Tag: Foundation

  • How funding policy has affected foundation year provision

    How funding policy has affected foundation year provision

    The coming academic year (2025-26) is the first in which classroom-based foundation year (FY) fees will be capped at a level below the higher level fee cap.

    For many who have experienced or supported foundation year tuition this is a retreat from a proven method for supporting people who have been failed by compulsory schooling in continuing their education. Critics would point to a few years of sustained growth, particularly in franchised provision, that is of more questionable quality and benefit.

    Foundation years are an anomaly in that they sit neither at level three (alongside other pre-university qualifications like A levels or the Access to HE Diploma [AHED]) or level four (alongside higher national diplomas, and the first years of both undergraduate degrees and higher technical qualifications). As such, they will face the worst of both worlds: level 3 funding (for classroom-based provision) covered by level 4 repayment rules and level 4 regulatory interventions.

    Why cut?

    In a ministerial statement that, in a dazzling display of self-awareness, actually used the phrase “fix the foundations” twice, the Secretary of State set a fee limit of £5,760 (the maximum current cost of an AHED, though in practice fees are nearer £4,000) as a maximum for “classroom-based” (non-STEM) foundation years on 4 November 2024.

    There’s a paragraph on the ostensible reasoning for this that is worth bearing in mind:

    The government recognises the importance of foundation years for promoting access to higher education, but they can be delivered more efficiently in classroom-based subjects, at a lower cost to students.

    This sounds more like an access-focused intervention rather than an attempt to cut provision, although it is rather divorced from the cost of provision. This is despite a 2023 report from IFF Research which noted that, based on the available data and on a series of interviews:

    the cost of delivering FY and the first year of a UG degree in the same subject area was found to be broadly similar

    Indeed, there were suggestions that FYs may actually work out more expensive, given the need for more contact time and the tendency towards smaller classes. We should leave aside for the moment the great difficulties we have in understanding the cost of higher education provision more generally, and note that the evidence base for this particular decision is weak. And there is, to be clear, a huge absence of meaningful data about FYs more generally – something DfE itself attempted (after a fashion) to remedy with an ad hoc data release in October of 2023.

    Review of routes

    If you were wondering where the impetus for this policy intervention originally came from, you have to look back to Philip Augar’s review of post-18 fees and funding back in 2019:

    We recommend that student finance is no longer offered for foundation years, unless agreed with the OfS in exceptional cases.

    In broad-brush terms, his argument was that foundation years did a similar job to some level 3 qualifications (specifically the Access to HE Diplomas) at greater cost: he characterised this as “enticing” underqualified students onto expensive four year degrees that may not be in their best interests.

    It was one of many largely arbitrary (and mercifully forgotten) Augar recommendations on higher education funding, to the credit of the previous government it was very much more aligned to addressing the value offered to students. As Michelle Donelan said in 2022:

    We also know that there are some people who need a second chance, an opportunity to get into higher education through a less conventional route. Often this route is through foundation years, but we think it is unfair that some of those who take advantage of this transformational opportunity have to pay over the odds. So we are reducing the fee limit for foundation years to make them more accessible and more affordable for those who need a second chance.

    Quantity and quality

    Okay. So, ignoring Augar, there’s never been an agenda to cancel or limit the availability of foundation years. The cuts are based (albeit on some quite shaky data) on reducing costs for students while maintaining affordability for providers.

    There is, however, widely reckoned to be a quality issue with some FYs offered via franchise or partnership arrangement – something which DfE did not appear to have considered in collecting data or commissioning reports.

    With the 2025 recruitment cycle mostly over, we now have the ability to assess how the sector has responded to these interventions via the Unistats dataset.

    As I never tire of telling people, Unistats is not perfect but it is useful. The big headline story we’ve tracked in recent years is a reduction in the number of undergraduate courses on offer overall – down 6 per cent between 2023 and 2024, and down a further 3 per cent between 2024 and 2025.

    Foundation supply

    But underneath this we lost one in ten courses with compulsory foundation years (courses that must start with a foundation year) between 2023 and 2024, and a further five percent between 2024 and 2025. The latter year also saw nearly 6 per cent of optional foundation years (courses that can include a foundation year if required) disappear.

    [Full screen]

    What about franchise provision? Using a unistats proxy (does the registered UKPRN match the display UKPRN, or is there an additional UKPRN for a different teaching location) it appears that the number of franchised compulsory foundation years grew from 90 in 2023 to 107 in 2024. This trend reversed between 2024 and 2025 (with numbers falling back below 80), but the number of optional franchised foundation years fell off a cliff after 2023: from 53 in 2023 to just 12 in 2024, and 13 in 2025.

    At a (top level) subject area the dominance of social sciences and business foundation years has declined a little – engineering foundation years have always been popular and have broadly persisted over the three years in question (and are the most popular by far at Russell Group providers). Among franchised provision business and management still dominates, but the last three years has seen a rise in the number of creative and engineering foundation years offered (largely with specialised providers as franchisers).

