Tag: Education

Exploring the motivation and satisfaction of higher education staff
For all the criticisms leveled at the sector as a group of employers, the number of staff working in higher education keeps on growing.

Understanding why they choose to work in higher education, what they value about their work, and how well the organisation they work for lives up to their expectations can help inform questions about what matters the most when resources are tight – pay and conditions are obviously important but people work in HE for a whole range of reasons, and not all of those expectations require resource to meet.

In our summer staff survey we gathered nearly 5,000 responses on these topics from people who currently work in or around the sector. We don’t make any claims that this is a representative sample – we can’t say with certainty what the sector as a whole feels but comparing similar groups of staff (for example by contract type) with each other yields fascinating insights and points the way towards understanding this fundamental issue.

For our motivation question bank we presented a range of possible motivations as follows:
- Working in an organisation whose values I share
- Opportunities for learning, development and professional growth
- Working alongside and collaborating with like-minded colleagues
- The generosity of the pay and benefits package
- Having the autonomy to focus on the work that is important to me
- Having a level of flexibility about where and when I work
- My physical working environment and the resources I have access to within it
- Receiving recognition for my hard work and contribution
- Knowing the work I do makes a positive impact – on students, on the advancement of knowledge, on my community
- Working in an organisation that I am confident is generally well run, and achieving its objectives
- Having opportunities to engage in activities that enhance community connection eg networks, clubs and groups, volunteering, public lectures etc
Then we asked people whether they felt each was an “important” motivation, and whether they were “happy” with their organisation’s performance against each one. A “yes” answer means that someone was happy, or agreed something was important.

We’re not running any fancy statistics here, but our working assumption is that a difference of more than four percentage points between different groups is interesting and notable enough to report on. This would vary by the size of the groups in question.

Two sectors?

We don’t know for sure (it isn’t data that we collect via HESA for the population) but there’s as many professional and support services staff as there are academics. And the former are far more likely to have experience working outside higher education – from the responses to our staff survey we see that around 80 per cent of our professional and support staff had worked outside the sector, compared to 64 per cent of academics, though those numbers might be lower in both instances had we specifically excluded casual work such as temporary work while studying.

The cliché of the unworldly professor in an ivory tower is clearly being left in the past – but the kinds of roles done by professional services staff are in demand right across the economy. On the face of it is far easier for them to find work elsewhere, and given the state of the sector, you’d assume this might be better paid.

Given this, it was surprising to see that while 68.8 per cent of academic respondents cited pay and benefits packages as something that was important to them, nearly three quarters of professional and support staff found this area of the working experience important.

In asking these kinds of questions you almost don’t expect people to say they are happy with their pay and benefits – so more than 40 per cent of our professional services respondents doing so is notable. After all, we hear enough from the various sector professional associations about the difficulty of recruiting and retaining skilled staff in a variety of key roles.

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Relative importance

Of all the suggested motivations for working in higher education, only two were not selected as important by more than 80 per cent of respondents: pay and conditions (73.5 per cent) and having opportunities to engage in activities that enhance community connection (41.4 per cent) – the latter scoring significantly lower than every other suggestion.

The three most important motivations selected were “knowing the work I do makes a positive impact” (87.5 per cent), “Working alongside and collaborating with like-minded colleagues” (86.9 per cent) and “Working in an organisation I am confident is generally well run” (84.5 per cent).

Looking at the areas where there was the largest gap between those who said something was important to them and those that agreed they are happy with the extent they get to experience it in their working lives, by far the largest gap relates to confidence the organisation is run well and is achieving its objectives, only 31.7 per cent saying they are happy with this, a gap of 52.8 percentage points.

The next highest gap relates to recognition: whereas 80.4 per cent of respondents said receiving recognition for their hard work and contribution was important, only 33.3 per cent said they were happy with this – a gap of 47.1 percentage points.

The third highest gap was in opportunities for learning, development and professional growth: whereas 83 per cent of respondents said this was important, only 44.3 per cent said they were happy with this, a gap of 38.7 percentage points.

Free as in freedom

Academic respondents were far more likely to cite autonomy to focus on the work that is important to them as a key motivating factor (86.7 per cent), but the number is still high for other staff (79.6 per cent), whereas professional services staff (83.5 per cent) were slightly more likely than academics (79.9 per cent) to cite flexibility in when and where they work.

Staff of all kinds are reasonably happy (c.65 per cent) with the levels of flexibility on offer. Clearly the experiences of Covid-19, and perhaps the drive for providers to rationalise estates – swapping offices for desks, or regular desks for hot desks – is also having an impact. You might expect that women would be more likely to value flexibility in working and you would be right – 84.8 per cent of women in our sample said this was important to them, compared to 76.5 per cent of men. However, similar proportions of men and women (around 65 per cent) reported being happy with the amount of flexibility on offer.

In terms of autonomy – the ability that a member of staff has to focus on work that is important to them – a little under half of both academic and professional staff were happy with what was on offer. It is worth bearing in mind that autonomy is always limited in some way in any role; for example, marking and exam boards pretty much need to happen when they do.

Value judgement

Despite frequent accusations of cultural relativism, a strength of universities is their values. Intriguingly, 60 per cent of professional services staff by just 45 per cent of academics were happy with the way that this manifests – despite similar levels of importance (85.8 per cent for academics, 82.7 per cent for professional) being placed on sharing the values of the organisation one works for.

If we think back to the idea that professional services staff would be more likely to work in other sectors, this does make sense. Values, and the sense of having a positive impact (86 per cent said this was important to them), are clearly going to be key motivations to work in a sector where perhaps pay and conditions don’t stack up.

An amazing 90 per cent of academic staff said that knowing that the work they did has a positive impact (on students, the advancement of knowledge, and/or on their community) was important to them. But just 53 per cent of academics and of professional staff saw this in practice. To be fair, this was one of the best performing motivations in our survey – but it is interesting that staff are no longer seeing the good that higher education does, especially when it is becoming so important to make this case culturally and with the government.

Recommend to others

It’s easy to get disheartened when you think about the staffing needs of higher education providers and how they are met. Although academics are clamouring to work in the UK sector, it feels like the terms and conditions are worsening and newer staff – in particular – are getting a raw deal. With professional staff, the fact that many specialisms can get better paid work elsewhere has some wondering about the quality of the staff we are able to recruit.

