Tag: heart

We want to make that heart beat more strongly

When people look at the apparently frenetic itineraries for our SUs study tours, we’re often met with confusion about why we would even attempt to visit so many cities in so few days.

This year we managed to fit in fifteen university cities in five days across Germany, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and both halves of Belgium – avoiding low bridges and Belgian traffic, and re-routing around the worst of Storm Goretti on a chartered bus whose toilet had frozen up.

In total we probably spent about 24 hours on the road with our driver Rene, which on first sight looks like an agenda full of dead time which could have been better spent immersing more deeply with our numerous hosts.

Sometimes the journeys are a good opportunity for a nap, or to sneak a look at emails, or to catch up on the gossip or just to stare out of the window at pretty houses in Spreitenbach.

But that time on the bus can also be a great time to look at and reflect on what we don’t see, the things we’re not told, the things that don’t make it onto the slide deck or into the tours and talks that we’re treated to by our largely student hosts.

Some of us started the week in Munich, which provided the excuse to while away at least one journey looking at the Technical University of Munich (TUM)’s Agenda 2030 strategy and teaching model.

On most programmes students choose from a bunch of “Plug-In Modules” – short courses designed to give students from one discipline a window into another – and one of the most popular ones is called “Politics for Rocket Scientists”, an introduction to political science for people who aren’t political scientists.

It’s a three contact hours a week, 6 ECTS (12 UK CATS) “lecture” module, an hour of which is chalk and talk by research-active political scientists, while students from later semesters in politics run “exercise” sessions.

Assessment takes the form of a ninety-minute closed-book exam – mainly a multiple choice quiz with a couple of open-ended questions – and it’s graded on the German system of 1.0, 1.3, 1.7, 2.0, 2.3, 2.7, 3.0, 3.3, 3.7, or 4.0. And you can retake that exam unlimited times until you pass.

Every year that it runs, a joke which we reckon is funnier in German is used to open the first module:

Welcome to Politics for Rocket Scientists. We also run Rocket Science for Politicians, but that one is less popular.

TUM has won awards for its teaching, where the academic model reflects its guiding principle of human-centered engineering – aimed at providing students with sufficient “integrative valency and educational capacity” to benefit the natural, engineering, life and economic sciences as well as society more generally.

The structure – which sees bachelor’s students only studying for about half of their credits in their “major” – also sees students separately acquire credit in “soft” skills, academic induction, out-duction to the labour market and electives in related subjects.

Students who are earning while learning on the peer teaching team are trained in the latest pedagogical techniques and take part in the university’s annual teaching innovation competition, all of which is both great for their development and for improving outcomes.

The structure ensures that some of the research active academics can continue their work without having to sustain entire degree programmes or departments framed around their own specialism. And the university’s student-staff ratio? 40.7.

Students need some context

There were plenty more like that. At our first official stop – Universität St. Gallen in Switzerland – every student, regardless of their main subject, has to complete 24 ECTS of “Contextual Studies” chosen from areas like Creativity, Technologies, Cultures and Responsibility. Neither the SU President nor his huge team of elected student officers and “teamies” were paid – but had the time to undertake their roles because the learning from them counts in the structure.

At the University of Twente in the Netherlands, the final third of the bachelor’s programme is genuinely elective – minors, free choices, preparation for different master’s routes. Students also get real control over how they learn – which projects to pursue, which workshops to attend, and when to study. Much of the scaffolding is labelled “Student-Driven Learning”, and almost always involves problem-oriented group project work that students enjoy rather than resent.

In France in 2017 the government launched Nouveaux Cursus à l’Université – New University Curricula – with funding distributed through competitive bids to fund undergraduate curriculum transformation. The core concept is “progressive specialisation”, where students specialise gradually rather than choosing narrow tracks at eighteen, with built-in gateways between different qualification routes, and flexible routes that can combine higher technical and academic tracks.

At KU Leuven in Belgium, the final four weeks of each semester are reserved for “lab courses” where students integrate knowledge across subjects and connect it to society. At the University of Maastricht, students don’t spend hours in lectures – they meet twice a week in tutorial groups of ten to fifteen, working through cases where assessment might be participation, presentations, essays, or exams, but where the emphasis is on whether students can use what they’ve learned.

Bits of all of this exist in the UK, of course, and there’s plenty to be proud of when we compare some of the facilities, support systems and services that we have built in the name of “student experience” back home. But while all of these systems are under financial pressure (everyone in Europe, it seems, wants a better education population but taxpayers are reluctant to fund it), what we didn’t find was a hurtle towards “do it all” 15 ECTS (30 CATS) modules to fit a forthcoming funding system and a rapid erosion of student choice.

More often, we found ways of delivering efficiency that were about giving students educational and social responsibility.

Maybe their Bologna-addled minds have been warped into collaborative conformity while the UK forges ahead alone by bolstering its reputation for excellence by overloading academics. But it was hard not to feel the impacts of isolation as visit after visit casually mentioned pan-European university alliances, compulsory mobility semesters, degrees that can be built from credit from multiple universities in multiple countries and systems that sustain student leaders whose English was often better than ours.

At various points, we were asked what they might learn from us. What not to do was the theme of our answers.

Money honey

Sometimes on the trips, there’s things to steal. The pot of honey we were all given on arrival in Mulhouse was created by a project aimed at causing academic and vocational students from multiple universities to interact with craft and small industry experts in the region, with a beehive in the garden of the regionally-run halls. Maybe there’s a way to get something similar going back home.

