Tag: give

  • Bill Would Require More Small Businesses to Give Paid Family Leave – The 74

    Bill Would Require More Small Businesses to Give Paid Family Leave – The 74


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    A state Senate panel advanced a bill Monday that would expand New Jersey’s family leave law to businesses with at least 15 workers, a change from the current threshold of 30 employees.

    The bill has seen some changes since it passed the Assembly in February. It had initially lowered the worker threshold to five, to widespread criticism from the business community. Business groups remain opposed, saying that encompassing businesses with fewer than 30 employees would deter hiring and potentially force small businesses to close their doors.

    “New Jersey small businesses are already shouldering some of the highest operating costs in the country, including labor, insurance, property taxes, and compliance obligations,” said Amirah Hussain of the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce. “Imposing these mandates introduces a new layer of risk and unpredictability.”

    Yarrow Willman-Cole, with consumer advocacy group New Jersey Citizen Action, testified in favor of the bill, saying 1.7 million workers are not covered by the state’s current family leave law.

    “We passed paid family leave 17 years ago. It took us 10 years to improve it. It should not take another decade to get this right,” Willman-Cole said. “Our laws should reflect our society’s growing caregiving needs. New Jersey is, in fact, not keeping up.”

    The Senate Judiciary Committee’s Republicans and Sen. Paul Sarlo (D-Bergen), the panel’s chair, voted against advancing the bill.

    New Jersey law requires that businesses provide eligible workers with up to 12 weeks of paid leave to bond with a new child or to care for a loved one. Workers pay into the fund that pays out benefits, and the benefits are based on a worker’s earnings. Workers’ jobs are protected until their leave ends.

    The committee amended the bill Monday to include employees who have worked for a company for six months — current law says 12 months — and for 500 hours, down from 1,000 hours. The bill would take two years to phase in.

    Elizabeth Zuckerman of the state chapter of the National Employment Lawyers Association said that whatever “small burden” the bill puts on an employer is justified to keep parents from choosing between bonding with their children or keeping their job.

    “We are a pro-family country. We should support our families by allowing employers or encouraging employers to give employees time off when they need to care for a child or a family member,” Zuckerman said.

    Businesses remain concerned that the bill would put an “unsustainable burden” on small employers, said Frank Jones with Big I New Jersey, which advises independent and locally owned insurance agencies.

    Jones said he supports the goal of the bill to give more workers access to family leave, but when businesses with 15 employees lose one person, it’s difficult for the remaining workers to juggle the work. He also said it would drive up liability insurance costs. He stressed that paid benefits and job-protected reinstatement should be separate issues.

    “The mandatory reinstatement requirement, regardless of business conditions, removes the flexibility small business employers need to survive,” Jones said. “Agencies may be forced to permanently restructure or hire to maintain client service, only to face liability for not reinstating later, even if decisions were made in good faith.”

    New Jersey Monitor is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Jersey Monitor maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Terrence T. McDonald for questions: [email protected].


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  • DeSantis wants to give USF’s Sarasota campus to New College of Florida

    DeSantis wants to give USF’s Sarasota campus to New College of Florida

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    Dive Brief:

    • The New College of Florida could take control of the University of South Florida’s Sarasota-Manatee campus under a new proposal from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. 
    • Under DeSantis’ 2026-27 state budget,  New College would assume control of USF Sarasota-Manatee’s 32-acre property and related liabilities by July. In exchange, the college would pay USF roughly $166,600 per month for debt tied to the property. 
    • Current USF Sarasota-Manatee students would have a “reasonable opportunity” to finish their degrees at the campus before New College could fully take over the property, according to the proposal. If the proposal takes effect, USF could not enroll new students at its Sarasota-Manatee campus going forward.

    Dive Insight:

    With DeSantis’ proposal, the liberal arts-focused New College, also based in Sarasota, would undertake a major expansion. However, the governor’s budget proposal essentially represents a legislative wish list, making the ultimate outcome still uncertain. 

    “This is a policy matter that is going to be discussed, debated and worked through over the coming months of the Legislative Session,” Will Weatherford, chair of USF’s governing board, said at a meeting on Thursday, according to local media. “We don’t control the outcome of that discussion.”

    The proposal would not transfer USF’s Sarasota-Manatee students or employees to New College.  

    USF would retain its intellectual and other intangible property, as well as records and equipment, and have priority over the space while its current students finish their degrees. 

    However, the budget provision states that the two institutions could forge a “mutual agreement to share or use space in any of the transferred properties or facilities when it is in the best interest of both institutions or their students.”

    News of such a plan for New College to take over the campus broke earlier this year. 

    Emails unearthed in March by WUSF — a public news outlet owned by USF — included a draft press release penned by New College announcing it would integrate the Sarasota-Manatee campus. The draft release trumpeted millions of dollars in potential savings and the elimination of redundancies between the two institutions. 

    The draft said the “strategic partnership between the next door colleges aims to create a unified, world-class institution that maximizes resources, eliminates redundancies, and elevates opportunities for students, faculty, and the region.”

    “New College’s rapid growth will immediately benefit from the additional physical space provided by the USF-SM campus,” the draft release also stated. “The integration also addresses longstanding inefficiencies, consolidating administrative functions and aligning academic offerings.”

    In New College’s envisioning, according to the draft, the integration would create “streamlined transfer pathways” for USF Sarasota-Manatee students to the university’s Tampa flagship or St. Petersburg campuses, or New College. 

    Prior to those discussions of a transfer, New College in 2024 took over a 9-acre waterfront property, originally set aside for USF Sarasota-Manatee, which the college said would grow its student population. 

