Tag: Education

  • Disability equality in higher education requires a joined-up and co-created approach

    Disability equality in higher education requires a joined-up and co-created approach

    Despite more than two decades of legislation to establish equality in education for disabled and or diverse learners, disabled students continue to tell us that university can feel like an obstacle course.

    The barriers are rarely spectacular, they are cumulative. A lecture uploaded without captions here, a placement form that cannot be read by a screen reader there, an adjustment agreed in one department but lost somewhere between a registry system and a module leader’s inbox. Committed staff can be found everywhere, but problematic patterns remain unyielding.

    That is the core problem our Office for Students-funded project sets out to address: in a mass, complex, data-driven sector, local goodwill and isolated fixes do not add up to equality. The numbers matter, as more students are disclosing disability than ever before, across every discipline and level of study.

    Behind those patterns sit familiar barriers: inaccessible learning environments and systems; opaque, slow, or inconsistent processes; siloed responsibilities between academic departments and student services; and a tendency to treat reasonable adjustments as individual fixes rather than signs of institutional design problems. Disabled-led organisations such as Disabled Students UK (DSUK) and Disability Rights UK (DRUK) have been clear in stating that meaningful change needs meaningful collaboration with disabled people, not consultation after the fact.

    So why has the sector not moved faster? Because the challenge, as our team have discovered, is ecological not episodic. Individual good practices exist, but without a joined-up approach or student leadership they do not add up to consistent or sustained equality.

    Policy and case law have been clear for years about duties to make reasonable adjustments. Yet the practical experience of securing those adjustments and seeing them work consistently, module by module and term by term, lags behind. One reason is structural: student services and academic departments often own different parts of the reasonable adjustment pathway, with digital systems, estates, timetabling and external partners (for example placement providers) making decisions that affect implementation.

    When responsibilities are split, accountability can be blurred; when data is siloed, feedback loops break down; when workloads bite, the exception becomes normalised. Our conclusion, based on lived experience, sector evidence and our own work with institutions, is that we have been treating an ecosystem problem with point solutions.

    An ecological approach

    When considering where disability equality and inequality are located in HE, the spaces, places and experiences we think of are shaped by relationships and meeting points between students, staff, timetables, curricula, estates, timetabling, assessment regulations, digital platforms, suppliers, and external points such as placement providers, funding assessors and employers.

    If you change one meeting point, the effects are felt across the whole system, and if meeting points are not communicating or working in joined up ways, they experience limited success in their combined aims and objectives. In this case the equitable access, success and progression of disabled students in HE.

    The ecological approach we are developing calls for joined up practices connecting actors, including students, programme teams, services, registry, estates, IT, and external partners to co-diagnose problems and co-design solutions. It works across timescales, from “use tomorrow” fixes (such as alternative formats) to structural shifts (such as assessment policy and data flows). It is transparent and makes accountability visible, sharing data, and providing feedback loops highlighting whether adjustments are timely, effective and equitable. Fundamentally, it centres disabled leadership, qualifying disabled students and staff as co-leaders, users and evaluators throughout, not just consultees.

    Three steps for equitable university experiences

    Our work is taking three key steps in developing this ecological model for the sector. First, we are mapping where and why barriers persist in the journey from a student disclosing a need to an adjustment being delivered in their teaching context.

    That journey is seldom linear. It crosses multiple systems, is hands-offs, and it often requires invisible labour by students themselves to keep things moving. We are documenting these routes with our partners, leading disabled people organisations DSUK and DRUK, so we can co-design fixes that survive real institutional conditions. We are doing this by collecting accounts and experiences through surveys and workshops with disabled students, student services and academics.

    Second, we are co-creating continuing professional development that address the needs of module leaders, personal tutors, programme leads, placement coordinators, timetablers, disability advisers and frontline advisers. The content pairs short, practical scenarios with data on timeliness and effectiveness, and prompts teams to move repeated adjustments into course design. By centring lived experience, we are producing “use-tomorrow” learning that is also a lever for upstream redesign.

    Third, we are writing university guidelines on reasonable adjustments that bring together responsibilities, timeframes and escalation routes. This is a working pathway, visible to students and staff alike, with shared ownership across academic and professional teams. These resources will be published openly on an OfS-sourced platform to support sector-wide take-up and long-term evaluation.

    Why a joined-up and co-created approach matters

    There is no shortage of “good practice” lists in the sector. What we do not yet have is a user-led, sector-ready pathway that integrates roles, systems and timescales. Gibson’s user-informed, user-led, user-evaluated approach provides the model of practice behind this project’s work. With its emphasis on partnership, user-leadership and co-creation the model places disabled students and lived expertise at the core and front of the project in design, output and impact evaluation.

    This approach reframes the idea of “reasonable”. A reasonable adjustment becomes not only something that can be delivered for an individual, but a signal about programme design and institutional capability. If the same adjustment is needed across a cohort, the reasonable response is to redesign. Staff recognise this logic; many are already pulling in that direction. The ecological approach provides them with a shared language, shared tools and shared accountability.

    On that basis, these are our recommendations for the sector:

    • Swap exceptions for design. Treat repeated adjustments as prompts to redesign curricula, assessments and processes so the need becomes built-in, not bolted on.
    • Create a single visible pathway. Publish a plain-English route, co-owned by departments and services, for securing, implementing and reviewing reasonable adjustments, with clear timeframes and escalation.
    • Close the loop with students. Ask disabled students if support was timely and effective, publish the actions you take, and track changes using measures that matter locally (as well as NSS/APP indicators).

    A student’s experience should not depend on which member of staff opens their email. In an inclusive ecology, the pathway is transparent and defensible, the systems talk to each other; the same student does not have to re-explain across every module; adjustments are recorded, enacted and reviewed; and the lessons from individual cases migrate into programme-level design.

    Our project aims to connect these practices into a pathway any provider can follow, and all the resources will be freely available for sector-wide use on an OfS-hosted platform.

    The authors would also like to thank Kathrin Paal, Chloe Webster-Harris, Lucy Bartlett, Arianwen Fox, Lottie Atton, Elena Brake, and Tyrell King for their contributions.

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  • New Jersey’s $40 Billion Education Machine Is Not Built to Teach

    New Jersey’s $40 Billion Education Machine Is Not Built to Teach

    Evan Scott is a lifelong New Jersey resident, a veteran, and a retired military service member. He holds a bachelor’s degree in education and was elected to his hometown’s Board of Education in 1988. Now living in Evesham Township, NJ, he continues to advocate for fair and transparent school funding.

    New Jersey spends about $40 billion each year on public education for roughly 1.3 million children. That’s one of the highest per-pupil spending levels in the country. We have a constitutional guarantee of a “thorough and efficient” education, a sophisticated school funding formula, a powerful state department of education, and layer upon layer of regulations and oversight.

    And yet: our statewide test scores are still below pre-pandemic levels. Achievement gaps by race, income, disability, and language remain enormous. In some grades and subjects, they’re widening.

    If you built a machine to spend this much money and still fail to close gaps year after year, it would look exactly like New Jersey’s education system.

    The System Optimizes for the Wrong Thing

    On paper, New Jersey’s education system is supposed to deliver a thorough and efficient education for every child, with equity across race and income, leading to college and career readiness.

    In practice, the system optimizes for compliance with regulations, political stability, and avoiding lawsuits and strikes.

    The proof is everywhere. We produce beautiful policy documents, voluminous regulations, complex aid tables, and endless reports. But ask a simple question — “what exactly are we doing differently in classrooms to get more third graders reading on grade level?” — and the answers get vague fast.

    We have built a machine to show we are doing something. We have not built a machine engineered to maximize student learning.

    $40 Billion Is Not $40 Billion of Teaching

    That enormous figure pays for instruction, sure. But also: support services, administration, operations and maintenance, transportation and food, debt, pensions, and legacy costs. Nationally, barely half of K-12 spending reaches the classroom as direct instruction. New Jersey is no exception.

    The problem isn’t that buses or nurses are wasteful. The problem is this: we are spending tens of billions of dollars through a system that does not prioritize the highest-impact instructional uses of the next dollar.

