Tag: government

Either the sector cleans up academic partnerships, or the government does

When the franchising scandal first broke, many thought it was going to be a flash in the pan, an airing of the darkest depths of the sector but something that didn’t really impact the mainstream.

That hasn’t been the case.

The more it digs, the more concerned the government seems to get, and the proposed reforms to register the largest delivery partners seem unlikely to mark the end of its attention.

Last orders

The sector would be foolish to wait for the Government’s response to its consultation, or for the Office for Students to come knocking. Subcontracted provision in England has increased 358 per cent over the past five years: and, for some providers this provision significantly outnumbers the students they teach directly themselves. Franchised business and management provision has grown by 44 per cent, and the number of students from IMD quintile 1 (the most deprived) taught via these arrangements have increased 31 per cent, compared to an overall rise in student numbers of 15 per cent.

The sector talks a big game about institutional autonomy – and they’re right to do so; it is a vital attribute of the UK sector. But it shouldn’t be taken for granted, and that means demonstrating clear action when practices are scrutinised.

Front foot

So today, QAA has released new comprehensive guidance (part of a suite sitting underneath the UK Quality Code) to help the sector get on the front foot. For the first time since the franchising scandal broke, experts from across the UK sector have developed a toolkit for anyone working in partnerships to know what good practice can look like, what questions they should be asking themselves, and how their own provision stacks up against what others are doing.

The guidance is framed around three discrete principles: all partnerships should add direct value to the staff and student experience and widen learning opportunities; academic standards and the quality of the student experience should not be compromised; and oversight should be as rigorous, secure and open to scrutiny as the provision delivered by a single provider. All partners share responsibility for the student learning experience and the academic standards students are held to, but it is the awarding partner who is ultimately accountable for awards offered in its name.

If you’re working in partnership management and are concerned about how your institution should be responding to the increased scrutiny coming from government, the guidance talks you through each stage of the partnership lifecycle, with reflective questions and scenarios to prompt consideration of your own practice. And as providers put the guidance and its recommendations into practice, they will be able to tell a more convincing and reassuring story about how they work with their partners to deliver a high quality experience.

Starter for five

But the sector getting its house in order will only quell concerns if those scrutinising feel assured of provider action. So for anyone concerned, we’ve distilled five starter questions from the guidance that we’d expect any provider to be able to answer about their partnerships.

Are there clear and shared academic standards? Providers should be able to provide agreed terms on academic standards and quality assurance and plans for continuous improvement.

Is oversight tailored to risk? Providers who have a large portfolio should be able to demonstrate how they take an agile, proportionate approach to each partnership.

What are the formal governance and accountability mechanisms? A provider’s governors or board should be able to tell you what decisions have been made and why.

How is data used to drive performance and mitigate risk? Providers should be able to tell you what data they have and what it tells them about their partnerships and the students’ experience, and any actions they plan to take.

And finally, how does your relationship enable challenge and improvement? Providers should be able to tell you when they last spoke to each of their partners, what topics were discussed and lead providers should be able to detail what mechanisms they use to hold their partners to account when issues arise.

Integrity and responsibility

The government has a duty to prevent misuse of public money and to ensure the integrity of a system that receives significant amounts of it. The regulator has a responsibility to investigate where it suspects there is poor practice and to act accordingly. But the sector has a responsibility – both to its students and, also, to itself – to respond to the legitimate concerns raised around partnership provision and to demonstrate it’s taking action. This lever is just as, if not more, important, because government and regulatory action becomes more necessary and more stringent if we don’t get this right.

The sector cannot afford not to grasp the nettle on this. Public trust, the sector’s reputation and, most importantly, the learning experience students deserve, are all on the line.

QAA’s guidance is practical, expert-informed and rooted in shared principles to help providers not only meet expectations but lead the way in restoring confidence. Because if the sector doesn’t demonstrate its commitment to action on this, the government and the regulator surely will.

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July 15, 2025
Don’t believe the hype: the Government and state school admissions to Oxford University
- HEPI Director, Nick Hillman, looks at the latest row on admissions to the University of Oxford.
In a speech on Friday, the Minister for Skills, Baroness Smith, strongly chastised her alma mater, the University of Oxford, for taking a third of their entrants from the 6% of kids that go to private schools.

In a section of the speech entitled ‘Challenging Oxford’, we were told the situation is ‘absurd’, ‘arcane’ and ‘can’t continue’:

Oxford recently released their state school admissions data for 2024.

And the results were poor.

66.2% – the lowest entry rate since 2019.

I want to be clear, speaking at an Oxford college today, that this is unacceptable.

The university must do better.

The independent sector educates around 6% of school children in the UK.

But they make-up 33.8% of Oxford entrants.

Do you really think you’re finding the cream of the crop, if a third of your students come from 6% of the population?

It’s absurd.

Arcane, even.

And it can’t continue.

It’s because I care about Oxford and I understand the difference that it can make to people’s lives that I’m challenging you to do better. But it certainly isn’t only Oxford that has much further to go in ensuring access.

This language reminded me of the Laura Spence affair, which produced so much heat and so little light in the Blair / Brown years and which may even have set back sensible conversations on broadening access to selective higher education.

I wrote in a blog over the weekend that the Government are at risk of forgetting the benefit of education for education’s sake. That represents a political hole that Ministers should do everything to avoid as it could come to define them. Ill-thought through attacks on the most elite universities for their finely-grained admissions decisions represent a similar hole best avoided. Just imagine if the Minister had set out plans to tackle a really big access problem, like boys’ educational underachievement, instead. The Trump/Harvard spat is something any progressive government should seek to avoid, not copy.