The international student spaces we saw in Wageningen and Leuven combined space for associations, facilities for cooking and seating for studying – as a set of (comparatively) skeleton set of staff to facilitate student-run study sessions, cultural nights and interaction both between international students and with those from the home countries. We’d face questions about risk assessments and students’ willingness to get involved – but there’s a pilot in there somewhere.

The posters up in Strasbourg asking students if they thought all the hours they were having to work were “normal”, the student (and staff) arts centre in the middle of an ostensibly STEM-oriented university, the student-run city-centre study spaces projects we saw in different forms, the lighting and the furniture and the St Gallen symposium – they’re all worthy of a try, if we can find the time.

Sometimes those long journeys between stops allow us to wallow not in possibility but its opposite – it’s the culture of the country, it’s a hundred years of history, it’s the funding system or the governance of student services away from the academic endeavour that produces the Truman show of magic in the powerpoints and presentations that must mask worse mental health problems and higher attrition than we enjoy in the UK.

But sometimes the projects – like the one at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich – were the antidote to such moments of pessimism.

Easier and more enjoyable

In the autumn of 2021, Sarah Hofer – a researcher who had previously documented how teaching methods rather than student ability explained vast gender gaps in physics performance – returned to ETH as a professor.

She quickly got to know the student board at VMP – the maths and physics student association – which has been making studying easier and more enjoyable for its members for 80 years.

Somewhere between an academic society and a set of course reps, it’s a bit of associative scaffolding that runs its own little welcome week, offers group social mentoring on arrival, provides old exams and organizes assessment preparation courses, and puts on poker and chess tournaments, fondue nights, parties and barbecues. And the VMP offers its members one free coffee a day at its lounge on campus.

It also stages its own careers fair, holds formal representation on departmental governance structures including the Departement conference (the highest departmental body), teaching committees, and grading conferences where exam standards are set.

It has working groups on sustainability and conduct, it has a project that focuses on equal opportunities through coffee lectures with professors, organises company excursions and social gatherings for computational science students, and supports international and master’s students with practical issues like housing and supervision.

Events include weekly talks on theoretical physics, an undergraduate colloquium with student presentations and apéro (think wine, beer, soft drinks, nibbles, and light finger food), as well as social events like ski weekends, fondue nights, and poker tournaments. Its student magazine VAMP publishes twice a semester in print and digital formats. And so on.

Unlike in the UK, where much of what it offers would be delivered for students by professionals in separate centrally-run departments inside student services or the SU, the assumption is that peer delivery backed up by the centre and associatively scaffolded at faculty level is good for the volunteers, good for belonging, good for innovation and good for students. Broadway musicals fail – school plays sell out.

And for Sarah Hofer, it was the perfect partner for operationalising some of her research.

No dumb questions

The idea was simple – create “exercise class” groups aimed at students who self-assessed as having less prior knowledge and/or imposter syndrome, where students facilitating would spend more time on fundamentals and where a “there are no dumb questions” culture was explicit rather than aspirational.

The pilot worked. Participants who might have been expected to underperform passed at higher rates than for the cohort overall, all via an intervention that was part-belonging, part-pedagogical and part-confidence building, changing the composition of the room so that nobody has to perform competence they don’t feel.

Workshops train TAs to think about what stops people asking questions – the group composition means there’s less stopping them. The research had said teaching methods were the barrier, not student ability. The recognition that heterogeneous prior knowledge makes some students fall silent, and that silence compounds, had found an outlet in a student society.

When Hofer left ETH for LMU Munich less than a year later, the initiative didn’t leave with her. VSETH kept running it. The SU now provides significant implementation infrastructure – recruiting student TAs, coordinating with departments, embedding it in their broader educational development work.

A working group – AG Fokusgruppen – sits under VSETH and works through the faculty student associations. Klara Sasse, who became the key student lead, was simultaneously active in VMP (the maths and physics faculty association, established over 80 years ago). Her dual positioning mattered – she could advocate at university level while having credibility and networks within the specific departments where focus groups needed to be implemented.

Departments have adopted it enthusiastically – Physics merged it with their existing Exercise Class Market infrastructure – but ownership remains with the SU. Klara has since become VSETH Vice President, VMP President, and Head of Communications at VSS (the national Swiss student union), and won second place in ETH’s individual Diversity Award 2024. The focus groups themselves won third place in the organisation category the same year.

I could KOKO

We heard so many stories like it during the week. They were rarely about responding to regulation, or delivering on KPIs, or lobbying the university to “provide” more for students. They were more often about students having the associative infrastructure – not so small as a course rep, not so large as a university-wide SU or student services department – to do things for each other.

Sometimes, ECTS credits were on offer. Sometimes students were paid for their work. One system saw students financially supported to pause while serving others for a semester. But almost without fail, when we interrogated why those in front of us had got involved, the money or the time or the academic recognition were always second-order hygiene. The real answer was always that they wanted to be the person that had first helped them.

At student social association KOKO in Maastricht, student chair Japke Zoon directs the board, oversees policy implementation, and maintains contact with Maastricht University, Zuyd University of Applied Sciences, the municipality, and other key partners. Sophie van Oosterhout oversees the bar committee, the club building, and safety during activities and parties.

Both Japke and Sophie were viscerally impressive and eminently employable – but it wasn’t really the things in their job descriptions that mattered the most. In conversation, it was the student who needed support, the first year that was thinking about dropping out, the international student who felt lonely, and the neurodiverse students who found a way to socialise with those who weren’t. Sophie was responsible for changing a barrel, but she was really responsible for other students’ success.