We asked all of our respondents whether they would recommend working in the sector to someone they cared about – and perhaps surprisingly three-quarters said “yes” or “maybe”. And there was very little difference between those making “yes”, “no”, or “maybe” on any of the motivation axes we discuss above (those who said “yes” were very marginally less likely to say pay and benefits were important to them).

However those that were more likely to recommend the sector to others were significantly happier with every aspect we examined. In contrast more than 80 per cent of those who would not recommend working in the sector were not happy with the amount of recognition they got for their hard work and contribution, and more than 85 per cent felt that their organisation was not run well. Recommendation is generally considered a good proxy for job satisfaction, and this survey seems to bear that out.

What people want to change

We asked respondents to say more where they had identified a gap between something they consider to be important, but the degree to which they are happy with the extent they actually experience that.

There were comments on workload and wellbeing, small-scale or systemic failures to offer recognition for achievement and, particularly from those in professional services, a desire for greater recognition, and development and/or progression opportunities. Some commented that the economic environment makes these asks more difficult.

But in terms of messages for leaders there is a lot about communication and consultation – a sense that the people who work in the sector understand the financial problems the university faces but want to be told the truth about them and be constructive in helping to solve them.

Clearer lines of communication and wider consultation on significant changes.

Greater dialogue with leaders when major decisions are made which impact the way in which I can carry out my role and an opportunity to demonstrate my expertise to build trust in my decision making.

Clear, transparent and timely sharing of strategy and the impact of the changes to come from the changes.

Another challenge is on the perceived values driving strategy and tactics – there’s a sense that management decisions are perceived as being short term, and that it is financial expediency rather than an underlying (and shared) purpose that is informing decisions.

There’s also commentary on issues around execution of strategy – the sense that while plans are spoken about they are not always put into practice or cascaded down the institution, or become snarled in bureaucracy.

Greater consistency, both between faculties and also on strategic planning. At the moment there are so many different initiatives that, while we talk about working smarter, the opposite is actually the case.

We need a clear strategy as to how we are going to get through the next couple of years which needs to be properly communicated. At the moment it feels like we are stuck in a vortex of chaos, with school level projects being put on hold whilst we wait for university level decisions, but the months go by and no meaningful direction or plan seems to be in place.

Better delegation and direction from above, more collaboration across the institution as a whole but also with core departments where the work intercepts with others work, creating a network of colleagues in those core teams.

A key takeaway is that the kind of organisational complexity in decision-making that has long been tolerated in higher education may not serve staff well when resources are stretched and bandwidth is low. Complexity may serve various legitimate organisational purposes but it can also cut staff off from understanding what’s happening, and what they personally need to do about it. It also creates a lack of consistency as multiple messages emerge from different quarters.

But also, while we were specifically focused on areas for improvement, it’s worth adding that a good few comments gave a general thumbs up – their working environment was clearly motivating them in the right ways – and that shows that it can be done.

The biggest risk of an exercise like this one is to suggest that where there is discontent or concern, that it is attributable to the wider environment, and not something that can be addressed or mitigated. While there’s clearly very little scope in most institutions to roll out shiny new initiatives, most comments suggest that some attention to hygiene factors – praise, involvement, honesty – could make a difference in sustaining staff motivation during these trying times.

We’ll be picking up the conversation about sustaining higher education community during tough times at The Festival of Higher Education in November. It’s not too late to get your ticket – find out more here.
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September 28, 2025
Texas Tech System Ends Class Discussions of Trans Identity

The Texas Tech University System has ordered all faculty to refrain from classroom discussions of transgender identity, The Texas Tribune reported.

In a letter to the leaders of the five universities in the system, Texas Tech Chancellor Tedd Mitchell wrote that the institutions must comply with “current state and federal law,” which “recognize only two human sexes: male and female.“ He cited Texas House Bill 229, which defines sex strictly as determined by reproductive organs, a letter from Texas governor Greg Abbott directing agencies to “reject woke gender ideologies,” and President Trump’s January executive order—which is not a federal law—declaring the existence of just two genders.

“While recognizing the First Amendment rights of employees in their personal capacity, faculty must comply with these laws in the instruction of students, within the course and scope of their employment,” Mitchell wrote.

The move follows a confusing week at Angelo State University—part of the Texas Tech System—where a new set of policies first seemed to prohibit faculty from engaging in any sort of pride displays but ultimately limited discussion and content only related to trans identity.

Mitchell’s letter provided little guidance for faculty about how to implement the new policy, suggesting it presents certain challenges.

“This is a developing area of law, and we acknowledge that questions remain and adjustments may be necessary as new guidance is issued at both the state and federal levels,” he wrote. “We fully expect discussions will be ongoing.”

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September 27, 2025
Building and rebuilding trust in higher education

Trust is fundamental to all of our relationships, and it is vital for meaningful relationships.

It can be an anchor in uncertain times, as explored in this special edition of the International Journal of Academic Development. Within higher education, trust underpins our diverse institutional relationships with students, and their families, friends and supporters; colleagues, regulatory bodies, employers, trade unions, students’ unions, prospective students and schools, international partners as well as local communities and many other groups. These individual interactions combine to build a complex matrix of relationships in which trust originates, takes form or develops.

Or sometimes, it doesn’t. Uncertainty and complexity can stifle relationships, suppressing trust as partners hold back or withdraw, leading to a crisis in confidence. A lack of trust can derail any relationship, well intended institutional narrative or strategy.

Having trust often means believing that you matter in some way to a person, or to the people working in an organisation, or system, enough for them to care about your experiences and feelings. It’s possible to trust without being highly engaged, but it’s difficult to get engaged without having trust.

Trust matters in higher education because universities are there to support individuals to achieve their goals, whether these are in teaching or research. Those individuals need to feel that people and systems are designed to include and support them. Trust has to be earned and it can easily be lost. Reflecting on the many challenges for the UK higher education sector and the multifaceted priorities and constraints it will be impossible to meet the expectations and aspirations of our students, colleagues and partners unless there is trust at every level.

When we encounter media articles like this one from the Guardian, we are asked to consider the possibility that trust in the whole system of higher education is beginning to fail – perhaps a consequence of massification and a loss of faith in education for its own sake, rather than as a passport to a shrinking pool of traditional jobs. We need to talk about why higher education remains worthwhile, and how we can work together to maintain trust in it and to ensure that students feel their own value as part of its systems.