The latest chastisement is poorly formed for at least three specific reasons: the 6% is wrong in this context; the 33.8% number does not tell us what people tend to think it does; and Oxford’s current position of not closely monitoring the state/independent split is actually in line with the regulator’s guidance.
1. 6% represents only half the proportion (12%) of school leavers educated at independent schools. In other words, the 6% number is a snapshot for the proportion of all young people in private schools right now; it tells us nothing about those at the end of their schooling and on the cusp of higher education.
2. The 33.8% number is unhelpful because 20%+ of Oxford’s new undergraduates hail from overseas and they are entirely ignored in the calculation. If you include the (over) one in five Oxford undergraduate entrants educated overseas, the proportion of Oxford’s intake that is made up of UK private school kids falls from from something like one-third to more like one-quarter. This matters in part because the number of international students at Oxford has grown, meaning there are fewer places for home students of all backgrounds. In 2024, Oxford admitted 100 more undergraduate students than in 2006, but there were 250 more international students – and consequently fewer Brits. We seem to be obsessed with the backgrounds of home students and, because we want their money, entirely uninterested in the backgrounds of international students.
3. The Office for Students dislikes the state/private metric. This is because of the differences within these two categories: in other words, there are high-performing state schools and less high-performing independent schools. Last year, when the University of Cambridge said they planned to move away from a simplistic state/independent school target, John Blake, the Director of Fair Access and Participation at the Office for Students, confirmed to the BBC, ‘we do not require a target on the proportion of pupils from state schools entering a particular university.’ So universities have typically shied away from this measure in recent times. If Ministers think it is a key metric after all and if they really do wish to condemn individual institutions for their state/independent split, it would have made sense to have had a conversation with the Office for Students and to have encouraged them to put out new guidance first. At the moment, the Minister and the regulator are saying different things on an important issue of high media attention.
Are independently educated pupils overrepresented at Oxbridge? Quite possibly, but the Minister’s stick/schtick, while at one with the Government’s wider negative approach to independent schools, seems a sub-optimal way to engineer a conversation on the issue. Perhaps Whitehall wanted a headline more than it wanted to get under the skin of the issue?

we do not require a target on the proportion of pupils from state schools entering a particular university

John Blake, Director for Fair access and participation
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July 9, 2025
China Select Committee Launches AI Campaign with Legislation to Block CCP-Linked AI from U.S. Government Use
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

June 25, 2025

Contact:

Alyssa Pettus

Brian Benko

WASHINGTON, D.C. — As the House Select Committee on the China opens its landmark hearing, “Authoritarians and Algorithms: Why U.S. AI Must Lead,” Committee leaders are unveiling new bipartisan legislation to confront the CCP’s growing exploitation of artificial intelligence.

Chairman John Moolenaar (R-MI) and Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) today announced the House introduction of the “No Adversarial AI Act”— bipartisan legislation also being championed in the Senate by Senators Rick Scott (R-FL) and Gary Peters (D-MI). The bill would prohibit U.S. executive agencies from acquiring or using artificial intelligence developed by companies tied to foreign adversaries like the Chinese Communist Party. The House legislation is cosponsored by a bipartisan group of Select Committee members, including Reps. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) and Darin LaHood (R-IL).

“We are in a new Cold War—and AI is the strategic technology at the center,” said Chairman Moolenaar. “The CCP doesn’t innovate—it steals, scales, and subverts. From IP theft and chip smuggling to embedding AI in surveillance and military platforms, the Chinese Communist Party is racing to weaponize this technology. We must draw a clear line: U.S. government systems cannot be powered by tools built to serve authoritarian interests.”

What the No Adversarial AI Act Does:
- Creates a public list of AI systems developed by foreign adversaries, maintained and updated by the Federal Acquisition Security Council.
- Prohibits executive agencies from acquiring or using adversary-developed AI—except in narrow cases such as research, counterterrorism, or mission-critical needs.
- Establishes a delisting process for companies that can demonstrate they are free from foreign adversary control or influence.
“Artificial intelligence controlled by foreign adversaries poses a direct threat to our national security, our data, and our government operations,” said Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi. “We cannot allow hostile regimes to embed their code in our most sensitive systems. This bipartisan legislation will create a clear firewall between foreign adversary AI and the U.S. government, protecting our institutions and the American people. Chinese, Russian, and other adversary AI systems simply do not belong on government devices, and certainly shouldn’t be entrusted with government data.”

Senator Rick Scott said, “The Communist Chinese regime will use any means necessary to spy, steal, and undermine the United States, and as AI technology advances, we must do more to protect our national security and stop adversarial regimes from using technology against us. With clear evidence that China can have access to U.S. user data on AI systems, it’s absolutely insane for our own federal agencies to be using these dangerous platforms and subject our government to Beijing’s control. Our No Adversarial AI Act will stop this direct threat to our national security and keep the American government’s sensitive data out of enemy hands.”

The legislation marks a major action in the Select Committee’s AI campaign, which aims to secure U.S. AI supply chains, enforce robust export controls, and ensure American innovation does not fuel authoritarian surveillance or military systems abroad.

Today’s hearing and legislation continues the series of new proposals and messaging the Committee will roll out this summer to confront the CCP’s exploitation of U.S. innovation and prevent American technology from fueling Beijing’s AI ambitions.
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June 25, 2025
Americans worry about AI in politics — but they’re more worried about government censorship

As artificial intelligence technologies make their way into political ads and campaigning, Americans are expressing growing concern. But they’re not just worried about deepfakes and deceptive content’s impact on elections — they also fear how the government might use the fight against misinformation to restrict free speech.