Cecile Kwekeu took the mic next – Secretary and Academic Co-Comissionier of SCOPE, the official study association of the university’s School of Business and Economics. She’s 20, originally from a small city in Germany, and got involved when she went to a Maastricht Business Days event:

As Academic Commissioner, my mission is simple: make sure our events actually help you grow. Whether it’s soft skills like communication and networking or hard skills like analytical thinking, I want to create opportunities that matter – both now and down the road. This year, I’m heading up some exciting projects including the Symposium, Consulting Case Challenge, Business Case Challenges, Career Development Days, and our Brussels Trip.

She also talks of building better systems, streamlining processes, and making sure her team can get the most out of student life. She and over 350 students like her across the university are helped by a bit of scaffolding that allows students to pause their studies to undertake an association board year or semester – and in turn, they support thousands of students to support others through projects, groups, committees and events.

The cold never bothered me anyway

None of it should be a surprise. Plenty of academic theory tells us that whole chunks of our lives have become increasingly hyper-organised, professionalised, and compliance-driven, adopting formal structures, metrics, and professionally-led processes that mirror “good organisation” norms but unintentionally erode amateur-led energy.

Money, measurement, risk management, staffing growth, and symbolic compliance often displace informal, trust-based activity. There’s evidence from wider civic life that shows that declining volunteering, loss of social infrastructure and low institutional trust is part of a broader hollowing-out of associational life, and has deep impacts on mental health, trust in governments and attitudes to others.

Increasingly, what we do in adult life is what students do – taking part in technically excellent but tightly controlled, professionally-run, highly transactional service provision – and in doing so there’s a crowding out of participation, a reduction in social solidarity and a widening of the intention–behaviour gap for those who might otherwise help others.

Letting go is hard. The pressure on UK students’ time is real. The regulation demands safety, the funding follows the metrics, and everyone remembers that time when that thing went wrong before the grown-ups took control. But this is less about letting go, and more about creating the conditions for student success.

Live and kick-in

When Frans van Vught got elected as Rector Magnificus of the University of Twente back in 1997, he inherited a technical university with declining student numbers, fragmented departments, a huge hole in the budget and a culture that had attempted to fix things by doing more centrally:

Campus life was bureaucratically controlled by a campus director. Not much was allowed, there were closing times, and students had to apply for permits for all kinds of things. I found that very unappealing. I felt that as a campus, or rather as a university community, we should be able to do better than that. Let the students organise things themselves.

Many encouraged Van Vught to retain the systems and structures that had been built up, only to operate them more efficiently. Instead, he set about shifting the culture both academically and socially – designing structures and scaffolds that would sustain a collaborative community with benefits both for individuals too.

And after his own study visit with some of his student associations to Queens in Belfast, he returned and set up the SU, giving it (against available advice) a raft of responsibilities previously assumed to be the university’s – all on the condition (agreed in a covenant) that they found student groups to run them.

“Universities have to take care not to become a bundle of non-communicating hyperspecialisms”, he said on the day he retired – bearing the scars on his back from a radical restructure:

[Students] are a very important part of the academic community and I think it’s important that they take their own responsibility… we have increased cohesion in student activism and increased the community feeling for the university as a whole.

Today, the SU hosts a student-led outreach and talent development programme for secondary school pupils, a £0.5m student run “kick in” welcome programme designed to build belonging, study space facilities across the city and hundreds of other student committees that operate everything from student support to PC repairs to the world’s biggest case competition.

The wider academic infrastructure helps. Every department gives space to an an academic student association on the basis that students need a “home” to work together in. On their courses, students work in multiple teams over extended periods, encouraging early peer bonding, a sense of belonging, and shared responsibility, reducing anonymity and social isolation.

There’s an emphasis on collaboration, role negotiation, and joint problem-solving that develops interpersonal skills like communication, empathy, and conflict management, while the coaching role of staff an integrated authentic assessment structure strengthens confidence, creativity, self-efficacy, and emotional resilience by providing an environment where students learn from mistakes and high-stakes pressure is reduced.

On the tours, we often pick up the differences in dual systems between elite universities and their old ideals of education for education’s sake, and newer players in the applied sciences who focus on labour-market prep. On paper, Twente ought to have been the most individualistic, transactional, skills-for-the-CV provider on the trip. But it wasn’t.

The Netherlands has a much higher percentage of students working while studying than the UK. Belgian and French students are just as likely to be struggling with the costs of living. Students in Luxembourg find it difficult to afford their placements, and Bavarian students are attempting to rent the most expensive student bedrooms in Germany. Even Swiss students struggle to maintain the sort of student experience that their parents said was possible.

But while HE and student funding was never far from the top of the lists of problems on the slides, it was also repeatedly obvious that the spaces and structures deliberately designed to create collaboration, engender responsibility and operate autonomously were helping to ensure that students were both transformed by their education, and were helping to transform both their university and their municipality as a result.

Society concerns social relationships and civic participation. Social networks provide support and contribute to quality of life. It is also important that everyone can participate in society, and trust other people, the government and other institutions.

Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reports that in 2024, 49.5 per cent of the population aged 15+ did voluntary work for an organisation or association at least once in the previous year – and it’s much higher for graduates. In the end, both in the university and the country, isn’t HE partly about the community you’re trying to create?

