Tag: Higher

  • Meet the Speakers Transforming Higher Ed at InsightsEDU 2026

    Meet the Speakers Transforming Higher Ed at InsightsEDU 2026

    Higher ed doesn’t need just another conference. It needs transformation.

    Legacy strategies are cracking under demographic pressure. AI is rewriting how students search and the Modern Learner is calling the shots. Institutions that cling to “what’s always worked” are watching the ground shift under their feet.

    InsightsEDU 2026 is built for leaders who are done settling. Presidents, marketers and enrollment teams who know reputation and revenue can’t live in separate silos anymore—and who are ready to align both around the needs of today’s learners.

    From February 17–19, 2026 in Fort Lauderdale, you’ll hear from university leaders, higher ed innovators and Modern Learner experts who are actively rebuilding how institutions compete, communicate and grow. More than 40 sessions will dig into real playbooks, not theory—unifying brand and enrollment, elevating student experience and turning AI disruption into advantage.

    Here’s a preview of a few of the voices taking the stage and how they’re already reshaping what’s possible.

    The Leaders Rewriting Higher Ed’s Playbook

    Gregory Clayton

    President of Enrollment Management Services at EducationDynamics
    With over 30 years of experience in the higher education space, Greg brings valuable expertise in enrollment management and performance marketing. As President of Enrollment Management Services at EducationDynamics, he leads a comprehensive team offering agency marketing, enrollment services, strategic consulting, and research, all tailored to the higher ed sector. His leadership and career position him as a visionary strategist, equipped to offer insightful commentary on the higher education landscape and enrollment solutions. Join his session to learn more about how to better serve the Modern Learner and implement strategies that drive institutional success.

    Session: Opening Session: From Framework to Action

    Amanda Serafin

    Associate Vice President of Enrollment at Indiana Wesleyan University 
    With more than twenty years in higher education enrollment, Amanda serves as the Associate Vice President of Enrollment at Indiana Wesleyan University, where she leads strategic initiatives and a high-performing team supporting IWU’s National & Global programs.

    At InsightsEDU, Amanda joins EducationDynamics’ Vice President of Enrollment Management Consulting to unpack three years of competitive research—revealing what secret shopping uncovered about competitor strategies, the depth and quality of student nurturing across the market and how IWU leveraged those insights to strengthen enrollment outcomes.

    Session: Mystery Shopping 2.0

    Alex Minot

    Client Partner Lead at Snapchat
    As Client Partner Lead at Snapchat, Alex helps higher ed institutions and nonprofits modernize their marketing through full-funnel strategies built for Gen Z and Millennial audiences. With experience spanning Snapchat, Reddit, Facebook and Google, he brings a deep understanding of how today’s learners discover, evaluate, and choose their next step.

    At InsightsEDU 2026, Alex will break down why traditional enrollment marketing no longer works—and what it takes to earn trust in a world where Gen Z is curating their own narratives. Joined by EducationDynamics’ Senior Social Media Strategist, Jennifer Ravey, he’ll explore how to design a content ecosystem that creates belonging, builds confidence and inspires advocacy from first touch to final decision..

    Session: From Awareness to Advocacy: Designing a Full-Funnel Strategy for Gen Z Engagement

    Chris Marpo

    Head of Education Partnerships at Reddit
    As Head of Education Partnerships at Reddit, Chris leads the charge in building high-impact collaborations with higher ed institutions and agencies. At InsightsEDU 2026, he’ll share how Reddit’s unique communities—and the behaviors driving them—are reshaping the way universities reach and influence the Modern Learner.

    Drawing on his experience helping scale advertising businesses at LinkedIn, Pinterest and Quora, Chris brings a sharp understanding of the digital landscape and what truly resonates with today’s audiences. Attendees can expect actionable insights on how institutions can meet prospective students where they are and stay relevant in an era of rapid change.