    New money goes first to contractual raises, benefit increases, new programs layered on old ones without evaluation, and rising facility costs. Almost none of this is evaluated through the brutal question a serious system would ask: “If we invest this next $100 million, what evidence says it will move reading and math outcomes for our most vulnerable students?”

    We don’t ask that. We just roll the machine forward.

    The State Knows Better—But Only in Science

    The Department of Education has already shown us what a more serious approach looks like. On its own website, NJDOE concedes that less than 20 percent of classroom materials are aligned to standards in science, and has responded by building a Model Science Curriculum around vetted, high-quality resources.

    In other words: the Department knows that standards alone are not enough. Teachers need specific, evidence-based materials, and many districts aren’t getting them on their own.

    But why only science? Our most urgent gaps are in early reading and middle-grades math. If the Department can curate model units for science, it can create a K-3 literacy framework aligned with the science of reading and a model math sequence built around proven materials.

    Instead, New Jersey treats curriculum as a hyper-local, 600-district procurement hobby — and then acts surprised when quality is all over the map and only half our students read or do math on grade level.

    600 Districts, Zero Instructional Coherence

    New Jersey has hundreds of school districts, each with its own superintendent, business administrator, HR department, and curriculum staff. Many are tiny. Above them sits NJDOE and county superintendents, responsible for standards, accountability, and oversight.

    What does the state actually control? It sets standards, not curriculum. Districts must “align” to the New Jersey Student Learning Standards, but the state does not mandate or approve specific programs.

    The result: strong standards and a huge compliance apparatus at the top. A fragmented, district-by-district free-for-all in curriculum and instruction at the bottom.

    Contrast that with Mississippi and Louisiana, which have seen real gains in early reading. Their state agencies didn’t stop at standards. They rated and recommended specific curricula aligned to the science of reading. They tied professional development to those exact materials. They used state power to make instructional coherence non-negotiable in early grades.

    New Jersey has allowed 600 different answers to “what does reading instruction look like in K-3?” and then acts surprised when results are uneven and gaps persist.

    Our administrative machine is big enough to boss districts around on paperwork and testing windows. It is somehow too shy to insist on evidence-based literacy instruction for six-year-olds.

    SFRA: A Formula Without a Steering Wheel

    New Jersey’s School Funding Reform Act is, in theory, a rational way to calculate how much each district needs, with extra weights for poverty, language, and special education.

    But SFRA answers “how much?” It says almost nothing about “for what?”

    You can be billions closer to full funding and still have districts spending above adequacy with mediocre outcomes, districts below adequacy left on their own to figure out interventions, and no systematic connection between spending patterns and student outcomes.

    SFRA is a clever formula for filling tanks. It is not a steering wheel.

    A System That Protects Itself Better Than It Protects Children

    Step back and the obscenity becomes stark:

    We tolerate enormous fixed administrative overhead spread across hundreds of districts that could consolidate or share services. We accept a patchwork of curricula in early literacy even as other states prove you can do better. We pour in new money with minimal discipline about which interventions actually work. We allow graduation standards to be quietly lowered so statistics look smoother.

    All of this is defended in the name of “local control,” “flexibility,” and “respecting stakeholders.”

    Meanwhile, a third grader in Trenton is still far less likely to read on grade level than a third grader in a wealthy suburb — despite living in one of the highest-spending education systems on Earth.

    New Jersey’s system is extremely good at sustaining itself. It is not nearly good enough at changing itself when children are not learning.

    What a First-Principles Reset Would Look Like

    If we were designing a $40 billion system for learning, rather than inheriting a $40 billion system of habits:

    Clear, public goals. By 2030: 80% of third graders reading proficiently, with racial and income gaps below 10 percentage points. By 8th grade: 70% proficient in math, same gap constraint. By graduation: diplomas tied to real college and career readiness benchmarks.

    Evidence-based spending rules. The next billion in state aid goes first to high-dosage tutoring for students below proficiency, smaller K-3 class sizes in high-poverty schools, literacy and math coaches tied to vetted curricula, and high-quality pre-K expansion. Not to automatic expansion of everything we already do.

    State leadership on curriculum. NJDOE should review and rate K-8 ELA and math curricula and publish a short list of high-quality options. Professional development should be built around those choices. Districts can still choose — but from good choices.

    Rationalized administration. Require consolidation and shared services where appropriate. Reinvest savings into classroom-facing roles: teachers, aides, interventionists, counselors.

    Real accountability for results. Public dashboards showing, for each district: spending per pupil broken out by category, proficiency rates and gaps by subgroup, and whether things are improving. Tie flexibility and funding to demonstrated ability to turn dollars into learning.

    The Courage We Actually Need

    New Jersey doesn’t need one more glossy plan or press release celebrating “investments in education.” It needs the political courage to admit that our current system is not designed to do the thing we say we value most.

    It will take courage to challenge the sacredness of local administrative fiefdoms. To tell high-spending districts that dollars above adequacy must be justified by outcomes. To insist that early literacy is not a matter of preference but of evidence. To rebuild NJDOE from compliance cop to instructional engine.

    We are not a poor state. We are not a low-spending state. Our children’s struggles are not about scarcity. They are about design — the design of a system that has learned to protect adults, institutions, and routines more effectively than it has learned to teach children to read, write, and think.

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  • Why every middle school student deserves a second chance to learn to read

    Why every middle school student deserves a second chance to learn to read

    Key points:

    Between kindergarten and second grade, much of the school day is dedicated to helping our youngest students master phonics, syllabication, and letter-sound correspondence–the essential building blocks to lifelong learning.

    Unfortunately, this foundational reading instruction has been stamped with an arbitrary expiration date. Students who miss that critical learning window, including our English Language Learners (ELL), children with learning disabilities, and those who find reading comprehension challenging, are pushed forward through middle and high school without the tools they need. In the race to catch up to classmates, they struggle academically, emotionally, and in extreme cases, eventually disengage or drop out.

    Thirteen-year-old Alma, for instance, was still learning the English language during those first three years of school. She grappled with literacy for years, watching her peers breeze through assignments while she stumbled over basic decoding. However, by participating in a phonetics-first foundational literacy program in sixth grade, she is now reading at grade level.

    “I am more comfortable when I read,” she shared. “And can I speak more fluently.”

    Alma’s words represent a transformation that American education typically says is impossible after second grade–that every child can become a successful reader if given a second chance.

    Lifting up the learners left behind 

    At Southwestern Jefferson County Consolidated School in Hanover, Ind., I teach middle-school students like Alma who are learning English as their second language. Many spent their formative school years building oral language proficiency and, as a result, lost out on systematic instruction grounded in English phonics patterns. 

    These bright and ambitious students lack basic foundational skills, but are expected to keep up with their classmates. To help ELL students access the same rigorous content as their peers while simultaneously building the decoding skills they missed, we had to give them a do-over without dragging them a step back. 

    Last year, we introduced our students to Readable English, a research-backed phonetic system that makes English decoding visible and teachable at any age. The platform embeds foundational language instruction into grade-level content, including the textbooks, novels, and worksheets all students are using, but with phonetic scaffolding that makes decoding explicit and systematic.

    To help my students unlock the code behind complicated English language rules, we centered our classroom intervention on three core components:

    • Rhyming: The ability to rhyme, typically mastered by age five, is a key early literacy indicator. However, almost every ELL student in my class was missing this vital skill. Changing even one letter can alter the sound of a word, and homographic words like “tear” have completely different sounds and meanings. By embedding a pronunciation guide into classroom content, glyphs–or visual diacritical marks–indicate irregular sounds in common words and provide key information about the sound a particular letter makes.
    • Syllabication patterns: Because our ELL students were busy learning conversational English during the critical K-2 years, systematic syllable division, an essential decoding strategy, was never practiced. Through the platform, visual syllable breaks organize words into simple, readable chunks that make patterns explicit and teachable.
    • Silent letter patterns: With our new phonics platform, students can quickly “hear” different sounds. Unmarked letters make their usual sound while grayed-out letters indicate those with a silent sound. For students frustrated with pronunciation, pulling back the curtain on language rules provided them with that “a-ha” moment.