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January 12, 2026
Teaching students how to talk: why dialogue belongs at the heart of higher education

UK universities are under mounting financial pressure. Join HEPI and King’s College London Policy Institute on 11 November 2025 at 1pm for a webinar on how universities balance relatively stable but underfunded income streams against higher-margin but volatile sources. Register now. We look forward to seeing you there.

This blog was kindly authored by Estefania Gamarra, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, and Marion Heron Associate Professor in Educational Linguistics, both from the University of Surrey Institute of Education. It was also authored by Harriet R. Tenenbaum Professor in Developmental and Social Psychology and Lewis Baker Senior Lecturer in Chemical and Process Engineering – Foundation Year, both from the University of Surrey.

Today’s higher education sector faces a need to increase student progression and improve retention. This goal is especially necessary for Foundation Year programmes. A proposed solution is active learning. Yet amid the push to make lectures more interactive, one approach stands out – dialogue.

Dialogue transforms students from passive listeners into active participants. But while universities increasingly encourage discussion in classrooms and put students in pairs, they often overlook a crucial question: do students know how to talk to each other in academic contexts?

For years, the emphasis has been on teaching students how to write academically, while teaching them how to engage in academic talk – how to reason aloud, build on others’ ideas, and disagree respectfully – has been largely ignored. Academic dialogue is not a natural skill: it is a learnt one. For many students, particularly those from ethnic minoritised or first-generation backgrounds, the language of higher education can feel like a second language. Expecting them to navigate complex, often implicit norms of discussion without support risks reproducing the very inequalities universities seek to address.

What we mean by educational dialogue

Educational dialogue refers to purposeful, structured talk that supports reasoning, collaboration, and shared understanding. It differs from casual conversation because it asks participants to listen actively, build connections between ideas, and make their thinking explicit. In this way, dialogue makes learning visible – students co-construct understanding through talk.

Despite a growing body of research in schools showing the benefits of educational dialogue for reasoning, collaboration, and attainment, there has been little work examining how this plays out in higher education. Our project, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, aimed to fill that gap by exploring how Foundation Year students across six UK universities talk to one another when given structured opportunities for dialogue – and whether a targeted intervention could enhance the quality of these interactions.

What we found

We observed clear disciplinary differences in the ways students engaged in dialogue. Psychology students, for instance, tended to make more connections to topics beyond the classroom, while Engineering students often built on one another’s ideas in a collaborative effort to solve the problems presented. Recognising these differences is crucial: subject cultures shape how students learn to talk, and this understanding can help educators design more inclusive, discipline-sensitive approaches to active learning. At the same time, if our goal is to prepare students for an increasingly interdisciplinary world, we must also help them become aware of how other disciplines talk and encourage them to develop the flexibility to communicate across disciplinary boundaries.

The intervention itself had a tangible effect. Discussion time increased, and we observed a higher frequency of dialogic moves such as connecting ideas and making reasoning explicit. In simple terms, students were not just talking more; they were engaging in higher-quality dialogue.

Both students and teachers noticed the change. Students reported greater confidence in contributing to class discussions and felt more comfortable expressing disagreement respectfully. Teachers in the intervention group described classroom talk as ‘more professional’ and ‘more purposeful’, noting that students participated more readily and that discussions felt more structured.

Why this matters for policy

These findings underscore a simple yet powerful message: if universities want students to collaborate effectively and communicate professionally, they must teach them how to talk.

This is not merely a matter of classroom technique but of educational equity. All students are expected to adopt the norms of academic discourse without being taught what these norms are. By treating dialogue as a teachable skill – much like academic writing – universities can make participation more equitable and support a sense of belonging for all learners.

Embedding educational dialogue within curricula also has broader policy implications. It aligns directly with the sector’s commitments to widening participation, student engagement, and the development of graduate attributes. In an increasingly interdisciplinary world, helping students learn how to communicate across disciplinary and cultural boundaries is not an optional extra – it is essential preparation for both professional and civic life.

A call to action

Universities already invest heavily in teaching academic writing. It is time to afford talk the same status. Embedding structured opportunities for educational dialogue – and explicitly teaching the skills that underpin it – can help create classrooms where every student, regardless of background, can find and use their voice.

If higher education is serious about inclusion, engagement, and progression, it must teach students not just what to say, but how to say it.

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November 4, 2025
Head or Heart? How do applicants make decisions about higher education?

The blog was kindly authored by Jenny Shaw, Director of Higher Education External Engagement at Unite Students.

Thousands of new undergraduates are taking their first steps into higher education, but what has brought them there? Have they weighed up all the evidence, or have they followed their heart? The answer is, of course, much more complicated.

The Unite Students Applicant Index, in partnership with HEPI, has tracked the experiences of prospective students since 2022, and this year we asked applicants to tell us, in their own words, why they chose their first-choice higher education provider. An initial analysis seemed to hint at the Teaching Excellence Framework’s influence on international students, but a subsequent deep-dive using inductive coding found a more complex and sometimes surprising story that reveals applicants’ desires, concerns and ambitions.

Academic excellence

International applicants tended to use terms such as academic excellence, good quality teaching or that the provider was best or excellent for a specific field of study. Some expressed their admiration of academic staff: expert faculty; very excellent teaching team. A few Chinese students described their chosen provider as zhuānyè, translated as ‘professional’ but which also implies specialist expertise.

