Tag: Education

  • A new international education strategy

    A new international education strategy

    The Westminster government’s newest iteration of the international education strategy commits the UK to three ambitions: to increase the UK’s international standing through education, to recruit high quality international higher education students from a diverse range of countries, and to grow education exports to £40bn a year by 2030.

    Last time we got an International Education Strategy from the government was back in 2019 – famously it committed the government to increase education exports to £35bn per year, and to increase the number of international HE students studying in the UK to 600,000 per year, again: both by 2030.

    The government’s current best estimate for performance against those targets – which deals with the 2022 calendar year – suggests income from education exports was £32.3bn for that year – with around three quarters of that being derived from higher education activity. For a variety of reasons, it isn’t great data.

    And HESA tells us that there were 758,855 international higher education students during the 2022-23 academic year, though numbers have fallen since.

    Diversification across sub-sectors

    Within the higher education sector the perception has been that this decline in international student numbers has been a political choice in the face of wider public concerns around immigration rather than any failing among universities: changes to dependant visa access, a reduction in the length (from 24 months to 18 months) of the graduate visa for postgraduate taught students, reported difficulties in obtaining student visas, and the onset of price rises linked to the forthcoming international student levy.

    Though a lot of the UK’s historic strengths in international education come via its higher education providers, the strategy is at pains to emphasis the full spectrum of what is on offer, noting:

    We see diversification across sub-sectors as key to long-term success

    Accordingly much of the strategy deals with early years and schools, non-HE tertiary education, English language training, special educational needs, and education technology. But, as with higher education, there is little detail: this will be filled in via an action plan developed by a reconstituted Education Sector Action Group (ESAG). This ministerially-chaired forum will bring together government, industry, and sector representative bodies: each representative will lead on a sub-sector action plan to be published within 100 days of appointment.

    Of course, we don’t even know which minister will chair the forum yet – the strategy is owned jointly by the Department for Education, the Department of Business and Trade, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office. We do know that Steve Smith retains his role as international education champion, and that the strategy will be supported by a range of existing tools and programmes: notably for higher education these include research and technology partnerships including Horizon Europe, plus things like Erasmus+ (from 2027) and Turing (newly confirmed for 2026-27).

    The British Council will play a prominent role too – most notably in the expansion of transnational education provision across every part of the sector. Here robust quality assurance will play a key part – we get detail on schools-level accreditation and oversight, but the parallel section on higher education quality assurance and international standards is missing (despite case studies on the University of London, and the India campus of the University of Southampton). The section on the work of the British Council-led Alumni UK programme (launched in 2022) offers recognition of the value of alumni as international ambassadors.

    And what’s in it for higher education?

    The meat of the strategy for higher education providers concerns a “strategic approach to sustainable international student recruitment”. The key words are “well-managed” and “responsible” recruitment, and a quality student experience should lead to world-class outcomes. It is very encouraging to see that support systems and infrastructure (including local housing) are on the radar too.

    Institutions will be “encouraged to diversify their recruitment”, moving away from reliance on any single country”. There’s support for the sector-owned Agent Quality Framework to tackle poor practices, and a suggestion that government will:

    work closely with the sector to ensure that our institutions recruit international higher education students in a way that maintains quality and student experience. This includes considering factors such as skills and entry requirements, adequate infrastructure, local housing, and support systems

    A section on “maintaining a competitive offer” flags the retention of the (18 month) graduate route, the high potential individual route for those graduating from top 100 institutions (nothing to do with helping UK international education expand, but it is in there), and the change in visa conditions enabling graduates to start businesses while transferring to the “investor founder” route. The international student levy clearly does not help to maintain a competitive offer but we get details of that here too:

    The levy will be fully reinvested into higher education and skills, including the reintroduction of targeted maintenance grant for disadvantaged domestic students, helping to break down barriers to opportunity as part of the government’s Plan for Change and making our higher education system more inclusive for the benefit of all students

    However this ends up benefitting home students, there is no detail on how the policy might discourage (via higher prices, for example) international recruitment.

    Indeed, throughout the strategy there is nothing that deals with the restrictions being placed on higher education as the largest single contributor to educational exports, and how that situation will cause problems (despite warm words about “unlocking the full potential of our education sector”) in meeting this expanded and challenging financial target.

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  • UK unveils new international education strategy

    UK unveils new international education strategy

    • Government aims to grow education exports to £40 billion per year by 2030, growth to come from TNE, ELT, skills and edtech
    • New strategy removes targets on international student numbers with focus on sustainable recruitment
    • Ministerial group known as the Education Sector Action Group (ESAG) to work with sector to deliver action plans tackling key concerns and identifying partnership opportunities

    The long-awaited document marks the first new UK international education strategy (IES) since 2019, which at the time revealed goals to grow international student numbers by 30% by 2030. Education is already one of the UK’s most important exports, bolstering the economy by £32bn per year, with the IES building on 2019’s stated ambition to grow its export value to £35 bn.

    However, after a post-pandemic boom, with international student numbers in the UK reaching 732,285 in 2023/24, the government has moved away from targetting increased enrolments, instead making clear that growth should come from areas such as English language training (ELT), transnational education (TNE) and edtech sectors – worth some £560m, £3bn and £3.89bn in exports respectively.