    New College has become a lynchpin in DeSantis’ efforts to remake higher education in Florida. In 2023, the governor revamped the college’s board and named his longtime ally Richard Corcoran — former Republican state House speaker and Florida education commissioner — as its president. 

    In the intervening two years, Corcoran and the board have killed the institution’s once-robust diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and dismantled its gender studies department, among other changes favored by conservatives. 

    In October, New College became the first to publicly volunteer for President Donald Trump’s higher education compact, which offers colleges priority in research funding in exchange for adopting a slate of policies put forward by the Trump administration. 

    The legal foundations of the compact have been widely questioned, and most of the nine research universities directly offered the deal rejected it over concerns about free speech, institutional independence and maintaining meritocracy in funding. New College, on the other hand, said it would “happily be the first” to embrace the compact. 

    “We have no affirmative action or DEI, and we have been building a campus where open dialogue and the marketplace of ideas are at the forefront of everything we do,” Corcoran said at the time. 

    Meanwhile, USF Sarasota-Manatee has been growing its physical footprint. The campus, long a commuter-only institution, last year opened a new 100,000-square-foot combined residence hall and student center that it billed as the campus’s first student housing and major expansion since opening in 2006. 

    New College is renting space in USF Sarasota-Manatee’s new facility to house some of its students. That expense, combined with renting nearby hotel rooms for the same purpose, is costing the college millions of dollars each year, according to WUSF.

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  • Foreign Academics Won’t Give Up on the American Dream

    Foreign Academics Won’t Give Up on the American Dream

    Donald Trump’s defunding of scientific research and proposed new charges on migrant labor will not be enough to deter international academics from heading to America, given the country’s unparalleled willingness to reward academic talent, Radenka Maric has argued.

    Since February 2022, Maric has served as president of the University of Connecticut, a six-campus public research university with a $3.6 billion annual operating budget.

    The Bosnian-born engineer is arguably one of the world’s most well-traveled university leaders, having worked in seven countries in a 30-year career, including Japan (where she earned her Ph.D. at Kyoto University and worked at Toyota’s material science research division), Canada (where she led the Institute for Fuel Cell Innovation at the National Research Council Canada), and Italy (where she was a visiting professor at Polytechnic University of Milan on a Fulbright scholarship).

    Having joined Connecticut as a professor of sustainable energy in 2010, Maric was appointed vice president for research in 2017 and took the top job five years later—an achievement she believes would not have been possible in any other country.

    “As someone born in Bosnia without a U.S. college degree, I would never have been made a university president in Japan, Italy or even Canada,” argued Maric, who studied at Belgrade University in Serbia, where she later worked as a junior scientist.

    “I don’t have that traditional academic pedigree required by some countries. I didn’t study at Harvard—I have a ‘Japanese Harvard’ Ph.D., but who really cares about my Japanese degree—nor have I been a provost or dean at a big U.S. university,” she continued.

    “But American universities don’t care if you studied in Italy or Serbia—they are only focused on excellence in science and innovation, which means ‘what is your h-index?,’ ‘where have you published?’ and ‘how many people have you brought with you on your journey?’” Maric said.

    Despite uncertainty over federal science funding—with several national agencies facing cuts of about 50 percent to their budgets next year—the academic meritocracy promised by U.S. universities will continue to appeal to international researchers, Maric believes.

    “That is what is powerful about American academia. As long as the American dream is there—that people like me can make it on their own merits—then America will be a magnet for talent. Crises will come and go,” she said.

    The current uncertainty over funding has undoubtedly caused problems, Maric explained, while there are growing concerns over plans to charge a $100,000 fee for H-1B skilled worker visas, up from $7,000—a move that would make it much more difficult for U.S. universities to employ foreign Ph.D. students or postdocs.

    On the likely damage of Trump’s recent higher education policies, Maric said, “It depends how long this lasts, but America has a great capacity to resituate itself very quickly. If you compare how the U.S. pivoted after the 2008 financial crisis, it came back much quicker than any other nation.”

    Despite her evident enthusiasm for her adopted homeland, Maric said she was also inspired by her time in Japan. “This was the 1990s and I was the only woman doing a Ph.D. at Kyoto’s engineering school. I stayed for 12 years there, so it wasn’t just the language that I learned but the culture. There is an immense amount of care in how everything is done, so I applied this to my career by thinking, ‘how can I improve my skills?’ or ‘how can my research get better?’

    “When I was in Japan, it was constantly stressed that there was no great science if it didn’t lead to great technology. And there is no great technology without a product, and there is no product without a market,” Maric explained of her approach to applied science—she worked in the field of battery technology for Toyota and later Panasonic before leaving to join a start-up in Atlanta.

    “The most important thing about Japan is kata—a way of doing things in a particular way. There is a natural tendency to do things in a certain way and there is a desire to protect their culture, so eventually I knew I had to leave,” reflected Maric on her leap from Toyota to the U.S. start-up world.

    Recruited to lead a battery fuel research group in Vancouver, Maric eventually headed to Connecticut—a state with long-established defense and manufacturing industries, in which the university now plays a crucial research role.

    “Since 2010 the state has been recruiting faculty in renewable and environmental sustainability, including CO2 capture, so I’ve been part of this, but the history of manufacturing goes back to the mid-19th century when bicycle companies had their first factories in Connecticut,” Maric said.

    Her university’s willingness to recruit someone with an eclectic CV—including stints in corporate R&D, academia and start-ups covering three continents—then promote them to the top job is a good example of why American academia will continue to thrive, despite the current challenges, Maric said.

    “I am not a traditional person, but I was always a hard worker who sought to improve myself and bring people along with me whenever I could. Not many foreigners—whatever their expertise or experience—will become university presidents, but it is possible in America,” she said.

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  • Should you give equal voice to all perspectives?

    Should you give equal voice to all perspectives?