Nurturing relationships

When we build trust we are also building partnerships. When we recognise an institution as trustworthy, we are frequently noting that it delivers on what it has promised and that it values relationships with its stakeholders; it holds itself accountable. And it is not just about the large-scale sector wide challenges, it is also about considering how we build trust through the average everyday experiences of our diverse student and colleague communities.

Creating trustful spaces in the classroom is one element of this. Teachers’ perception of trust-building has shown that trust is based on teachers’ care and concern for students as much as on their subject knowledge and teaching ability. Research on how students in engineering perceive trust-building efforts also shows that they value attention to them as individuals most highly. They also use their trust in the institution to mitigate perceived problems with individual colleagues or services, believing that the university, or their department, makes student-centred decisions with respect to recruiting and training lecturers and professional services staff, and accepting that occasionally, they may not find an individual teacher trustworthy.

Trust and accountability also underpin meaningful cultural change in uncomfortable spaces and sensitive areas. When we trust each other we can have difficult conversations and begin to accept the existence of hidden barriers across our diverse colleague and student groups. Inside the university, teams must trust each other, empathising with each other’s views and values – 2024’s report from AdvanceHE and Wonkhe showed that trust is paramount when leading strategic change in challenging times. Because of this, trust underpins institutional sustainability; particularly within a sector that is currently responding to rising costs and income constraints.

Nurturing relationships through difficult choices about resources and provision requires a fine balance, transparency, and accountability if trust is to be maintained and difficult decisions explained. Few people would continue a relationship in which trust has broken down or with someone or something that they would describe as untrustworthy, but many of use will recognise the situation where this has happened and all parties feel powerless to rebuild the trust.

What can individuals and leaders do?

Trust can be expressed in many forms: You can trust me, I trust you, you can trust yourself, you can trust each other. Within a complex array of opportunities and challenges which call for attention, HE institutions will benefit from finding the most appropriate strategies, performance indicators and (regulatory) endorsements which will create trust and accountability in their provision to build their reputation. As leaders, how do we show colleagues that we trust them? How do we encourage others to show that they trust us? What do we do to ensure that we are trustworthy?

At a larger scale, a trustworthy research partner shares ideas, makes it easy to distribute funding between institutions, invites contributions from stakeholders, colleagues working in the field, and students. A trustworthy community partner supports students and employees from the local area, ensuring that they feel welcome and valued, and uses local services. A trustworthy internationalised university supports cultural diversity and makes both moving to and working with research and teaching easier by explaining practical and organisational differences. By considering how long-term relationships are built and maintained, we can develop a track record of ‘quality’ provision and demonstrate that they are ‘worth it’ to students, colleagues, funders, regulatory bodies, employers and other partners.

When trust in leaders or institutions is lost, the response is often rapid and drastic, with changes in staff and policies having the potential to create further turbulence. As the research with students showed, trust in institutions and systems can survive individual lapses. Maybe a first step should always be to try to rebuild relationships, making oneself, the university, or the system slightly vulnerable in the short term as we work to show that higher education is a human activity which may sometimes not work out as planned, but which we believe in enough to repair.

We can work at all kinds of levels to build and foster trust in our activities. Public engagement has the power to counter hostile narratives and build trust and so does effective partnership work with our local communities, students and Students’ Unions. Working together, listening to and valuing our partners’ perspectives enables us to identify and mitigate the impacts of challenges and take a constructive and nuanced approach to build both trust and inclusive learning communities. If we are to tackle our current pressing sector challenges and wicked problems such as awarding gaps when trust in public institutions is low, it has never been more important to collaborate with our partners, be visibly accountable and focus on equity.

So how can we work together to offer a holistic view of the benefits and value that focusing on trust building can bring? We are keen to build a community of practice to systematically strengthen trust across the HE sector. Join us to develop a trust framework which will explore environments that increase or decrease trust across stakeholder groups and consider how to encourage key trust behaviours such as sharing, listening, and being accountable in a range of professional contexts.

If you are interested, get in touch and let us know what trust in higher education means to you: Claire Hamshire Rachel Forsyth. Claire and Rachel will be speaking on this theme at the Festival of Higher Education on 11-12 November – find out more and book your ticket here

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September 27, 2025
The Grand Irony of Nursing Education and Burnout in U.S. Health Care
Nursing has long been romanticized as both a “calling” and a profession—an occupation where devotion to patients is assumed to be limitless. Nursing schools, hospitals, and media narratives often reinforce this ideal, framing the nurse as a tireless caregiver who sacrifices for the greater good. But behind the cultural image is a system that normalizes exhaustion, accepts overwork, and relies on the quiet suffering of an increasingly strained workforce.

The cultural expectation that nurses should sacrifice their own well-being has deep historical roots. Florence Nightingale’s legacy in the mid-19th century portrayed nursing as a noble vocation, tied as much to moral virtue as to medical skill. During World War I and World War II, nurses were celebrated as patriotic servants, enduring brutal conditions without complaint. By the late 20th century, popular culture reinforced the idea of the nurse as both saintly and stoic—expected to carry on through fatigue, trauma, and loss. This framing has carried into the 21st century. During the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses were lauded as “heroes” in speeches, advertisements, and nightly news coverage. But the rhetoric of heroism masked a harsher reality: nurses were sent into hospitals without adequate protective equipment, with overwhelming patient loads, and with little institutional support. The language of devotion was used as a shield against criticism, even as nurses themselves broke down from exhaustion.

The problem begins in nursing education. Students are taught the technical skills of patient care, but they are also socialized into a culture that emphasizes resilience, self-sacrifice, and “doing whatever it takes.” Clinical rotations often expose nursing students to chronic understaffing and unsafe patient loads, but instead of treating this as structural failure, students are told it is simply “the reality of nursing.” In effect, they are trained to adapt to dysfunction rather than challenge it.