    Policy outcomes and policy intentions

    So, it all depends on how you take the impetus of the government’s change in foundation year policy. If it was a measure to reduce overall the number of classroom (non-STEM) foundation years it has had some questionable success, likewise if you believe it was a policy designed to limit the spread of franchised foundation year degrees.

    It is possible that it has driven savings within universities – allowing foundation years to be run more cheaply. This might explain things like the paradoxical rise in franchised foundation years in creative arts alongside a drop in non-franchised provision – smaller and less historically encumbered (and potentially lower quality) providers may be better at running these foundation years at a lower overall cost.

    Here’s who is offering these courses – and what they are.

    [Full screen]

    This defaults to FY provision in 2025 but is – with a bit of effort, a fascinating tool for looking over the complete three years of courses advertised to undergraduates.

    As usual, we are hugely short of data – the fact that unistats (of all things) offers the best lens on what is happening suggests that there’s nobody in DfE with an eye on what is going on.

    But rumours of the demise of the classroom based foundation year, or even the franchise model in providing this, are likely to be overstated. It remains to be seen, by whatever measure, whether the cut-price offer is as good.

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  • Extortion in plain sight | The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

    Extortion in plain sight | The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

    This essay was originally published by The Dispatch on July 4, 2025.


    Paramount Global’s decision to pay $16 million to end President Donald Trump’s lawsuit over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris was a “win for the American people,” according to Trump’s lawyers. And it happened because “CBS and Paramount Global realized the strength of this historic case and had no choice but to settle.”

    Well, not quite.

    The case is “historic” for sure, but not in a good way or because the advocates came up with profound theories of media law. Quite to the contrary: The case is so baseless, so devoid of factual or legal support, and so diametrically opposed to basic First Amendment principles it is hard to imagine how those who filed it sleep at night. 

    The main question about Paramount’s decision to settle this comically frivolous lawsuit is not why the company decided to settle, but why did resolving it take this long if the “historic case” were so “strong?” The reason for the settlement is obvious. Paramount, the corporate parent of the CBS television network, had a gun to its head. 

    Paramount must get approval from the Federal Communications Commission for its proposed $8 billion merger with Skydance Media (which includes the transfer of 28 CBS-owned and -operated broadcast stations). The merger agreement expired April 7 but was extended to July 7. So it was pay-up or shut-up time.

    The holdup, in every sense of that word, came in the form of FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, whom President Trump elevated to head the commission on Inauguration Day. As one of his first official acts, Carr opened his own investigation of the Harris interview over supposed “news distortion,” and he slow-rolled the FCC’s merger review process. The Securities and Exchange Commission and European regulators had approved the merger back in February, but the FCC continued to “ponder” the matter as the deal clock ticked down.

    Trump’s $16M win over ’60 Minutes’ edit sends chilling message to journalists everywhere

    Trump’s $16M win over a “60 Minutes” edit sends a chilling message to journalists everywhere. FIRE’s Bob Corn-Revere calls it what it is: the FCC playing politics.


    Read More

    But let’s give him the benefit of the doubt: Couldn’t it be that Carr was just carefully considering nuanced issues of media law in order to safeguard the public from big-network media bias? After all, Trump had claimed that CBS had edited its interview deceptively to make Harris “look better” — something he called “totally illegal,” an “UNPRECEDENTED SCANDAL,” and for which the FCC should “TAKE AWAY THE CBS LICENSE.” Never mind that networks are not licensed by the FCC (stations are), the rant led to the lawsuit in Texas and later the FCC investigation.

    Loopy all-cap social media posts aside, there was never a legitimate basis either for the lawsuit or the FCC action. Every day, from the smallest newspaper to the largest network, reporters and editors must digest and condense the information they collect — including quotes from politicians and other newsmakers — to tell their stories concisely and understandably. For instance, Trump has repeatedly received the same treatment. Fox News repeatedly edited interviews with then-candidate Trump during the campaign, editing answers to enhance coherence, eliminate digressions, and excise insults. Making sense of the stuff that pours from politicians’ mouths is not easy. And here, CBS was accused of something unforgivable: committing standard journalism. 

    This was never about swapping out answers to different questions or rewriting answers, as Trump and his supporters falsely claim. During the interview, 60 Minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker asked then-Vice President Harris a question about the Biden administration’s relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: 

    MR. BILL WHITAKER: But it seems that Prime Minister Netanyahu is not listening. The Wall Street Journal said that he — that your administration has repeatedly been blindsided by Netanyahu, and in fact, he has rebuffed just about all of your administration’s entreaties.

    VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Well, Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by, or a result of many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region. And we’re not going to stop doing that. We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.

    CBS broadcast two excerpts of Harris’ answer on two separate programs: On Face the Nation, CBS aired the first sentence of Harris’ answer. On 60 Minutes, CBS aired the last sentence of the answer. Really — that’s all this is about.