    Journalists are often told to be objective and to tell both sides of a story. They are taught to seek multiple perspectives. This means that when reporters interview an expert about any given topic, they are encouraged to find another source with a different opinion to make it “fair” and “balanced”. 

    Journalists also know that conflict makes a story more interesting and that gets more eyeballs or ears which allows their news organizations to sell more ads and subscriptions. 

    But research any topic and you will find disagreements among scientists, ecologists, business leaders, politicians and everyday people. In other words you can just about always find conflict. 

    Be careful of this. In homing in on conflict you could create a false balance. That’s when you make two sides seem more equal than they are. 

    The classic example is climate change. One of the reasons why it took so long for governments to recognize the danger of climate change is that for years journalists would balance the many, many scientists warning about carbon levels with the very few scientists who said the problem was overblown. 

    So how can you report multiple perspectives without creating a false sense of balance?

    A few suggestions

    Focus on facts, not opinions. And know the difference. 

    A fact can be verified through data and anecdotes of things that happened and that can also be verified. 

    When sources give you information, ask them: “How do you know that?” and “Do you have evidence to back that up?” 

    Even when they have evidence to back up what they say, question why they take the stand they take, or why they came to the conclusions that they did. It is almost as easy to find evidence to support a position as it is to find conflict in a story. I found myself almost believing that the earth is indeed flat when an advocate of that theory seemed to offer up a pile of convincing evidence. 

    To get the public to not worry about the dangers of tobacco, people from the tobacco industry offered up all kinds of evidence for years. People from the fossil fuels industry can offer up all kinds of evidence that human behavior (like driving petrol-powered cars) doesn’t cause climate change. 

    So it is important when you publish information someone has given you, to explain to your audience how that person benefits or is hurt by the issue. 

    Not all experts are equal.

    When seeking opinions or assessments, do so from people with actual expertise. That’s not the same as a level of education or a fancy title. Don’t be afraid to ask people: “How do you know this?” Someone without a university degree might have lived experience with a problem, while someone with a doctorate might never have experienced what you are reporting on. Politicians are fond of talking about the problems of poor people even though many of them came from privileged backgrounds. 

    Don’t be afraid to challenge people’s statements. Let them know when you find contradictory information. When you challenge people it is not a sign of disrespect. It is a sign that you have carefully listened to what they said, have thought about it and are now questioning it. Disrespect is to take something someone says without really listening or thinking about it. 

    Question data people cite or that you find. A census conducted in 2010 in Nabon, a rural area in Ecuador, found that almost 90% of the population was “poor”. That’s an astounding figure, and if used as data in the media, paints a very particular picture. However, a different study in 2013, conducted by the University of Quenca with the Nabon municipal government at the time, found a significantly different figure — that about 75% of the population reported to be highly satisfied with their lives when assessing “subjective wellbeing”. 

    The difference in figures is due to the indicators used to measure satisfaction. The “subjective wellbeing” survey by the University of Quenca measured people’s control over their lives, satisfaction with their occupation, financial situation, their environmental surroundings, family life, leisure time, spiritual life and food security. The census from 2010, however, looked at housing, access to health and education and monetary income.

    So the language used for measuring life satisfaction was important and that the context of the data — how and why it was collected — can change the meaning of the information. To make sure you don’t misreport data, try to avoid overly relying on just one source of numbers or statistics. Instead, check what other data is out there. 

    Report the reality.

    Your job as a journalist is to present the information in such a way that your audience can recognise what is actually happening and why it’s important. 

    Does what the experts say or what people say about their personal experience go against what you have seen out there yourself? People often exaggerate without even realizing that they are doing so. Our memories are often faulty; we might think we know things that we really don’t. 

    Taking all this into account, it is ultimately up to you, as a journalist, to decide how much balance to give to the multiple perspectives you have gathered. If the experiences and evidence and your observations and common sense all point to a reality, then you will mislead your audience if you balance that out equally with people who offer up what seems to be a different reality. 

    That doesn’t mean that you should silence them or keep them out of the story altogether. Understanding and exploring opposing viewpoints is important so that ultimately people can reach an understanding.

    Without that understanding, consensus isn’t possible. And it is difficult to make progress in a society without consensus.

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  • Alumni urge Harvard not to “give in” amid settlement rumours

    Alumni urge Harvard not to “give in” amid settlement rumours

    “This is a critical juncture – and it’s essential you live the values Harvard teaches and not make a deal with the Trump administration that cedes the university’s autonomy in unconstitutional or unlawful ways,” states the August 1 letter.  

    Signed by 15,068 alumni, faculty, researchers, staff and other supporters, the letter criticises settlements made by Columbia and Brown, which signatories warn “represent a dangerous capitulation that risks eroding the foundation of American higher education”.  

    “As Harvard rightly argued in court in its lawsuit, the unconstitutional demands being made by this administration represent a blatant encroachment on academic freedom and university autonomy,” it continues.  

    Last month, Columbia became the first institution to settle with Trump over allegations of antisemitism on campus, paying the administration $221m in return for settling various civil rights and employment claims and restoring $400m in terminated funding.  

    Soon after, Brown University followed suit, reaching its own deal with the administration over similar disputes about DEI admissions practices and access to student data.   

    Harvard, having the largest endowment of any global university, has been the only one to challenge the White House in the courts, though recent rumours have suggested a $500m deal between Harvard and the government could be in the making. 

    The letter’s message is clear: “Do not give in.” 

    It calls on university leadership to uphold Harvard’s independence and reject political interference and punitive action, ensuring that admissions hiring, employment and disciplinary processes do not treat student and staff differently based on their political views. 