While a few UK students talk positively about teaching in general, for example great academics; good education, their comments more often refer to a specific course. Frequent comments such as top rated for my course or it’s good for psychology suggest that subject-level rankings hold more weight than overall teaching quality.

Additionally, about one in four international applicants, though a much smaller proportion of those from the UK, are primarily motivated by overall reputation or prestige. International applicants tend to cite the fame of their chosen university and its place in international or UK rankings. UK applicants tend to be less specific, for example good uni; its reputation and they sometimes use the Russell Group as a signal of high reputation. They also rely on word of mouth or their own perception: I’ve heard good things; It seemed the best.

Another common motivation for provider choice is linked to the course of study, independent of course quality. This theme includes the availability of specific or niche course, the structure or content of a course, or a provider that offers an appealing range of courses. For a few international applicants, the provider has been recommended to them for a specific subject discipline.

Location, location, location

UK applicants have similar motivations, but their choice is more likely to be contingent on location. This could take the form of having to choose the best option that is commutable: It has forensic psychology as a study choice and it isn’t too far from home; or the course being a co-equal motivator alongside the location: I like the course and the city.

Location more broadly is a major motivation for UK applicants both as a primary and a secondary factor. For some, this is driven by the need to find a provider that is within commuting distance. But the theme also includes the choice of a particular location among UK applicants that reflects their own priorities and lifestyle preferences. This is in line with the growing importance of independence as a motivator: elsewhere in the survey almost 3 in 10 cite becoming more independent as a top motivator for going into higher education. While location can be a motivator for international applicants it is much less common and can be linked to personal recommendations or links to family and friends.

A few applicants were motivated by the supportiveness of a provider. This included being diverse which we know from the Living Black at University report can be important to applicants from racially minoritised groups. Having good support for international students was also mentioned. A few spoke about mental health or disability support, or just the perception of the university and its staff being understanding or lovely.

Employability is a surprisingly rare motivator. While other survey questions show the importance of employability generally, it’s surprisingly absent as a reason to choose a specific provider. When cited, it usually relates to the university’s offer or services around employability skills. Only occasionally it relates to the university’s track record of graduate employment.

Vibe check

However, a more common theme is the nebulous ‘vibe’, a theme that covers a range of emotionally-driven motivations. This may be a particular aesthetic on campus, sense of good fit or a lifestyle preference, and is surprisingly popular as a primary factor as well as being a secondary consideration in combination with other motivations. You may recognise it as a factor in your own higher education choices – I certainly do.

When it comes to the vibe, international applicants have a greater tendency to reference culture and perceptions of reputation: It has a long history and some beautiful buildings; Because it suits my style and it one of the best universities; The building is full of cultural atmosphere. They also express less specific sentiments such as: Great atmosphere; Because it is my ideal university.

UK applicants are more likely to say the university feels like a good fit or a comfortable place: It had a very welcoming feel; It looks like somewhere I’d fit in. They also express reasons that are less specific: Quite lowkey; I like the vibe; It’s soooooo cute. This may be a reflection of the importance of belonging in the student experience, and the higher levels of anxiety about belonging found among UK applicants elsewhere in the survey.

However, the last word should go to the applicants, both UK and international, who simply loved their chosen provider.

“This was my first choice because it has always been my goal and dream.”

“I love it!”

For them, this was reason enough.

You can read more from the Applicant Index at this link.

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September 29, 2025
Collaboration must be at the heart of regional growth

The importance of place in public policy has rarely been more visible.

From the UK Government’s growth missions and industrial strategy to devolution deals and innovation funding, there’s now a tangible recognition that universities must be seen as more than providers of education and research, but as strategic and proactive partners to drive regional and national growth.

Place is about people, relationships, and shared futures. Universities have a unique role to play, as civic institutions rooted in their communities and connected to the world.

When we speak about partnering for place, I believe we’re really talking about reimagining the social contract between universities and the places they serve. This goes beyond outreach or impact metrics. It’s about embedding collaboration into how we plan, how we invest, and how we think about our institutional purpose. It’s about taking time to understand our places – what is important to local leaders and communities, and to articulate clearly how we as universities can contribute. This is what I’m proud to say we’ve embodied at Newcastle University, in what is being increasingly described as a fourth generation university.

Fourth generation universities

Throughout history, universities have continually redefined their purpose. The first generation devoted itself to teaching, shaping minds for the future. The second generation advanced this mission, placing research at its core and unlocking new realms of knowledge. The third generation pushed further, embracing innovation and knowledge exchange to bridge academia with society.

Now, we stand at the dawn of fourth generation universities – institutions that unite all these strengths under one bold vision: working hand in hand with communities to create lasting, meaningful change. These universities don’t just educate – they inspire and empower. They nurture talent to prepare the workforce for the future in line with jobs needs, they spark innovation, and cultivate thriving local ecosystems that lift everyone.

Think of fourth-generation universities as catalysts for transformation – driving solutions, forging powerful partnerships, and delivering real impact that shapes a brighter, better future for us all.

She may not have used the same terminology, but this is effectively what the Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, was driving at in her letter to all vice chancellors following the Autumn Budget last year. In it, she made it clear that government expects universities to collaborate more, support economic growth, widen opportunities and deliver efficiencies, presenting a clear quid pro quo if the sector is to argue for further investment.

UNEE

It is timely then, that Universities UK has launched a new working group dedicated to Civic and Local Growth, of which I am a member and is chaired by our Vice Chancellor Chris Day. The enthusiasm across the sector for working with and for the places and communities we call home is manifest. Our challenge, however, is to move beyond showcasing individual success stories and toward articulating a coherent, collective offer from the sector: a vision for how universities, working together and with others, can shape the places they serve.