Once in the workforce, the pressures intensify. Hospitals and clinics operate under tight staffing budgets, pushing nurses to manage far more patients than recommended. Shifts stretch from 12 to 16 hours, and mandatory overtime is not uncommon. Documentation demands, electronic medical record systems, and administrative oversight add layers of clerical work that take time away from direct patient care. The emotional toll of constantly navigating life-and-death decisions, combined with lack of rest, creates a perfect storm of burnout. The grand irony is that the profession celebrates devotion while neglecting the well-being of the devoted. Nurses are praised as “heroes” during crises, but when they ask for better staffing ratios, safer conditions, or mental health support, they are often dismissed as “not team players.” In non-unionized hospitals, the risks are magnified: nurses have little leverage to negotiate schedules, resist unsafe assignments, or push back against retaliation. Instead, they are expected to remain loyal, even as stress erodes their health and shortens their careers.

Recent years have shown that nurses are increasingly unwilling to accept this reality. In Oregon in 2025, nearly 5,000 unionized nurses, physicians, and midwives staged the largest health care worker strike in the state’s history, demanding higher wages, better staffing levels, and workload adjustments that reflect patient severity rather than just patient numbers. After six weeks, they secured a contract with substantial pay raises, penalty pay for missed breaks, and staffing reforms. In New Orleans, nurses at University Medical Center have launched repeated strikes as negotiations stall, citing unsafe staffing that puts both their health and their patients at risk. These actions are not isolated. In 2022, approximately 15,000 Minnesota nurses launched the largest private-sector nurses’ strike in U.S. history, and since 2020 the number of nurse strikes nationwide has more than tripled.

Alongside strikes, nurses are pushing for legislative solutions. At the federal level, the Nurse Staffing Standards for Hospital Patient Safety and Quality Care Act has been introduced, which would mandate minimum nurse-to-patient ratios and provide whistleblower protections. In New York, the Safe Staffing for Hospital Care Act seeks to set legally enforceable staffing levels and ban most mandatory overtime. Even California, long considered a leader in nurse staffing ratios, has faced crises in psychiatric hospitals so severe that Governor Gavin Newsom introduced emergency rules to address chronic understaffing linked to patient harm. Enforcement remains uneven, however. At Albany Medical Center in New York, chronic understaffing violations led to hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, a reminder that without strong oversight, even well-crafted laws can be ignored.

The United States’ piecemeal and adversarial approach contrasts sharply with other countries. In Canada, provinces like British Columbia have legislated nurse-to-patient ratios similar to those in California, and in Quebec, unions won agreements that legally cap workloads for certain units. In the United Kingdom, the National Health Service has long recognized safe staffing as a matter of public accountability, and while austerity policies have strained the system, England, Wales, and Scotland all employ government-set nurse-to-patient standards to protect both patients and staff. Nordic countries go further, with Sweden and Norway integrating nurse well-being into health policy; short shifts, strong union protections, and publicly funded healthcare systems reduce the risk of burnout by design. While no system is perfect, these models show that burnout is not inevitable—it is a political and policy choice.

Union presence consistently makes a difference. Studies show that unionized nurses are more successful at securing safe staffing ratios, resisting exploitative scheduling, and advocating for patient safety. But unionization rates in nursing remain uneven, and in many states nurses are discouraged or even legally restricted from organizing. Without collective power, individual nurses are forced to rely on personal endurance, which is precisely what the system counts on.

The outcome is devastating not only for nurses but for patients. Burnout leads to higher turnover, staffing shortages, and medical errors—all while nursing schools continue to churn out new graduates to replace those driven from the profession. It is a cycle sustained by institutional denial and the myth of infinite devotion.

If U.S. higher education is serious about preparing nurses for the future, nursing programs must move beyond the rhetoric of sacrifice. They need to teach students not only how to care for patients but also how to advocate for themselves and their colleagues. They need to expose the structural causes of burnout and prepare nurses to demand better conditions, not simply endure them. Until then, the irony remains: a profession that celebrates care while sacrificing its caregivers.

Sources
- American Nurses Association (ANA). “Workplace Stress & Burnout.” ANA Enterprise, 2023.
- National Nurses United. Nursing Staffing Crisis in the United States, 2022.
- Bae, S. “Nurse Staffing and Patient Outcomes: A Literature Review.” Nursing Outlook, Vol. 64, No. 3 (2016): 322-333.
- Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Union Members Summary.” U.S. Department of Labor, 2024.
- Shah, M.K., Gandrakota, N., Cimiotti, J.P., Ghose, N., Moore, M., Ali, M.K. “Prevalence of and Factors Associated With Nurse Burnout in the US.” JAMA Network Open, Vol. 4, No. 2 (2021): e2036469.
- Nelson, Sioban. Say Little, Do Much: Nursing, Nuns, and Hospitals in the Nineteenth Century. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.
- Kalisch, Philip A. & Kalisch, Beatrice J. The Advance of American Nursing. Little, Brown, 1986.
- Oregon Capital Chronicle, “Governor Kotek Criticizes Providence Over Largest Strike of Health Care Workers in State History,” January 2025.
- Associated Press, “Oregon Health Care Strike Ends After Six Weeks,” February 2025.
- National Nurses United, “New Orleans Nurses Deliver Notice for Third Strike at UMC,” 2025.
- NurseTogether, “Nurse Strikes: An Increasing Trend in the U.S.,” 2024.
- New York State Senate Bill S4003, “Safe Staffing for Hospital Care Act,” 2025.
- San Francisco Chronicle, “Newsom Imposes Emergency Staffing Rules at State Psychiatric Hospitals,” 2025.
- Times Union, “Editorial: Hospital’s Staffing Violations Show Need for Enforcement,” 2025.
- Oulton, J.A. “The Global Nursing Shortage: An Overview of Issues and Actions.” Policy, Politics, & Nursing Practice, Vol. 7, No. 3 (2006): 34S–39S.
- Rafferty, Anne Marie et al. “Outcomes of Variation in Hospital Nurse Staffing in English Hospitals.” BMJ Quality & Safety, 2007.
- Aiken, Linda H. et al. “Nurse Staffing and Education and Hospital Mortality in Nine European Countries.” The Lancet, Vol. 383, No. 9931 (2014): 1824–1830.
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September 26, 2025
Most adults say higher education is important but want colleges to stay out of politics
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Dive Brief:
- Nearly 4 in 5 surveyed Americans, 78%, said a college education is somewhat or very important to a young person’s success, according to a new poll from researchers at Vanderbilt University.
- Despite increasing polarization around higher ed, a significant majority of both Democrats and Republicans — 87% and 68%, respectively — said a college education was at least somewhat important.
- The broadly favorable public sentiment comes amid the federal government’s allegations of “violations, shortcomings and biases” at colleges, John Geer, head of the nonpartisan Vanderbilt Project on Unity & American Democracy, said in a Wednesday press release.
Dive Insight:

The Trump administration has increasingly targeted higher education, decrying colleges as hubs of liberal indoctrination and wastes of federal funding. Against this backdrop, Vanderbilt researchers polled 1,030 adults in English and Spanish from Sept. 5 to Sept. 8.