    The impact on our students’ reading proficiency has been immediate and measurable, creating a cognitive energy shift from decoding to comprehension. Eleven-year-old Rodrigo, who has been in the U.S. for only two years, reports he’s “better at my other classes now” and is seeing boosts in his science, social studies, and math grades.

    Taking a new step on a nationwide level

    The middle-school reading crisis in the U.S. is devastating for our students. One-third of eighth-graders failed to hit the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) benchmark in reading, the largest percentage ever. In addition, students who fail to build literacy skills exhibit lower levels of achievement and are more likely to drop out of school. 

    The state of Indiana has recognized the crisis and, this fall, launched a new reading initiative for middle-school students. While this effort is a celebrated first step, every school needs the right tools to make intervention a success, especially for our ELL students. 

    Educators can no longer expect students to access grade-level content without giving them grade-level decoding skills. Middle-school students need foundational literacy instruction that respects their age, cognitive development, and dignity. Revisiting primary-grade phonics curriculum isn’t the right answer–educators must empower kids with phonetic scaffolding embedded in the same content their classmates are learning. 

    To help all students excel and embrace a love of reading, it’s time to reject the idea that literacy instruction expires in second grade. Instead, all of us can provide every child, at any age, the chance to become a successful lifelong reader who finds joy in the written word.

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  • A Tumultuous Tenure Leading the Nation’s Diversity Officers

    A Tumultuous Tenure Leading the Nation’s Diversity Officers

    Paulette Granberry Russell is stepping down as president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE) after a dramatic and unpredictable five years at the helm.

    She represented campus diversity professionals amid the national racial reckoning that accompanied the Black Lives Matter movement, and then through the dizzying years that followed as anti-DEI laws swept the country. She also spent 22 years as a diversity professional at Michigan State University.

    Granberry Russell told Inside Higher Ed she never planned to stay at NADOHE longer than five years, so she’s ready to move on and facilitate a “smooth transition and handoff.”

    But what a tenure it’s been.

    She spoke with Inside Higher Ed about how she navigated the headwinds facing diversity professionals and the future of diversity, equity and inclusion work on campuses. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

    Q: Over the course of your term, from 2020 to 2025, the landscape for diversity professionals in higher education radically shifted. What has it been like for you to represent DEI professionals then and now?

    A: When I came into the role, my goals were to do a few things, which, not only were intended to build on our past successes, but also [to] develop new initiatives that would enhance a few areas, [including] increasing our membership but also providing our support for them. It included, for example, enhancing our industry influence but also sustainability of the organization.

    I came into the role in March of 2020, and what happened in March of 2020? The pandemic, which altered much of what was going on in higher education and how we were doing our work, whether that was remotely, but also with threats in terms of both student experiences but also student support. And then, in May of 2020, the murder of George Floyd, and all of the ways in which our institutions were reacting and responding and certain commitments were made to enhance antiracism efforts on our campuses.

    When I think about my first few months, it was something very different than what I anticipated. And I’m certain that’s true for higher education as well. I lived in this state of shifting priorities, having to think about ways to best support members who were having to adjust to significant shifts on their campuses. We were also dealing with significant challenges around freedom of speech and disruption on our campuses prior to these more recent experiences.

    And the politics are very different. When you shift from an environment of enhanced commitment built on an understanding that our campuses had to deal with issues around race and expanding opportunities more broadly across identity to now pushback—it was causing quite a shift in equilibrium. And that’s true for our members as well as the organization. And because of the evolution of diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education historically, as painful as a lot of this was, I believe we were better prepared than we understood ourselves to be.

    Q: You touched on how you started at NADOHE in this moment in 2020, when campuses made commitments and investments in thinking about race and racial inequities, and now campuses are rolling back so much of those efforts in response to anti-DEI legislation. How did these policy shifts change NADOHE’s work and change your work as its leader? How did you have to pivot?

    A: Our successes, I think, resulted in some of the pushback. The pushback was evolving. Expanding on opportunities [created by diversity initiatives] beyond race, so that people understood that diversity was more inclusive than they initially understood it to be—we did not do as good a job as we could have and should have.

    But [we] are beginning to do [it] now, in broadening people’s understanding that diversity is and should be interpreted very broadly. I think that the narrative was hijacked, meaning it was easy to unfortunately define diversity narrowly on the basis of race, gender and sexuality. And others used that narrative to create fear and apprehension that somehow others were being advantaged, versus understanding that we all have benefited from the ways in which we were adjusting our efforts on campus to broaden access, to broaden opportunities, to increase equitable outcomes, understanding that [it’s] not one-size-fits-all, and we had to tailor and adjust our efforts to accommodate the broad range of interests and identities that presented on our campuses and have always presented on our campuses. What we failed to do well was messaging both the communities impacted by our work and the work that was being done to expand opportunities as well.

    Q: How did the backlash shift your priorities, if at all?

    A: When we think about the early challenges, some [opponents] would point to critical race theory. I don’t know that they necessarily understood it very well, and [they] were having a difficult time messaging it. But it was easier to talk about diversity, because for many people, that conjures up issues around race, it harkens back to earlier views of affirmative action and I think it became an easier message to divide higher ed both internally as well as externally.

    It was important for NADOHE to emphasize—whether it was around academic freedom, First Amendment rights and freedom of speech and freedom of expression—that diversity, equity and inclusion are embedded in those. Freedom of expression cannot be sanitized. Our research, for example, or our curriculum is going to touch on issues that may impact communities broadly—and diverse, marginalized, underserved communities. And the work that we do in higher education as diversity leaders requires evidence-based research that informs our work. In the absence of that, you’re guessing at strategies and interventions that will support all students.

    This work is not going to go away. We’re not going to go back to a time when opportunities were constrained, when fairness did not extend to certain communities. That’s unacceptable.”

    —Paulette Granberry Russell

    And so, I don’t know that it was as much a shift in our priorities as much as it was helping higher ed internally, as well as audiences outside of higher ed, to understand that access and opportunity are not limited to any one demographic or a few demographics. If there was a shift in priorities, it was hopefully helping broader audiences understand that there’s nothing to fear, especially in the ways that diversity, equity, inclusion was being demonized. This work is not intended to grant preferential treatment to some and deny others opportunities.

    Q: So, you found yourself having to do a lot of explaining about what’s actually meant when people say “DEI” in a higher ed context.

    A: That’s right. And it’s also saying to folks, don’t use the acronym. Because the acronym, unfortunately, supported a very narrow way of defining efforts.

    Diversity is not defined narrowly. Equity is intended to reduce barriers that may result in differential impact, and those differential impacts are not limited to any one category. Inclusion doesn’t happen just naturally. We know individuals feeling included allows them to be themselves but also allows them to be more successful. If I don’t feel like I belong, what do I do? I tend to retreat, or I don’t access the resources that are there, resources that may benefit me, resources that are accessible to all, with an understanding that, again, we’re not monolithic. It is helping people differently understand, and hopefully better understand, that there are no threats here. Diversity on our campuses is a reality, period. And it’s not going to change, certainly not as long as organizations like NADOHE are here to defend access and opportunities.

    Changes in nomenclature happen. How we define our work, how we label our work, how we tag our work has always changed. If we think historically, going back 20, 30 years, we talked about affirmative action. We talked about multiculturalism. We talked about diversity. We talked about equal opportunity. We talk about fairness. We talk about equity. We talk about belonging. We talk about inclusion. Terminology evolves over time, given how the work itself evolves.

    Q: As campuses close centers associated with DEI and get rid of diversity roles, what do you see as the next phase of the work? How do campus diversity professionals move forward from here? And what does the DEI movement look like now and into the future?

    A: At least for this moment in time, we need to more closely scrutinize the systems that have been designed that have resulted in barriers to success. And how do we redesign, or how do we begin to design systems that differently support our campuses?