    The FCC in the past has never defined the editing process as “news distortion.” In fact, it has steadfastly maintained the First Amendment bars it from doing so. Chairman Carr’s decision to reopen a closed complaint in a matter he knows to be baseless and beyond the FCC’s authority is unprecedented and indefensible.

    We need a far stronger word than ‘hypocrite’ to capture this moment. We have a president who on day one issued an executive order purporting to ‘restore free speech’ … [then] deployed agency heads to retaliate against news organizations that displease him.

    And the arguments in the now-settled lawsuit are even more frivolous (if that’s even possible). Trump’s lawyers argued that the Harris interview violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act and the federal Lanham Act as a “false, misleading, or deceptive act or practice” and asserted $20 billion in damages. Those laws are designed to prevent consumer deception in marketing practices (like turning back the odometer on a used car) or false advertising. They simply don’t apply to editorial judgments by news organizations. No court in any jurisdiction has ever held that such a cause of action might be valid, and few plaintiffs have ever attempted to bring such outlandish claims. Those who have done so were promptly dismissed.

    But who needs good arguments or supporting legal authority when federal regulators are willing to ignore their oath to uphold the Constitution and back your political power play?

    Of course, Carr has maintained that there was no link between the Texas lawsuit and the FCC’s merger review or news distortion investigation. But let’s get real. Before he was named chairman, Carr said he didn’t think the 60 Minutes interview “should be a federal case,” and “we don’t want to get into authenticating news or being a Ministry of Truth.”

    But once Trump announced Carr as his pick to head the agency, Carr changed his tune, telling Fox News the FCC would review the 60 Minutes complaint while considering whether to approve the Paramount-Skydance merger. The hypocrisy here is staggering. As chairman, Carr has routinely boasted that he wants to move quickly to spur business and investment. Yet here, he mysteriously lagged in reviewing the Paramount Global-Skydance merger (coincidentally, no doubt) as settlement negotiations dragged on in Texas.

    We need a far stronger word than “hypocrite” to capture this moment. We have a president who on day one issued an executive order purporting to “restore free speech” and to bar any federal official from engaging in censorship. At the same time, the very same president deployed agency heads to retaliate against news organizations that displease him and to do so in support of his private litigation efforts. And we have an FCC chairman who used to say things like “[a] newsroom’s decision about what stories to cover and how to frame them should be beyond the reach of any government official, not targeted by them,” who has made micromanaging news editing a defining principle of his administration.

    Meanwhile, settlement of Trump’s case against CBS and the anticipated merger approval raise some significant questions. Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Ron Wyden have asked whether the settlement might violate federal bribery laws, which prohibit corruptly giving anything of value to public officials to influence an official act. In a similar vein, the Freedom of the Press Foundation has threatened (as a Paramount shareholder) to bring a derivative action against the company for conflict of interest, and last May filed a shareholder information demand. 

    Whatever else may happen, this week’s settlement announcement is not the end of this saga. But one thing is clear: The bullying tactics that led to this settlement stain our nation’s character and taint not just those who engage in them but also those who give in.

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  • Civic engagement offers a firm foundation for universities contributing to regional economic growth agendas

    Civic engagement offers a firm foundation for universities contributing to regional economic growth agendas

    When searching for friendly support or warm words from politicians, the media, and the public, UK universities are increasingly being left empty-handed.

    Last year’s modest increase in tuition fees allowed universities a temporary reprieve after years of tightening financial constraints but came with a firm warning that standards must improve and was quickly wiped out by rises in National Insurance. Meanwhile, culture wars and negative perceptions on quality and graduate outcomes continue to dominate discourse around the sector, fuelling criticism of universities from all directions.

    Richard Jones, vice president for regional innovation and civic engagement at the University of Manchester posited last week that university leaders may be tempted to look for easy savings in their civic impact work – initiatives that engage with and benefit their local community but ultimately fall outside of a university’s traditional mission of teaching and research. But as he argues, this would be a profound mistake.

    The outlook in recent years for universities may have been challenging, but hope lies in Labour’s focus on place-based policy. Place has driven flagship funding decisions and policies including the Spending Review and the Industrial Strategy, with more money being devolved from Whitehall to the regions in pursuit of growth. New Mayoral Strategic Authorities have been empowered to take the reins on transport, investment, spatial planning and skills, with the promise of further autonomy as they mature. A new Green Book – government’s methodology for assessing public investments – is being updated and will broaden the criteria to look more favourably at investments outside London and the South East.

    Universities are perfectly placed to be the drivers of Labour’s regional growth ambitions. The priority sectors in last week’s Industrial Strategy – including advanced manufacturing, life sciences, and clean energy industries – are some of UK universities’ best strengths. Moreover, as anchor institutions located in the heart of communities, universities are physically well-placed to address causes of economic decline.

