaningless. So what’s left to be in it?

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  • As Enrollment Falls, Fewer Schools Close – The 74

    As Enrollment Falls, Fewer Schools Close – The 74

    The headlines are seemingly everywhere:

    “Jackson Public Schools board votes to close 13 school buildings.”

    “Denver Public Schools to close 7 schools, cut grades at 3 others despite heavy resistance.”

    “The list is out: These are the SFUSD schools facing closure.” 

    Such reports can leave the impression that districts are rapidly closing schools in response to declining enrollment and families leaving for charters, private schools and homeschooling. 

    But the data tells a different story. 

    School closures have actually declined over the past decade, a period of financial instability that only increased in the aftermath of the pandemic, according to research from the Brookings Institution. 

    The analysis, shared exclusively with The 74, shows that in 2014-15, the closure rate — the share of schools nationwide that were open one year and closed the next — was 1.3%. In 2023-24, the rate was just .8%, up from .7% the year before.

    “I think it’s important for people to realize how rare school closures are,” said Sofoklis Goulas, a Brookings fellow and the study’s author. 

    Last fall, his research showed how schools that have lost at least 20% of their enrollment since the pandemic are more likely to be low-performing. The Clark County Public Schools, which includes Las Vegas, had the most schools on the list — 19 — but isn’t currently considering closures. In Philadelphia, with 12 schools in that category, district leaders are just beginning to discuss closures.

    When it released Goulas’s initial report, leaders of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute argued that low-performing schools should be the first to close. But efforts to do so are often met with pushback from families, teachers and advocacy groups who argue that shutting down schools unfairly harms poor and minority students and contributes to neighborhood blight. Their pleas often push district leaders to retreat. Working in advocates’ favor, experts say, is the fact that many big district leaders are untested and have never had to navigate the emotionally charged waters of closing schools.

    “Closing a neighborhood school is probably one of the most difficult decisions a district’s board makes,” said Michael Fine, CEO of the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, a California state agency that provides financial oversight to districts. “They are going to avoid that decision as long as they can and at all costs.” 

    Such examples aren’t hard to find:

    • Just weeks after announcing closures, the San Francisco district halted plans to shutter any schools this fall.
    • In September, outgoing Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez pledged to put off school closures for another two years, even though state law allows the city to take action sooner. The district is in the process of absorbing five charter schools to keep them from closing. 
    • In October, Pittsburgh Public Schools recommended closing 14 schools; several others were set to be relocated and reconfigured. About a month later, Superintendent Wayne Walters hit pause, saying the district needed more “thoughtful planning” and community input.
    • Last May, the Seattle Public Schools announced it would shutter 20 elementary schools next school year in response to a $100 million-plus budget deficit. They later increased the number to 21. By October, the list had dwindled to four schools. Just before Thanksgiving, Superintendent Brent Jones withdrew the plan entirely. 

    “This decision allows us to clarify the process, deepen our understanding of the potential impacts, and thoughtfully determine our next steps,” Jones wrote to families. While the plan would have saved the district $5.5 million, he said, “These savings should not come at the cost of dividing our community.”

    map visualization

    Graham Hill Elementary in Seattle, which fifth grader Wren Alexander has attended since kindergarten, was initially on the list. The Title I school sits on top of a hill in a desirable area overlooking Lake Washington. But it also draws students from the lower-income, highly diverse Brighton Park neighborhood.

    Among Wren’s neighbors are students from Ethiopia, Vietnam and Guatemala. Wren, who moves on to middle school this fall, said she looks forward to visiting her former teachers and cried when she heard Graham Hill might close. She wanted her younger brother and sister to develop the same warm connection she had.

    “I don’t think I would be who I am if I didn’t go to the school,” she said.

    Wren Alexander and her little sister Nico, outside Graham Hill. (Courtesy of Tricia Alexander)

    Tricia Alexander, her mother, was among those who opposed the closures, participating in rallies outside the district’s administration building and before board meetings.