    There’s no single office or individual that can do this work alone. Certainly, in my own career at an institution that was a large public land-grant with over 40,000 students at that time and 14,000 faculty and staff, there was no way that a person with two staff was going to be able to dramatically impact change. [Change comes from] working with others and understanding that it’s going to take what I would call a whole-institution approach, which means that our leadership, our policies, budget, people, culture have to be aligned. That also means that we have to take a look at the policies, practices, procedures that we have in place that may be having differential impacts, and how do we make adjustments in those? Not to grant preferential treatment, not to discriminate, but to say, can we design systems that work better?

    We’re talking about a systems approach for structural change. When I say a systems approach, this is going to be far more extensive than I think many of us are prepared to do, but I think that it’s the future. [In the past], unfortunately, we didn’t [always] look at connections between the needs of our students, the capacity of faculty to meet those needs, the capacity of staff to meet those needs and connecting our students to potential employers. Things were very siloed. Things are still very siloed. We have to think about the life cycle of a student. And we do that, but it’s not that we are always very deliberate in how we do it.

    When I grew up as a child, the expectation was that I would go to college, but my family, by all definitions, was very low income. [When] I got to my undergraduate experience, there were no tools in the way that there are now. There were no interventions. There were no programs that I could access that connected me to all of the resources that would allow me to be successful. I was a low-income Black female who arrived on a campus with no prior experience, not knowing how to navigate the space, not knowing where the resources were, not knowing how to fund my education. I was a person with a dream and a family that really wanted me to be successful, but they didn’t have the tools to provide that. It’s a very different world we live in today.

    [The goal is] helping that student understand where the resources are, and then helping faculty understand the differences of those students that come into your classroom, ways that you as faculty can support them, connecting those faculty with the advisory services that those students might need. We have to design [systems] in ways that reduce barriers, that acknowledge the differences that exist and with the goal of those individuals being successful [and] reducing the barriers for faculty to be successful.

    Q: After leaving NADOHE, what’s next for you?

    A: My entire trajectory, my entire life, I have always been this person who believed in fairness. I always believed in opportunities. I’m always that person who fought for not only myself, but for others to be treated fairly, because I grew up in a family where my history included ancestors who were formerly enslaved.

    At 16 years old, I decided I wanted to increase participation in voting. In 12th grade, I remember I had a speech class, and I was that person giving speeches on the slaughtering of baby seals. I was the person who was giving speeches on sexuality and treating people differently based on how they identified. I was that person who gave speeches on the Black Power movement, civil rights, Martin Luther King. And as I reflect now, as I transition, I’m not going to be any different than what I have always been. I will find new ways to [apply] my experiences and my advocacy. Because I have no choice. I realized that about myself.

    My time with NADOHE has been to build on the successes of my predecessors. I believe that I have done that. I achieved the goals that I set out to achieve, both for myself and for the organization, whether that is increasing our membership, our influence within higher ed [and] beyond higher ed. We’ve done that.

    This work is not going to go away. We’re not going to go back to a time when opportunities were constrained, when fairness did not extend to certain communities. We’re not going back to a time when discrimination on the basis of identity was lawful, certainly in the context of race, gender, sexuality, sexual orientation. That’s unacceptable. We’re not going back.

    My next move is, I’m going to breathe. I’m going to take a little bit of time for myself. But I know I will always find my way back to what I have always been committed to, that I want people to be treated fairly. I want people to have opportunities.

    Q: Whoever takes over your position is going to face significant headwinds. What would be your advice to them?

    A: Bring your passion. Bring your commitment. Coming into this role, it’s going to be exhausting, but you have to decide that there’s no other way forward. Too many lives depend on it. This country, our democracy, depends on it.

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  • Loan and Degree Insurance May Be Self-Defeating (opinion)

    Loan and Degree Insurance May Be Self-Defeating (opinion)

    Imagine you are the parent of an incoming college student who wants to study theology, ranked among the lowest-paid majors after graduation. You’re proud of their conviction, but also anxious because friends and family keep reminding you that theology is a major for which career prospects are uncertain at best. Then, in the thick of college decision season, you learn that the college your child is considering offers something called “degree insurance”: If your graduate doesn’t earn above a set threshold, the program will step in to cover part of the gap.

    The promise is meant to ease parents’ and students’ fears. Yet, it raises a deeper question: Why would a college degree, still the surest path to economic advancement and long-term financial stability, suddenly require insurance at all?

    Across the country, colleges and universities are rolling out a new suite of financial products targeting undergraduates, marketed as “loan” and “degree” insurance. Loan repayment assistant programs (LRAPs), sometimes also called loan repayment guarantees, are a form of loan insurance that protect students against default: If a graduate doesn’t earn above a certain threshold, their student loan payments are reimbursed to a certain amount. Degree insurance is a mechanism akin to public “wage insurance” programs, where if a graduate makes less than the average income in their field adjusted for regional differences, the insurance would “top up” the difference in wages for a period of time.

    These two tools have distinct origins and underlying rationales. Loan Repayment Assistance Programs (LRAPs) originated in Yale Law School in the 1980s, and spread to other law schools, as the rising cost of legal education began to deter graduates from pursuing lower-paying public interest careers. While they began as internal sources of funding, the privatization of LRAP offerings and search for profit have pushed the industry to expand into new markets, namely undergraduate education. Indeed, Ardeo Education Solutions, an early and prominent player in this sector, was founded by Yale Law graduate Peter Samuelson, who himself benefited from Yale’s loan assistance program. Ardeo positions itself as reassuring families about the risks of taking on debt in order to pay for undergraduate education, “increasing access to the life-changing impact of higher education,” and freeing students from having to choose “between their passions and a paycheck.”

    Degree insurance products take a different approach. Degree Insurance, which counts Augustana College in Illinois as a client, draws on the cultural cachet of the American dream to market itself as an income equalizer; its flagship product, “American Dream Insurance,” guarantees “equal pay for equal study,” where “no graduate will have to earn less than their peers, regardless of race or gender, because everyone will have the same safety net.” This is insurance against the uncertainties and inequalities of the labor market as well as against individual weaknesses of any particular candidate.

    While the current scope and reach of this sector is challenging to assess, Ardeo Education advertises that it’s provided LRAPs to more than 30,000 students at more than 200 American colleges and universities. Participating institutions range from a number of small, faith-based colleges like Lyon College and MidAmerica Nazarene University to a public research university like Eastern Michigan University. Eligibility for repayment assistance usually requires graduation from the offering institution, full-time work (30+ hours/week), and staying below the income cap.

    The extension of LRAPs and degree insurance into undergraduate programs represents a new dimension of risk management in higher education, which has gone through several phases since it began in earnest in the late 20th century when colleges and universities started responding to increased personal injury and campus safety litigation. These risk management programs, tailored to protect institutions, eventually expanded to include Title IX, Occupational Safety and Health Administration requirements, environmental regulations, reputation management, crisis communications, cybersecurity and, most relevantly for this topic, financial sustainability. Loan and degree insurance represent the latest iteration of such efforts.

    For now, colleges typically pay for these programs, though it is unclear how much of the cost is passed on to students through tuition. How students are selected for inclusion in these programs is also opaque. Institutions are free to determine which students and majors are offered the program. Augustana College’s website, for example, says that it offers degree insurance at no direct cost to the student, but participation is on an invitation-only basis.

    There are, of course, reasons to defend these programs. Scrutiny of the student loan system, which has resulted in a student debt crisis, has intensified across the political spectrum, as policymakers from both parties recognize the harm it has caused (even as they disagree on the solutions). LRAPs and degree insurance may decrease the rate of loan default and reassure low-income families who were unable to save for college and are averse to taking on loans to pay for college.

    In an environment marked by increasing competition for students, admissions professionals see offering LRAPs and degree insurance as a competitive advantage. Loan repayment and degree insurance plans also encourage students not only to enroll in college in general but to pursue degrees with more challenging career prospects, which are also often the ones at risk of being cut due to low enrollment. This is increasingly relevant given the almost daily news of program closures.

    The arrival of these financial instruments is perhaps an understandable response to the rising cost of a college education, increased competition for students, overall wage stagnation and shifting public views about the purpose, value and outcomes of higher education. The adoption of these tools, however, is not simply driven by the current circulation of the idea of college education as a risk; it also further reinforces that view.