    Civic engagement for economic growth

    The civic university movement, which champions collaboration between universities and their localities, has an established framework for institutions looking to ramp up civic impact initiatives with their civic university agreements. More than 70 civic university agreements are already in place between universities and their local authorities, with universities in Manchester, Nottingham, Sheffield, Exeter, Derby and London, among others, providing a range of examples for institutions to learn from.

    A UPP Foundation series of roundtables held in four regions across England recently has also highlighted that the civic university movement remains active, with a wealth of civic activity taking place across the country. Universities are finding creative ways to engage with their local communities, with examples including offering to host events in university spaces, or running a café that demystifies the benefits of nuclear energy while providing employment and training for local people. For institutions nervous about signing up to lengthy and potentially costly partnerships, participants at the roundtables instead stressed that smaller gestures can be just as meaningful. Rather than draining resources, civic activity can in fact alleviate funding pressures when universities work together to learn from one another.

    Irrespective of geography, participants were united in their contention that universities should collaborate with their local partners to develop civic initiatives, working collaboratively to address the real day-to-day problems communities want help with, such as helping local businesses transition to net zero.

    Labour’s devolution agenda also offers an opportunity for universities to become visible bridges working across regions and political geographies. While mayoral devolution has been lauded in cohesive urban centres like Manchester and Birmingham, there are concerns the model will work less well in rural areas where proposed Mayoral Combined Authorities will intersect with traditional county borders. For such regions, universities can both serve as bolsters to wider regional identity and can benefit from the flexibility of their own geography that may span mayoral regions.

    The opportunities are there for universities to re-embed civic activity into their core work under Labour’s agenda – but it needs brave leadership to embrace them. In the face of tough financial decisions, university leaders must champion the benefits of civic activity. The late Bob Kerslake, chair of the UPP Foundation’s Civic University Commission 2018–19, deeply understood the potential and necessity for universities to be rooted in their local communities. For a higher education sector that has spent recent years on uncertain footing, tapping into Kerslake’s vision could provide a more certain path forward.

    The UPP Foundation’s full report UPP Foundation Spring 2025 Roundtables: The Role of Universities in Regional Placemaking explores the key themes of the roundtable discussions. You can download the report here.

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  • Federal Court Orders Reinstatement of Southern Education Foundation Grant After DEI Controversy

    Federal Court Orders Reinstatement of Southern Education Foundation Grant After DEI Controversy

    Raymond PierceThe Southern Education Foundation has secured a significant legal victory in its fight against the U.S. Department of Education, with a federal judge ordering the reinstatement of a key grant that was terminated earlier this year over allegations of illegal diversity, equity, and inclusion practices.

    On May 21, 2025, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted SEF’s motion for preliminary injunction, ordering the Department of Education to restore the organization’s Equity Assistance Center-South grant and reimburse all outstanding expenses. The grant, which had been terminated on February 13, 2025, enables SEF to provide technical assistance to public school districts and state agencies across 11 Southern states to help them comply with federal civil rights law.

    The court’s ruling was particularly pointed in its criticism of the Education Department’s decision to terminate the grant. 

    “In view of the history of race in America and the mission of SEF since the Civil War, the audacity of terminating its grants based on ‘DEI’ concerns is truly breathtaking,” the judge wrote in the opinion.

    The Southern Education Foundation, which has operated for more than 150 years with a mission to advance educational opportunities for Black students in the South, traces its origins to the late 1800s when it supported education for individuals recently emancipated from enslavement. The organization’s Equity Assistance Center represents a continuation of work that began with the original Desegregation Assistance Centers.

    “We are pleased with the Department of Education’s compliance with the court order by reinstating our grant,” said SEF President and CEO Raymond Pierce. “With the grant reinstated, SEF can move forward with developing the assistance needed to free school districts from policies and practices that remain from the dark era of lawful segregation which continue to hinder equal education opportunity for far too many children.”

    The preliminary injunction provides temporary relief while the case proceeds through the courts. The judge found that SEF was likely to succeed on the merits of its claim that the Department violated federal law in terminating the grant. However, the reinstatement is not yet permanent, pending the outcome of the full legal proceedings.

    The case highlights ongoing tensions around diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in education, particularly as they relate to organizations with deep historical roots in civil rights work. The Southern Education Foundation’s century-and-a-half commitment to educational equity predates modern DEI terminology by decades, making the Department’s allegations particularly contentious.

    The EAC-South serves a critical function in the region, providing technical assistance to help school districts navigate complex federal civil rights requirements. This support is particularly vital in states with histories of legal segregation, where legacy policies and practices can continue to create barriers to equal educational opportunity.

    The reinstatement allows SEF to resume its work immediately, though the organization will be watching closely as the legal case progresses. The preliminary nature of the court’s order means that while SEF can continue operating the program, the long-term resolution of the dispute remains uncertain.