    The revamped IES outlines three main priorities for UK international education; to grow education exports to a collective $40bn per year, oversee sustainable overseas student recruitment and amplify the UK’s international standing through education – including a focus on cutting red tape for TNE partnerships abroad.

    Elsewhere, the government is drawing on expertise from the international education sector through a reformed ministerial group known as the Education Sector Action Group (ESAG) – a collective tasked with tackling key concerns and identifying partnership opportunities, as well as smoothing the path towards international alliances.

    Each representative will develop an action plan drawing on how its members will support the IES’s three main goals to be published within the first 100 days of their accession to ESAG. As yet it is unclear who will be included in the group.

    Meanwhile, Sir Steve Smith will stay on as the UK’s international education champion, with a remit to “remove barriers to education partnerships” by continuing to engage with India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam. Sir Steve is also looking into opportunities in “emerging economies” such as Brazil, Mexico, and Pakistan, the IES said.

    By expanding overseas, our universities, colleges and education providers can diversify income, strengthen global partnerships and give millions more access to a world-class UK education on their doorstep, all whilst boosting growth at home
    Bridget Phillipson, education secretary

    The document also signals the publication of more specific strategy documents in the future, including a Soft Power Strategy outlining plans to grow the UK’s global influence through its education, sports, science, governance, development and tech sectors.

    Expanding the UK’s soft power abroad is a key part of the IES, which recognises the power in education as a way to position the country as “a place of learning, openness, research and innovation – building life‐long alliances and deepening trust in the UK”.

    Education secretary Bridget Phillipson said that supporting international partnerships would help institutions to “diversity and strengthen their business models”.

    “By expanding overseas, our universities, colleges and education providers can diversify income, strengthen global partnerships and give millions more access to a world-class UK education on their doorstep, all whilst boosting growth at home,” she added.

    Minister for Trade Chris Bryant branded education exports as a “major UK success story”.

    “We’re on track grow the sector to £40 billion by 2030, powered by world leading providers driving digital learning, AI enabled innovation and future skills development,” he said. 

    Malcolm Press, president of Universities UK welcomed the new document, saying it “signals a renewed commitment to fostering the global reach, reputation and impact of our universities”.

    This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates on this emerging story…

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  • Realpolitik: 10 points to note about today’s new International Education Strategy

    Realpolitik: 10 points to note about today’s new International Education Strategy

    Author:
    Nick Hillman

    Published:

    HEPI Director, Nick Hillman, takes a look at the new International Education Strategy, which is out today.