In a recently released FIRE poll of registered American voters, conducted by Morning Consult, one concern stood out: government regulation itself. Nearly half of respondents (45%) said they are “extremely” or “very” concerned that government regulation of election-related AI content could be abused to suppress criticism of elected officials. That’s a powerful signal that while Americans see the risks posed by AI, they don’t trust government regulators to police political expression fairly.

When asked to choose between protecting free speech in politics or stopping deceptive content, a plurality (47%) said protecting free speech in politics is more important, even if that means allowing some deceptive content. Just 37% prioritized stopping deceptive content, even at the expense of limiting speech that would otherwise be protected by the First Amendment. These sentiments are held across the political spectrum, but are stronger among Independents and Republicans, than among Democrats.

This isn’t just a preference — it’s a principled stand in favor of the core freedoms the First Amendment exists to protect. Political speech lies at the heart of those freedoms, and Americans clearly recognize that any government attempts to police what can or can’t be said pose a far greater threat to democracy than free speech itself.

Regulation threatens participation

The chilling effects are already measurable. About 28% of voters said they’d be less likely to share content on social media if the government began regulating AI-generated or AI-altered content. (That’s right: All content, not just AI-generated or AI-altered content.) That may not sound dramatic at first glance, but that’s more than the average voter turnout during the last midterm primaries. As our political culture is increasingly shaped online, discouraging speech — even unintentionally — can have real consequences for public discourse.

These findings suggest a troubling trajectory: Government regulations justified in the name of protecting the public from AI could end up silencing the public instead.

While some polls show that a similar percentage of voters (41%) say it’s important to protect people from misinformation, that concern cannot be used to justify censorship. About 39% said that preserving freedom of speech should be the government’s top priority when crafting AI laws. Only 12% said that view doesn’t describe them at all. In other words, most Americans believe that protecting speech isn’t just one goal among many — it’s the central concern.

And they’re right to think so. The First Amendment doesn’t permit the government to restrict speech simply because it believes the public might be misled. The solution to bad speech is more speech, not less.

These results should serve as a warning to policymakers: The public views efforts to regulate AI in political campaigns as a risk to free expression. FIRE has been actively engaged in legislative advocacy to safeguard First Amendment rights, including vague and overbroad bans or disclosure requirements imposed on AI content.

If voters already believe regulation will be abused — and are already pulling back from political expression using AI — that’s not just a theoretical harm. It’s a chilling effect in action.

Instead of rushing to regulate, elected officials should reaffirm their commitment to protecting political speech, no matter the medium. The technology may be new, but the principle is not: In a free society, the government doesn’t get to decide which ideas are too dangerous to be heard.

The poll was conducted May 13-15, 2025, among a sample of registered voters in the US. A total of 2,005 interviews were conducted online across the US for a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Frequency counts may not sum to 2,005 due to weighting and rounding. Topline results are available here.

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June 6, 2025
The future of HTQs requires commitment and certainty from the government

The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) – formerly the Institute for Apprenticeships – has been central to reforms aimed at increasing standardisation and quality in technical education at all levels in England since 2017.

As it slips into the shadows from where Skills England is about to emerge, we wanted to explore how IfATE’s work establishing a quality assurance process for level 4 and 5 technical education – launched in 2020 – could be built upon and improved.

Since IfATE introduced the process of approving level 4 and 5 qualifications as Higher Technical Qualifications (HTQs), more than 80 FE colleges, universities and awarding organisations have successfully submitted their qualifications. We decided that their experiences – and their views on the future – were a good place to start.

We interviewed 46 individuals from 17 organisations to explore their motivations for being “early adopters” of HTQs, their feedback on the approval process itself, and their recommendations for making it better. Ultimately we were keen to find out what would encourage and enable more organisations to apply for HTQ status for their qualifications, and in this way help address the “missing middle” of England’s workforce skills. The full report can be read here.

Managing a heavy burden

Unsurprisingly, a strong recommendation was to make the approvals process less burdensome. There was widespread appreciation of the support provided by IfATE, and evidence of their responsiveness to early adopters’ feedback across all five cycles of HTQ approvals. This said, respondents noted that mapping qualifications – particularly those with multiple pathways – to the knowledge, skills and behaviours of occupational standards remained complex and time consuming.

It was clear that the level of resource and responsiveness shown by IfATE needs to be maintained by Skills England, particularly as occupational standards continue to evolve, and new awarding bodies come into the fold. However, our respondents also noted that manageability could be improved if the approvals process became more integrated with extant internal and external quality assurance and approvals processes, including professional body accreditations.

Gaining traction, but slowly

Reassuringly, many of our respondents reported that one positive outcome of getting their qualifications ready for HTQ approval was the stimulation of renewed engagement with employers – with benefits that went beyond simply endorsing the qualification at hand.

Similarly, for some respondents the decision about whether to put forward a qualification for approval had acted as a catalyst for the further engagement and support of senior leaders in their organisation with higher technical education (HTE) – as part of their widening participation commitments and/or their portfolio diversification and growth.

Yet alongside this positivity, respondents reported that awareness of the HTQ quality mark, and what it represents, remains low among prospective students and employers. A key reason for this was seen to be a lack of commitment from the Department for Education (DfE) to widespread and visible brand backing.