    The case represents a broader debate about the role of equity-focused programming in education and the extent to which federal agencies can regulate or restrict such work. For the Southern Education Foundation, the stakes extend beyond a single grant to encompass the organization’s fundamental mission and its ability to continue serving communities that have historically faced educational inequities.

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  • 16 states sue National Science Foundation over wide-reaching research cuts

    16 states sue National Science Foundation over wide-reaching research cuts

    Dive Brief:

    • Sixteen states sued the National Science Foundation on Wednesday over the agency’s cap on funding for research overhead and its mass termination of grants related to diversity, equity and other topics deemed verboten by the Trump administration. 
    • Plaintiffs allege both moves violate federal law and threaten major research projects and millions of dollars in federal funding at universities in their states. An NSF spokesperson declined to comment on the lawsuit. 
    • The suing states — nearly all of whom have Democrat attorneys general — asked a federal judge in New York to block NSF’s indirect cost cap and its April directive barring diversity-related grants.

    Dive Insight:

    On April 18, the science research agencywhich was founded in 1950 and had a budget of $9 billion last fiscal yearissued a statement announcing it would prioritize research focused on creating “opportunities for all Americans everywhere.” 

    “Research projects with more narrow impact limited to subgroups of people based on protected class or characteristics do not effectuate NSF priorities,” the agency said at the time.

    The same day, NSF began issuing mass termination notices for projects that seek to boost participation in scientific fields by “women, minorities, and people with disabilities,” according to Wednesday’s complaint. Studies on misinformation and environmental justice also received termination notices.

    The canceled projects include a University of Delaware study on post-traumatic stress disorder and suicidality among veterans; a new doctoral program in New Jersey promoting increased participation of underrepresented groups in science-related Ph.D.s; and a University of Oregon initiative providing some 20,000 students with learning experiences in computer science. 

    Later, in May, NSF moved to cap reimbursement for indirect research costs at 15% for all new grants issued to colleges. The cuts affect funding for equipment, administrative staff, laboratory construction and other expenses in research programs.

    The funding cap already sparked at least one other lawsuit, from a group of higher education associations.

    The change could bring steep financial and infrastructural damage to university research programs that the government relies on to advance knowledge and technology in the country, the state plaintiffs argued. 

    According to Wednesday’s lawsuit, the “vast majority” of university projects in the plaintiff states had negotiated indirect research rates between 40% and 60% with NSF. Those states’ “institutions will not be able to maintain essential research infrastructure and will be forced to significantly scale back or halt research, abandon numerous projects, and lay off staff,” the plaintiffs argued. 

    In both cases — the April directive and May indirect cost cap — the NSF violated law, the states said. 

    In the case of the April directive, the plaintiffs pointed to statutes that explicitly direct the agency to promote scientific participation among underrepresented groups in the U.S. 

    They further argue that the longstanding policy has worked, citing statistics showing that the number of women in science and engineering occupations or with related degrees doubled between 1995 and 2017. Participation in these fields by those from minority groups rose from 15% to 35% during the period. 

    The plaintiffs likewise argued that the indirect cost cap undermines a federal law directing the NSF to support basic scientific research and education programs.

    Under the Trump administration this year, the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Energy also both adopted similar 15% caps on overhead reimbursement. Courts have blocked both policies, though the cases are ongoing.

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  • Alliant Credit Union Foundation Grants $108K to Boost AI and Digital Programs at Ridgewood High School

    Alliant Credit Union Foundation Grants $108K to Boost AI and Digital Programs at Ridgewood High School

    The Alliant Credit Union Foundation has awarded a $108,000 grant to Digital Leaders Now, the nonprofit that powers the Digital Leaders Academy at Ridgewood Community High School District 234, to support the implementation of innovative digital opportunity programs.

    The initiative will begin rolling out in Spring 2025, with full program implementation for the 2025-2026 school year. The grant will help students gain critical digital skills, enhance career preparation opportunities at Ridgewood and beyond, and ensure teachers have the necessary resources to integrate technology into the classroom effectively.

    “The Alliant Credit Union Foundation is committed to fostering educational opportunities that prepare students for the future,” said Meredith Ritchie, President of The Alliant Credit Union Foundation. “By partnering with the Digital Leaders Academy, we are helping to bridge the digital divide and ensure that students in Ridgewood Community High School District 234 are equipped with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in the evolving workforce.”

    The grant will support key initiatives, including:

    • Integration of AI Tools: Students will gain hands-on experience using AI and emerging technologies to enhance their learning and problem-solving skills.
    • Teacher Training & Development: Supporting professional development programs that empower educators with the tools and knowledge to incorporate digital learning strategies into their curriculum.
    • Digital Fluency Expansion: Enhancing student digital literacy and technology-based learning experiences to build a foundation for future careers.
    • Career Readiness Programs: Preparing students for high-demand technology roles by connecting them with industry experts, mentorship opportunities, and real-world applications of digital skills.