    The signatories recommend the establishment of a structure for the university to directly engage with the Harvard community about policy changes impacting them, urging Harvard to use its financial resources to “protect and honour” their livelihoods and education.  

    “Protect students, faculty, researchers and staff, especially those with international status, from any intrusions of privacy, unwarranted immigration action, and attacks on their constitutionally protected rights and freedoms,” it continues. 

    At this moment of national reckoning, Harvard must demonstrate that our values, integrity, and freedom are not for sale

    Harvard alumni

    The letter warns of the “chilling effect” that a settlement would have on the Harvard community and beyond.

    Holding the line is critical for campuses across the US, for those that benefit from the research and scholarship of the university, and for the “foundational role that independent higher education plays in our democracy,” it argues.  

    “At this moment of national reckoning, Harvard must demonstrate that our values, integrity, and freedom are not for sale.” 

    Since mid-April, the Trump administration has launched multiple attacks on Harvard for allegedly failing to root out antisemitism on campus and failing to hand over international students’ records, among other accusations.   

    The university is fighting the government on multiple fronts in the courts, including defending its right to enrol international students, which the administration has repeatedly tried to revoke.  

    The university has publicly stood by its 7,000 international students, who make up over 27% of Harvard’s student body and come from nearly 150 different countries.  

    Amid broader attacks on higher education and severe visa challenges, colleges across the country are bracing for a major decline in international students this fall, with “conservative” estimates of a potential 30-40% decline.  

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  • Three Ways to Give Donation-Minded Visitors a Good Story

    Three Ways to Give Donation-Minded Visitors a Good Story

    In a study of 99,542 donors who supported causes between 2020 and 2024 with gifts totaling less than $5,000 a year (nearly 97 percent of all donors), just 5.7 percent supported education institutions. That’s according to “The Generosity Report: Data-Backed Insights for Resilient Fundraising,” published this April by Neon One, a provider of nonprofit operational technology.

    While major gifts will always be a crucial part of higher ed advancement success, it’s important to remember that smaller gifts add up, and during this uncertain time higher ed leaders must prioritize capturing the interest of every could-be donor.

    Among the donors studied, nearly 30 percent gave to more than one nonprofit, for a combined average of about $545 in 2024, an increase from $368 in 2020. Many—if they have a good relationship with a nonprofit and are asked—will increase their level of support.

    Sharing donation impact stories on a college’s main giving page is an approach not taken enough, in my experience. Typically, the “make a gift” or “give now” link, found prominently on an institution’s homepage, brings a visitor to a form. (“Yes, we’ll take that credit card info now.”) While no one wants to distract anyone from giving online, some colleges are clearly making efforts to inspire and inform giving by sharing how donations are helping students succeed and contributing to research and other efforts benefiting the community or beyond.

    In uncovering examples of colleges using engaging narratives on their donation pages, I now have a clear sense of several practices to consider. For anyone asking how an already resource-strapped marketing and comms team is supposed to make time for additional storytelling, here’s some good news: Most institutions are probably already publishing articles that can be gently repurposed for alumni and other friends thinking about making a gift.

    Following are three actions to take when the goal is telling impact stories on a main giving page.

    1. Find (and tweak) or create the content.

    Do some sleuthing to locate any articles already written about programs and supports made possible at least in part with donor funding. While giving sites can include articles about major gifts that center around the donor, focusing on individuals or communities that are better because of the initiative is more compelling.

    Donation-related video content—although probably needing to be built from scratch—is a great way to highlight real student successes, whether it’s a scholarship that opened up access, emergency funds that allowed a student to stay in school or the excitement of commencement. Minnesota State University, Mankato, recorded accepted students finding out they had received scholarships and students who had benefited from emergency funding sharing how the gift had “saved the day.” Gratitude-focused videos, especially when they use student voices, need not reveal specific personal circumstances.

    To help find individuals to feature, some giving pages invite students, alumni, employees and donors to suggest or contribute their own impact stories.

    1. Provide a mix of content formats and collections.

    Slideshows, blown-up quotes and infographics (individual graphics or numbers-driven stories) are a few visual content tactics spotted on giving pages.

    Lewis & Clark College tells succinct stories on its giving page through a slideshow with three students sharing how their financial aid offers allowed them to enroll. The Oregon college’s giving page also includes a collection of five featured stats, highlighting how gifts from the past year have made an “immediate impact on the areas of greatest need.” Rather than just presenting the most obvious numbers, such as giving totals, these data points note, for example, the number of potential jobs and internships sourced by the career center, or how many new titles were purchased by the library.

    When strategizing about giving page content, consider a series of similar stories that use a standard title or title style. These can even be short first-person pieces, such as “The next decade of [community, achievement, opportunity, gratitude, etc.] begins with you,” a series created for McGill University in Montreal.

    To make an impact story most effective at inspiring a gift, be sure to take the extra step of adding a call-to-action message and link within each article. Even institutions doing this tend to be inconsistent about it. Try adding an italicized note at the end, a sentence within the text or a box that explains the related fund, as University of Colorado at Boulder does.

    1. Be thoughtful about giving page content organization.

    Content-rich giving pages don’t start with a gift form or a bunch of stories. Instead, a single large photo or slideshow featuring students and a short, impactful message seems to be the preferred approach.

    As a visitor scrolls down, additional content tiers can offer more detail and giving encouragement—such as students expressing gratitude for support. More comprehensive feature articles and/or collections of impact story content tend to appear toward the bottom of the page, with a few teaser stories and often a link to see more. Larger collections of stories can be broken into categories and made searchable.

    Some institutions place links to impact story pages in more than one place and include multiple “make a gift” buttons on the main giving page.

    A new focus on giving content should also trigger some tweaks to the gift form itself. Does it include a drop-down menu with specific fund options? Can a donor write in where to direct the gift?