DfE did make funding available to successful applicants via the HTE Growth Fund in 2021, and two further rounds of HTE Skills Injection Funds (including funding for localised marketing) – but the potential clawback of these funds should recruitment not meet projected numbers led to some uncertainty about the benefits of applying for short term and unconfirmed funding streams.

If even those organisations who have already been successful in getting HTQ approval are feeling dubious about the future, then clearly much more needs to be done to encourage those who have not yet entered the field.

Let’s not forget the missing middle

There is no reason to doubt that the current government cares about addressing the skills gap known as the “missing middle”, as ignoring it may pose serious risks to growth and opportunity missions. So we – and the many organisations that have invested in HTQs and wish to see them flourish and thrive – have a couple of hopes.

First, that Skills England maintains strong and continuous engagement with current and future HTQ providers – providing good labour market data on what qualifications are needed, offering personalised support during the approval process, and engaging with the wider sector in order to improve the process.

But also, we hope that DfE can quickly resolve funding uncertainties for HTQs – including their potential for funding under the growth and skills levy and their primacy in the rollout of the Lifelong Learning Entitlement – and that the department showcases this commitment through a national marketing campaign. This could include building an HTQ ambassadors network, and an annual HTQ celebratory week (similar to those currently supported for T levels and apprenticeships).

The latest data from DfE shows that in 2022–23 numbers of entrants for Level 4 and 5 education increased after a long period of decline. The contribution of HTQs to this increase may well be small but the strong focus on HTE since 2017, from which HTQ approval arose, will have contributed. We’ve made a great start – let’s not lose momentum now.

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May 22, 2025
The National Audit Office’s review of UKRI has lessons for the government

It should come as little surprise – given the scale and complexity of the challenge – that the government sees investing in research and innovation (R&I), and the accompanying promise of new technologies and ideas, as key to achieving its complex policy goals of growing the economy, transitioning to clean power, and modernising the NHS.

After all, history shows that state backing of R&I to overcome a range of problems – particularly in times of crisis – is hardly a novel idea. If the rapid technological advances witnessed in the 1940s to support the war effort are receding further into the past, then memories of the mass Covid-19 vaccine rollout at least remain fresh.

With this in mind, the government’s commitment “to promote innovation and harness the full potential of the UK’s science base” through “protecting record funding for research and development” is merely the latest example of those in power acknowledging the vast capacity of R&I to transform society.

This tradition at least partly explains the strong international reputation the UK has accumulated over the years in the field of R&I, with UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) – the country’s largest single public funder of R&I – at the forefront.

In 2023–24, UKRI assessed 28,866 applications for competitive grant funding, ultimately spending £6 billion on R&I grants. Its recently approved projects have included funding for very early-stage research in microbial fuel cells and hydrogen purification, and the development of bone stem cell and biomaterial technology to reduce infection rates and the cost of hip repairs.

In short, UKRI plays a critical role in the country’s R&I ecosystem, supporting cutting-edge work that feeds not only into the government’s environmental and health policy ambitions, but in other areas too.

And by looking at the effectiveness of UKRI’s grant support, the National Audit Office (NAO) has identified some lessons for government that can serve a very useful, and much broader, purpose when it comes to tackling the major challenges facing the country.

Lessons learned

First is the importance of taking a planned and coordinated approach to R&I, which involves using good quality information on funding and knowing how to build a base to innovate in each research area. Government departments should be aware of other organisations with related objectives, determine whether they are also putting funds or resources into trying to innovate in that area, and identify potential linkages with their own workstreams.

This “portfolio” approach to innovation is a key component in well-managed risk taking, which brings us to our second lesson: the need to establish a clear and effective risk appetite, and put in place the organisational cultures and processes that can support bold decision-making. Innovation – the act or process of doing something that has not been done before – goes hand-in-hand with risk. Embracing it requires the knowledge and the confidence in accepting that things may not turn out quite as intended, or may even fail together.

The head of the NAO said as much in his recent address in Parliament, where he called on the government to unlock the vast opportunities for boosting productivity and strengthening resilience in the public sector by adopting a fast-learning approach when investing in innovation: in other words, learning quickly what works and what does not, so that failed projects can be promptly scrapped in favour of redirecting energy and resources to more promising ideas.

Ultimately, a coherent, comprehensive and clearly communicated risk appetite can help organisations reap substantial rewards, more than offsetting the disappointment of unsuccessful ventures.

Third is the caveat that while a clear plan, coordination and risk appetite can lead to successes, the full benefits of innovation cannot be realised without effective monitoring and evaluation. As well as evaluating programmes on a macro level, organisations should regularly draw together learning by theme (such as in a specific research area), with the support of strong data systems. Doing so can ensure that they effectively capture cumulative learning and develop a well-rounded understanding of which innovations are working well, which ones are not, and why.

Across the whole of government

Arguably the most important lesson of all, however, is remembering that these insights cut across the whole of government and need not be strictly applied to the domain of R&I. The projects funded by UKRI may be operating on the frontier of scientific and technological research, but this does not mean that what we learn about their approaches to innovation cannot be applied to other government contexts.

If government is to achieve its long-term policy goals, it must do more to identify the public spaces where innovation is lacking, and take measures to reverse this trend. This includes breaking down the barriers that are preventing some organisations from adopting the right culture to allow innovation to flourish. It would do well to start with taking on board some of the lessons learned from UKRI’s approach.