    Through this initiative, the Alliant Credit Union Foundation continues its mission of driving positive change in education by expanding access to technology and professional development resources.

    “The Digital Leaders Academy is a testament to the power of partnership and community. With the support of Alliant, we’re equipping students, teachers, and parents with the tools to thrive in the digital age, because when we invest in digital fluency, we unlock limitless potential,” said Caroline Sanchez Crozier, Founder of Digital Leaders Now, an Illinois-based nonprofit, and creator of Digital Leaders Academy.

    Ridgewood Community High School District 234 students will benefit from enhanced learning experiences, giving them a competitive edge in today’s digital economy.

    Kevin Hogan
    Latest posts by Kevin Hogan (see all)

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  • Gates Foundation to Spend $200B Before Closing in 2045

    Gates Foundation to Spend $200B Before Closing in 2045

    Bill Gates is planning to close his philanthropic foundation in 2045, but not before he ramps up spending on health research and other humanitarian efforts.   

    STAT News reported Thursday that the Gates Foundation, which launched in 2000, will spend $200 billion over the next two decades—double the $100 billion it spent on global health, development, gender equity and other work during its first 25 years. The announcement comes amid President Trump’s directives to cut billions of dollars in federal research funding to universities, effectively shutter the United States Agency for International Development and withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization. 

    In an interview with The New York Times, Gates said some of those decisions stunned him and predicted that unless there’s a big reversal of the Trump administration’s policies, “we’ll probably go from 5 million to 6 million” child deaths a year instead of earlier projection that child deaths would decrease by one million. 

    “The world’s richest man has been involved in the deaths of the world’s poorest children,” he said, referring to the unelected billionaire bureaucrat Elon Musk, who runs the Department of Government of Efficiency, which ordered the decimation of USAID. “He put it in the wood chipper because he didn’t go to a party that weekend.”

    Over the next 20 years, the Gates Foundation will focus its resources on achieving three goals: that “no mom, child or baby dies of a preventable cause”; that “the next generation grows up in a world without deadly infectious diseases”; and that “hundreds of millions of people break free from poverty, putting more countries on a path to prosperity.”

    “There are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto resources that could be used to help people. That is why I have decided to give my money back to society much faster than I had originally planned,” Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, wrote in a blog post. “I will give away virtually all my wealth through the Gates Foundation over the next 20 years to the cause of saving and improving lives around the world.”

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  • Is cancel culture dead? | The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

    Is cancel culture dead? | The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

    The co-authors of “The Canceling of the American Mind”
    discuss its new paperback release and where cancel culture stands a
    year and a half after the book’s original publication.


    Greg Lukianoff

    Rikki Schlott

    Timestamps:

    00:00 Intro

    04:35 Origin of book

    07:56 Definition of cancel culture

    17:55 Mike Adams, canceled professor

    23:51 Alexi McCammond, former Teen Vogue
    editor-in-chief

    31:57 Echo chambers on social media

    35:09 Trump administration ‘canceling’ law firms and
    higher ed institutions

    44:02 Rikki’s libertarian political identity

    51:02 Is cancel culture dead?

    54:26 Outro


    Read the transcript.

    Enjoy listening to the podcast? Donate to FIRE today and
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    through a donation to FIRE at thefire.org and would like access to
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    Show notes:

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  • National Science Foundation faces lawsuit over 15% indirect research cap

    National Science Foundation faces lawsuit over 15% indirect research cap

    This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.

      Dive Brief:

    • A group of universities and higher education associations is suing the National Science Foundation over its new cap on reimbursement for indirect research costs for all future college grants.
    • In court documents filed Monday, the plaintiffs — led by the American Council on Education, the Association of American Universities and the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities — allege the unilateral 15% cap, which took effect May 5, violates the law in “myriad respects” and that its effects will be “immediate and irreparable.”
    • The new lawsuit follows two other legal challenges over similar caps implemented by the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Energy — both of which have been blocked, at least temporarily.

    Dive Insight:

    NIH implemented the first federal cap on indirect research costs in February. Colleges and higher ed groups sued, and a federal judge permanently blocked the agency’s plan last month. 

    In the ruling, the judge said NIH unlawfully implemented the cap and violated constitutional prohibitions on applying new rules retroactively. The Trump administration quickly appealed the ruling, and the case is ongoing.

    Next came the Energy Department. In April, the agency announced the same 15% cap on indirect research costs, alleging the plan would save taxpayers $405 million annually. Again, colleges sued, and a federal judge blocked the plan — albeit temporarily — while the lawsuit moves forward.

    The ACE, AAU and APLU are plaintiffs in both cases.

    Now NSF has introduced its own cap, to the chagrin of colleges and higher ed experts. When announcing the 15% cap, the agency argued the move would streamline and add transparency to the funding process and “ensure that more resources are directed toward direct scientific and engineering research activities.”