    1. It is a relief to have the paper finally out, as it has been a wait. First, the Coalition had their initial 2013 version (which still reads pretty well, except for its comments about MOOCs, even if it had a rather different list of target countries … ); the subsequent Conservative Governments then had their 2019 Strategy, with its clear targets, and subsequent updates in 2021, 2022 and 2023; and, in October 2024, the newly installed Labour Government promised ‘a review of the International Education Strategy’, which is what has now landed. It is good to have clarity: the new paper provides a comprehensive summary of UK strengths, usefully reinvigorates some tired initiatives (like a ‘reformed’ Education Sector Action Group) and commits to achieving £40 billion of educational exports by 2030. I do not underestimate the challenges involved in getting the paper to this stage, which has been overseen like most of its predecessors by the indefatigable Sir Steve Smith (the UK Government’s International Education Champion to whom the sector owes so much), despite my mixed commentary below – given the general rightwards shift in the country, given the differences of opinion across Whitehall on issues like student migration and given all the other energy-sapping issues on Number 10’s plate.
    2. My first impression was that the paper is shorter than we might have expected – c.50 pages of large text, with lots of ‘throat clearing’ (the Introduction arrives on page 10 and the meat doesn’t start until page 17…). In contrast, the 2019 Strategy was of a similar length but with a much smaller text and included 23 clear ‘Actions’, while the 2021 Update was c.70 pages of dense text, including an update on progress towards the specific actions.
    3. Similarly, the three Ministers put up to front the report are, in government terms, second rank (Minister of State) rather than first rank (Secretary of State) and two sit in the unelected Upper Chamber rather than the elected House of Commons. Along with the lowish word count, this sends a slightly unfortunate signal about the seriousness with which education export issues are taken in government. The 2019 Strategy and the 2021 Update each had two Secretaries of State pen the Foreword, for example.
    4. Perhaps none of this matters. It is better to be concise than wordy. Who cares how many pages there are, what font size has been used and which Ministers have written the inoffensive Foreword? I think it probably does matter a bit as there are no areas of education as competitive as international exports, and it is one of the few areas where the UK can still undeniably claim world-class status. Our main competitors read such UK strategies closely, just as the UK’s own initial 2013 strategy emerged partly as a response to the strategies that had already been adopted in other English-speaking countries. A confident country keen to expand its share of a particular global market tends to project itself as such, whereas a thinner paper that hedges its bets may be regarded, perhaps accurately, as reflecting lukewarm support for educational exports in parts of Whitehall.
    5. More importantly, the new Strategy is keen to emphasise that it is a cross-Government initiative: ‘Leadership of this agenda now sits firmly across the government, with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office joining the Department of Education and the Department of Business and Trade as co-owners of the strategy.’ This is welcome. But the Home Office remain notable by their absence, and it is they that have sole control over things like student visas, post-study work rules and Basic Compliance Assessments. Until the Home Office are forced to share responsibility for international students studying in the UK equally with other parts of government or until the Home Office is overridden by the centre of Whitehall, our higher education institutions will continue to have one arm tied behind their back while trying to expand this important export market.
    6. The Home Office ministers and mandarins will still, however, have had to sign the new paper off and their behind-the-scenes influence is evident. While the paper is full of commitments to ‘leverage’, ‘champion’ and ‘continue’ doing things, it eschews the opportunity to set clear new targets for higher education. The 2013 paper looked to increase the number of international students studying in the UK at higher education ‘by 15-20% over the next five years.’ The 2019 Strategy had a target of increasing students ‘in the UK to 600,000 per year’ by 2030. Now, however, there is an overall goal of increasing all ‘education exports to £40 billion per year’ by the end of this decade but, on higher education students specifically, we only get a commitment to ‘support the sustainable recruitment of higher-quality international students’, warm words about ‘Well-managed and responsible recruitment’ and an objective of ‘building a more resilient, diverse and long-term pipeline of international talent.’ How many more synonyms are there for ‘reducing’ the number of new student arrivals in the UK, I wonder. The Department for Education’s press release suggests TNE (transnational education), with all its challenges and opportunities, has displaced students coming to the UK as the flavour of the month.
    7. As it is a UK-wide document, so the rUK or the ‘rest of the UK’ as it is known in Whitehall get a brief look in. There are nice words about Scotland’s (in truth poor-performing) schools system and the controversial Curriculum for Excellence, which may be rather useful to Scottish policymakers as they look ahead to the 2026 elections to the Scottish Parliament, when education is expected to feature quite heavily.
    8. There are a surprising number of lengthy references to things that are clearly part of modern education but which do not immediately seem directly relevant to establishing a stronger framework for encouraging UK educational exports around the globe, and which are perhaps included to flesh out the text. For example, climate change appears in the very first sentence of the document and page 22 elaborates: ‘the UK Government expects all nurseries, schools and colleges to have a climate action plan, and in collaboration with leading environmental and education organisations, provides direct support through the innovative Sustainability Support Programme. The programme ensures educational settings are inspired to act and supported to plan and deliver meaningful climate action to embed sustainability, climate awareness and connection with nature.’ One can fully subscribe to the idea of man-made climate change and a climate emergency, as well as the need for action to address these, but still be left scratching one’s head at quite what the purpose of such text is in a short paper promoting the UK’s educational exports.
    9. The paper inadvertently reveals a long-standing and tricky issue for policymakers, which is the gap in our general attitudes towards delivering education to people at home and selling UK education to people from overseas. For example, as a nation we are as favourable towards soft power abroad, by making friends in high places through education, as we are opposed to old boys’ networks at home. In England, we tightly regulate who gets to university via Access and Participation Plans, yet when it comes to overseas students, we rely on the very high fees (plus an incoming International Student Levy) that only upper-middle class students can afford and we don’t even worry too much if, on occasion, the extra international students squeeze out home students. (Those attacking Trinity Hall for advertising their outreach work to a handful of UK independent schools tend to ignore that the entire higher education system is propped up by some of the wealthiest people from other countries.)
    10. There is another contradiction illustrated by the new International Education Strategy too: while Ministers block Eton College from working with partners to set up a school for disadvantaged Brits in Middlesborough, the new Strategy celebrates famous independent schools establishing footprints abroad. So Charterhouse Lagos is, we are told, ‘a model for future school partnerships abroad, strengthening bilateral ties and delivering long-term educational and economic benefits.’ It seems to be Floreat Carthusia abroad and Pereat Etona at home (please correct my Latin in the Comments section below … ), which doesn’t in all honesty seem to make much logical sense. At least, there is a German word for it all: realpolitik. 

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  • Misrepresenting Prison Education Risks Harming Students

    Misrepresenting Prison Education Risks Harming Students

    To the editor:

    We write from a Big 10 Prison Education Program, where we’ve worked for a decade to increase access to higher education for incarcerated individuals. We found the framing of the article,“Prison Education May Raise Risk of Reincarceration for Technical Violations” (Jan. 12, 2026) to be misleading and have deep concerns for its potential impact on incarcerated students and prison education programming.

    The article fails to acknowledge decades of evidence about the benefits of prison education. The title and framing deceptively imply that college programs increase criminal activity post-release at a national scale. The Grinnell study—an unpublished working paper—is only informed by data collected in Iowa. Of most impact to incarcerated students, the title and introductory paragraphs mislead the reader by implying that the blame for technical violations and reincarceration should be placed on the justice-impacted individuals themselves. Buried in the article is a nuanced, accurate, structural interpretation of the data: per Iowa-based data, incarcerated individuals who pursue college may be unfairly targeted by parole boards and other decision-making bodies in the corrections system, thus leading to a higher rate of technical violations.

    The impact of the article’s misleading framing could be devastating for incarcerated college students, especially in a climate where legislators often value being “tough on crime.”