    Or consider McGill’s approach: Each of five big ideas listed on its giving stories page takes visitors to a gift form, followed by a description of the meaning of that idea, followed by specific stories that bring it to life.

    What inspirational success stories could you be sharing with friends who click to donate?

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  • June 5th Closing Reception & Artist Walkthrough of *GIVE LIGHT* Exhibit @CUNYSLU

    June 5th Closing Reception & Artist Walkthrough of *GIVE LIGHT* Exhibit @CUNYSLU







    Higher Education Inquirer : June 5th Closing Reception & Artist Walkthrough of *GIVE LIGHT* Exhibit @CUNYSLU




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  • Euro visions: Austrian HE has much to give, but the love is wasted

    Euro visions: Austrian HE has much to give, but the love is wasted

    As I type, a UK-EU “reset” summit is due to be held in 24 hours’ time, and in the face of “Brexit betrayal” and “surrender summit” commentary from the likes of former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, the government is out on the media rounds talking up Europe.

    As such, it could probably have done without our Eurovision entry getting the dreaded “nul points” from televoters across the continent on Saturday night.

    The Swiss are especially upset about a voting system that saw them come second with juries but share our “nul points” with televoters – although the commentary there is characteristically introspective.

    It’s probably for the best that UK journalists filed all of their stories after the full UK televote was published in the night. We always tend to vote for Malta and Israel – but we also gave points to Poland, Greece, Lithuania, Latvia and Albania, which was almost certainly more about the size of their diaspora in the UK than the quality of their entries.

    Meanwhile our televoters managed to give “nul points” to eventual winners Austria – whose singer Johannes Pietsch is a “soprano” countertenor at the Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna.

    Rehearsals in Basel means that JJ missed out on placing his vote in last week’s Österreichische Hochschülerinnenschaft elections. In Austria, SU elections are held at the same time, using the same platform, nationwide at three levels – the federal level (BV), the university level (HV), and field of study (STV).

    Traditionally, the ÖH gets less interest in private universities, where significantly fewer students vote, and only one “list” tends to compete at the university level. In the federal election, political parties’ youth wings’ involvement means that the process picks up considerable national press coverage – and students’ participation in it at least involves national debates about higher education rather than who’s giving out the best lollipops.

    It also means that politicians are much more likely to have been involved in student representation and university governance than in the UK – a decade or so ago, current higher education minister Christoph Wiederkehr was chair of JUNOS (Junge liberale Studierende), the liberal student faction affiliated with NEOS, which is sort of like the Lib Dems, just without the weird stunts.

    But despite the level of influence, given the political situation in Austria, rectors likely feel like JJ in “Wasted Love” – despite having much to give, his love ultimately goes to waste because the recipient isn’t willing to fully engage.

    I reach out my hand

    Until a decade or so ago, the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) (the centre-right, Christian democratic party) was in a “grand coalition” with the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) under Chancellor Werner Faymann, holding key ministries but facing criticism for slow reforms.

    The ÖVP’s approach to higher education had typically balanced market-oriented perspectives with traditionalist values. Under Education Minister Martin Polaschek (an ÖVP appointee), they had focused on “stabilising university funding” while simultaneously introducing more restrictive admissions policies.

    But like a lot of European countries, populism was on the march, and in 2017 it switched leader and formed a hardline coalition with the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) – although that collapsed in 2019 when the FPÖ’s leader was caught on camera discussing potentially corrupt deals with a woman posing as the niece of a Russian oligarch (the so-called “Ibiza scandal”).

    Despite all of that, the Freedom Party (FPÖ) secured the largest vote share in last September’s federal election – and its stance on higher education was all about national identity, cultural conservatism, and scepticism towards progressive influences. Its manifesto was strong on the promotion of the German language and Austrian cultural values within universities, opposed “woke” ideology and “gender diktats”, and even proposed the reporting of mechanisms to flag “politically active educators”.

    It topped the polls with nearly 29 per cent of votes – not quite enough to form a government, so the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) attempted to form a government with the Social Democrats (SPÖ) and the liberals (NEOS) to block the FPÖ.

    When those talks collapsed in January 2025, President Van der Bellen tasked FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl with forming a government – leading to five weeks of negotiations between FPÖ and ÖVP, during which leaked documents revealed plans to significantly increase tuition fees, slash student representation in university governance, and tighten controls on academic freedom – as well as plans to restrict international student admissions, prioritise “native Austrian” applicants in competitive fields like medicine, and impose stricter oversight of academic content to curb what the FPÖ described as “leftist indoctrination.”

    Eventually, Austria returned to a centrist coalition, with the ÖVP and SPÖ including NEOS in their new coalition, forming a government in March 2025 under Chancellor Christian Stocker (ÖVP). It’s quite a spread of views – the conservative ÖVP champions efficiency, market discipline and selective admissions with an eye toward business alignment, the centre-left SPÖ calls for open access, generous student grants and democratic governance as vehicles for social mobility, and the liberal NEOS promotes structural modernisation, flexible learning pathways and income-contingent loans to balance access with sustainability.

    But you watch me grow distant

    As in the UK, there are some major fiscal constraints. Austria’s budget deficit exceeded the EU’s 3 per cent limit in 2024 and is projected to reach 4 per cent in 2025, and so the coalition has agreed to implement cuts of €6.4 billion overall – with the ÖVP pushing for fiscal restraint, the SPÖ advocating for educational equality, and NEOS championing system reform.

    And there’s no indication that the government will address the increasing financial pressure on university operations that led providers like TU Wien (Vienna University of Technology) to close its campus for a month as a cost-saving measure in the winter of 2022/23.