    These programs are not simply a new and neutral financial option for students. By extending the logics of institutional risk management to the economic futures of students, these tools cement the troubling, and potentially self-defeating, idea that a college degree itself is a financial risk requiring protection rather than the most reliable path to upward mobility and a critical component of our continued economic and cultural prosperity. Their adoption by colleges and universities is a reflection of the “short-termism” that has increasingly marked higher education strategy. As more institutions inevitably adopt these programs, it is unclear how long they will remain a competitive advantage. Furthermore, as the trend spreads, we may see the labor market respond, with employers lowering entry-level salaries even further as they take into account insurance payouts. Indeed, like many aspects of higher education today, it feels like a race to the bottom.

    Comparisons between insurance products and other forms of income or employment assurances are difficult to make. Should families prioritize colleges with strong outcomes (e.g., graduation rates upward of 70 percent and reassuring post-graduation employment statistics), robust alumni networks, or loan and insurance programs? It is also too early to tell what the consequences of transferring the risk to third parties, a common higher education risk management strategy, might be for students and institutions in the long term. And, it further financializes education, such that in the process of character formation, managing risk, rather than other values or logics, becomes central to identity.

    Colleges and universities might want to ask themselves whether treating college degrees as a risk serves their long-term interests. Loan and degree insurance products may deliver short-term enrollment gains, ease families’ anxieties, and even encourage students to pursue majors often viewed as less “marketable.” In the long-term, however, these strategies relieve the pressure to address underlying structural challenges such as rising costs, stagnant wages and a flawed loan system. Ultimately, they undermine our ability to make the case for higher education as a public good, thus putting the future of the entire endeavor at risk.

    Margarita Rayzberg is an assistant professor of sociology and criminology at Valparaiso University.

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  • Is DEI Dead or Changing?

    Is DEI Dead or Changing?

    Under repeated threats to their funding, higher ed institutions began to rebrand or shut down cultural centers, Black student resource centers and LGBTQ+ and women’s programs. Many campus diversity officers lost their jobs or were shuffled off to other offices, barred from doing much of the work they were hired for. Some institutions scrapped celebrated traditions such as affinity graduations and campus residential communities geared toward students of certain racial or ethnic backgrounds. Some student groups, like Esperanza, lost university funding because of their identity-based missions.

    In one recent example, the University of Alabama ended two student publications, one focused on women and the other on Black students, citing federal policy concerns. The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga shuttered its Women’s and Gender Equity Center, an LGBTQ center, its Office of Multicultural Affairs, and the Office of Student & Family Engagement, replacing them with a Center for Student Leadership, Engagement and Community. The changes have affected faculty and staff as well as students; earlier this fall, the University of Illinois System banned consideration of race, sex or country of origin not only in financial aid decisions but in hiring, tenure and promotion as well.

    “It’s very sad to see a lot of universities fall to their knees,” Luna said. Higher ed institutions “are supposed to be the places where the exchange of ideas happen, where leaders are developed and where you’re just taught about how the world objectively is … It’s a very dangerous sign for the future.”

    A Double Attack

    State-level anti-DEI laws have proliferated for several years now, but diversity-related programs and services were dealt a double blow this year when Trump took office.

    On Feb. 14, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights issued a Dear Colleague letter declaring race-conscious student programming and resources illegal, based on an expansive interpretation of the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision against considering race in admissions in Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard. It gave colleges and universities 14 days to eliminate such offerings or risk losing their federal funding. A month later, ED launched investigations into 51 colleges for ongoing DEI activity. Federal judges struck down the department’s anti-DEI guidance in April, pausing enforcement, but colleges nonetheless scrambled to review and scrub DEI language from their programs and offices or shutter them altogether.

    Over the summer, the Department of Justice came out with a sweeping guidance memo declaring an even wider set of practices off-limits, including those that use “potentially unlawful proxies” for race, such as recruiting students from majority-minority geographic areas. In a series of contentious legal battles, the federal government pressured some universities to agree to settlements that included anti-DEI provisions, including bans on race-conscious programs and transgender athletes. For example, the University of Virginia, which the DOJ targeted for DEI practices, recently agreed to quash all DEI programming to maintain federal funding.

    I am a person who still believes, and I will forever believe, that it is important to call it diversity, equity, inclusion, anti-racism.”

    Shaun Harper, founder and chief research scientist at USC’s Race and Equity Center

    All the while, federal agencies have slashed, frozen and stalled billions of dollars in research grants to universities, often for perceived ties to DEI concepts. More than 120 TRIO programs, which support disadvantaged students, also lost their federal funds over alleged DEI connections. And in September, the Education Department abruptly ended grants for many minority-serving institutions, calling such programs—used to fund supports like extra peer mentoring or streamlined STEM programming at colleges with burgeoning minority student populations—“discriminatory” and “unconstitutional.”

    States, meanwhile, enacted an unprecedented number of new laws cracking down on DEI: 14 in 12 states, including Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, New Hampshire, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia and Wyoming. That’s double the number of states that passed anti-DEI laws last year.

    A higher education consultant and lawyer in the Washington D.C. area, who asked to remain anonymous, said campus leaders are increasingly asking, “How do we keep ourselves off the radar? How do we avoid scrutiny from the federal government?” At the same time, they face “increasingly disgruntled and disappointed communities within who are saying, ‘We thought you cared about this issue’,” the source said. University leaders have come under “very real pressure.”

    A ‘Loss of Momentum’

    Diversity officers and scholars fear that this year’s seismic policy shifts and campus crackdowns on DEI will have ripple effects across academe and beyond.

    Kaleb L. Briscoe, associate professor of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Oklahoma, is concerned that some institutions have responded to DEI bans by limiting what’s taught in the classroom.

    For example, Florida colleges removed hundreds of courses related to race, sex and gender from their general education requirement options. Classes at Texas A&M University that “advocate race or gender ideology, sexual orientation, or gender identity” now require approval from the university president. And other Texas universities have undertaken reviews of course syllabi and curricula for anything that runs afoul of state or federal DEI bans.

    Curriculum changes that would normally “take years’ worth of processes” are sometimes happening quickly and without appropriate faculty input, Briscoe said. While proponents of DEI bans often call for viewpoint diversity, “by implementing these bans, you are taking away voices and taking away knowledge … which really counters what they are hoping to do.”

    She also fears a “blue, red, purple divide of education,” where students have different levels of access to certain subject areas or perspectives depending on where they go to college.

    “We are now going to see different people in different states learning and getting access to different things,” she said. “That is horrible because, knowledge-wise, we should be preparing our students to be productive citizens across difference.”

    What we’re doing is reducing opportunities.”

    Paulette Granberry Russell, president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education

    Shaun Harper, founder and chief research scientist at the University of Southern California’s Race and Equity Center, said he’s mourning a “loss of momentum” in improving the experiences and outcomes of underrepresented students, a movement that stretches back to the 1960s.

    He recently visited a campus where “the Black cultural center still exists in name, but it has no staff. It has no programming. It’s just an empty room,” he said. Harper, who also serves as USC’s Clifford and Betty Allen Chair in Urban Leadership and Provost Professor of Education, Business and Public Policy, said he found a smattering of students still trying to use the space, sitting in the dark and talking. He remembers when the same center was “a light, bright, vibrant space that was rich with culture that had employees … who helped to make it a home away from home.”

    To him, the darkened space was a symbol of what’s been lost.

    DEI Professionals Under Fire

    Harper said he’s been especially disheartened to see DEI professionals lose their jobs.

    Institutions dismissed “good, innocent, hard-working people who were expert at bringing campus communities together across racial, religious, ideological and other important divides,” and who pushed for some widely-cared-about issues like pay equity for women and access for students with disabilities, he said. “The loss of those people has been catastrophic to higher education, to the students that they were serving and to those people’s careers.”

    A former diversity professional at a public higher ed institution in the South told Inside Higher Ed that DEI officers were wrestling with the “trauma,” “shame” and “humiliation” of suffering such a forceful, nationwide rejection.