    We understand the importance for journalism to tell the full story, and many of the Grinnell study’s findings may be useful for understanding programmatic challenges; however, this particular framing could lead to its own unintended consequences. The 1994 repeal of Pell funding collapsed prison education for nearly thirty years; as a result, the US went from having 772 Prison Ed Programs to eight. Blaming incarcerated individuals for a structural failure could cause colleges and universities to pull support from their programs. We’ve already seen programs (e.g.,Georgia State University) collapse without institutional support, leaving incarcerated students without any access to college. This material threat is further amplified by the article’s premature conclusions about a field that has only recently—as of 2022 with the reintegration of Pell—begun to rebuild.

    In a world where incarcerated students are denied their humanity on a daily basis, it is our collective societal obligation to responsibly and fairly represent information about humanizing programming. Otherwise, we risk harming students’ still emerging—and still fragile—access to higher education.

    Liana Cole is the assistant director of the education at the Restorative Justice Initiative at Pennsylvania State University.

    Efraín Marimón is an associate teaching professor of education; director, of the Restorative Justice Initiative; and director of the Social Justice Fellowship at Pennsylvania State University.

    Elizabeth Siegelman is the executive director for Center for Alternatives in Community Justice.

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  • Montana President Eyes Senate Run

    Montana President Eyes Senate Run

    Bodnar has led the University of Montana since 2018.

    Don and Melinda Crawford/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

    While the politician–to–college president pipeline is thriving in red states like Florida and Texas, University of Montana president Seth Bodnar aims to go the other direction with a Senate run.

    Bodnar is expected to launch a bid for the U.S. Senate as an Independent and will resign from his role as president, a job he has held since 2018, to do so, The Montana Free Press reported. 

    A Bodnar spokesperson confirmed the run and the resignation plans to the news outlet but said he would wait until after a formal announcement to provide more details. The move is reportedly part of a plan backed by Jon Tester, a Democrat who served in the Senate from 2007 to 2024. Tester was unseated by Republican Tim Sheehy in 2024.

    Bodnar

    The University of Montana

    Tester has reportedly expressed skepticism about chances for a Democratic victory but signaled support for Bodnar in a text message, viewed by local media, in which he pointed to the UM president’s background in private business, military service and Rhodes Scholar status.

    Bodnar holds degrees from the United States Military Academy and the University of Oxford. He served in Iraq as a member of the 101st Airborne Division, was a Green Beret in the U.S. Army’s First Special Forces Group, and later a lieutenant colonel in the Montana National Guard.

    Bodnar taught at West Point from 2009 to 2011 before joining General Electric, where he served in a variety of corporate leadership roles before he was recruited to take the UM presidency.

    A university spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed asking when a formal campaign announcement will be made or when Bodnar may step down.

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  • The unlikely formula behind a sold-out international education summit

    The unlikely formula behind a sold-out international education summit

    If you’ve scrolled through LinkedIn lately, you may have seen something that looks more like Eurovision than a typical education conference: university staff singing, recruitment agents dancing, and national teams battling it out for ‘best in show’ on a brightly lit stage in China’s tropical Sanya.

    The annual summit of global recruitment and international education consultancy HUATONG International‘s (Hti Edu) has been running since 2014, originally under the iae China banner before continuing under Hti’s own branding from 2023.

    The final night of the conference features performances by Hti staff, university representatives and country teams from the UK, Australia, Canada and other destinations. Acts range from institution-led and mixed national groups to collaborations with professional musicians.

    “The social bonding aspect is a strong focus of the event as we strive to forge cross cultural understanding and friendships that transcend pure business. Hti has always espoused that relationships make partnerships,” explained Mark Lucas, Hti’s senior vice president of global partnerships and business development.

    “It is hugely popular with the attendees and very competitive between the country-based acts in a ‘frenemies’ way, as each country tries to take the honours of the ‘best in show,’” said Lucas.

    “The event is held near the end of the year and all attendees from Hti’s amazing team to the channel partners, institutions and service providers work incredibly hard throughout the year – this is chance to unwind, meet people from around the world and embrace the diversity and talent that is so evident and present in the world of International education.”

    For Lucas, the entertainment is not a distraction from business – it is part of it.

    This is chance to unwind, meet people from around the world and embrace the diversity and talent that is so evident and present in the world of International education
    Mark Lucas, HUATONG International

    “We are very good at blending a serious, relevant and very full educational and business format with meaningful and fun social events. We are unusual in the fact that the social and performance aspect of the summit has become a very pivotal part of the whole event,” said Lucas.

    Alongside the spectacle sits a packed program of policy and professional content, from embassy-led visa briefings and destination updates to sessions on transnational education, AI, employability and wider sector shifts.

    The summit now draws around 1,000 delegates – including 600 hand-picked recruitment partners from across China, alongside universities, service providers and government officials from major study destinations.

    “For our channel partners, an invite to the summit is awarded based on their efforts. It is very competitively sought after and as they tell us each year, often the highlight of their year.”

    The same applies to institutions: because total attendance is capped, only around 150 institutions, service providers, and commercial partners are invited to the summit. As a result, many lock in their place for the next event as soon as the current one ends.