We must also do more to evidence the value we offer to policymakers and the public. This includes showing how all of us, regardless of the kind of university, or the different context, can collectively deliver greater economic and social impact.

Regional consortia are already starting to deliver this. Through Universities for North East England (UNEE) we are providing a unified voice for higher education and working with our mayoral authorities to make an even greater contribution towards shaping a more prosperous and resilient future for our region. Our strength lies in the diversity of each institution and our extensive global, national and regional networks. It is this collaboration, not competition, that will drive the economic, educational, social and cultural success of our cities, towns and wider region.

I am encouraged to hear similar examples from across the country, including Yorkshire Universities and Midlands Innovation. I believe we must build on this to ensure that voices are heard from all parts of the country if we are to establish resilient local economies.

People, communities, and their future

It would be remiss not to acknowledge the financial challenges facing our sector at the moment, and the reasons for this are well rehearsed. At such times, it is tempting to focus on our own needs ahead of prioritising partnership working. I would argue that now is exactly the time we should be partnering in place, not least because there is much we can learn from other local partners when it comes to dealing with, and adapting to, funding challenges. But also because it becomes much easier to make the case for further investment when taxpayers can see the value of higher education for their communities and feel the wider benefits that universities bring.

Ultimately, I maintain place is not just a policy priority. It’s personal. It’s about our people, our communities, and our futures. Collaboration is the key to unlocking our full potential and ensuring a sustainable future.

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August 31, 2025
Adapting With Heart | CUPA-HR
by CUPA-HR | April 14, 2025

Editor’s Note: This is the conclusion of a three-part series by Maureen De Armond, chief human resources officer at Des Moines University Medicine and Health Sciences, on adapting during changing times. The series begins with Adapting for Survival and Adapting With Purpose.

In Robert Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” the concept the main character — a professor — struggled with was identifying the essence of quality. Why did brilliant students sometimes turn in average work? How could average students sometimes produce brilliant work? He grappled with this riddle to the point of a breakdown, eventually concluding that the essence of quality is caring.

If you want something to be good, you must do it with care. This is a similar answer to the question, “Why did grandma’s cookies taste so good?” The answer is because she made them with love.

While caring is difficult to quantify, measure or predict, we know it when we see it, feel it and are on the receiving end of it. The employees we serve experience the same thing. As the saying goes, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

There is no state or federal law, no executive order, no external action that can regulate — let alone limit — our ability to care about the work we do and the people we support. At the local level, on our campuses, in our offices and during face-to-face interactions, we are still fully empowered to serve with compassion, empathy and care. People will notice.

Begin With Listening

There are likely many employee engagement and retention efforts that can be explored or revived that can help offset some of the workplace angst, increase HR’s visibility, and help the HR team feel like they are contributing in a meaningful way.

While below is a high-level list of ideas, HR teams should start by consulting with campus stakeholders. What would they love to see HR spend time and energy on? How can HR support them during these times of change and uncertainty?

Institutional branches of shared governance may have ideas. Include student affairs, academic affairs, affinity groups, deans and department heads, and others. With summer approaching, a pulse survey or a few focus groups may be helpful tools to collect the voice of campus customers and let their responses inform HR’s plan for the fall.

Some ideas to ponder:
- Expand your emphasis on well-being and mental health. Offer more trainings, partner with campus experts, summarize and package benefits, and dig into your EAP provider’s resources to maximize that benefit.
- Renew campus partnerships and collaborations in organizing employee events, such as bite-size topics for casual lunch and learns, book clubs, wellness events, and events that are just for fun and community-building (bingo, puzzles, drawing, afternoon walks, friendship bracelets, adult recess, etc.).
- Consider offering more soft-skill trainings, with input from your campus stakeholders on topics. These can include emotional intelligence, navigating change, stress management and mindfulness.
- Make a special effort to seek out ways to provide service to the institution, including attending student events, supporting student career services, and volunteering to be guest speakers in classes or student clubs.
- Get to some of those “nice to have” ideas. It may be time to finally prioritize them: create a mentoring program, assign buddies for new hires, update onboarding materials, reimagine new employee orientation.
- Tap into your campus experts who may also be hungry to contribute through informal brown bag lunch conversations, passion projects or hobbies. Pulling campus experts in engages them, acknowledges their talents and expertise, and demonstrates respect. These events also build community.
- Offer community service leave, or explore community service projects employees can participate in. If you already offer this benefit, promote it.
These ideas aren’t new or revolutionary, and they won’t solve all your problems or undo damage. But HR can make a difference when we are visible, caring and thoughtful in trying to engage all members of campus. Make a collaborative effort to contribute in a positive way — it matters.

Make Time to Rest

“When you get tired, learn to rest, not to quit.” – Banksy

Helpers often tend to everyone else first and themselves last. Take care of yourself. Take inventory of what you need to rest and recharge. Make time to do the following:
- Work with your team as soon as possible to hammer out rest days throughout the next year. Everyone can have days blocked off for intentional self-care.
- Check on your team’s leave balances and usage if you are in a leadership position. You likely have people who do not take nearly enough time off. They may benefit from some encouragement to do so.
- Lean into the HR community when you need the extra support, as many of us did during the pandemic. A community of helpers is a powerful force. CUPA-HR is an excellent place to connect with higher ed HR colleagues.
Even though we are in boats of differing sizes, equipped with varying resources, a common storm binds us. I choose to find solace in Maya Angelou’s timeless wisdom. “Every storm runs out of rain,” she once said. We can make it through.