    The ex-diversity officer, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of career repercussions, spent years working to make their institution a more welcoming place for students of color—and it worked, they said. Over their tenure, faculty diversity increased and the percentage of underrepresented students in the university’s entering class more than doubled.

    But you wouldn’t know it from looking at the institution’s website, the former diversity officer said. It makes no mention of the diversity office, which was dissolved. The university stripped any evidence of its work, including videos of events and educational programs, data reports and online community platforms. Unlike many of their co-workers, the former diversity officer retained an unrelated position at the institution, but their former role feels like a “scarlet letter” on campus and in the job market, they said.

    They worry not only for their colleagues but also for students and faculty members left unserved.

    “I can tell you that students of color who had community, don’t,” they said. “They’re spitting on Black kids, they’re calling them the N-word, and kids don’t know where to go. They don’t know what office is going to support them.”

    The former diversity professional believes DEI is officially “dead,” at least as a label.

    But “the underlying work of creating welcoming, diverse, inclusive, supportive cultures on campus and communities is not dead,” they said. The “benefits of diversity, of inclusion, those are still there. It just can’t be called that.”

    Students in Ann Arbor protested the University of Michigan’s decision last spring to close its DEI offices, putting up posters criticizing President Donald Trump and former UM President Santa Ono.

    Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

    DEI’s Murky Future

    Harper argued that the work can’t really go on without using the term “DEI.” He believes replacement terms like “culture” and ”community” lack specificity in a way that makes them meaningless.

    “It’s giving weak sauce,” he said. “I am a person who still believes, and I will forever believe, that it is important to call it diversity, equity, inclusion, anti-racism.” The same goes for “antisemitism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia. It’s important to call those things by their names.”

    Whether DEI will continue in some form is an open question currently under debate by current and former DEI officers and researchers. Some retain their optimism; others argue it’s going to take years, even decades, for campus infrastructure to recover from the full extent of this year’s losses—if a comeback is even possible.

    The DEI rollbacks mark a retreat from “60-plus years of effort to broaden access and address inequities,” said Paulette Granberry Russell, who’s stepping down as president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education in January after five years at the helm. “So, do I see this work coming back? Bouncing back? No.”

    Regardless of who wins the next election, she believes federal funding cuts and stymied DEI-related research will cause long-lasting damage. She’s spoken with scholars studying issues related to race and gender who have been doxed and threatened, and who fear continuing the work they’ve done for years.

    “What we’re doing is reducing opportunities,” Granberry Russell said. “You’re not going to make that up in two, three, four years.”

    But she’s not without hope. She emphasized that a “systems approach” to improving academic outcomes for students—making such work the entire university’s responsibility—could be the next phase of these efforts as diversity offices fade. Doing so would require leaders to express “their commitment, which at least at this point, requires a certain amount of courage, given the very heavy-handed … taking away of resources to bring colleges and universities into line,” she said.

    A chief diversity officer who lost their job in a state with a DEI ban but now works in the same role at an east coast institution, said they’re doing a “post-mortem” on where DEI went wrong. They believe the DEI movement might have tried to accomplish too much too fast, without explaining the research behind the practices developed to boost student outcomes.

    Practitioners introduced concepts “really new to people” and sometimes “began to cancel people quickly” who didn’t get it, said the CDO, who asked to remain anonymous. But “you can’t run a marathon with people who are not fit. You have to bring them up to where you want them to be. And that requires teaching. It requires patience.”

    They noted that the field of DEI grew rapidly in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. Scholarship on improving campus climate flourished, and diversity professionals enjoyed a wide berth to try new strategies to close equity gaps. But it was short-lived. Less than a year into the CDO’s role at their previous institution, the anti-DEI movement gained traction in the state. An anti-DEI law ultimately passed, and the diversity office later closed for good.

    “That great rebirth or Renaissance” was “like a star that just had its last final flash of wonder—and then the death began,” they said. “We didn’t know at the time that the star was shining brightly to die.”

    They believe DEI could be on the brink of a new era, one that rectifies some of its past mistakes and garners more support. “My fear is that we won’t be given the opportunity to do so,” they said. But they’re confident diversity professionals won’t give up on the programs, practices and strategies they believe students need.

    “Fear not. Rest up, my friends,” they said. “We will be back.”

    The D.C.-based higher education consultant and lawyer believes DEI isn’t dead; it’s just shifting. Campus DEI work has never been unlawful, they argued, so colleges and universities simply need to emphasize that fact, not scale back their work. They encourage campus leaders to state explicitly that cultural centers and programs are open to all, and to train everyone on campus, including student group leaders, how to frame their programming that way—even though the programs didn’t discriminate in the first place.

    “Many times, I’m just trying to remove language that I know is going to draw scrutiny and then trying to offer them a way to continue to live out their values,” they said. “There may be ways to thematically describe the intended purpose of a program without using an identity marker that really just is a lightning rod in this moment.”

    They acknowledged that “this transition has been really painful” for all invested in diversity, equity and inclusion work.

    “But I think people are resilient,” they said. “They’re evolving, and they’re trying to figure out a pathway to make the work of universal access and opportunity evergreen.”

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  • Hope Is Essential to Success of Any Job Search (opinion)

    Hope Is Essential to Success of Any Job Search (opinion)

    We live in uncertain and unstable times. The job market is contracting due to economic uncertainty, political instability and the increase of AI-driven automation. In my role as a career adviser, I talk to many students and recent graduates who have faced a long and difficult job search. The words and phrases I hear most often in these conversations are “dejected,” “soul-crushing,” or “I feel like I am screaming into the void.” International students face an added challenge, with H-1B visas seeming out of reach as they become more difficult and expensive for employers to process.

    All of this uncertainty can lead to feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. What I hear from students, and in particular our international community at Columbia University, is, “What is the point of applying to jobs if no one will hire me?” Such self-defeating thoughts can lead to inaction and feelings of despair. Yet hope is essential to the success of any job search. Having hope or optimism that something will work out is central to achieving one’s goals.

    It is likewise essential that a career coach or adviser have a hopeful, positive attitude. A recent article published by the IZA Institute of Labor Economics describes how when people who were unemployed for a long period of time worked with caseworkers who had “strong confidence in the potential of their clients to find employment,” the relationship led to an increase in the client’s motivation and resilience, and to improved earnings and employment outcomes over time. Thus, our outlook as advisers can impact the students we are working with, so we must manage our own feelings of hopelessness. I find myself returning to Jane Goodall’s The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times for inspiration.

    Another source of inspiration I return to is a framework called Career Flow: A Hope-Centered Approach to Career Development, developed in 2011 by Spencer G. Niles, Norman E. Amundson and Roberta A. Neault. In the remainder of this article, I plan to provide career development professionals with an overview of this hope-based career development model and suggestions on how they can implement it to assist their students and graduates.

    In the theory, “Career Flow” is an analogy that compares different types of experiences in one’s career to the flow of water. Anyone who has felt “underwater” at work can understand this metaphor. Finding “optimal” flow in a professional setting means that your skills and personality match the tasks and requirements of your role. Below, I outline suggested steps based on the model to help you implement a hope-based approach to career advising.

    Step 1: Assessing and Establishing Hope

    Start by letting the advisee tell their story and share the challenges that they face. Listen and reflect back what you are hearing. But also start to consider the person’s outlook and demeanor. Many of the people I talk to, including federal workers who were laid off or furloughed, exhibit signs of hope even though they understand the current challenges they are facing and express frustration and sometimes fear. I have been surprised and impressed by people’s resilience and willingness to pivot, which I make sure to point out. That helps them see the strength they are exhibiting even in a moment of crisis.

    However, some people will present as mostly frustrated, with little hope. If you are talking to someone who seems particularly hopeless about their situation, it could be helpful to reflect that back to them. You might say, “What you just described to me seems like a very tough situation. I wonder if you might feel a sense of hopelessness?” Sometimes it just takes awareness for someone to realize that they need to shift their mindset. Validate their struggle, then help them reframe their point of view toward one that is more hopeful. For example, you could mention the Career Flow model that shows the positive benefits of having hope in a career search. If a student seems unwilling to shift, you might want to suggest that they seek extra support through family, friends or counseling services.