    According to Lucas, the event seeks to provide a platform to allow for the organisation’s priority partner institutions to directly engage with its channel and recruitment partners in a “controlled training and social context” – noting that this approach was “not the norm for B2B businesses.”

    “Hti takes a very different approach and trusts that our priority partner institutions will not seek to work directly with our extensive network of channel partners and creating an opportunity to bring their key advantages and sector positioning directly to a select group of 600 channel partners.”

    Alongside universities, the summit also brings together the wider service ecosystem that supports international students, including finance, health insurance, testing and accommodation providers.

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  • Harvard’s President Undercuts Academic Freedom and Learning

    Harvard’s President Undercuts Academic Freedom and Learning

    In a recent podcast, Harvard president Alan Garber said some things about teaching that I found at best odd, and at worse pretty much nonsense, because if we’re talking about teaching and learning—supposedly the core of the undergraduate experience at Harvard and elsewhere—it doesn’t make any sense.

    As reported by the Harvard Crimson student newspaper, reflecting on the present challenges to institutions around accusations of intolerance and hostility to free debate, Garber came down firmly on the side of not debating (bold is mine): “I’m pleased to say that I think there is real movement to restore balance in teaching and to bring back the idea that you need to be objective in the classroom.”

    It came as news to me that it is a goal to be “objective” in the classroom, because objectivity is not a value that I associate with writing instruction, my primary field of expertise. As I’ve written here previously, my first-year writing students often struggled with this notion, believing that it was their job to not only be objective but in also to be “authoritative,” which had them adopting strange approaches to expression as they tried to BS themselves and the audience in a weird performance of fake erudition.

    Instead, I introduced students to the values that I believe properly attach to personal expression through writing—which is what all scholarship is, after all—values like transparency, openness, fairness, accuracy and curiosity (among others).

    They need to practice these things in order to build trust with their audience in the effort to be convincing, not as some kind of objective authority, but as someone who has proven themselves trustworthy through the deployment of sound writing practices and respect for the audience.

    As I told students, this is no guarantee of people agreeing with you or adopting your position, but in my view, the job of the writer is to be as clear as possible with their own positioning in order to foster an ongoing, in fact never-ending, academic conversation in which people with different perspectives come together to communicate across topics in ways that fundamentally illuminate those topics for the benefit of an interested and engaged audience.

    I don’t think any of this is controversial and has, in fact, been the underlying engine of academic inquiry for, I don’t know … ever? That faculty having opinions rooted in their expertise and then expressing those opinions somehow became controversial is not a problem with the academic conversation.

    I admit that this framing of discourse is a little quaint in an era where attention is the primary (perhaps only) coin of the realm and attempting to be accurate, transparent and fair seems to matter very little, but one of the great things about the essentially conservative nature of higher education institutions is that we get to cling to out-of-fashion notions because we believe they are consistent with our underlying values.

    I wonder where Garber got this notion that objectivity in the classroom is something that used to be the norm. I don’t remember my Econ 101 professor in fall 1988 regaling the class with a balanced discussion of socialist and Marxist (or even New Deal) economic theory. Instead, I was subjected to what would become bog-standard neoliberal notions about markets, competition and deregulation—notions that are highly contested within the field of economics.

    Which is as it should be! This is the work of academia.

    It’s possible that Garber is paying a little bit of lip service to audiences he knows have been critical of what they perceive as the ideological biases in higher ed, but it is enervating to see a college president validate critiques that have been overwhelmingly applied in bad faith to undermine institutions. If you don’t believe me, perhaps you should consider the testimony of former Republican governor of Indiana Eric Holcomb, who spent a semester teaching at an elite university, expecting to find an ideological monoculture, but experienced the opposite—a place of open debate, differing viewpoints and productive intellectual exchange.

    Holcomb was “surprised,” but he shouldn’t have been, because those of us who work within higher education know that the critique Garber is validating is overwhelmingly untrue.

    Oh, that elite institution where Holcomb found not objective presentation of information but open debate? Harvard.

    What is a bigger threat to free expression on campuses, faculty expressing opinions in classrooms, or institutional leaders publicly declaring it’s important for faculty to keep things “objective”?

    One of Garber’s rationales for championing objectivity was that this approach would be in the interest of students, saying, “How many students would actually be willing to go toe-to-toe against a professor who’s expressed a firm view about a controversial issue?”

    Harvard students, or at least one Harvard student, Adam Chiocco, also writing at The Harvard Crimson, reject this rationale, pointing out that one of the things that draws students to Harvard is the faculty, who have deep expertise and “the most refined and developed perspectives in academia.” Garber is essentially asking faculty to shelve that expertise in the service of what, exactly?

    Chiocco isn’t having it. As he says, “When a professor offers their perspective, students can see how an expert in a field thinks through an issue, how their arguments are structured, and often gain new ways to analyze sources. Good professors will then invite disagreement with their views, challenging students to contemplate and present thoughtful questions and objections.”

    This is happening in thousands of classrooms across the country every single hour of the day. While there are outlier exceptions who may abuse the privilege of their position, we know, and Garber knows, as former governor Holcomb knows, that they are by far the exception.