    “We were really loud,” said Alexander, who’s also part of Billion Dollar Bake Sale, an effort to advocate for more state education funding. She said there was “no real evidence” that closing schools would have solved the district’s budget woes. “In no way would kids win.”

    It’s a view shared by many school finance experts, who note that the bulk of school funding is tied up in salaries, not facility costs. Districts may save some money from closing schools, but unless coupled with staff reductions, it’s often not enough to make up for large budget shortfalls.  

    ‘So bad at this’

    If enrollment doesn’t pick up, experts say, leaders who delay closures will have to confront the same issues a year later or — perhaps even more likely — pass the problems on to their successors. 

    “If there continues to be fewer and fewer children …then that doesn’t get better,” said Brian Eschbacher, an enrollment consultant.  

    One Chicago high school, for example, had just 33 students last year. In Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest district, 34 elementary schools have fewer than 200 students and 29 of those are using less than half of the building, according to a recent report. The share of U.S. students being educated outside of traditional schools also continues to increase, according to a forthcoming analysis Goulas conducted with researchers at Yale University. 

    “We don’t see a trajectory of enrollment recovery,” he said. “Things actually got worse in the most recently released data batch.”

    But such conditions haven’t stopped advocacy groups from campaigning against closures. One of them, the left-leaning Advancement Project, has joined with local groups in Denver and Pittsburgh to make a case against closures nationally. 

    “All children deserve to have a local, neighborhood public school in which they and their families have a say,” said Jessica Alcantara, senior attorney for the group’s Opportunity to Learn program. “It’s not just that school closures are hard on families. They harm the full education ecosystem that makes up a school — students, families, school staff and whole communities.”   

    Last May, Alcantara and other Advancement Project staff urged the U.S. Department of Education to treat school closures as a civil rights issue. Nine of the 10 schools the Denver district planned to close in 2022 had a majority Black or Hispanic student population. 

    The advocates argued that in cases of enrollment loss, run-down facilities and empty classrooms, there are alternatives to closing schools. They encourage communities to push for renovations and urge district leaders to use vacant spaces for STEM, arts or other programs that might attract families. Opponents of closures also say that districts sometimes underestimate how much of a building is used for non-classroom purposes like special education services, early-childhood programs and mental health. 

    Eschbacher’s assessment of why districts often back down from closing schools is more blunt. 

    “Districts are so bad at this,” he said. “If you just do a few things wrong, it could sink the whole effort.”

    For one, leaders often target schools with under 300 students for closure, appealing to parents that they can’t afford to staff them with arts programs, a school nurse or a librarian. 

    But those explanations sometimes fall flat.

    “Parents always say, ‘I wanted a small school. I know my teachers and they know my kid. And it’s right down the street,’” Eschbacher said. If they didn’t like their school, he added, they would have likely would have chosen a charter or some other option. 

    District officials also run into trouble if they try to spin the data. When Seattle officials talked about “right-sizing” the district, they pointed to the loss of 4,900 students since 2019-20. 

    But Albert Wong, a parent in the district and a lifelong Seattle resident, knew there was more to the story. Not only is the current enrollment higher than it was from 2000 to 2011, the pandemic-related decline seems to have leveled off. In a commentary, he argued that officials presented misleading data “to make current enrollment look exceptionally bad.”

    Graham Hill Elementary, fifth-grader Wren’s school, actually saw a slight increase in enrollment this year, including a new class for preschoolers with disabilities. And while Pittsburgh schools are projected to lose another 5,000 students over the next six years, enrollment this year held steady at about 18,400.

    To Eschbacher, the “burden of proof is always on the district” to make an airtight case for why students would be better off in larger schools. He has applauded the Denver-area Jeffco Public Schools, which has closed 21 schools since 2021, for having state demographers, not just district officials, explain population trends to families at community meetings.

    ‘It wasn’t realistic’

    Walters, Pittsburgh’s superintendent, can easily rattle off reasons why the district should rethink how it uses its buildings. Early last year, local news reports showed that almost half of the district’s schools were less than 50% full. 

    “We’ve lost about a fourth of our population, but we have not changed anything to our footprint,” he said. 