    Step 2: Self-Reflection and Self-Clarity

    Self-reflection and self-clarity are essential to any job search, including when it comes to establishing a hopeful approach. If someone is not clear about their own needs and values or has a lack of understanding of their situation and challenges, that person can struggle to succeed in their goals. Therefore, help them gain a greater sense of self-clarity by reflecting any key interests, skills and values you hear them describe in your conversation. At the same time, it is important to ask about possible challenges or obstacles to fully understand their situation and address hurdles standing in the way of their goals.

    If a student seems hopeless about succeeding in their goals, advisers can bolster hope by asking about areas of strength or asking them to describe a time they felt they succeeded when faced with a difficult task. Reminding students of past successes and helping to celebrate these wins can increase their sense of agency and help them believe they can overcome future challenges.

    Step 3: Visioning

    An inherently hopeful exercise, visioning is the ability to brainstorm future possibilities and identify desired outcomes. Sometimes, I talk to a student who is so focused on one goal, such as finding an academic job or postdoc position, that they forget to consider other opportunities where they can apply their skills and expertise. When starting the visioning process, encourage advises to imagine multiple ways of reaching their desired goal. This is also known as “pathways thinking” and, in the Career Flow model, quantity is more important than quality. When an extensive list of possible career paths is identified, the advisee should use self-reflection and self-clarity to narrow their options by selecting a few paths that best align with their interests, skills and values. Pathways thinking also supports advisees in being both flexible and adaptable, traits that are incredibly important in any job search.

    However, people who feel hopeless can sometimes lack the capability to consider other options. Help connect them to resources, such as career assessments like ImaginePhD, myIDP or O*Net, where they can gather information to explore different types of employment. Also, help them consider ways they can gain skills or experience through online courses, volunteering, on-campus work or internships.

    Step 4: Goal Setting and Planning

    Once a student has selected a few possible paths, then focus on setting specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound (SMART) goals. Students often set lofty or poorly defined goals such as, “I want to find a job.” Help them identify small, realistic steps they can take to achieve their main goal of employment. For example, suggest that they find a job they want to apply to and create a tailored résumé and cover letter for the role and then schedule another career advising session in two weeks to review the documents. Again, consider possible barriers to their goals and how they can overcome them.

    Step 5: Implementing and Adapting

    As students start to reach their incremental goals they will encounter either positive feedback (e.g. a request for an interview) or a lack of success (silence or rejection emails). As they gather more data, help them revise or relinquish possible paths that are no longer relevant or serving them. Sometimes, you will need to help them accept the fact that a goal might not be achieved. This process is known as radical acceptance, or giving in to your current reality. Help them see that finding employment during a period of uncertainty is difficult and can cause pain, but life can still be hopeful and joyful.

    Another approach is to help students see what they have control over. We might not be able to control the economy, but we can control our actions and our outlook, and we can seek out help when we need it or find support in community with others. Overall, be there as a source of support, guidance and encouragement.

    In conclusion, it can take substantial effort to choose to be hopeful in periods of uncertainty, but we must maintain hope even in the darkest of times. To quote C. R. Snyder, who writes about the psychology of hope, “in studying hope …, I observed the spectrum of human strength. This reminds me of the rainbow that frequently is used as a symbol of hope. A rainbow is a prism that sends shards of multicolored light in various directions. It lifts our spirits and makes us think of what is possible. Hope is the same—a personal rainbow of the mind.”

    So, let us be a rainbow for those we work with and help them to let hope, rather than despair, lead the way.

    Francesca Fanelli has 10 years of experience working with graduate-level students and is a licensed mental health counselor in the state of New York. She currently serves as senior associate director of graduate career development at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where she specializes in career advising and event management.

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  • MacKenzie Scott Showers Colleges With More Gifts

    MacKenzie Scott Showers Colleges With More Gifts

    Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott gave more multimillion donations out to colleges.

    picture alliance/Getty Images

    Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott is at it again with another round of gifts.

    Robeson Community College in North Carolina announced a $24 million gift from Scott on Thursday, the single largest contribution in the rural college’s history.

    Robeson’s president, Melissa Singler, called the gift “a profound affirmation of our students, our faculty and staff, and the limitless potential of Robeson County.”

    “Never before have we been given a gift of this magnitude that affords our team the time, space and freedom to think, dream and plan boldly,” Singler said in a news release.

    Scott also gifted Carl Albert State College in Oklahoma $23 million. The college is working on a strategic plan for how to use the funds, focused on “sustainability, academic and career success, innovation, and community engagement,” according to an announcement last week. Connors State College, also in Oklahoma, celebrated a $15 million contribution from Scott, its largest gift ever.

    Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College also announced a “multi-million dollar gift” last week, the largest unrestricted gift in its history, but didn’t specify the amount. The tribal college plans to use Scott’s funding to support scholarships and grants for native and non-native students.

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  • Grad Programs Brace for Loan Caps

    Grad Programs Brace for Loan Caps

    Most of the colleges with the largest graduate programs in the country don’t have clear plans for how they’ll deal with new loan caps, set to kick in next July. And if they do, they aren’t taking publicly about it.

    For years, students could borrow essentially unlimited funds to pay for graduate education, thanks to a program known as Grad PLUS that capped loans at the cost of attendance. Republicans in Congress and other critics have argued that colleges took advantage of this program and raised their prices, fueling the student debt crisis. Loans for grad students make up nearly half of the federal loan portfolio.

    Along the way, colleges have begun to rely on graduate education to fund their university operations, higher ed experts say.

    But now that two-decade-old system is ending. Congress eliminated Grad PLUS over the summer and will cap how much students can borrow for graduate education. Lawmakers also limited Parent PLUS loans, which were also previously uncapped and offered families a way to make up the gap and pay for college. Both changes came out of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

    Beginning next summer, most graduate programs will have a federal loan cap of $100,000, with exceptions for a scaled-down number of professional programs with a limit set at $200,000. Those changes have created uncertainty for graduate schools and students who are navigating a changing landscape with fewer resources. Experts say graduate schools could face enrollment declines and some could shutter, thanks to the new limits.

    Even before the loan caps, graduate education was facing a reckoning, particularly after the Trump administration clamped down on federal research funding. Colleges paused graduate admissions for doctoral programs, and sometimes rescinded offers. Meanwhile, colleges are starting to rethink their approaches to humanities doctoral programs, among other shifts in this space.

    Planning for Change

    To better understand how universities are planning ahead, Inside Higher Ed reached out to 20 of the largest graduate programs in the nation. Most did not respond. Those that did emphasized a mix of increased corporate engagement and expanded loan options, among other measures.

    But for the most part, many appear to still be figuring it out.

    “We’re spending a lot of time this year looking at diversifying the streams of funding for graduate students,” said Bonnie Ferri, vice provost for graduate and postdoctoral education at Georgia Institute of Technology.

    Ferri noted that while Georgia Tech already has corporate partnerships that sponsor projects, which in turn help fund students, the university is doubling down on those efforts this year and “focusing on being more systematic” to spread those dollars across more graduate programs.

    At a recent University of Florida Board of Trustees meeting, Vice President and Chief Enrollment Strategist, Mary Parker, said UF will “have to figure out how to fill the gap for our students” as loan options diminish. She noted UF is rolling out Scholarship Universe, a tool to help students find internal and external scholarships. Parker said UF is also “looking at the expansion of our institution loan program” and the university will also help students identify private loan options.

    University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign spokesperson Patrick Wade told Inside Higher Ed by email that Illinois is still in the planning process and it is too early to share specific details. But Wade added that university officials “are directing units to begin developing contingency plans and to communicate proactively with current and prospective students, particularly in professionally oriented programs, where we expect recent changes to have the greatest impact.”

    Several other institutions said it was too early to share details about how they’ll fill loan gaps.

    Grad Enrollment Fallout

    Some experts believe the changes to federal loans will leave students scrambling.