    Chiocco again: “For all involved, binding expertise to the ideal of neutrality constricts the possibilities for meaningful learning.”

    I don’t think the freedom of students to learn and faculty to teach is helped by a university president giving credence to a fiction or offering a vision that is inconsistent with what we know to be good educational practices.

    There are obviously bigger threats to academic freedom right now, like Texas A&M censoring Plato and canceling graduate courses on ethics because a professor can’t promise to guide discussion according to the dictates of a politically partisan legislature.

    But part of fighting those larger forces is making the affirmative case for the work faculty and students do. President Garber failed that part of his duty with his podcast remarks.

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  • Plato and Morality Tales

    Plato and Morality Tales

    I’ve enjoyed the coverage of Texas A&M’s decision to ban certain of Plato’s dialogues for being too woke, but I wish the people covering it would place it in context.

    Socrates—the protagonist of the dialogues—was sentenced to death for corrupting the youth of Athens. That’s essentially what A&M is accusing the dialogues of doing now. Now we refer to “wokeness” instead of “corruption,” but the underlying assumption is the same: Students were pure of heart and mind, untroubled by unpopular thoughts, until a teacher led them astray.

    Um, no. It wasn’t true then, and it isn’t true now. Students (and the young generally) are not, and never have been, pure. For that matter, neither has “the Western tradition,” to the extent that it makes sense to use the definite article. The folks who try to use “tradition” to bash, say, homosexuality, might blush at the ancient Greeks’ sexual practices. Speaking of blushing, those who embrace Stephen Miller’s assertion that power has only ever been about force might face some awkward questions encountering Thrasymachus’s blush in book one of the Republic when Socrates points out that the claim that justice is simply the advantage of the stronger is incoherent.

    If it were up to me, every political journalist in America, and every elected official, would be forced to grapple with Aristotle’s definition of friendship. In the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle explained that the opposite of a friend is not an enemy but a flatterer. Both a friend and an enemy can bring out the best in someone, but a flatterer brings out the worst in them. Any application to our current politics is left as an exercise for the reader.

    Probably my favorite line in the Western tradition about purity has to be Saint Augustine’s howler “give me chastity and continence, but not yet.” That’s hardly the plea of a naïve innocent. If anything, it frames purity as aspirational and sin as a default setting. Rephrase “aspirational” as “constructed” and we’re off to the races.

    I offer these for a few reasons. First, it’s fun. Secondly, and much more importantly, to point out that “the classics” and “traditional values” (as asserted by some political actors) have little to do with each other. The only way to use the former to prop up the latter is to ignore the classics’ actual content. What makes the classics worth studying is not that they’re simple little morality tales; they wrestle with recognizable and real dilemmas that we wrestle with, too. They’re complicated. They make didactic morality tales look shallow and silly. And, as anyone who does the reading knows, they disagree with each other, sometimes drastically. Compare, say, Antigone’s attitude toward the family with Socrates’s; they’re sufficiently far apart as to seem to come from entirely different cultures. And that’s without even considering Oedipus or Medea.

    Part of what makes me twitchy about community colleges being treated entirely as job-training centers is that neglecting the classics can contribute to the project of historical erasure that allows people with agendas to write their desired futures into imaginary pasts as if they’re true.

    They aren’t. We need people to experience different answers to big questions, both for the sake of the exercise and for gaining the great gift of historical study: a sense of how things don’t happen. Seeing others across time and space as three-dimensional people, wrestling with the same uncertainties and mixed motives they are and, can vaccinate against coercive utopianisms that are, inevitably, founded on simplistic and false ideas of how people are. That healthy skepticism is what the arts of liberty—alternatively known as the liberal arts—can provide.

    Yes, Texas A&M embarrassed itself by trying to ban Plato. But it was just slightly right in noticing that elements of Plato don’t fit cleanly into contemporary politics. They don’t. All the more reason to read him. As another complicated figure put it, there is more to heaven and earth than is dreamt of in their philosophy. And a good thing, too.

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  • 2025 Was a Bad Year for College Presidents. Will 2026 Be Better?

    2025 Was a Bad Year for College Presidents. Will 2026 Be Better?

    Last year turned out to be a tumultuous one for higher education, with institutions buffeted by the Trump administration’s sweeping federal research cuts, unprecedented intrusion into classrooms and relentless crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and speech rights.

    In response, campus leaders engaged with lawmakers behind closed doors, spent heavily on lobbying and co-signed higher education associations’ efforts to fight government policies that threatened academic freedom and their institutional missions. But few objected publicly. For the most part, college presidents watched in silence.

    Experts say that’s not surprising; university leaders are caught in a unique moment—squeezed between faculty and students demanding action and boards and lawmakers intent on punishing those who speak up.

    “Unique challenges facing presidents included that difficult balance between what campus constituents wanted for presidents to say and the desires of trustees to hold very different positions, either based on pressures from legislatures or their own political beliefs,” said Teresa Valerio Parrot, principal of TVP Communications, a sector-focused public relations firm. “Often presidents found themselves in this very interesting position of trying to please internal audiences and also meet the expectations of their bosses when they weren’t congruent.”

    Here’s a look at how college presidents navigated 2025—and what observers expect this year to look like for them.