    Meanwhile, the average age of the district’s buildings is 90 years old, and many lack air-conditioning, forcing some schools to send students home in sweltering weather.

    But a consulting group’s proposal showed that Black and low-income students and those with disabilities would be disproportionately affected by the changes. Several advocacy groups drew attention to those disparities, calling  the effort “rushed.” 

    412 Justice, an advocacy group, is among the community organizations pushing for alternatives to school closures in Pittsburgh. (412 Justice)

    Walters agreed and put the plan on hold last fall, saying he lacked “robust” responses to parents’ tough questions about how schools would change for their kids.

    “It doesn’t mean that we don’t see a path forward,” he said. “But it wasn’t realistic that we would have those questions answered within the timeline that we’ve been given.”

    In March, parents pushed for another delay, causing the school board to postpone a vote on the next phase in the closure process.

    As the Jeffco district demonstrates, some school systems are following through with closures. The school board in nearby Denver unanimously voted in November to close seven schools and downsize three more. 

    But that’s after community protests pushed the district to put the brakes on a plan to close 19 schools in 2021. Advocates argued that families in low-income areas, who had been heavily impacted by the pandemic, would be most affected. Then the district only closed three in 2023, and now board members are considering a pause on closures for three years.

    School boards closing a dozen or more schools are often catching up with work their predecessors let pile up, said Goulas of Brookings. 

    “Closing a single school allows for easier placement of students and minimizes the political cost and community stress,” he said. “When a district releases a long list of schools to close, it likely indicates that they waited for conditions to improve, but this didn’t happen.”

    Angel Gober, executive director of 412 Justice — one of 16 organizations that called on the Pittsburgh district to drop its plan — acknowledged that their fight isn’t over.

    “I think we got a temporary blessing from God,” she said. But she wants the district to explore a host of alternatives, like community schools and corporate support, before it shutters and sells off buildings. “We do have very old infrastructure, and that is an equity issue. But can we try five things before we make a drastic decision to close schools for forever?”


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  • Three-fourths of NSF funding cuts hit education

    Three-fourths of NSF funding cuts hit education

    The outlook for federal spending on education research continues to be grim. 

    That became clear last week with more cutbacks to education grants and mass firings at the National Science Foundation (NSF), the independent federal agency that supports both research and education in science, engineering and math.

    A fourth round of cutbacks took place on May 9. NSF observers were still trying to piece together the size and scope of this wave of destruction. A division focused on equity in education was eliminated and all its employees were fired. And the process for reviewing and approving future research grants was thrown into chaos with the elimination of division directors who were stripped of their powers.

    Meanwhile, there was more clarity surrounding a third round of cuts that took place a week earlier on May 2. That round terminated more than 330 grants, raising the total number of terminated grants to at least 1,379, according to Grant Watch, a new project launched to track the Trump administration’s termination of grants at scientific research agencies. All but two of the terminated grants in early May were in the education division, and mostly targeted efforts to promote equity by increasing the participation of women and Black and Hispanic students in STEM fields. The number of active grants by the Division of Equity for Excellence in STEM within the education directorate was slashed almost in half, from 902 research grants to 461.

    Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.

    Combined with two earlier rounds of NSF cuts at in April, education now accounts for more than half of the nearly 1,400 terminated grants and almost three-quarters of their $1 billion value. Those dollars will no longer flow to universities and research organizations. 

    Cuts to STEM education dominate NSF grant terminations

    Source: Grant Watch, May 7, 2025 https://grant-watch.us/nsf-summary-2025-05-07.html

    More than half the terminated grants…

    … and nearly three-quarters of their $1 billion value are in education 

    Data source: Grant Watch, May 7, 2025. Charts by Jill Barshay/The Hechinger Report

    The cuts are being felt across the nation. Grant Watch also created a map of the United States, showing that both red and blue states are losing federal research dollars. 