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May 13, 2025
New Government, familiar problems – By Chris Husbands

The higher education sector had high hopes of a new government last July. Early messaging from ministers suggested that they were justified. The Guardian quoted Peter Kyle, the Science Secretary, declaring an ‘end to the war on universities’. Speaking to the Commons in September 2024, the Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said that ‘the last Government ..use[d] our world-leading sector as a political football, talking down institutions and watching on as the situation became…desperate. I [want to]…return universities to being the engines of growth and opportunity‘. In November, she announced a rise – albeit for just one year in the first instance – in the undergraduate tuition fee, with the prospect of alleviating pressure on higher education budgets.

Ten months on, the hopes look tarnished as financial, political and policy challenges mount. The scale of the higher education funding challenge is deepening, it seems, by the week. The OfS has reported that four in ten universities will report a deficit this year. Restructuring programmes are underway in scores of universities, with some institutions on their second, third or even fourth round of savings. The post-study graduate visa, an important lifeline for international student recruitment, appears to be under threat.

There are eerie echoes of headlines and comments under the last government. The Daily Telegraph declared that a ‘record number of universities [are] in deficit’. The Times claimed that universities that appeared to report relatively poor progression to graduate-level jobs were to be ‘named and shamed’. Following the success of Reform UK in local elections, some backbench Labour MPs have been sharply critical of universities: ‘I would close half our universities and turn them into vocational colleges’, wrote the Liverpool MP Dan Carden (BA, London School of Economics, since you ask), whilst Jonathan Hinder, MP for Pendle (MA Oxford) declared himself ‘happy to be bold and say I don’t think we should have anywhere near as many universities and university places‘. Philip Augar, who reviewed skills funding for Theresa May’s Government, wrote in the Financial Times that the ‘English higher education market is broken‘ as a result of a ‘failed free market experiment’. It seems terribly familiar: a sector in financial crisis, losing political traction and friends.

Policy direction appears to be unclear. The English higher education sector is still largely shaped by the coalition government’s policy decisions between 2010 and 2015. Its key design principles include uncapped student demand since number controls were abolished in 2013, assumed cross-subsidies across and between activity streams allowing for institutional flexibility, access to private capital markets since HEFCE capital funding was removed in 2011, diverse missions but largely homogenous delivery models based around traditional terms and full-time, three-year undergraduate provision, and jealously protected institutional autonomy. Familiar though these principles are in higher education policy, some are in truth relatively recent, and are creating tensions between what the nation wants from its university system, what universities can offer and what the government and others are willing to pay for.

Moreover, the sector we have in 2025 is not the sector which the 2017 Higher Education and Reform Act (HERA) envisaged: HERA was expected to significantly re-shape the sector. The government’s impact assessment of HERA suggested that there would be in the order of 800 HE providers by the mid-2020s. This did not happen, though the impact of private capital, often channelled through established institutions and now rapidly growing for-profit providers, should not be underestimated as a longer-term transformative force in the sector.

We are expecting both a three-year comprehensive spending review and a post-16 White Paper in a couple of months’ time. In my 2024 HEPI paper, ’Four Futures’, I sketched out possible scenarios for a sector facing intense challenges. The near-frozen undergraduate fee was reducing the unit of resource for undergraduate teaching as costs rose. Undergraduate demand seemed to be softening amongst (especially) disadvantaged eighteen-year-olds. International student demand remains volatile and subject to political change in visa regulations. The structural deficit on research funding deepened. ‘Four Futures’ outlined four scenarios, summarised in Table 1.

Of course, we all want a mixture of cost control, thriving universities, regional growth and research excellence, but it is difficult to have all of them. Governments and universities set priorities based on limited resources, so there are choices to be made and trade-offs to be confronted for both policymakers and institutional leaders.

Government needs to make decisions about universities in the context of competing and changing policy imperatives. It needs to balance restoring government finances, allocating resources to other needy sectors, securing economic growth, and, more obviously important than a year ago, protecting sovereign intellectual property assets and growing defence-related R&D. The Secretary of State’s letter to Vice-Chancellors in the Autumn identified growth, engagement with place, teaching excellence, widening participation and securing efficiencies, but did not unpick the tensions between them. That depends on articulating a stronger vision for higher education given the Government’s priorities and resources and the economic challenges facing institutions, and it is a task for the forthcoming White Paper.

But there are urgent choices too for institutions, and those need to be made quickly in many universities. Institutional and sector efficiencies are vital, and a key theme of the UUK Carrington Review, but they need to be considered in the light of sustainable operating models for both academic delivery and professional services. Institutions need a clearly articulated value proposition, communicated strongly and effectively and capable of driving the operating model. In the past, too many universities have tried to do too many things – and with resources scarce, the choices cannot be ducked. That means there is a consideration which links the choices facing government and those facing individual institutions. If a core strength of the English system lies in its diversity and its distributed excellence, individual institutions need to think about their place in, and responsibilities to, the wider HE system. For a sector characterised by intense competition, that is a profound cultural shift, notwithstanding the economic and legal challenges of collaboration.

The higher education sector now is not the sector we have always had, and therefore it won’t be the sector we always have. How the sector collectively, and institutions individually, confront choices is a test for policymakers and institutional leaders.