    Caught Unprepared

    Experts said most presidents were caught off guard by the onslaught of challenges unleashed by the federal government.

    Brian Rosenberg, president emeritus of Macalester College and a visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, told Inside Higher Ed that last year was “traumatizing” for campus leaders who struggled “to not get snowed under by all of the challenges they faced.”

    Michael Harris, a professor of higher education at Southern Methodist University, argued that presidents had a “failure of imagination” over realizing “how damaging” policy changes would be under Trump 2.0 as the federal government shifted from a trusted partner to attack mode.

    “Institutions were still trying to figure out how to navigate all the typical challenges that higher education had been facing before 2025. Those didn’t go away, but then you add on to it the federal landscape changing virtually overnight and continually changing,” Harris said. “When you’re trying to make decisions by which judge has frozen which policy or what might be coming out next, or a Dear Colleague letter that doesn’t match what the logical legal interpretation would be, that’s a challenging environment for anybody, much less a college president.”

    At the same time, many leaders were also navigating financial woes, an upended athletics landscape and protests against ICE raids and international student visa crackdowns.

    Lost Jobs, Stymied Searches

    Institutions and individual presidents alike were caught in the political crosshairs in 2025, leading to a litany of federal and state investigations, resignations and the occasional legal showdown.

    Multiple presidents targeted by federal or state lawmakers stepped down in 2025, including Michael Schill at Northwestern University and Jim Ryan at the University of Virginia. Both had drawn scrutiny from the federal government: Schill for his handling of pro-Palestinian protests and Ryan for allegedly failing to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion programs fast enough. Others, like Mark Welsh at Texas A&M University, were pushed out by pressure from state politicians.

    Welsh was caught in a flap between Melissa McCoul, an English instructor, and a student in her children’s literature class who objected to the professor’s statement that there are more than two genders, citing an executive order from President Trump that recognizes gender only as male and female. Welsh initially resisted firing McCoul until the student tagged a Republican lawmaker, who published a video of the incident, ratcheting up pressure on both Welsh and McCoul. Ultimately, Welsh fired McCoul as the controversy swirled and other Texas politicians piled on.

    Although Welsh gave state lawmakers what they wanted, it was too late to save his job.

    He resigned under pressure and was replaced by interim president Tommy Williams, a former Republican lawmaker. In his first few months on the job, Williams sparked controversy after Texas A&M censored a philosophy course; officials told the professor he could not teach Plato in a class on contemporary moral problems because it conflicted with university restrictions on topics of race, gender and sexuality. (Williams has since noted the university is not “banning Plato altogether.”)

    More recently, Texas A&M canceled a graduate ethics class after a professor said it would be impossible to specify the precise timing or manner in which topics of race, gender and sexuality would arise.

    Texas A&M did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.

    Judith Wilde, a research professor at George Mason University who studies presidential searches and contracts, wrote by email that 2025 had “unusually high” turnover both at the presidential level and among other high-ranking academic leaders. She noted that amid the current political volatility, “some institutions seem to be using an interim leader to buy time as they consider their political exposure as well as try to avoid committing to a long-term hire.”

    Similarly, Rosenberg pointed to the mid-2024 elevation of Harvard University president Alan Garber from interim to permanent status as an example of a college making a relatively safe choice and sidestepping the internal and external criticism that would inevitably accompany an executive hire. He also noted that Columbia University recently extended its presidential search.

    “Nobody wants to do a search right now, particularly at these elite privates, because of the kind of scrutiny it will draw and the difficulty of hiring the right kind of person,” Rosenberg said.

    Who Gets to Be a President?

    Last year also saw significant presidential hiring drama, such as when the Florida Board of Governors rejected Santa Ono as the next president of the University of Florida, even though the institution’s Board of Trustees voted unanimously to select him as their next leader. The FLBOG largely shot down Ono’s selection over concerns about his past support of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, which he unsuccessfully sought to downplay.

    Wilde said that reflects a shift not only in who is being hired but also in the fact that “the search itself is no longer the deciding factor in choosing a president” as boards lean into performative public vetting. Now “whether the president can survive the ideological gauntlet” is what matters most in hiring, she said.

    She suspects such factors may prevent traditional academics from applying for presidencies.

    At UVA, the Board of Visitors tapped an internal candidate, business dean Scott Beardsley, who reportedly scrubbed multiple references to DEI initiatives from his résumé during the search process. (Critics have also accused Beardsley of inflating his academic profile and research output.)

    Experts say such instances reflect both sector hiring challenges and the changing nature of the presidency.

    “When you have a rash of poor hires, failed searches, failed presidencies, at some point we have to acknowledge that’s not individual failures, it’s systemic failure,” Harris said. “I think we need to acknowledge we have systemic failures in how we hire, recruit, retain, reward and support presidents. Also, the job is changing, insofar as presidents have to be more politically savvy. It’s always been a part of the job, but I feel like now that is even more so the case.”

    Rosenberg agreed that a president’s political affiliation matters more than ever, especially in red states like Florida and Texas, which have hired numerous former lawmakers to lead higher ed institutions.