“Higher education has undoubtedly been a primary concern for President [Donald] Trump’s administration,” Geer said. “Certainly, people expressed areas of concern and viewed certain institutions as more problematic than others, but support for colleges and universities remains substantial, even in the midst of these many criticisms from Washington,” he said.

Nearly two-thirds of respondents, 65%, said colleges have a positive effect on society. A large majority of Democrats agreed with this statement, as did most of the “traditional” Republicans surveyed, according to the Wednesday release.

A deeper schism emerged from Republican respondents who identified with the Make America Great Again movement. Among those supporting MAGA ideology, 65% said colleges have a negative effect on the U.S.

In a February poll, Vanderbilt found that a majority of Republicans surveyed, 52%, identified with the MAGA movement — though slight, it was the first majority since researchers began asking the question in June 2023.

The September survey also found a broader skepticism of some aspects of higher education that transcended political divides. Among the overall respondent pool, 67% said ideological or political bias is at least somewhat of a serious problem at colleges. Within that share, 35% said bias is a problem at most institutions.

However, the respondents who said political bias exists on campuses did not broadly fault academic instruction. About 2 in 5, or 43%, blamed administrative decisions, while 16% cited what is being taught in the classroom.

Nearly three-quarters of respondents, 71%, said colleges should not “take official positions on controversial political issues.” Broken down by political party, 83% of Republicans and 59% of Democrats concurred with that statement.

“That mix of skepticism and expectation underscores how difficult it will be for colleges to persuade the public that they are neutral arbiters in a polarized environment,” Vanderbilt said.

The public showed mixed opinions on different types of institutions, the poll found.

For instance, 70% of respondents expressed confidence in community colleges. Vanderbilt researchers noted that community colleges “have largely avoided the controversies embroiling larger, wealthier institutions.”

But that confidence level dropped sharply for Ivy League institutions. Less than half of those surveyed, 48%, expressed a somewhat or very favorable opinion of those eight universities.

What’s more, respondents’ view of the Ivies varied significantly by their political party. Among Democrats, 72% approved of Ivy League universities, compared to just 33% of Republicans.

Other colleges earned a similar approval rating as the Ivies but with a smaller political divide.

Just 2 in 5 respondents expressed overall confidence in colleges in the Southeastern Conference, which includes the University of Georgia, the University of Tennessee and Mississippi State University among its 16 members.

About half of Republicans, 51%, expressed a favorable opinion of those institutions, as did 33% of Democrats.
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September 26, 2025
Education Department officially launches 2026-27 FAFSA form
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Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Department of Education rolled out the 2026-27 Free Application for Federal Student Aid to all students Wednesday, about a week before the congressionally mandated deadline.
- Education Department officials billed the release as the “earliest launch in the program’s history.” The new form comes with several updates, including a redesigned process for inviting parents or other contributors to add information to the application and faster account verification for students and parents, according to the agency.
- The on-time FAFSA follows later than usual releases the past two years. In 2023, the Education Department didn’t roll out the FAFSA until the final days of December — nearly three months after students and their families usually can access the form.
Dive Insight:

Education Department officials praised the on-time release after two rocky financial aid cycles.

“No one would have thought this was possible after the Biden-Harris administration infamously botched FAFSA’s rollout two short years ago,” U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a Wednesday statement.

In 2023, the Biden administration was responsible for carrying out the first major redesign of the FAFSA in over four decades, including by paring down the number of questions applicants must answer. However, even after the Education Department released the FAFSA in December that year, many students and families struggled to complete the form due to glitches and other technical issues.

Moreover, the Education Department didn’t begin sending FAFSA applicant data to colleges that financial aid cycle until March 2024, even though that information is typically available shortly after the form rolls out in October. Scores of colleges pushed back their traditional May 1 decision deadline as a result.

In response, congressional lawmakers passed a law in November 2024 mandating that the Education Department release the form by Oct. 1 each year. The statute also requires the U.S. education secretary to testify before Congress if the agency anticipates it will miss the deadline.

This year, the Education Department began beta testing the form in early August. During that period, students started nearly 44,000 FAFSA forms and submitted roughly 27,000 of them, according to the department. The agency has processed almost 24,000 FAFSA forms without rejection.

However, this financial aid cycle hasn’t come without criticism. A report earlier this month from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog agency, raised questions about whether the Education Department was adequately overseeing contracted work on the new back-end system launched in 2023 for processing FAFSAs.

In September 2024, the Education Department told GAO officials that several functions required by a contract with a third-party vendor were not yet available, including the ability to make corrections to FAFSA applications and modify eligibility rules. At the time, the department said those functions would be available by 2026.

However, as of May 2025, the Education Department couldn’t provide an update on the system and said it was no longer tracking the contractual requirements, according to the GAO report. GAO recommended that Federal Student Aid’s chief operating officer take steps to improve contract monitoring.

The GAO’s report included a response from Aaron Lemon-Strauss, executive director of the FAFSA program, who pushed back on GAO’s framing. Lemon-Strauss wrote that some of its recommendations embrace a model that “assumes initial contracts can fully anticipate a system’s evolving needs.”

Lemon-Strauss, who joined the department last year, said the agency has made changes to its FAFSA vendor contracts that allow it to adapt to user needs. For instance, after the 2024 FAFSA release, department officials identified that the FAFSA system still did not allow users to import their answers from the prior year to start their new forms — a contractually required feature.

“This is undoubtedly a helpful feature and one that should be included in the FAFSA,” Lemon-Strauss said to GAO. “Yet, rather than mechanically moving to implementing renewal capability, the team examined user data to determine where their next efforts would be maximally useful.”