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May 12, 2025
‘The gatekeepers’: Trump’s action on accreditation sparks concerns over government intrusion
Dive Brief:
- Some higher education experts slammed President Donald Trump’s executive order aiming to reshape the accreditation system, raising warnings about government intrusion into academic matters, while the accreditation sector defended its work.
- The president took aim at accreditor criteria related to diversity and equity while calling for new requirements of what he called “intellectual diversity” in faculty. He also called on U.S. Secretary Linda McMahon to “resume recognizing new accreditors to increase competition and accountability.”
- The order was part of a bevy of higher education-related executive orders that Trump signed late Wednesday night affecting different aspects of the sector, including workforce development and historically Black colleges.
Dive Insight:

In his order on accreditation, Trump decried the quality-control bodies as “the gatekeepers that decide which colleges and universities American students can spend the more than $100 billion in Federal student loans and Pell Grants dispersed each year.”

He accused the organizations of having “failed in this responsibility to students, families, and American taxpayers,” and also of having “abused their enormous authority.”

In the order, Trump launched into a 350-word castigation of accreditors’ diversity, equity and inclusion criteria.

He specifically named the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, which accredits medical programs, and the American Bar Association’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, which accredits law schools.

The ABA is suing the U.S. Department of Justice over allegations the department canceled federal grants as retaliation for the association “taking positions the current Administration disfavors,” including its diversity requirements.

“Federal recognition will not be provided to accreditors engaging in unlawful discrimination in violation of Federal law,” Trump said in the order, without specifying which DEI criteria and laws may come in conflict.

Trump also directed McMahon to hold accreditors “accountable” by denying, monitoring, suspending or terminating of accreditation powers for those who “fail to meet the applicable recognition criteria or otherwise violate Federal law.”

His order specifically mandates that accreditors require institutions to use program data on student outcomes “without reference to race, ethnicity, or sex.”

Other elements of the order would smooth the path for federal recognition of new accreditors.

The order also includes a provision directing McMahon to ensure “institutions support and appropriately prioritize intellectual diversity amongst faculty in order to advance academic freedom, intellectual inquiry, and student learning.”

Trump also issued executive orders Wednesday on workforce development, artificial intelligence, foreign funding reporting requirements for colleges, and historically Black colleges and universities.

Trump’s accreditation order drew a fierce rebuke from the American Association of University Professors, among others.

Accreditors have been “important mechanisms for ensuring that academic institutions are accessible and inclusive, and provide high-quality education for all students,” the faculty group said in a statement Wednesday.

It added, “This executive order, however, uses the administration’s cruel and absurdist weaponization of antidiscrimination and civil rights law to prevent accrediting agencies from requiring that institutions take basic steps to ensure they are accessible to and inclusive of all students.”

AAUP President Todd Wolfson described the order’s call for “intellectual diversity” as “code for a partisan agenda that will muzzle faculty who do not espouse Trump’s ideological agenda.”

Sameer Gadkaree, president of The Institute for College Access & Success, similarly condemned the order, saying that it “undermines the aspects of the accreditation process that are designed to protect classroom instruction from political interference.”

Gadkaree also panned the order’s ban on using demographic data to evaluate programs, warning that without that option “accreditors — along with researchers, evaluators, and policymakers — will lack the information they need to truly assess quality.”

Responses from the accreditation sector were quieter, but they defended the work of accreditors.

Accreditor’s DEI standards are “predicated on institutions implementing such requirements in accordance with applicable state and federal laws,” the Council of Regional Accrediting Commissions said in a statement Wednesday.

C-RAC called for the order’s required changes to be worked out through the Education Department’s negotiated rulemaking process, which brings together higher education representatives to hash out policy details. The organization also pointed to the regulated process for removing accreditor recognition, noting, “Ultimately, concerns about accreditor recognition can be escalated to federal court.”

The Council for Higher Education Accreditation, an industry group that both vets and advocates for accrediting bodies, issued a statement Wednesday largely describing the work, standards and innovation already in place at accreditors and institutions.

“Our focus is and always will be academic assurances,” said Cynthia Jackson Hammond, the organization’s president. “CHEA-recognized accreditation organizations meet those standards.”

She closed by saying, “The independence of the accreditation process is essential in order to preserve and protect the integrity of quality assurance in higher education.”
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April 24, 2025
Medical Journals Now Reportedly Under Government Scrutiny

The Trump administration now appears to be targeting medical journals, questioning at least three different publications about how they represent “competing viewpoints” and assess the influence of funding organizations like the National Institutes of Health on submitted papers, MedPage Today reported.

Republican activist Edward Martin Jr., who is currently serving as interim U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., sent a letter to CHEST Journal and at least two other unnamed publications earlier this month demanding answers to a series of questions about their processes and practices.

“It has been brought to my attention that more and more journals and publications like CHEST Journal are conceding that they are partisans in various scientific debates—that is, that they have a position for which they are advocating either due to advertisement (under postal code) or sponsorship (under relevant fraud regulations),” Martin wrote. “The public has certain expectations and you have certain responsibilities.”

The letter then requested answers by May 2 to questions including “Do you accept articles or essays from competing viewpoints?“ and “How do you handle allegations that authors of works in your journals may have misled their readers?”

“I am also interested to know if publishers, journals, and organizations with which you work are adjusting their method of acceptance of competing viewpoints,” Martin wrote. “Are there new norms being developed and offered?”

CHEST is a peer-reviewed journal published by the American College of Chest Physicians that produces articles on such subjects as pulmonary hypertension, lung cancer and obstructive sleep apnea.

Martin’s letter “should send a chill down the spine of scientists and physicians,” Adam Gaffney, a pulmonary and critical care physician who has published in CHEST, told MedPage Today. “It is yet another example of the Trump administration’s effort to control academic inquiry and stifle scientific discourse—an administration, it warrants mentioning, that has embraced medical misinformation and pseudoscience to reckless effect. Journal editors should join together and publicly renounce this as yet more thinly guised anti-science political blackmail.”