    “I think when we get to July 1 next year, when these caps are scheduled to go into place, there will be a lot of students who are going to need to come up with another way of paying for graduate school than what’s been true in the past,” Jordan Matsudaira, director of the Postsecondary Education & Economics Research at American University, told Inside Higher Ed.

    Research led by Matsudaira projects that programs such as dentistry, osteopathy and medicine will be particularly squeezed by the changes.

    And given the many other pressures on university budgets, such as federal research funding challenges, federal efforts to limit international enrollment, and the looming demographic cliff, Matsudaira doesn’t expect universities to lower graduate tuition or significantly increase aid.

    “I just think institution budgets are going to be under so much pressure from so many different things that it is just incredibly optimistic thinking, bordering on fantasy, to believe that they’re going to come up with substantial sources of funding to be able to either cut their graduate school prices or be able to fund their own loan program to enroll students,” he said.

    (Some experts have suggested that states should get involved by providing low or no-interest loans as the Grad Plus loan option goes away.)

    Matsudaira expects a “very rough transition period over this coming year” for students. He also expects graduate enrollment to decline.

    “The question is how much does it reduce the number of students pursuing graduate school,” Matsudaira said.

    Private loans are one option students are likely to turn to. He believes private loans will surge, with the market growing from around $3 billion a year currently to $10 billion in the near future.

    But even private loans may prove difficult to obtain for some students.

    “If I had to make predictions, I would guess that private student loan providers will make loans available to students attending programs with a good track record of earnings and loan repayment, but it is less certain whether students in programs that tend to lead to lower earnings and/or worse loan repayment outcomes will be able to access private student loans,” Lesley Turner, an associate professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, wrote by email.

    She added private loans will have “fewer protections and less flexibility in repayment terms.”

    Turner expects that the fallout of the changes to graduate school funding will not only decrease enrollment but may even prod some institutions to shutter such programs as headcount falls.

    Credit rating agencies have also taken a dim view of what the changes will mean.

    “Institutions with a greater proportion of graduate students will likely face more pronounced impacts from these policy changes, particularly if they serve disproportionately high levels of aid- and loan-dependent students,” Fitch Ratings concluded in its 2026 sector outlook, which it described as deteriorating. “While private loan providers can fill gaps created by federal limits, private offerings may nevertheless deter students, as private loans will likely be offered with less favorable rates and limited flexibility compared to what was available under federal programs.”

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  • The international recruitment market is changing – and international education strategies will need to change with it

    The international recruitment market is changing – and international education strategies will need to change with it

    If you work anywhere near international student recruitment in the UK right now, chances are you’re feeling it: the tension; the uncertainty; the quiet panic behind friendly webinar smiles and networking events where we gather with peers. Is there some comfort in realising it’s not just you? The recruitment landscape really has shifted – and it’s shifted fast.

    For years, the UK felt like a safe bet. We’ve dined out on a strong reputation, our many world-class universities and our significant English-language advantage, which has given us a steady flow of students from our key markets. Looking back on the year just gone, it’s not hard to see why it feels like we’ve been living through a crisis.

    The international student levy and student demand

    The announcement of the international student levy sent shockwaves through the sector. There has been much focus on the potential material impacts to universities, but there is also a significant symbolic effect among prospective international students.

    At a time when international students are already facing rising tuition fees, higher living costs, currency volatility, and visa expenses, the levy feels like yet another barrier. Even if institutions absorb the levy cost, the levy has already done time in the court of public opinion, and the “international student tax” perception is out there. The most recent iteration of our student perceptions research, Emerging Futures 8, saw that three of the top five reasons international students decline their offer to study internationally are financially linked: the cost of tuition is beyond their financial reach; the cost of living has become too expensive; and the student visa cost has become too high.

    While institutions and the British public are being encouraged to look at it as an investment in other areas of HE, from a student’s perspective, it doesn’t read as investment. It reads as “you’re welcome… but at a price.” We saw a similar proposal come and go in Australia pre-election. The Australian Universities Accord panel considered and ultimately ruled out a levy, on the grounds of both the damage to Australia’s international appeal, and the significant headache in administering it

    If we put ourselves in the shoes of a student weighing up studying in the UK versus studying in Germany, the UK option now comes with higher tuition fees to offset domestic fees, the NHS surcharge, an increase in maintenance amounts, a steep visa fee and now, an additional levy. Meanwhile, Germany is saying low or no tuition, post-study work routes and growing English-taught provision. Even if the UK still offers higher prestige, the financial psychology is changing, and we know that matters.

    The countries that traditionally send students to the UK are facing shrinking job markets. And while students are still interested in international qualifications, the tone has shifted from aspirational to transactional with a strong emphasis on whether UK study is “really worth it.”

    The quiet squeeze of the BCA

    The BCA (Basic Compliance Assessment) framework is another pressure point, and it hits universities unevenly. On paper, it’s about quality and credibility, which no one disputes works to safeguard the reputation of the UK. But operationally, it’s becoming a quiet limiter on recruitment ambition. If an institution’s refusal rate climbs, its recruitment strategy tightens. If dependency on a single market becomes too visible, risk tolerance drops. And suddenly, growth opportunities shrink.

    That’s not because the demand isn’t there, but because the risk feels too high, with real consequences: fewer bold recruitment experiments; less appetite for new or emerging markets; more conservative agent partnerships and reduced flexibility in offer-making. The result? A recruitment environment that’s more cautious than creative.

    Sliding demand for the UK

    For a long time, the UK competed largely on reputation. Now, while the UK is still in the conversation, it no longer owns the room. The UK still has world-class education, but these days, so does everyone else. While UK institutions were navigating Brexit fallout, policy uncertainty, immigration messaging shifts and now compliance tightening, our competitors were building momentum. Students are more informed than ever. They compare graduate salaries, post-study work options, cost of living, the political climate, safety, and mental health support as well as prestige and reputation. But the recruitment decision is no longer just academic – it’s deeply geopolitical and financial, with a focus on ROI.

    The UK is no longer the automatic first choice destination it once was. Emerging Futures 8 puts Australia out front, with the UK second, ahead of the USA. But this doesn’t mean demand has collapsed. It means it has fragmented.

    We’re seeing a softening in traditional high-volume markets, slower conversion from offer to enrollment and more students holding multiple destination options later into the cycle. In fact, the same survey showed that now only 12 per cent of students apply for one destination – meaning 88 per cent of students are considering multiple options and they are holding onto those options much later down the recruitment funnel than in previous years. This also goes some way to explaining why institutional modelling of admissions is not as accurate as it has been in the past.

    At the same time, countries like France and Germany are stepping confidently into the spotlight. France has aggressively expanded English-taught programmes, particularly at Masters level. Business schools, engineering schools and public universities are all in the mix. Add lower tuition and growing post-study work routes, and suddenly France is no longer Plan B but a plausible first-choice option.

    Germany, meanwhile, has quietly built one of the most attractive international education propositions in the world: minimal or zero tuition, strong industry links, STEM leadership and a welcoming post-study work ecosystem. Layer in concerted campaigns from Poland, Spain, Turkey, Korea, China and Hong Kong to attract international students and you’ve got a busier marketplace than UK HE has ever had to contend with.

    What this means in 2026

    Despite all of the rather gloomy realities I’ve outlined, I see no reason why the UK should concede its market advantage without a fight – we are looking forward to working with our partners in 2026 to do just that. But winning back market share will mean recognising that the UK is no longer competing from a position of automatic advantage. We’re competing in a truly global marketplace where value matters as much as prestige, policy signals shape perception, compliance restricts agility, and cost sensitivity is rising everywhere.

    The institutions that will thrive are the ones that diversify markets meaningfully (not just on paper), invest in authentic student support, build real industry and employability pipelines, strengthen agent relationships as partnerships, and tell clearer, more honest value stories to students. As the government puts the final touches to its international education strategy, there is much opportunity to sustain and even extend international education, but any strategy that depends on “recruit as many as we can” without thinking deeply about how the offer lands in the international student market, is not likely to see long term success.

    Because right now, the world isn’t waiting for the UK to catch up. The world has already moved on, and our future students have moved with it.

    This article is published in association with IDP Education.

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