Internal data showed that some 5% of users were exiting the form and not returning once they needed to invite their parents or other contributors — such as a spouse or a parent’s spouse — to work on the application. In response, the Education Department decided to prioritize redesigning the process to invite outside contributors instead of focusing on the contractually required feature, Lemon-Strauss said.
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September 26, 2025
University of Arizona Shutters Chinese Microcampuses

The University of Arizona is quietly shutting down its four microcampuses in China at the end of this semester, in response to a government report released earlier this month that criticizes branch campuses of U.S. institutions in China.

The report, by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and the Committee on Education and the Workforce, said American college and university branch campuses in China can “facilitate technology transfer and pose national security risks.” It follows a similar report from a year ago that the new report said led to the closure of eight U.S. branch campuses in China.

The report, “Joint Institutes, Divided Loyalties,” highlights programs at 13 institutions deemed to be “high risk”—including one UA microcampus, the Arizona College of Technology at Hebei University of Technology, which awards students a B.S. in applied physics—and calls on the universities to sever those partnerships. (It also highlights a former partnership between UA and the Harbin Institute of Technology, a Chinese university affiliated with the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, but the university told Inside Higher Ed that partnership ended in 2023.) It’s unclear if any of the other 12 institutions have taken steps toward ending their programs at Chinese institutions.

Though the report only referenced one current UA microcampus, the university said it will close all four of its campuses in China.

“Acknowledging a congressional directive, the University of Arizona immediately terminated its China-based microcampus agreements. We have communicated directly with those affected and are working with enrolled students to help them continue their education,” a university spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed via email.

In total, 2,200 students, 36 faculty and four staff will be impacted by the closures, the spokesperson said. UA will provide funds to help employees relocate back to the U.S.; the university is also working to help students figure out next steps.

The university has a total of 18 microcampuses across the globe—programs that are housed at another university, in which students are taught by a mix of professors from UA and the partner institution and earn degrees from both institutions. The first such program was a bachelor’s program in law at Ocean University of China, in which students study both Chinese and U.S. law.

University officials told Inside Higher Ed in 2017 that the main goals of the microcampuses were to increase the university’s internationalization, provide students with affordable international pathways and earn revenue. They also said they hoped to eventually launch 25 microcampuses worldwide and reach 25,000 students.

In a post on X, the Committee on Education and the Workforce lauded UA’s move.

“@uarizona is making the right decision to end its China-based campus agreements. The CCP uses these programs to steal cutting-edge research for its own military buildup and promote communist ideology,” the post reads. “These programs are a direct threat to U.S. national security. Every American school should follow suit and end agreements with the CCP.”

‘Boom, We Shut Down’

Ken Smith, who leads the environmental science dual-degree program at UA’s microcampus at the Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University in China’s Shaanxi province, said he was informed the program would be shuttering just a week ago.

Now in its fifth year, the program has been incredibly successful, Smith said. It had recently completed a yearlong federal and provincial review process and had received exceptional marks. Student outcomes were also strong, with many going on to top-tier graduate programs in the U.S. and Europe. Others were able to find careers in China, despite environmental science being a low-demand degree in the country, because they held degrees from a well-regarded U.S. university.

“Things were really going super well, and, boom, we shut down,” he said.

Rong Qian, who graduated in the program’s second class this past spring, told Inside Higher Ed he was “shocked” to hear the program was ending. He credited the UA professors for boosting his confidence and inspiring him to apply to graduate school in the U.K., where he is now studying at Imperial College London. He also noted that UA’s reputation has helped him and his classmates get into such good programs.

“I want to express my gratitude for those professors, especially those from [UA] … not only for their patience and time [with] me and my studies, but also for their encouragement, their support and their easygoing characteristics,” he said.

Smith said that current seniors in the program will still be able to graduate with their UA degrees, and he’s working with both UA and NWAFU to try to find a way for the third-year students to finish out their programs as well. However, he’s doubtful that newer students will be able to get a degree from UA; they could study online or come to the U.S. to finish, but he doesn’t think the former option will hold much appeal, while the latter is prohibitively expensive for most.

In the university’s email to students at the affected campuses sent earlier this week, which the university shared with Inside Higher Ed, Jenny Lee, dean of international education, wrote, “The U of A is committed to supporting you in the completion of your degree. We welcome you to join us at our main campus, in Tucson, Arizona, under an extended Study Arizona Program for up to 4 semesters (usually during the junior and senior years). The U of A will follow up soon with further guidance regarding Study Arizona and other possible options for your degree completion pathway.”

The closure of the program is not just a loss for UA, Smith said, but also for the nation as a whole.

“Living in China for the past four years and watching the U.S. news, I think a lot of political figures don’t know much about China … It’s a major modern economic power, a major military power,” he said. “I think it’s in everyone’s best interest that people in the U.S. and people in China understand each other. The kind of program I was involved with was a major educational success, but it was also a diplomatic success. It got the University of Arizona’s name out there. People wanted us there. They enjoyed learning about the American education system, and, unfortunately, now, that’s all over.”

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September 26, 2025
Grad v. Professional Programs a Key Issue for ED Panel

Despite the possibility of a government shutdown next week, the Education Department is slated to begin the complicated endeavor of determining how to carry out the sweeping higher ed changes in Congress’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

The agenda for the weeklong meeting, which kicks off Monday, includes hammering out details about loan repayment plans and how to help struggling borrowers return to good standing. The key issue on the table, though, will likely be determining how best to differentiate between graduate and professional degree programs for future borrowers.

The terms “graduate” and “professional” were once nothing more than a trivial self-prescribed classification. But under the Republicans’ new law, they have become critical labels that could alter which college programs get more federal aid. For example, under the new plan, student borrowers in a graduate program will be limited to $20,500 per year or $100,000 total, whereas those enrolled in a professional program will be able to borrow more than double that.

And while lawmakers on Capitol Hill gave the department a foundational definition of what qualifies as professional in the bill, it’s up to Education Under Secretary Nicholas Kent and the negotiated rule-making advisory committee to write rules that detail how that definition will work in practice. (The committee is scheduled to meet for another weeklong session in November, and only after that can the department finalize its proposal and open the floor for public comment.)

Some university lobbyists and career associations want the department to include more programs in the professional bucket and make a comprehensive list of those that qualify. Others recommend using a broad definition and then letting institutions sort the programs. Consumer protection advocates, however, are urging the department to stick to the original, more narrow definition in an effort to prevent greater levels of student debt.