JT Morris, a senior supervising attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, told MedPage Today that the First Amendment clearly protects CHEST’s independence.

“A publication’s editorial decisions are none of the government’s business, whether it’s a newspaper or a medical journal,” he said. “Like with any bully, the best response is to stand up to them—and that includes officials who try to intimidate Americans into parroting the government’s view. The First Amendment packs a powerful punch, and it has these medical journals’ backs.”

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April 22, 2025
Bank holiday reading: Government control of US universities
- Gill Evans is Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History at the University of Cambridge.
In early March 2025, the Trump administration sent letters to 60 US universities warning them that they faced ‘potential enforcement actions’ for what it described as ‘failure to protect Jewish students on campus’ during the widespread pro-Palestinian protests on campuses during the last year. This Government direction not only permitted terms to be set on which continuing funding was to be conditional for a specific higher education provider, but also allowed those terms to encroach on the academic freedom of an institution to choose what to teach and how. This ‘Project 2025’ also allowed the President to require a significant proportion of funding to go to the provision of ‘business’ courses.

There were wider consequences of these Government directions. The resulting limitation of funding for research quickly prompted hints of restricted publication of results and encouraged US academics to seek employment in Canada, the UK and Europe.

Though it was joined in its active resistance by Yale and Princeton, Harvard became a test case. It objected to the Government demand that it immediately agree:

to implement the Trump administration’s demands to overhaul the University’s governance and leadership, academic programs, admissions system, hiring process, and discipline system—with the promise of more demands to come

and thus ‘overtly seek to impose on Harvard University political views and policy preferences advanced by the Trump administration and commit the University to punishing disfavored speech’. [1] The US Education Department speedily responded, announcing on 14 April that it was freezing about $2.3bn of Harvard’s funding. On 15 April, Trump threatened to remove Harvard’s tax-exempt status,

US universities are divided into the ‘private’ and ‘public’ on the basis of their funding and therefore differ in the extent to which they are at risk of loss of funding in attacks on their academic freedom. The ‘private’ Ivy League universities enjoy substantial endowments, making them less dependent on their supplementary Government funding than their ‘public’ counterparts.

The Office for Students funds and regulates higher education in England. MEDR, the Welsh Commission for Tertiary Education and Research, funds and regulates higher education in Wales, taking these responsibilities over from the former Higher Education Funding Council for Wales. The counterpart body for Scotland is the Scottish Funding Council. This depends on the Scottish Government for the funding it disburses to providers.

English higher education providers enjoy an institutional autonomy, strengthened by the fact that Government funding for English higher education was greatly reduced with the progressive ending of a ‘block grant’ under the Higher Education Act of 2004 and the raising of tuition fees in 2012. That was replaced by much higher student tuition fees under the Higher Education and Research Act of 2017.

Under the same legislation the autonomy of higher education providers in England is protected, with express reference to their right to design their own courses, choose their students and appoint their academic staff. This extends to higher education at tertiary education levels 4 and 5 as well as to ‘degree-level’ 6 and postgraduate degrees at levels 7 and 8.

This legislative permission does not allow a free-for-all. ‘University’ is a ‘sensitive term’ in English law, as are ‘higher’ and ‘accreditation’ when used of education. New providers may grant their own degrees and call themselves ‘universities’ only if they have powers to do so. In the case of new providers that requires Registration by the Office for Students (OfS). The OfS is subject only to ‘guidance on strategic priorities from the Department for Education’, though its activity is open to expressions of Parliamentary concern. For example, on 2 April 2025, the House of Commons debated ‘the impact of university finances on jobs in higher education’. It was suggested that ‘the funding model, which depends on international students paying higher fees, has harmed universities since Brexit’, but it was recognised that only public funding and such broad policy preferences lay with the Government.

The accreditation of qualifications in the UK is the responsibility of a number of agencies, some of which are professional and some are public bodies. In the USA ‘relying on private, independent accrediting agencies has been the most important tool for preventing the centralized political control of higher education in the United States’. The authority of the Trump directive over these seemed clear at first.

What protects the institutional autonomy of US Universities? The nearest US counterpart to the Office for Students is the Higher Learning Commission, an independent agency founded in 1895. It accredits institutions granting degrees. The University of Michigan, for example seeks renewal of its accreditation from the Higher Learning Commission every ten years. Its ‘evaluations’ are conducted by reviewers from other institutions not the HLC itself.

The award of ‘University title’ and degree-awarding powers is not restricted in the US as it is in England. For example they may derive from a Charter establishing the institution. Its own Charter granted the Trustees of Columbia University degree-awarding powers and powers to create such:

ordinances and by-laws which to them shall seem expedient for carrying into effect the designs of their institution; Provided always, That such ordinances or by-laws shall not make the religious tenets of any person a condition of admission to any privilege or office in the said college, nor be inconsistent with the constitution and laws of this state, nor with the constitution and laws of the United States.

Private US universities

The privately funded Ivy League Universities were set up with a degree of constitutional independence. Each had a State-based beginning. Harvard was established as a College by the General Court of Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636 with funding of £400. Its stated purpose was to ensure that the Puritans should be provided with educated ministers, by advancing ‘learning’ to meet the needs of ‘posterity’ and to avoid leaving churches with ‘an illiterate ministry’. Princeton, founded in 1746 by the Presbyterian Synod as the College of New Jersey, had its name changed to Princeton University in 1896. Its present charter dates from 1748. It too has Trustees. In an age when it could be expected that those arriving from England would be practising members of the Church of England, it was insistent about religious freedom:

Petitioners have also expressed their earnest Desire that those of every Religious Denomination may have free and Equal Liberty and Advantage in the Said College any different Sentiments in Religion notwithstanding.