    “It’s never been irrelevant, certainly at public institutions, but in places like Florida and in Texas, we’re basically seeing college presidents being chosen from current or former politicians. So political affiliation is important in public institutions in ways that it has never been before,” Rosenberg said.

    The Year Ahead

    Experts project another challenging year for college presidents owing to a difficult policy environment. But they also note a few points of optimism that presidents can build on in 2026.

    Valerio Parrot said that one win from 2025 was that “presidents were able to find coalitions” and to network with other leaders in similar positions, using one another as sounding boards. Such relationships, she said, helped guide them through moments of political uncertainty. Valerio Parrot also pointed to the role higher ed associations played in pushing back on federal overreach.

    Rosenberg noted Harvard’s legal victory against the Trump administration after it tried to strip the university of federal research funding, among other actions.

    He wants to see more college presidents take a stand and exhibit moral courage.

    “I think what they could learn is that not resisting authoritarian growth doesn’t stop it. It enables it,” he said. “You would have thought that people would have learned that from history, but apparently we have not. If you allow authoritarians to continue to expand their power without pushback, they will expand that even more. You do that long enough, and sooner or later you reach a point where you can’t push back. I think the lesson is that duck and cover isn’t working.”

    Valerio Parrot urged presidents to ask themselves three questions when considering whether to issue statements: “Why them? Why now? And what is the takeaway from what they’re sharing?” If presidents choose to speak up, she argued, they need to do so in a way that does more than add noise.

    While speaking up is perilous, Harris argued it’s the kind of decision presidents must weigh and strike the right balance in execution.

    “This is where I think presidents are in a no-win situation. If they spoke out as forcefully as their faculty wanted, they would be in an untenable position,” he said. “At the same time, if you’re not willing to advocate for the core values of your institution, then what are you doing at the top?”

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  • Capstone Course Helps Students Launch Ventures

    Capstone Course Helps Students Launch Ventures

    Students often learn about entrepreneurship without a clear path to turn their ideas into a viable business. The University of Dayton’s capstone course gives them that path.

    Launched in fall 2024, Flyer Nest guides students to develop scalable business ideas they can continue after graduation.

    Housed in UD’s School of Business Administration, Flyer Nest is part of the university’s entrepreneurship program and teaches students not just how to launch companies but also how to design ventures that solve real problems and benefit their communities.

    To date, Flyer Nest has served 12 teams totaling about 70 students, with each team developing a single business venture. Two teams have continued their ventures beyond the course, and six new teams began this semester.

    Vince Lewis, associate vice president for entrepreneurial initiatives at UD, said all students in the capstone course end the semester not just with a classroom project but with a proposal they can submit for funding.

    “There is a bigger learning outcome than just the start-up,” Lewis said. “Students gain better confidence in actually being able to execute an entrepreneurial venture.”

    He added that two students from a continuing team raised about $400,000 to fund their venture aimed at improving helmet safety for football players.

    “That’s a valuable, real-world opportunity,” Lewis said. “Students build a business case and then present it to business owners, investors and entrepreneurs at the end of the semester to get feedback.”

    “It really does provide a win for students actively pursuing start-ups,” he added.

    The approach: The capstone course partners with the Ohio Entrepreneurial Services Provider program and the Ohio Third Frontier Technology Validation and Start-Up Fund (TVSF) to provide critical resources to Flyer Nest teams, including mentorship and connections to potential investors.

    Lewis said students build their projects around technologies they find in a database of innovations available for licensing from research labs.

    “Scientists and engineers develop [the technologies], but they aren’t focused on commercializing them,” said Lewis. He added that Flyer Nest teams work together to turn these technologies into solutions for real-world problems, from disease detection to health literacy for Black Americans.

    Lewis said the team from Flyer Nest’s inaugural cohort focused on helmet safety secured $200,000 in state funding through TVSF, then secured the rest from new-venture competitions and grants.

    The project leveraged the students’ football backgrounds and technology originally designed for hazmat suits to create a sensor embedded in helmet chin straps, he said.

    “If you integrate Bluetooth and communications already being added into helmets, it can alert coaches or someone on the sideline that a chin strap isn’t tight, potentially preventing head injuries,” said Lewis.

    He added that another team from the capstone course is using technology originally designed to detect fatigued pilots to assist truck drivers. The students are currently partnering with three local trucking companies interested in pursuing the venture with them.

    What’s next: Lewis said next steps involve expanding Flyer Nest beyond business and entrepreneurship majors, particularly pulling students from engineering, design, communications and other disciplines.

    He also said he wants to create a year-round venture studio where students can continue developing their ideas after the semester ends.

    For other institutions interested in creating an experiential course like Flyer Nest, Lewis said it’s essential that they have strong institutional commitment and an engaged community partner embedded in the local entrepreneurial ecosystem.

    “The community partners are what makes it work,” Lewis said. “Because they have this vast network of people they can bring in and integrate into the course to help us execute.”

    Ultimately, Lewis said, running a capstone course like Flyer Nest requires dedication and a willingness to navigate the uncertainty that comes with real-world learning.

    “It’s a significant lift in terms of effort, because there’s a little ambiguity when you’re going into it,” he said. “This experiential, real-world opportunity for students is a really big commitment.”

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