    Students occupied the main auditorium under the banner “TUbesetzt” – calling it an unacceptable abdication of responsibility by both the government and the rectorate, given it denied students access to libraries, labs and study spaces right before exams.

    They also criticized what they saw as conservative, outdated teaching and highlighted the lack of coursework on “societally relevant topics like queer-feminism, the climate crisis, and ethics” in technical curricula.

    Occupiers demanded that the university recognize that “technology is not apolitical” and reform its teaching to prepare students for future challenges. On the same day, about 40 students at the University of Graz also occupied a lecture hall, focusing on campus sustainability (they demanded exclusively plant-based menus in cafeterias and more free student spaces) and mandatory climate-protection classes for all students.

    Since the protest, TU Wien has launched its “fuTUre fit” initiative, culminating in a 2024 convention on sustainability, student-centered learning, and innovation. Key new initiatives include new courses like “Sustainability in Computer Science” and a sustainable design focus within the Faculty of Architecture.

    You don’t want to go under

    More widely, in the face of rocketing inflation, Austrian public universities had requested an extra €525 million, but ultimately only got €205 million in the 2024 budget. The government had previously topped up the national university budget by a total of €850 million to buffer rising prices – now a new multi-year commitment will only offset inflation and provide a “solid basis” for the next three years.

    For students, an ÖH survey showed that students spend on average 43 per cent of their income on housing alone. Rising rents and utility costs are said to be pushing many into financial hardship, prompting calls for government intervention as private “luxury” student dorms proliferate but remain unaffordable.

    The ÖH has urged reintroduction of a nationwide subsidy for student dormitories – abolished in 2011 – noting that since 1994, student grants had risen only about 15 per cent while living costs jumped roughly 90 per cent.

    Even campus food has become a flashpoint. In 2024, student “mensas” (cafeterias) in Graz and Innsbruck shut down due to rising costs, while others hiked prices.

    It cannot be that students have to go to the nearest supermarket or fast food because the local Mensa is outrageously expensive or even closed.

    …argued ÖH chair Sarah Roßmann.

    So far the coalition has only committed to maintaining the indexation of student financial aid to inflation, with the additional income limit for student grants already increased, and the value of study grants set to be adjusted for inflation each September.

    When student numbers are capped, you can announce, take credit for and target investment – so it is growing study places in high-demand fields, particularly STEM subjects at Universities of Applied Sciences (UAS), with a goal of addressing skills shortages while also increasing the proportion of women in technical disciplines.

    Digital transformation is seen as one of the ways out of the financial crisis – and with funding from government, Austria’s Digital University Hub (DUH) is attempting to achieve it via a major expansion in shared infrastructure rather than spend on commercial platforms.

    There’s an Austrian University Toolkit (a modular IT toolkit for standard processes), a Digital Blueprint (a “toolbox for tech challenges”), ePAS+ (a national system for digital recruitment), HR4u (a national HR backbone), m:usi (a sports management platform), PASSt (a sector-owned student analytics platform), a Diversity Platform (a multilingual, interactive platform to enhance counseling and information processes), UVI-Sec (IT security enhancement) and uniCHAT (collaboration platform).

    How do you not see that?

    The FPÖ’s rise has been a challenge for a sector whose students are used to fighting far-right influence on campus. There have been ongoing protests, for example, against a University of Vienna professor (Lothar Höbelt) known for his far-right affiliations and favourable stance toward the FPÖ.

    In 2020 left-wing and anti-fascist student groups repeatedly disrupted Höbelt’s lectures, eventually forcing the cancellation of one under slogans like “No room for Nazis at the university” – as well as protesting student fraternity (Burschenschaft) groups that they say use academic spaces to spread racist or antisemitic ideas.

    More controversially, in late 2023 a “Pro-Palästina” protest camp was set up at the University of Vienna’s Altes AKH courtyard, demanding universities cut ties with institutions linked to military funding, including the European Defence Fund and the national defence program FORTE. Eventually, the police were sent in. Given Austria’s complex historical relationship with antisemitism and its post-World War II commitment to supporting Jewish communities and Israel, encampments were much more controversial than in the UK.

    Both the university administration and the ÖH strongly condemned the protests, citing concerns over antisemitism, extremism, and the involvement of the BDS movement, and stressed the need for free but respectful discourse. Education Minister Martin Polaschek also called for “zero tolerance” towards hate, arguing that academic freedom should not shield extremism. FPÖ figures cheered the crackdown on the camp, claiming it validated their warnings about imported extremism on campuses – demanding harsher consequences for student protestors who “disrupt teaching” or “insult Austria”.

    This wasted love

    But probably the most interesting policy shift is one that is starting to recognise some of the limits of massification. While the universities of applied sciences are expanding, traditional universities have been told to tighten admissions for postgraduate courses and introduce more selective entry criteria.

    It’s being discussed as a more “managed” expansion, in areas deemed to be economically strategic – and while government has tried to balance it all by indexing student grants to inflation and expanding support for underrepresented groups in STEM, the critique is that vocational will seen as the more accessible option, while traditional academic routes become even more exclusive than they are now.

    That debate can be obscured in the UK, given the way in which we swedged together everything and called it a “university” back in 1992. But the coalition in Austria is grappling with the same problems that Labour is – Austria needs more graduates, just not that sort and not there. Coalition politics there may well mean it’s more likely to deliver it.

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  • Why First-Year Comp Classes Give Me Hope (opinion)

    Why First-Year Comp Classes Give Me Hope (opinion)

    First-year composition courses, which are required of incoming students at many colleges and universities, lack cachet. No student gets excited about a comp class, and the faculty who teach these classes usually occupy the low rungs on the academic ladder. And right now, as crisis after crisis batters the country, and the world, first-year composition may seem even less important than usual. But in my 30 years of college teaching, it’s first-year comp classes that give me hope, because they offer the possibility of change.