    Source: Grant Watch, May 7, 2025 

    It remains unclear exactly how NSF is choosing which grants to cancel and exactly who is making the decisions. Weekly waves of cuts began after the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE entered NSF headquarters in mid April. Only 40 percent of the terminated grants were also in a database of 3,400 research grants compiled last year by Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican. Cruz characterized them as “questionable projects that promoted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) or advanced neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda.” Sixty percent were not on the Cruz list.

    Source: Grant Watch, May 7, 2025 

    Other NSF cuts also affect education. Earlier this year, NSF cut in half the number of new students that it would support through graduate school from 2,000 to 1,000. Universities are bracing to hear this summer if NSF will continue to support graduate students who are already a part of its graduate research fellowship program. 

    Related: Education research takes another hit in latest DOGE attack

    Developing story

    NSF watchers were still compiling a list of the research grants that were terminated on May 9, the date of the most recent fourth round of research cuts. It was unclear if any research grants to promote equity in STEM education remained active.

    The Division of Equity for Excellence in STEM, a unit of the Education Directorate, was “sunset,” according to a May 9 email sent to NSF employees and obtained by the Hechinger Report, and all of its employees were fired. According to the email, this “reduction in force” is slated to be completed by July 12. However, later on May 9, a federal judge in San Francisco temporarily blocked the Trump administration from implementing its “reduction in force” firings of federal employees at the NSF and 19 other agencies.

    Several congressionally mandated programs are housed within the eliminated equity division, including Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) and the Eddie Bernice Johnson initiative, which promotes STEM participation for students with disabilities.

    The process for reviewing and approving new grant awards was thrown into chaos with the elimination of all NSF division directors, a group of middle managers who were stripped of their powers on May 8. In addition, NSF slashed its ranks of its most senior executives and its visiting scientists, engineers and educators. That leaves many leadership positions at NSF uncertain, including the head of the entire education directorate.

    Legal update

    An initial hearing for a group of three legal cases by education researchers against the Department of Education is scheduled for May 16.  At the hearing, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., will hear arguments over whether the court should temporarily restore terminated research studies and data collections and bring back fired Education Department employees while it considers whether the Trump administration exceeded its executive authority. 

    A first hearing scheduled for May 9 was postponed. At the May 16 hearing, the court will hear two similar motions from two different cases: one filed by the Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP) and the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP), and the other filed by National Academy of Education (NAEd) and the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME). A third suit by the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE) was filed in federal court in Maryland and will not be part of the May 16 hearing.

    Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or [email protected].

    This story about NSF education cuts was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

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  • Rurality Matters in Evaluating Transfer Outcomes (opinion)

    Rurality Matters in Evaluating Transfer Outcomes (opinion)

    Transfer enrollment rose by 4.4 percent this year, according to recent data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. In total, transfers have grown by 8 percent since 2020, signaling a steady rebound from the sharp declines seen during the pandemic. That’s encouraging news for students seeking affordable, flexible pathways to a degree, as well as for institutions focused on expanding access and supporting completion.

    Less noticed, however, is just how much progress rural students are making. In fall 2023, rural community colleges experienced a 12.1 percent increase in students transferring to four-year institutions. This progress is even more impressive given the historic underinvestment in rural institutions and the well-documented barriers their students face on their path to a four-year degree.

    Many of the country’s small, rural institutions remain on the margins of transfer conversations, partnerships and policy priorities. Here in California, for instance 60 percent of the community colleges with the lowest transfer rates are rural. From low-income students in Appalachia to Latino learners in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, rural colleges are lifelines for students facing barriers such as poverty, food and housing insecurity, and limited access to transportation and technology. Yet these institutions tend to lack the support, visibility and resources of larger community college systems. They often remain excluded from the design and implementation of transfer initiatives.

    Rural students bring tremendous talent, drive and potential to higher education. Many are the first in their families to attend college. They are often deeply rooted in their communities and, in many cases, seek to use their education to give back and contribute to their local economies.

    Transferring to a four-year institution can dramatically increase the lifetime earnings of these learners, expand their career paths and help meet the growing demand for a highly skilled workforce. Individuals with a bachelor’s degree earn, on average, nearly 35 percent more per year than those with only an associate degree. Four-year degrees open doors to career advancement, civic engagement and personal growth.