The department’s initial proposal, released this week, stuck largely to the 10 programs cited in the existing definition but added a catch-all clause to add “any other degrees designated by the Secretary through rulemaking.”

To Clare McCann, a former Education Department official and now managing director of policy for the Postsecondary Education and Economics Research Center at American University, the initial proposal shows that the department doesn’t quite know how it wants to define a professional program.

“This is a really complicated issue,” she said. “So it seems clear to me that the department is planning to use this first session to gather ideas and feedback but is not planning to come to the table with a real proposal of its own.”

Further complicating the issue, McCann and others say, it’s going to be difficult for the department to finalize its rule fast enough to give students and institutions enough time to prepare. (Currently, the new loan caps are slated to kick in as of July 1, 2026.)

As McCann explained, the earliest colleges and universities could expect to see a proposed rule—let alone a finalized one—would be later this fall. And at that point, many prospective students have already started receiving acceptance letters.

“There will be many people making decisions about whether and where they’re going to graduate school, and they’ll be doing that in a vacuum, without final rules about what they’ll be able to borrow and how they’re going to be able to repay it,” she said. “So this whole regulatory process is going to be an incredible time crunch.”

Current Definitions

The current definition of “professional,” which is laid out in the Higher Education Act of 1965, states that in order to qualify as professional a degree must signify that a student has the skills necessary beyond a bachelor’s degree in order to practice a specific profession.

Later it adds that “professional licensure is also generally required,” and provides a short but nonexhaustive list of programs that could fit the bill, including: pharmacy, dentistry, medicine, osteopathy, law, optometry, podiatry, veterinary medicine, chiropractic medicine and theology. (That list served as the foundation for the department’s proposal.)

Some groups, like the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, made clear in their public comments that they interpret this definition to be an intentionally “flexible” and “inclusive approach.” And based on that, they encouraged the department to maintain a broad definition and allow institutions to self-certify their programs with periodic review from the department.

Jordan Wicker, the senior vice president of legislative and regulatory affairs at Career Education Colleges and Universities, a lobbying group for for-profit institutions, added that the economy and higher education landscape are constantly evolving—pointing to the need for a broader definition.

“I don’t know that you want to re-regulate a comprehensive list any time curriculums or programs change,” he told Inside Higher Ed.

Others, including the American Council on Education, agree that the interpretation should be broad but say the best way to ensure that is the case is by creating a more complete list of eligible programs. “At the very least,” ACE said in its comment letter, the list should include dozens of clinical and health science programs highlighted under an existing regulation known as financial value transparency. On top of that, it also urges the department to include about 15 additional programs, including architecture, accounting, social work, education and word languages.

Halaevalu Vakalahi, president of the Council on Social Work Education, agreed, arguing that many programs like hers meet the current definition.

“We’ve always identified ourselves as a profession,” she said. “There’s licensure, there’s accreditation—all of the things that we have as part of the social [work] profession are also in the list that currently exists on what is a profession.”

But Third Way, a left-of-center think tank, drew the exact opposite conclusion, arguing that Congress intended for the definition to be stringent and address “unnecessary student debt.” (Graduate student debt accounts for nearly half of the student loan portfolio, raising concerns for lawmakers and advocates.)

“While this list is not exclusive, Congress did not indicate that it intended to include any other fields in crafting the OBBBA loan limits,” senior policy adviser Ben Cecil wrote in a recent blog post about the distinction. “By codifying this list as written, the Department can best enforce the legislative intent of ensuring that students aren’t overborrowing for graduate school and have manageable debt compared to their program’s earnings.”

High-Stakes Talks

With the different proposals on the table, those interviewed agreed that it will be rather difficult for the committee to reach consensus. If the committee doesn’t reach an agreement, the department is free to interpret the definition cited in OBBBA however it wants.

McCann from PEER, who worked at the department during the Obama and Biden administrations, said that until she starts to see the debate play out, it’s hard to know which approach will win. But no matter what, she added it will likely be an uphill climb.

“It’s a challenging issue for negotiators, and there are a lot of competing interests with pretty high stakes attached,” she said. So “this is going to be a difficult committee on which to get that kind of agreement.”

Todd Jones, president of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Ohio and a former Republican staffer in the department, said that he expects the Trump administration will lean toward a more narrow definition if the committee doesn’t reach consensus. At that point, he added, it will be up to the individual types of programs to lobby for why they should be added to the list.

“The question is, what has the administration already decided that they are going to give on?” Jones said. “And the things I’ve heard while I was in D.C. over the past few months indicate that there may not be support for some of these social science higher degrees being considered professions and instead simply being considered master’s.”

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September 26, 2025
In Light of AI, a Creative Alternative to Essays (opinion)

For decades now, professors have been complaining about the futility of asking students to write term papers, otherwise known as a research paper. In theory, research papers teach students how to gather a large body of information, weigh conflicting interpretations and come up with their own ideas about the subject, all while honing their writing skills.

But the reality is very different. The prose is usually terrible and the ideas a bad rehash of class lectures. Grading these essays is pure torture. Anecdotally, I’ve heard many say that evaluating papers is the worst part of teaching. If Dante had known about grading, he would have added a new circle of hell where the damned have to grade one bad paper after another for all eternity.

And now we have AI, or “artificial intelligence,” in the form of ChatGPT, Grok, Gemini and a host of other platforms. Submit a prompt, and these programs spit out an essay that, aside from the occasional hallucination, is actually pretty good. Grammatical mistakes are rare; there’s a thesis, evidence and organization.

Even worse, using AI for schoolwork is rampant in both K–12 and higher ed. As James D. Walsh puts it in his now-infamous New York magazine article, “Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College.” And it’s nearly impossible to catch cheaters, especially now that the airless, robotic prose that’s often a marker of an AI-written essay can be masked by programs that promise to “unlock truly human-like AI text.”

What to do? If you have a large class, interviewing students about their essays to ensure they didn’t use AI is impractical, and randomly choosing students to interview could lead to charges of bias. Besides, suspecting everyone of plagiarism destroys the class atmosphere.

Many have gone back to handwritten exams and in-class writing assignments. But grading a pile of blue books is as agonizingly tedious as a pile of papers.

My solution has been to replace the final research paper with a creative project.

Instead of a detailed prompt or instructions, I give my students very wide latitude to do, as the phrase goes, whatever floats their boat. Nonetheless, I still set a few parameters. They have to tell me several weeks in advance what they have in mind. They can’t take a piece of paper, draw a line across it and say, “Behold: my interpretation of Hamlet.”