Related CUPA-HR Resources

Managing Stress and Self-Care: “No” Is a Complete Sentence — This highly rated webinar shows how and why setting boundaries is critical to thriving.

Mental Health Toolkit — This HR toolkit includes resources on sustaining mental health programs on campus and addressing problems like burnout.

Trauma-Informed Leadership for Higher Education — This webinar explores how to develop a supportive leadership style and how to create a culture where team members can depend on each other for support during times of hardship.

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April 14, 2025
Stewardship With Heart: Creative Ways to Show Donors You Care
What do you get when you add a stewardship crisis, two expert fundraisers, and a whole bunch of Valentine’s Day puns? RNL’s February webinar, of course! Earlier this year, RNL hosted an hour-long conversation featuring Miranda Fagley and Becca Widmer, where they unpacked their strategies for creating meaningful moments through stewardship.

A tough heart-to-heart: The current state of the world

With geopolitical conflict running rampant, a rocky economic state, and a rapidly shifting domestic political landscape, it’s no wonder donors are wary of the future. During this tough heart-to-heart, we unpacked the various factors that might make donors hesitate before opening their wallets in 2025, and took a deep-dive into how the state of the world is impacting our donors, and therefore impacting the state of philanthropy as we know it. From generational differences and the more dollars/fewer donors trend we have all experiences to evolving donor expectations, advancement leaders are facing unprecedented challenges as the goal-line seems to move every year.

The heart of it all: A look at the donor data

Jumping into the “heart” of our conversation, we went straight to the source—donor expectations gleaned from RNL’s 2025 National Alumni Survey. We noticed a few alarming trends when comparing this donor expectation data with the 2024 Giving USA report, which analyzed giving trends when accounting for inflation across our sector. Total giving declined by 2.1% when adjusting for inflation and, while higher education saw a 6.7% increase in overall giving, even when accounting for inflation, donor numbers across the board were down. There is also an obvious mismatch between donor expectations and reality, as seen in our comparison of RNL’s 2024 Advancement Leaders Speak report with the 2025 National Alumni Survey. Take, for instance, the fact that 66% of donors indicated that understanding the impact of their giving is important to them. This becomes an issue when 43% of advancement leaders reported that their shops have difficulty communicating the impact of specific funds. Storytelling is the name of the game, and it is becoming clear that communicating impact is a key piece of the donor acquisition and retention puzzle.

The broken hearts club: Under-stewarded donors

Many advancement shops are unknowingly leaving a trail of broken-hearted donors in the wake of annual campaigns. Why is thoughtful stewardship important?
1. Connecting donors to your mission and educating them on the impact of their giving is crucial to keeping donors interested in your priorities.
2. Telling your story through a “thank you” is a great way to differentiate your cause and your need in comparison to other organizations in this increasingly noisy world.
3. The simple act of reminding donors of your impact is a great way to retain donors and move them through your pipeline. The more you can encourage donors to see themselves in your mission and important work, the more likely you are to get them onboard as true donor-partners.
On the flip-side, we unpacked that can happen if you don’t steward your donors well, including a shrinking pipeline, excessive spending when you do decide to attempt to reacquire them, and the loss of both short- and long-term revenue. Don’t be a heartbreaker!

Uncovering donor love languages: Do you know your donors?

Words of affirmation. Quality time. Acts of service. These are just a few love languages from Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages. Did you know donors have love languages too? It’s our job as mission-centric, donor-focused fundraisers to learn those love languages and lean into them through stewardship, relationship-building, and even solicitation.

In our exploration of donor love languages, we unpacked the first level- generational differences. Hearts are broken generationally when we do not pay attention to context and communicated need. While not always “the answer,” generational segmentation and a slight shift of message can be a simple way to get to the “heart” of what a majority of your donors want and need from your stewardship outreach. And, as we continue to experience generational shifts and the great wealth transfer, leaning into generational values will become even more important to attracting and retaining donors.

Another layer of love language exploration comes from you going straight to the source- your individual donors and what their giving history can tell you. We looked at one of RNL’s solutions for further discovering donor love languages, the RNL360, which offers an opportunity to dive into your database. By illustrating historic AND recent trends in giving and interaction, the RNL360 can provide you with a better understanding of giving and retention by donor type, an analysis of consistency and efficacy of your various giving channels (hello, smart investment in tools and campaigns!), and can help establish baseline metrics which can inform goal setting and future fundraising and engagement targets.

We can theorize all day about what donor expectations are, but the purest source of truth is looking at donor data and asking donors to tell you what they want and need. That’s where RNL’s Market Research solution comes into play. A complementary component of the RNL360, this additional solution allows you to hear directly from your donors by way of a private, but not anonymous, survey administered by RNL, where you can learn more about your donors’ philanthropic priorities, communication preferences, and sense of connectedness.

When it comes to effective stewardship and solicitation, knowledge is power.

Engagement strategies with heart: RNL experts share their takes

Our two experts shared their take on stewardship and engagement with heart, with overlapping themes of getting personal, telling your story, and taking the time to really listen to what donors are telling you they want to hear from you.