    Yet the systemic challenges rural community college students face—from more limited course offerings and degree options to long travel times to campuses to unreliable internet connections—require tailored support and intentional partnership. A one-size-fits-all approach to transfer doesn’t work when rural students are starting from a fundamentally different place than many of their peers.

    For example, rural colleges may not have the staff capacity to manage complex articulation agreements or advocate for their students in statewide transfer initiatives. Their advisers may juggle many roles, serving as counselors, career coaches and transfer liaisons all at once. Meanwhile, students themselves may be unaware of transfer opportunities or discouraged by long distances to four-year campuses, especially when those pathways demand sacrifices they can’t afford to make.

    The health of both our higher education ecosystem and our economy depends on ensuring that all students, regardless of ZIP code, can move easily between two-year and four-year institutions. If efforts to improve transfer overlook rural colleges, they risk deepening existing educational inequities and missing out on a significant segment of our nation’s talent pool.

    Organizations such as the Rural Community College Alliance shine a needed spotlight on how to best collaborate with rural institutions across the country to improve transfer outcomes and better support rural students’ success. Progress starts with listening and taking the time to understand the unique strengths and challenges of rural communities rather than imposing outside solutions.

    The policy landscape will need to evolve to support these efforts. This means increasing investment in rural higher education infrastructure, expanding funding for rural-serving institutions, and creating more flexible transfer frameworks that reflect the realities of rural learners, many of whom are working adults, members of the military, parents, or all of the above. Federal, state and higher education leaders should recognize rurality as a key lens through which to view improving student outcomes, on par with class or race.

    Transfer rates are rising, and more students are finding affordable on-ramps to bachelor’s degrees. But this progress is incomplete unless it reaches every corner of the country, including the small towns and rural communities that are home to millions of students. In a moment when more students are finally moving forward, we can’t afford to leave these learners behind. When rural students succeed, our entire nation benefits.

    Gerardo de los Santos is vice president for community college relations at National University.

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  • College Programs Support Holistic Student Basic Needs

    College Programs Support Holistic Student Basic Needs

    About three in five college students experienced some level of basic needs insecurity during the 2024 calendar year, according to survey data from Trellis Strategies. Over half (58 percent) of respondents said they experienced one or more forms of basic needs insecurity in the past 12 months.

    Student financial challenges can negatively impact academic achievement and students’ ability to remain enrolled. About 57 percent of students said they’ve had to choose between college expenses and basic needs, according to a 2024 report from Ellucian.

    While a growing number of colleges and universities are expanding support for basic needs resource centers—driven in part by state legislation that requires more accommodations for students in peril—not every campus dedicates funds to the centers. A 2024 survey by Swipe Out Hunger found that of 300-plus campus pantries, two in five were funded primarily through donations. Only 5 percent of food pantries had a dedicated budget from their institution as a primary source of funding.

    Inside Higher Ed compiled four examples of institutions that are considering new or innovative ways to address students’ financial wellbeing and basic needs on campus.

    Penn State University—School Supplies for Student Success

    Previous research shows that when students have their relevant course materials provided on day one, they are more likely to pass their classes and succeed. Penn State’s Chaiken Center for Student Success launched a School Supplies for Student Success program that offers learners access to free supplies, including notebooks, writing utensils and headphones, to help them stay on track academically.

    Students are able to visit the student success center on the University Park campus every two weeks to acquire items, which are also available at two other locations on campus. Learners attending Penn State Altoona and Penn State Hazleton can visit their respective student success center for supplies, as well.

    The program is funded by a Barnes & Noble College Grant program and is sustained through physical and monetary donations from the university community.

    Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts—Essential Needs Center

    The Essential Needs Center was developed from a Service Leadership Capstone course, which required students to complete a community-based service project. One group of students explored rates of basic needs insecurity and established a food pantry to remedy hunger on campus.

    “The program started as a drawer at my desk,” said Spencer Moser, assistant dean for Student Growth and Wellbeing, who taught the course. “Then it grew to fill a shelving unit, a closet and eventually its own space on campus.”