    But the new lawsuit argues that NSF’s policy echoes the other agencies’ attempts, to deleterious effect.

    “NSF’s action is unlawful for most of the same reasons, and it is especially arbitrary because NSF has not even attempted to address many of the flaws the district courts found with NIH’s and DOE’s unlawful policies,” it said. 

    Like the lawsuits against NIH and Energy Department’s policies, the plaintiffs allege that the NSF’s cap oversteps the agency’s authority.

    “It beggars belief to suggest that Congress — without saying a word — impliedly authorized NSF to enact a sweeping, one-size-fits-all command that will upend research at America’s universities,” it said.

    In fiscal 2024, Congress gave NSF $7.2 billion to fund research and related activities. In turn, the agency funded projects at 1,850 colleges — more than 1 in 4 of the higher education institutions in the U.S. eligible to receive federal dollars.

    That year, NSF awarded Arizona State University, one of the plaintiffs, 172 awards worth a total of $197.5 million in anticipated and obligated funding, according to court documents. Prior to the NSF’s new policy, the institution negotiated a 57% rate for indirect costs in fiscal 2026. 

    The University of Illinois, another plaintiff, received just over $129 million in NSF funding in fiscal 2024 — making the agency its biggest funder — and negotiated an indirect research funding rate of 58.6%.

    The university said in court documents that it has received the most NSF funding of all U.S. colleges for six years in a row, and it is poised to lose more than $23 million a year if the agency’s new cap is allowed to continue.

    The college plaintiffs are:

    • Arizona State University.
    • Brown University, in Rhode Island.
    • California Institute of Technology.
    • The University of California.
    • Carnegie Mellon University, in Pennsylvania.
    • The University of Chicago.
    • Cornell University.
    • The University of Illinois.
    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
    • The University of Michigan.
    • The University of Minnesota.
    • The University of Pennsylvania.
    • Princeton University, in New Jersey.

    The lawsuit also cited an attempt by the first Trump administration to cap rates for indirect research at a federal agency. In 2017, the White House proposed cutting the cap to 10% for all NIH grants. Congress – then under Republican control as it is now — “identified serious problems immediately” and took “swift and bipartisan” action against the proposal, the lawsuit said.  

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  • Private international foundation courses, and what they say about university leadership

    Private international foundation courses, and what they say about university leadership

    by Morten Hansen

    My research on the history of private international pathway providers and their public alternatives shows how some universities have stopped believing in themselves. Reversing this trend requires investment in their capabilities and leadership.

    The idea that universities have stopped believing in themselves as institutions that can take on the challenges of the day and find solutions that are better than those developed by private rivals echoes a point recently revived by Mariana Mazzucato. Mazzucato explains how private firms often are portrayed like lions. Bold animals that make things happen. The public sector and third-sector organisations, on the contrary, are too often seen as gerbils. Timid animals that are no good at developing new and innovative solutions.

    Skilled salesmen convinced some universities that private companies are better than universities at teaching and recruiting for university preparatory programmes. The inbuilt premise of this pitch is that universities are gerbils and private providers are lions. One university staff member explained what it felt like meeting such salesmen:

    “The thing that sticks most in my mind is the dress. And how these people sat differently, looked differently, spoke differently, and we felt parochial. We felt like a bunch of country bumpkins against some big suits.” (University staff)

    The lion-gerbil pitch worked in institutions across England because universities were stifled by three interlocking practices of inaction: outsourcing capability development; taking ambiguous stands on international tuition fees; and refusing to cooperate with other universities.

    Outsourcing capability

    Universities are increasingly outsourcing core aspects of their operations, such as recruiting international students. While university leadership is often characterised as conservative, my research suggest that this trope misses something critical about contemporary university leadership in English higher education. The problem with the term ‘conservative’ is that it implies that leadership is risk-averse, and comfortable projecting past power structures, practices and norms into the future. This does not correspond to historical developments and practices in the sector for international pathways.

    The University of Exeter, for example, submitted incorporation documents for their limited liability partnership with INTO University Partnerships only six years after the Limited Liability Partnerships Act 2000 was passed, which marked the first time in England’s history that this legal setup was possible. They took a big leap of faith in the private sector’s ability to recruit students for them, and after doing so invested time and resources helping INTO to further develop its capability. They even invited them onto their campuses. It is hard to overstate how much these actions diverged from historical practice and thus ‘conservative’ leadership.