    Session: From Keywords to Conversations: Winning Student Mindshare in the Age of AI Search

    Kevin Halle


    VP of Enrollment at Wayne State College
    With more than a decade of experience leading undergraduate, transfer, graduate, and financial aid teams, Kevin brings a deep understanding of how to build enrollment pipelines that serve diverse learner groups.

    At InsightsEDU, he’ll unpack what it takes to break down the silos separating traditional, graduate and adult learner strategies and how institutions can create one unified approach that works for all students.

    Session: Unifying Your Enrollment: Building a Cohesive Strategy for the Modern Learner

    Katie Tomlinson

    Katie Tomlinson

    Senior Director of Analytics and Business Intelligence at EducationDynamics
    Prepare to unlock insights with Katie Tomlinson. As the Senior Director of Analytics and Business Intelligence, Katie expertly manages data and reporting, uncovering key trends to support EducationDynamics in delivering data-driven solutions for the higher ed community. Learn from her as she discusses findings from EducationDynamics’ latest report, where attendees will gain a deeper understanding of the evolving learning environment and the significant factors that influence Modern Learners’ educational choices.

    Session: Opening Session: From Framework to Action

    Matt Loonam

    Lead Enterprise Account Executive, Education at LinkedIn
    With 20 years in digital media across programmatic, video, mobile and social, Matt has spent the last six years helping colleges and universities strengthen their brands and drive enrollment with more precise, student-centric outreach. At InsightsEDU, he will share how LinkedIn’s rich audience signals can help institutions reach career-focused prospects who are closer to a decision, while building the kind of trust that moves students to choose their school.

    Session: How to Win High Intent Students on LinkedIn

    Leila Ertel

    Vice President of Marketing at Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design
    As Vice President of Marketing at Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design, Leila brings a bold, data-informed approach that helps more students uncover their creative potential and pursue rewarding careers. Attend her InsightsEDU session to see how your institution’s website can move from overlooked asset to true engine of enrollment growth.

    Session: The Evolution of Website Marketing

    The voices shaping InsightsEDU continue to grow. Check out the full speaker lineup and new additions on our speakers page. 

    Be In the Room Where Higher Ed Resets 

    InsightsEDU is where presidents, marketers and enrollment leaders pressure test old assumptions and build new playbooks around the Modern Learner. Over three days you’ll connect with peers who are aligning brand and enrollment, experimenting with AI and digital and proving that you don’t have to choose between revenue and reputation to achieve institutional success.  

    Don’t watch the next era of higher education happen from the sidelines. Get a front-row seat. Register for InsightsEDU 2026 today. 

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  • Elite Influence and For‑Profit Exploitation in Higher Education

    Elite Influence and For‑Profit Exploitation in Higher Education

    As the 2028 presidential race accelerates, J.B. Pritzker has emerged as a favored candidate among Democratic power brokers. His public image—competent, pragmatic, socially liberal, and reliably anti-Trump—has been carefully shaped to appeal to voters exhausted by polarization and chaos. But beneath this polished surface lies a deep and troubling contradiction that the public, and especially those affected by the student-debt crisis, cannot afford to ignore. This contradiction, the Pritzker Paradox, stems from the profound dissonance between Pritzker’s public rhetoric about educational opportunity and the private capital networks that have fueled both his family’s wealth and his political ascent.

    The Pritzker family has long been intertwined with for-profit higher education and its surrounding ecosystem of lenders, service providers, and private-equity investors. These sectors have collectively played a major role in producing the contemporary student-debt crisis. While J.B. Pritzker often presents himself as a champion of equity, public investment, and educational access, his family’s financial history reveals an alignment with institutions that have extracted billions from low-income students, veterans, and Black and Latino communities through high-cost, low-value educational programs.