    These small, discussion-based classes give students much-needed practice in how to disagree without disrespect, and—if these classes were embedded more firmly into university curricula—they could radically reshape not only how students learn but how they participate in public life.

    My students often come into their comp class with a chip on their shoulder: Why should they have to “learn to write”? They got themselves into college, after all, and if they get stuck on a writing assignment, there’s always ChatGPT. First-year writing is a waste of time, they think; they’re in college to take “real” classes, courses that matter.

    I harbor a secret affection for these reluctant students, because I know that their resistance will melt when they discover the immensely practical importance of finding the right words for their ideas—and the accompanying sense of power that comes with being able to express themselves so that others understand them. Universities tell students that comp classes aren’t “content courses,” because writing courses aren’t discipline-specific. But then again, neither is the world we live in: Most of us live, work and think in multiple, overlapping contexts.

    For many students, the composition class is the first (and for some, the only) place in college where they experience a seminar-style class that emphasizes process as much as (or more than) product. The paradigm of a composition course involves a reset: It’s not about “the right answer”; it’s about prioritizing curiosity over certainty and about students discovering not only that they have a voice, but that they can use this voice to explore their world. In the 21st-century university, in which faculty are asked for their “course deliverables,” as if learning were an assembly-line widget, comp classes exemplify an alternative to the sludgy tide of university corporatization.

    Composition classes encourage questions, welcome mistakes and revisions, and value messiness and curiosity. During peer workshops, which are an integral part of these courses, I remind students that grades aren’t pie: Everyone can, conceivably, get an A in the course, so their workshop task is helping one another create more effective writing, not to tear each other’s drafts to shreds. Their success, in other words, does not depend on someone else’s failure.

    There are other disciplines where students work iteratively and collaboratively—computer science, for example. But in composition workshops, students learn to ask the kinds of questions that promote reflection and refinement. They’re quick to pick up on one another’s sweeping generalizations—“throughout history, men and women have always disagreed”—and explain why those sorts of generalizations aren’t effective.

    As they talk, they see how their own experiences might be radically different from those of the people reading their work, and they begin to understand how their experiences, consciously or not, have shaped how they see the world. In classroom conversations and workshops, they learn to disagree without rancor and to understand that how they chose to explain (or not explain) an idea has consequences for how they are understood. In a recent essay in The New York Times, Greg Weiner, president of Assumption University, writes that college campuses “are places where dissenting views deserve an elevated degree of respectful and scholarly engagement.” That’s a tall order for U.S. colleges these days, it seems, but it’s one of the underlying principles of composition classrooms.

    “How could I say this better?” is a question I hear writers ask, to which their readers reply, “What do you really want to say, and why?” Students ask one another to explain the evidence for their claims, to examine their assumptions and to think about alternative ways of presenting their ideas. Composition courses help people become more effective writers because they help people become better listeners: Students learn to disagree without dismissiveness or disrespect. And as they help one another, they see ways to improve their own work; it’s a feedback loop that helps them find critical distance, which is essential for revision. Quite literally, students have to re-see their ideas and consider the impact of those ideas on their audience.

    I remember when a male student from Shanghai read an essay written by a female student from the Persian Gulf about her struggles to be a dutiful daughter. “She totally read my mind,” the Shanghai student proclaimed. “Being a good son, trying to keep my parents happy—it’s exhausting!” His comment prompted a class discussion about the generational struggles they all shared, albeit across wildly divergent cultural experiences. Their differences prompted questions that led to connections; difference became an opportunity for exploration rather than a threat. Students were excited to write the essays that emerged from this conversation; they were invested in examining their own experiences in order to open those experiences to others.

    That’s what reading and writing can give us: moments of connection with other people’s lives, which then help us see ourselves in a new light. Connection and distance, empathy and self-reflection: These are the qualitative moves that students practice in composition class. These are the deliverables.

    These deliverables, however, don’t translate into status for composition teachers, who are typically not tenure-track or tenured; they are often called lecturers rather than professors, despite having a Ph.D. Most of us are what’s known as contingent faculty because we work on renewable contracts (sometimes semester to semester, sometimes in longer increments).

    To be a composition teacher, then, means working in the trenches of the university rather than its ivory towers. I’ve been teaching some version of first-year writing for more than 30 years, and while I might hope otherwise, I know that only one or two semesters of writing instruction isn’t enough to create lasting change, even though the most resistant students admit to feeling like more confident and competent writers by the end of the course.

    If universities had the courage to put composition at the center of their missions, however, they could create real change: What if students had expository writing classes every year for four years, regardless of their majors? Four years of slow, reflective, process-based writing about the world outside their specific subjects, with an emphasis on exploration and curiosity, rather than “the right answer”? What if the ability to reflect and reconsider, the twinned abilities at the heart of critical thinking, were the deliverables that mattered?

    Imagine those students bringing that training into the public sphere. People who are eager to ask questions and interrogate assumptions (including their own), people who think in terms of process rather than product: These are the basic tenets of almost any composition class and yet, increasingly, these attitudes seem almost radical. People trained in this way could re-shape public discourse so that it becomes conversation rather than a series of point-scoring contests.

    First-year comp is a content course. We just need to see that content as valuable.

    Deborah Lindsay Williams is a clinical professor in liberal studies at New York University. She is author of The Necessity of Young Adult Fiction (Oxford University Press, 2023) and co-editor of The Oxford History of the Novel in English: Volume 8: American Fiction Since 1940 (Oxford, 2024).