Miranda’s take
1. Get specific: steward in ways only YOU can.
2. “Single” out your society members with a special ‘thank you.’
3. Take the time to survey your donors- understand what you THINK will resonate and get feedback/confirmation from them.
Becca’s take
1. Put gratitude on repeat.
2. Turn generosity to belonging.
3. Keep impact front and center.
4. Asking is omnichannel, so thanking should be too.
Our main takeaways?
1. Consider the landscape: context is everything
2. Take a hard look at donor data:
3. Understand the “why” behind stewarding annual donors: Tell. Your. Story.
4. Get to know your donors’ love languages: ask your donors directly
5. Steward in ways only YOU can: don’t be afraid to get a little wacky
Want to learn more about the RNL360 and Market Research to uncover your donor love languages and steward more thoughtfully? Connect with an RNL fundraising expert today!
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April 11, 2025
Lawsuit slaps heart of academic freedom (opinion)

A lawsuit filed in July against the Columbia University chapter of the American Association of University Professors, along with 20 other organizations and individuals, alleged that our public statements in support of antiwar and pro-Palestinian student protests last spring harmed other students by contributing to the campus shutdown that followed. Unraveling the cynical logic of this claim is for the courts. But what is clear from this lawsuit is that the purpose of such recourse to legal theater is not to ameliorate harm. It is to silence public and academic speech.

This effort is part and parcel of a broader attack on higher education, one characterized by legislative attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion; instruction; and tenure; and an epidemic of jawboning by public officials meddling into curricula, campus programming and even the careers of individual faculty members. Following a series of executive orders from President Donald Trump, colleges and universities across the country now find themselves in the crosshairs.

The tactic used against us is what is known as a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP). These suits are brought principally not to win in court but to harass and intimidate individuals or groups into curtailing speech. By entangling defendants in costly and invasive litigation—or even just threatening to do so—plaintiffs can frighten those with whom they disagree into silence. In the context of higher education, this comes at an incalculable cost.

On its own, this lawsuit certainly threatens the speech of Columbia-AAUP. But in the current climate, it also opens a front in the widespread attack on universities as sanctuaries of critical inquiry and reasoned debate. In their mere filing, lawsuits like this one aim especially to chill dissenting speech, including speech that takes place at the intersection of the classroom and the public square. Such legal instruments are a dangerous cudgel that could be used to threaten broad swaths of political and academic speech on American campuses.

Our chapter has precisely sought to combat this hostile environment in the speech over which we are being sued. In multiple public statements made during the height of the campus protests last spring, we condemned partisan congressional meddling in Columbia’s affairs, arguing that this “undermine[s] the traditions of shared governance and academic freedom.” We called for a vote of no confidence in university leadership, who we believe “failed utterly to defend faculty and students” and “colluded in political interference.” And we affirmed the Columbia Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ subsequent vote of no confidence in our then-president for her “failure to resist politically motivated attacks on higher education,” whereby she endangered students and undermined our rights as faculty.

In challenging our statements in support of faculty and students, this particular SLAPP targets both our constitutionally protected public speech and our academic freedom. We are fortunate enough to be represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and civil rights firm Wang Hecker LLP, who have filed a motion to dismiss on our behalf that utilizes New York State’s anti-SLAPP law, one of the 35 state-level anti-SLAPP laws on the books across the United States. But the outcome of a SLAPP shouldn’t depend on your counsel, or the state in which you live. Unfortunately, for many faculty and students faced with a SLAPP, the only available option may well be to self-censor.

Interests committed to the mainstream political consensus have found pro-Palestinian political advocacy on American campuses to be unacceptable. To silence dissent, they have shown themselves willing to use every instrument at their disposal in a manner that recalls the red scares of the early and mid-20th century, when character assassination and blacklists were employed in industry and civil society, including academia. This SLAPP revives such measures, as do the theatrical congressional grillings of college presidents, including our own, and the wave of censorship that has swept over higher education during the course of the past year. In this context, attacks on public speech are also attacks on academic freedom.

Academic freedom depends essentially upon a social contract that remains under perpetual debate both inside and outside the academy. SLAPPs like this one aim at the very heart of that contract, which accords to academics relative autonomy to explore difficult and often uncomfortable truths on the assumption that those truths will ultimately benefit society. Although the classroom, the laboratory and the library are classic sites for the practice and protection of this freedom, the truths pursued there translate to worlds outside the campus gates. Bullying faculty and students into self-censorship in the public square, SLAPPs seek to further silence and constrain the pursuit of uncomfortable truths in the classroom.

Scholarly knowledge consists of truth claims, not dicta. Whether exercised in the classroom or in the public square, academic freedom is therefore the freedom to make and to contest such claims. This goes for all sides in a debate, including the debates still quietly raging on our campuses. However, a stark reality disclosed by SLAPPs is that political force is now poised to govern the contest over truth in place of enlightened reason and democratic deliberation.

If such high-minded concepts as truth claims, enlightened reason and democratic debate seem too lofty for the dirty realism of the day, it is important to remember that these still lie at the core of any academic freedom worthy of the name. Academic freedom is not a narrowly academic matter; it is a matter of determining whether something is or is not true. SLAPPs are designed to decide such questions in advance, in favor of those who can afford the attorneys, or on whose behalf politically motivated law firms work. It is time for us to exercise our freedoms and responsibilities as academics, in defense of our right and that of our students to speak.

Reinhold Martin is president of the American Association of University Professors chapter at Columbia University, on whose behalf he wrote this piece, and a professor of architecture.

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February 20, 2025