I have only two hard rules: The project must reflect a good-faith effort to interpret something we’ve read in class, and they have to hand in a brief description of what they tried to accomplish. For those willing (most are), the students present their projects to the class during the period allotted for the final exam. Other than that, they do what they want—and I’ve gotten amazing results.

When I was teaching the literature of terrorism, one student happened to be going to New York for spring break, so she went to the Sept. 11 memorial and interviewed people. Another student composed a rock opera based on Thomas Kyd’s Elizabethan play The Spanish Tragedy. A group put together a postapocalyptic performance of King Lear on the heath, using the university’s loading docks for their stage. I’ve gotten raps, short stories, children’s books, parodies performed and written, musical compositions, and paintings.

For example, a student produced this project for my last Shakespeare class (reproduced with the student’s permission):

Created by Teresa Cousillas Lema

This pencil drawing represents the student’s response to Al Pacino’s delivery of Shylock’s “Hath not a Jew” speech in Michael Radford’s 2004 film, The Merchant of Venice. The three images represent the different emotions Shylock displayed over the course of his speech: rage, sadness, determination.

For the background, this student wrote out Shylock’s speech, thereby committing it (she told me) to memory. But this project represents more than a pretty picture: It demonstrates a profound response to Shakespeare’s words and Pacino’s delivery of them.

This project accomplished nearly the same goals a term paper is supposed to accomplish: reflecting on the material and responding to the play both emotionally and intellectually. As a final payoff, while most students forget about their term papers seconds after they submit them, I’m guessing this student will remember this one and carry forward a deep appreciation of Shakespeare.

Granted, switching to creative projects does not entirely eliminate the possibility of using AI to cheat. Students could still resort to AI if they want to produce anything that involves writing (e.g., a screenplay or a short story), or, for visual projects, they could use an AI art generator. But the opportunity to create something they’re invested in, as opposed to responding to the professor’s essay topics, reduces the incentive to not do the work. The project is something the student wants to do rather than something they have to do.

Yet there is something lost. When the creative project replaces the research paper, students will not have the experience of sorting through multiple and contradictory interpretations. They won’t learn about literary theory and different approaches to literature. And they won’t learn how to write critical prose.

In short, in my discipline, replacing the research paper with a creative project means moving away from teaching English majors how to be literary critics, and that’s not small. It means reorienting the undergraduate English major away from preparing our best students for graduate school and more toward historically informed response.

Nonetheless, it makes no sense to continue with an evaluation method that just about everybody agrees has long since lost its value. So I suggest abandoning the essay for another method that not only accomplishes nearly the same aims but, in the end, brings joy to both student and teacher.

Peter C. Herman is a professor of English literature at San Diego State University.

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September 26, 2025
Employers Value Postsecondary Credentials, Durable Skills

Public perceptions of college have been declining over the past decade, but the role of postsecondary education as a training ground for the workforce remains clear, according to employer surveys.

Recently published data from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and College Board found that a majority of hiring managers say high school students are not prepared to enter the workforce (84 percent) and that they are less prepared for work than previous generations (80 percent).

Similarly, a survey from DeVry University found that 69 percent of employers say their workers lack the skills they need to be successful over the next five years.

The trend line highlights where higher education can be responsive to industry needs: providing vital skills education.

Methodology

DeVry’s survey, fielded in summer 2025, includes 1,511 American adults between the ages of 21 and 60 who are working or expect to work in the next 12 months, and 533 hiring managers from a variety of industries.

The Chamber of Commerce report was fielded between May 20 and June 9 and includes responses from 500 hiring managers at companies of all sizes.

Cengage’s State of Employability includes responses from 865 full-time hiring managers, 698 postsecondary instructors and 971 recent college graduates. The study collected data in June and July.

Investing in education: Nine in 10 respondents to the Chamber of Commerce’s survey indicated that trade school graduates and four-year college graduates with industry-recognized credentials were prepared to enter the workforce. About three-quarters said college graduates without industry-recognized credentials were prepared for the workforce.

According to Devry’s data, three-fourths of hiring managers believe postsecondary education will continue to be valuable as the workplace evolves over the next five to 10 years.

A 2025 report from Cengage Group found that 71 percent of employers require a two- or four-year degree for entry-level positions, up 16 percentage points from the year prior. However, only 67 percent of employers said a degree holds value for an entry-level worker—down from 79 percent last year—and fewer indicated that a college degree remains relevant over the span of a career.

The Chamber of Commerce’s survey underscored the role of work-based learning in establishing a skilled workforce; just under half of employers said internships are the top way for students to gain early-career skills, followed by trade schools (40 percent) and four-year colleges (37 percent). This echoes a student survey by Strada Education Foundation, in which a majority of respondents indicated paid internships had made them a stronger candidate for their desired role.

However, fewer than two in five hiring managers said it’s easy to find candidates with the skills (38 percent) or experience (37 percent) they need. In DeVry’s survey, hiring managers identified a lack of skilled workers as a threat to productivity at their company (52 percent), with one in 10 saying they would have to close their business without skilled talent.

Looking to the future, 80 percent of the hiring managers DeVry surveyed said investing time and money in education is worthwhile in today’s economy; a similar number said education would advance a worker’s professional career as well.

Needed skills: Nearly all hiring managers said they’re more likely to hire an entry-level employee who demonstrates critical thinking or problem-solving abilities, compared to a candidate without those skills. Ninety percent consider effective communication skills a top quality in an applicant.

DeVry’s survey showed that skills have impact beyond early career opportunities; 70 percent of employers said durable skills are a deciding factor in promotions, with critical thinking (61 percent), self-leading (50 percent) and interpersonal communication (50 percent) as the top skills needed for the future.

A majority of educators polled by Cengage said postsecondary institutions should be responsible for teaching industry-specific skills, with 60 percent placing the onus on instructors and 10 percent on campus advisory services or programs. Employer respondents said they expect recent graduates to bring job-specific technical, communication and digital skills to the table when hired.

The Chamber of Commerce survey underscored a need for early education, with 97 percent of respondents saying high school courses should teach professional career skills. Even so, 87 percent of respondents still believe work experience is more valuable than formal education.

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

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September 26, 2025