Columbia, too, began as a College. It was granted a Royal Charter in 1754, making its governors a ‘body corporate’. In 1912, the corporate name was changed to ‘Columbia University’. A series of amendments followed, with an Act of the people of the State of New York in 1810 clarifying the position. Its Trustees were to form ‘a body politic and corporate’ ‘in the City of New York’, with ‘continual succession for ever’ and a common seal. The powers of its Trustees as governors were set out in detail, separating them decisively from the ‘professors’ and ‘tutors ‘. The Trustees were to:

have full power and authority to direct and prescribe the course of study, and the discipline to be observed in the said college, and also to select by ballot or otherwise, a president of the said college, who shall hold his office during good behavior,

but no ‘professor, tutor, or other assistant officer’ was to be a Trustee. There was to be an executive body, consisting of eleven of the Trustees, constituting ‘a quorum for the despatch of all [routine] business’.

Its Statutes include a ‘Code of Academic Freedom and Tenure’:

Academic freedom implies that all officers of instruction are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subjects; that they are entitled to freedom in research and in the publication of its results; and that they may not be penalized by the University for expressions of opinion or associations in their private or civic capacity; but they should bear in mind the special obligations arising from their position in the academic community.

In March 2025, seeking to force the University of Columbia to comply with his instructions, the President of the USA withdrew $400m of federal funding. Nine specific ’reforms’ had been called for in this case, including a change of Departmental Head and modifications to its provision of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies. A Senior Vice-Provost was to review the educational programmes.

The University published a statement of its own view that certain ‘protests in academic buildings, and other places necessary for the conduct of University activities, are generally not acceptable under the Rules of University Conduct’ because of the likelihood of disrupting academic activities’. Yet Columbia acceded to the Trump administration’s demands, including an agreement to expand ‘intellectual diversity’ as ‘defined by the Trump administration’.

Princeton spoke of resistance when the ‘Trump administration suspended dozens of grants to the University from several agencies, including the Department of Energy, NASA, and the Department of Defense’, pending ‘an investigation into antisemitism on campus’. Yale too declared its resistance in a letter signed by 900 of its Faculty, protesting at ‘unlawful demands that threaten academic freedom and university self-governance’. On March 31, Cornell published an op-ed by its President in the New York Times, describing the point which had been made in the interests of freedom of speech when the University held a Panel conversation exploring ‘pathways to peace’ for Israel and Palestine.

On 24 March, the American Association of University Professors and Democracy Forward explained the decision to litigate. On 11 April 202,5 Harvard began its own litigation about ‘the Trump administration’s unlawful and unprecedented misuse of federal funding and civil rights enforcement authority to undermine academic freedom and free speech on a university campus’. It complained that on March 31 ‘an investigation of Harvard University’ had been announced and on April 3 this had been followed by an order to ‘adopt a list of vague yet sweeping programmatic and structural changes to university management, operations, and curriculum’ as a condition of the University continuing to be the ‘recipient’ of $9 billion ‘federal taxpayer dollars’.

Harvard argued that the Government had failed to take the required preliminary steps under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. These requirements, it pointed out, existed because ‘Congress recognized that allowing federal agencies to hold funding hostage, or to cancel it cavalierly, would give them dangerously broad power in a system in which institutions depend so heavily upon federal funding’. It pointed out that the Trump administration had:

frozen over $1 billion in funding for Cornell University and $790 million for Northwestern University, with an even more shocking lack of process, not even purporting to issue communications providing notice under Title VI or any other legal authority.

Public US universities

US public universities are subject to national Government control as recipients of Government funding. State legislation about them is also significant. The University of North Carolina was established by legislation in 1789, becoming America’s first public university. Its many schools and offshoots were brought together by the North Carolina General Assembly in 1972. The Constitution of the State of Texas states that its legislature shall ‘establish, organise and provide for the maintenance, support, and direction of a University of the first class’ with a new ‘undergraduate curriculum’ and also ‘establish a more demanding standard for leadership of academic departments and research centres’. As a public research university, the University of Texas at Austin (founded 1883) now describes itself as ‘the flagship institution of the University of Texas System’.

Conclusion

A wise US university makes provision to respond to both Government and State supervision. Michigan has a Vice President for Government Relations, acting ‘as the university’s bridge between local, state, and federal governments’. Its ‘State Relations team is committed to building and nurturing strong relationships with state government officials and agencies’, seeking ‘to secure funding, influence policy, and represent the university’s interests in state-level discussions. It also has a Federal Relations team ‘dedicated to fostering and maintaining collaborative relationships between the university and federal government entities including the U.S. Congress’. It too has been subject to Donald Trump’s demands and has stopped the successful diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) program it has run since 2016, and closed the office it had set up to deal with it.

It remains to be seen how far the present President of the USA will succeed in enlarging Government control of the nation’s institutions of higher education by linking direction of academic activity with their funding. Former President Barack Obama did not hesitate to express his support for Harvard, calling Trump’s action ‘unlawful and ham-handed‘.

[1] Harvard Faculty Chapter, and American Association of University Professors v. United States Department of Justice, filed 11 April, 2025.
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April 18, 2025