    What was once a highly unusual thing to do, has over the last two decades thoroughly normalised—to the extent that partnering with pathways now seems unavoidable. One respondent from the private sector explained this change in the following way:

    “In 2006, ‘07, ‘08, ‘09, ‘10, the pathway providers were, if you like, the unwelcome tenants in the stately home of the university. We had to be suffered because we did something for them. Now, the relationship has totally moved. It’s almost as if they roll out the red carpet for the pathway providers” (C-suite)

    The far more conservative strategy would have been to lean into the university’s core capabilities – teaching and admissions – and scale this up over time. Yet that is precisely what my respondents said ‘conservative’ university leaders were unwilling to do: they did not believe the university could manage overseas recruitment by themselves. As argued by former Warwick VC Nigel Thrift, this timidity is not unique to the recruitment of international students, but also extends to their engagement with government agencies. University management by and large “has done as it has been told. It hasn’t exactly rolled over and played dead, but sometimes it can feel as though it is dangerously close to Stockholm Syndrome” (Thrift, 2025, p3).

    Ambiguous stands on international fees have deepened the current crises

    There is no law in England that compels universities to charge high international students fees. By setting them as high as possible and rapidly increasing the intake of international students, universities de facto offset and thus obfuscated the havoc that changing funding regimes wreaked on university finances. This has contributed to what Kings’ Vice Chancellor Shitij Kapur calls the ‘triangle of sadness’ between domestic students, universities, and the government.

    Had universities chosen to stand in solidarity with their international students by aligning their fees more closely to the fees of home students, then the subsequent crises in funding would have forced universities to either spend less money, or make it clearer to the wider public that more funding was needed, before building up the dependencies and subsequent vulnerabilities to intake fluctuations that are currently on full display. These vulnerabilities were exacerbated by overoptimistic growth plans, and university leadership not always fully understanding the added costs that came with such growth. In an example of this delayed realisation, one Pro-Vice-Chancellor explained to me what it felt like to partner with a private foundation pathway:

    “At the time you are signing up for these things, there is euphoria around because they are going to deliver against this business plan, which is showing hundreds of students coming in. International student is very buoyant, you sign up for a 35-year deal. So, everything is rosy. If you then just take a step back and think ‘so what am I exposing the university to?’  …  because in year seven, eight, ten, fifteen whatever, it can all go pear-shaped, and you are left then with the legacy building.” (Pro-Vice-Chancellor)

    By seeing fee setting as a practice, that is, something universities do to their own students rather than something that is inflicted by external (market or government) powers, we make visible its ideological nature and implications. The longer history of international fees in Brittan was thus an important site of ideological co-option; it was a critical juncture at which universities could have related in a more solidaric manner towards their students.

    Unwillingness to cooperate on increased student acquisition costs

    You might, at this stage, be wondering: what was the alternative? The answer is in recognising the structure of the market for what it is: efficiently recruiting and training a large number of international students requires some degree of cooperation between universities. My research, however, suggests that universities have often been unwilling to cooperate because they see each other chiefly as competitors. This competition is highly unequal given the advantage conferred to prestigious universities located in internationally well-known cities.

    The irony is that many universities nevertheless end up – perhaps unwittingly – cooperating by partnering with one of the few private companies that offer international foundation programmes. These private providers can only reach economies of scale because they partner with multiple universities at the same time. One executive explains how carrying a portfolio of universities for agents to offer their clients is precisely what gives them a competitive advantage:

    “The importance of the pathways to the agents is that they carry a portfolio of universities, and the ambition is that you have some which are very well-ranked and academically quite difficult to get into. And, you try and have a bottom-feeder or two, which is relatively easy to get into academically. The agent is then able to talk to its clients and say, look, I can get offers into these universities. Some of them are at the very top. If you are not good enough there, then you might get one in the middle and I’ve always got my insurance offer for you. […] what the pathways do is that they provide a portfolio that makes that easier.” (Private Executive)

    A public consortium with pooled resources and that isn’t shy about strategically coordinating student flows would have functioned just as well, and the Northern Consortium is living proof of this. The consortium in fact inspired Study Group to get into the pathway business themselves. The limited growth of the Consortium, relative to its private rivals, is equally proof of missed chances and wasted opportunities.

    Could the gerbil eat the lion?

    Private providers can use and have used these practices of inaction to pit universities against each other, over time resulting in lower entry requirements and higher recruitment costs. In this climate, public alternatives such as in-house programmes struggle to survive. Once invited in, pathway companies are also well positioned to expand their business with their partner universities in other ways, deepening their dependence. As one senior executive told me:

    “Our aspiration is to say that the heart of what we are is a good partner to universities. They trust us. […] for some of our core partners, we bring in a lot of revenue. And, that then puts us in a really good position to think about the other services that we can add of value.” (Private Executive)

    The economic downside of relying on these ‘good’ partners is the expensive and volatile market dynamics that follow. As long as universities are trapped by the notion that they are chiefly competitors best served by outsourcing capabilities to sales-oriented firms and leaving international students to pick up the bill, there is limited hope for any genuine inter-university collaboration and innovation. This limits the public potential for scaling an economically viable and resilient market in the long-run.  As a sector, HE has the know-how, experience, capital, and repute to do this. It’s just about getting on with it!

    Morten Hansen is a Lecturer in Digital Economy and Innovation Education at the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

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