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  • 5 not so good FINANCIAL GIFTS TO GIVE TO OUR CHILDREN (The last one is the worst)

    5 not so good FINANCIAL GIFTS TO GIVE TO OUR CHILDREN (The last one is the worst)

    The VERY BEST Financial Gift we could give our kids is to not be dependent on them financially later in our lives, while they are trying to raise and educate their kids.

    Most parents love their kids dearly and would die for them. My question is always – “Should We?” Here are some decisions that start out with good intentions but could actually end up having bad consequences for our loved ones.

    1. Getting a Parent PLUS loan that the student has to pay.

    There is a reason that there is a limit on how much the government will lend to your student in their name. It’s because they should not have a massive burden coming out of college, and most students coming out of college cannot afford to pay more than the federal lending limit to them.

    Many parents are struggling to fund college AND save for retirement at the same time. If you don’t have enough money to do both, then it is probably unwise to expect your children to pay back Parent Plus Loans that you have signed for.

    Remember that if we have not saved enough for retirement and have depended on Parent loans to get the kids through college, then we might be reliant on help from our kids when we age. Is this what we really intended? Thanks a lot Dad!

    • Whole life insurance (The wrong type)

    Whole Life insurance could be a great product if structured properly, but on the PARENTS. I have seen some policies purchased with kids insured, from the same company that they buy baby food from. These are horribly inefficient policies and, in most cases, a bad idea. Most times, insurance on young kids is much more expensive than insurance for parents.

    Firstly, we should consider what the purpose of the insurance is. If we purchase with the kids as the insured, it only pay out if the child dies, which means it is pays out for your future grandchildren 2 generations away! Is that what we meant to happen? We should consider who we want to protect?

    Typically, we would want to insure the parent who is the main breadwinner, so that if something happened to them, their spouse and children would not have to face devastating financial consequences. That way they would be leaving a positive legacy for the family and not a burden.

    I STRONGLY advocate for good insurance, and personally practice what I preach so feel free to give me a call if you would like to see what is wise for your family.

    If you want to purchase timeshare, do it for yourself, and accept the long-term consequences, but don’t burden your kids with it.

    Here is something to think about:

    * The Internal Revenue Service values your timeshare, and all timeshares, as worthless.
    * No legitimate charity wants your donated timeshare. Period.

    If so, why would we think that our timeshare has any value. It has to be paid for each year and most people cannot GIVE their timeshare away. Don’t burden your kids by buying timeshare for them. With technology today and Airbnb we have so much more flexibility without the burden.

    • Champagne Taste on a Beer Budget

    If our children leave our house with the expectation that everyone can go to a private school, vacation in Hawaii or France every year, shop at expensive stores and drive expensive cars, then we have probably done them a disservice.

    Their first shock comes when they see their first paycheck, wonder why so much of it has gone to taxes and other deductions, and the realization that they have to pay for their own car and place to live. Sometimes we love to spoil our kids too much, but it ends up hurting them in the long run. The worst is when they realize that we cannot retire because we didn’t teach them.

    • Parent Financial Insecurity –I have saved the toughest one for last.

    Remember the lecture we always get when we fly? “In the unlikely case of an emergency, put your own mask on before you help your children” This is the way it should be with our finances.

    I speak to families all the time who have parents who are not financially stable, who could not control their spending, who did not save enough for retirement, or didn’t have life insurance when needed or Long Term Care, who are in such bad financial shape that their children spend their nights worrying about their parents.

    One of the most wonderful financial gifts that we can give to our kids is our own financial security. That way we can be a blessing to our kids and not drag on their lives.

    As a counter to the perhaps perceived negative connotation of what we should perhaps NOT be doing, here are some things that we might think of that we SHOULD be doing.

    Five smart financial habits to teach our children early in life – can set them up for a future of success.

    Someone told me once – the way to teach our kids the value of money, borrow some from them

    1. The miracle of compounding – the earlier the better – As parents, we often wish we knew this
    • We Value What We Earn, Not What We Are Given

    Allowances – Given or Earned? Allowances are not just about money, but what lessons we could teach our kids in the process. Humans learn a lot when we earn things because of effort and dedication, rather than just being given something. My daughter once worked really hard to earn a surfboard by walking around our neighborhood selling cookie dough for her school. I will never forget when I asked her how many people said “No” to her, she told me “I don’t know dad, I was just focused on getting 75 people to say “Yes”

    It is a valuable lesson to see firsthand how effort translates into earnings and this in turn translates into the behaviors to become an “earner” in life.

    • Teach Your Kids How to Lose Money

    Yes, lose money. You see, no matter what courses they take in high school or college around personal finance, there is no greater teacher for all of us in life on what NOT to do with our money until we experience losing some money.  

    No matter which custodian we help them set up a brokerage account with, perhaps we could get them started saving into some type of investment and sit down quarterly with them to track it and teach them how their investment is performing.  

    Have them pick one stock of their favorite company and even if they lose money, they win in the long-term gaining interest on how investments work and how to make good investment decisions.

    • Spending – Questions to ask first
    • Do I want it?
    • Do I need it?
    • Can I afford it?

    If the answer to any of these is “No”, then probably think twice about it.

    Only once we have SAVED money, should we use it for our WANTS

    One thing that I learned in life is that giving early when you don’t make much, is really helpful rather than trying to start giving when you are making a lot. It just seems such a lot to get going when the number is high, but when it grows incrementally it becomes a great and rewarding habit.

    I go back to my first statement – Most parents love their kids dearly and would die for them. My question is always – “Should We?”

    If you would like to discuss how you can make wise decisions for Retirement Planning and College Planning for your family? Please don’t hesitate to contact Dave Coen to set up a no-cost consultation.

    You can see more about my role as a Financial Advisor with SageView Advisory  HERE

    Tel:714-813-1703
    dcoen@sageviewadvisory / [email protected]

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