    The center, now a one-stop shop for basic needs support on campus, provides students with small appliances, storage containers, personal care items and seasonal clothing, as well as resources to address housing and transportation needs, including emergency funding grants. Students can also apply for a “basic needs bundle” to select specific items they may require.

    Paid student employees maintain the center but it’s also left “unstaffed” at some hours to address the stigma of seeking help for basic supplies. Between November 2023 and January 2025, over 1,300 students engaged with the center.

    University of New Hampshire—Financial Wellness

    A lack of financial stability can also have a negative impact on student thriving and success. To support students’ learning and financial wellbeing, the University of New Hampshire created an online digital hub that provides links to a budget worksheet, financial wellness self-evaluation, college cost calculator and loan simulator.

    Students can also schedule an appointment to talk with an educator to discuss financial wellness or engage in a financial wellness workshop.

    Roxbury Community College—the Rox Box

    Most colleges operate on an academic calendar, with available hours and resources falling when class is in session. Roxbury Community College in Massachusetts launched a new initiative in winter 2023 to ensure students who were off campus for winter break didn’t experience food insecurity.

    Before the break, staff at the college’s food pantry, the Rox Box, handed out Stop & Shop gift cards and grab-and-go meals, as well as a list of local places students could visit for meals over break.

    Do you have a wellness intervention that might help others promote student success? Tell us about it.



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  • Higher education can cut through the immigration debate with a focus on quality

    Higher education can cut through the immigration debate with a focus on quality

    The surge for Reform in the recent local elections in England has increased fears in the higher education sector that Labour may feel compelled to focus on driving down immigration at the expense of its other priorities and missions – James Coe has set out the risks of this approach on Wonkhe.

    Vice chancellors are understandably frustrated with the public debate on immigration and do not relish the prospect of rehearsing the same political cycle in the wake of the forthcoming white paper on legal migration. All can reel off data point after data point demonstrating the value of international student recruitment to their regions and communities, which according to the most recent London Economics calculations for the academic year 2022–23 brought £41.9bn a year in economic returns to the UK. That data is well supported by polling that suggests the public is generally pretty unfussed about international students compared to other forms of legal migration. The latest insight from British Future on the public’s attitudes to international students found:

    International students are seen to boost the UK economy, fill skills gaps, improve local economies and create job opportunities for locals and make cities and towns more vibrant and culturally diverse.

    Heads of institution also add that of all the many and varied problems and complaints that arise from engagement with their local communities and regions, international students have never once featured. The problem, they say, is not policy, it is politics. And when politics tilts towards finding any means to drive down overall migration, higher education inevitably finds itself in the position of being collateral damage, despite the economic and reputational harm done – because it’s much easier to reduce student numbers than to tackle some of the more complex and intransigent issues with immigration.

    Standing the heat

    To give the government its due, the signal it wants to send on student visas is not currently about eroding the UK’s international competitiveness as a destination for study, and much more about reducing the use of that system for purposes for which it was never designed, particularly as a route to claiming asylum. Measures proposed are likely to include additional scrutiny of those entering from Nigeria, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, an approach that may sit uncomfortably as making broad assumptions about a whole cohort of applicants, but at least has the benefit of being risk-based. That nuance may be lost, however, in how the public conversation plays out both within the UK and in the countries where prospective international students and their governments and media pay close attention to the UK international policy landscape and associated mood music.

    The political challenge is not limited to higher education. Recognising the derailing effect of constant short-term reactive announcements in immigration policy, a number of influential think tanks including the Institute for Government, the Institute for Public Policy Research, the Centre for Policy Studies, Onward, and British Future have called on the government to create an annual migration plan. The Institute for Government’s explanation of how it envisages an annual migration plan would work sets out benefits including clarity on overall objectives for the system with the ability to plan ahead, the segmentation of analysis and objectives by route, and the integration of wider government agendas such as those on skills, or foreign policy.

    For the higher education sector, an annual planning approach could make a big difference, creating space for differentiated objectives, policy measures and monitoring of student and graduate visas – something that in many ways would be much more meaningful than removing student numbers from overall published net migration figures, or presenting them separately. It could open up a sensible discussion about what data represents a meaningful measure, what should be adopted as a target and what should be monitored. It could also open up space for a more productive conversation between higher education representatives and policymakers focused on making the most of the connections between international education, regional and national skills needs, and workforce planning.

    In the weeks and months ahead the government is also expected to publish a refreshed international education strategy, which should give the sector a strong steer about what the government wants to see from international higher education. But it will be critical for that strategy to have a clear line of sight to other government priorities on both the economy and the wider immigration picture, to prevent it being siloed and becoming dispensable.

    The fate of the last government’s international education strategy tells an instructive tale about what happens when government is not joined up in its agenda. Three years ago the sector and its champions in Westminster celebrated the achievement of a core objective of that strategy – attracting 600,000 students to the UK – eight years earlier than planned. But that rapid growth provided both unsustainable, as numbers dropped again in response to external shocks, and politically problematic, as students bringing dependents drove up overall numbers and the government responded with another shift in policy. The credibility and longevity of the refreshed strategy will depend on the government’s willingness to back it when the political heat is turned up in other parts of the immigration system.

    Quality is our watchword

    The higher education sector is justifiably proud of its international offer and keen to work with government on developing a shared plan to make the most of opportunities afforded by bringing students to the UK to study. The focus has to be on quality: attracting well-qualified and capable applicants; offering high-quality courses focused on developing career-relevant skills, particularly where there is strategic alignment with the government’s industrial strategy; and further enhancing the global employability of UK international graduates, whether it’s through securing a good job via the Graduate route, or elsewhere.

    The value of international recruitment is not always very tangible to people living in communities in terms of valuable skills and cultural capital – and that breaks down to telling stories in ways that people can connect with. As one Labour Member of Parliament suggested to us, many parts of Britain are in the process of reimagining their collective identities, and part of the job is building a compelling identity connection with the new economy rather than harkening back to an imagined past. That is work that sits somewhat apart from simply explaining the value of international students, but may also turn out to be intimately connected to it.

    Higher education institutions can work with employers, the regional and national policymakers concerned with skills, innovation and growth, and in local communities, to further that agenda, but they need the breathing space afforded by policy stability and a clear plan from government they can trust will be sustainable. To create that space, the sector will need to demonstrate that it has a high standard of practice and will not tolerate abuse of the system. “Abuse” is a loaded word; many of the practices that raise alarm are technically legal, but they put the system as a whole in jeopardy. The sector has a great track record on developing a shared standard of practice through instruments like the Agent Quality Framework, but it may also need to collectively think through whose job it is to call out those who fall short of those standards, to avoid the whole sector being tarred with the brush of irresponsible practice.

    While the landscape is complicated and at times disheartening, UK higher education can cut through the noise by sticking like glue to its quality message. Many universities are bigger and longer standing than Premier League football clubs – but those bastions of community pride have also had to work through challenges with their places and update their practice as the landscape has shifted. There is an opportunity with the forthcoming white paper and international education strategy to get the government and the sector on the same side when it comes to international higher education. Both parties will need to show willing to hear where the other is coming from to avoid another five years of frustration.

    This article is published in association with IDP Education. It draws on a private discussion held with policymakers and heads of institution on the theme of international higher education’s contribution to regional economic growth. The authors would like to thank all those who took part in that discussion.

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  • Different kinds of value, different kinds of higher education

    Different kinds of value, different kinds of higher education

    If Lionel Robbins – author of the first major review of higher education in 1964 – could have glimpsed the future, he would no doubt have been pleased with much of what he saw.

    Back then, only about five per cent of young people attended university. His ambition was to extend opportunities to all who could benefit from a degree – and much of what he envisioned has come to pass.

    Yet after years of expansion, universities are in a funding crisis, students are struggling with costs, many question the benefit of a degree, and both international and domestic student demand is under threat.

    This is why I now find myself frequently debating how best to measure the value of higher education – for fear we may lose what we have failed to adequately value.

    In research

    The value of university research is perhaps the least disputed aspect. The UK, home to just one per cent of the world’s population, produces six per cent of global research output and over 13 per cent of the most highly cited articles, according to Universities UK. Over 60 per cent of this research involves international collaboration, and a third of academics come from abroad.

    Whether measured by citations, publications, Nobel Prizes, or the ability to attract international talent, UK research performs strongly and is undeniably valuable. At the Leverhulme Trust, we certainly appreciate this. We receive far more outstanding ideas than we can support, and the research produced is extraordinary.

    However, university research is not a standalone activity. In many, though not all, institutions, research and teaching are intertwined – and not only in a financial sense. Research informs teaching, and teaching shapes research.

    Connectedness

    Without a strong flow of talented students, the future of UK research looks bleak. This is why, with our mission to support research, we invest a lot in doctoral students. Calculations of value (and indeed policy) need to take this connectedness into account – tricky with different government departments responsible for research and teaching, and a one-size-fits-all funding model with cross-subsidy of research built in.

    The sector’s status as a major export industry is also undeniable, contributing around £27 billion to national exports. But HE’s contribution to the national accounts does not capture its broader social impact, and I suspect Robbins might have been most heartened by the strides made to widen access.

    Putting a value on this is tricky, but opportunities for individuals from working-class backgrounds to attend university have improved dramatically. Despite setbacks in recent years, it is noteworthy that nearly 30 per cent of students eligible for free school meals now progress to higher education. Remarkably, around half do in London. More than 60 per cent of Black students go on to university. The fact that the system is far more open to all students is of great value and worthy of celebrating.

    Perceptions

    But what about the value for students in this expanded sector? Various metrics have been employed to assess the worth of a degree: student satisfaction surveys, employment rates, job quality and wages. Each of these measures is limited in different ways. However, with taxpayers’ money funding a significant portion of costs, even such imperfect measures of value are necessary and informative.

    On average, graduates earn more than their non-graduate peers, but averages are not helpful in understanding the scepticism among some students about the value of their degree. In regions lacking investment, transport and thriving industries, there is insufficient demand for graduate skills. Therefore, many graduates who are unable to relocate do poorly in the labour market.

    Earnings and employability, particularly measured early in a graduate’s career, do not, of course, capture the full value of a degree. This is perhaps most obvious for those in jobs with high social value, such as nurses, or those in low-paid but creative jobs.

    Demands

    Nonetheless, in repeated surveys, students and graduates report concern about their job prospects. Many are struggling to find graduate jobs.

    At the same time, there continue to be skill shortages in some fields. Skills England has the difficult task of addressing national skills needs, including any mismatch between supply and demand, and this must include consideration of graduate skills. Helping students make informed choices and ensuring that all degrees, irrespective of discipline, equip them with a broad, adaptable skill set is crucial. But we need to acknowledge that even in tough labour markets, this will still not ensure great jobs for all.

    It is in those left behind areas with weak labour markets that assessing the value of universities for their local communities and economies is more difficult but vital. Universities can catalyse local growth – the evidence on agglomeration effects is substantial. Some institutions contribute nationally; others drive local innovation and regeneration.

    In deprived areas, universities serve as social anchors and must help retrain adults for emerging jobs. Some universities in struggling regions have played critical roles not only in equipping students with skills for the modern economy but also in providing a sense of community and purpose during periods of industrial decline and economic hardship.

    Risks

    In the short term, as the UK grapples with its economic challenges and the sector with the funding crisis, we need to be alert to the risks of a shrinking HE system. Loss of teaching capacity will lead to loss of research capacity, and vice versa. If we are to preserve the sector’s strength, we need to recognise the varied roles that institutions play across teaching, research, local development and social mobility.

    Looking forward, universities will continue to make a crucial contribution to economic growth by developing the skills of the workforce, but only if accompanied by other types of investment.

    Above all, with such a diverse sector, a one-size-fits-all approach cannot work. Policy needs to actively shape the system and enable different universities to focus on where they can add the most value.

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