    This is not simply a matter of past investments. It is part of an ongoing and highly influential political economy in which wealthy Democratic donors, private-equity executives, and education “reformers” operate as a unified class. Central to that class formation is The Vistria Group, a Chicago-based private-equity firm founded by Marty Nesbitt, a close friend of Barack Obama. Vistria stands at the intersection of Democratic power and education profiteering. After the collapse of scandal-ridden chains like Corinthian Colleges and ITT Tech, Vistria did not step in to dismantle the exploitative for-profit model. Instead, it strategically acquired distressed educational assets and reconstructed them into a new generation of institutions that presented themselves as “nonprofits” while maintaining tuition-driven, debt-laden business models. Former Obama administration officials moved seamlessly into Vistria and related firms, raising serious questions about regulatory capture and revolving-door governance.

    Pritzker moves within this same Chicago-centered network. His political donors, associates, and advisers overlap significantly with the circles that built Vistria’s ascent. The structural relationships matter more than any single investment. A Pritzker administration would not exist outside this ecosystem; it would be shaped by it. The question, therefore, is not whether Pritzker personally signed a for-profit acquisition deal but whether the political world that produced him can be trusted to regulate higher education fairly and aggressively. The answer, based on the last twenty years of policy and practice, is no.

    This is especially troubling because presidents play a decisive role in higher-education oversight. Through the Department of Education, a president can strengthen or weaken borrower protections, set standards for nonprofit conversions, determine enforcement priorities, and decide whether private-equity extraction will be challenged or quietly accommodated. Millions of borrowers harmed by predatory institutions are currently awaiting relief through borrower defense, income-driven repayment audits, and Gainful Employment rules. The integrity of these processes depends on political leadership that is independent from the private-equity interests that helped create the crisis.

    Pritzker’s political style—managerial, technocratic, deeply rooted in elite networks—suggests continuity rather than challenge. The neoliberal framework he embodies does not confront structural inequalities; it manages them. It does not dismantle extractive systems; it attempts to regulate their excesses while leaving their core intact. In higher education, this approach has already failed. It is the reason the for-profit sector was allowed to expand dramatically under both Republican and Democratic administrations. It is why private-equity firms continue to control large segments of the educational marketplace through complex ownership structures and shadow nonprofits. And it is why millions of borrowers remain trapped in debts for degrees that offered little or no economic return.

    The Pritzker Paradox is therefore not a story about one wealthy governor. It is a story about the consolidation of political and economic power within a narrow elite that has profited handsomely from the financialization of education while promising, cycle after cycle, to reform the very problems it helped create. Vistria exemplifies this dynamic. The Pritzker family’s history echoes it. And a Pritzker presidency would likely entrench it further.

    America needs leadership willing to challenge private-equity influence in higher education, not leadership bound to it. The country needs a president who understands education as a public good, not a marketplace. For borrowers, students, and communities harmed by decades of predatory practices, the stakes could not be higher. The choice before the nation is not simply whether Pritzker is preferable to Trump. It is whether the country will continue to entrust its public institutions to elites who speak the language of equity while advancing the interests of the very networks that undermined educational opportunity in the first place.

    Sources
    Public reporting on Pritzker family investments in for-profit and education-related sectors; investigations by the Senate HELP Committee, GAO, and CFPB; reporting on The Vistria Group’s acquisitions and nonprofit conversions; analyses of private-equity influence in U.S. higher education; academic literature on neoliberalism and elite capture.

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  • Shouldn’t College Be for Learning?

    Shouldn’t College Be for Learning?

    In a long, passionate, well-reasoned, thoroughly evidenced cri de coeur published at Current Affairs, San Francisco State professor Ronald Purser declares, “AI Is Destroying the University and Learning Itself.”

    That attention-grabbing headline is a bit misleading, because as Purser makes clear in the article, it is not “AI” itself that is destroying these things. The source of the problem is human beings, primarily the human beings in charge of universities that have looked at the offerings from tech companies and, failing to recognize the vampire prepared to drain their institutions of their life force, not only invite them across the threshold but declare them their new bosom buddies.

    Dartmouth University recently announced a deal with Anthropic/Amazon Web Services that university president Sian Beilock declared “is more than a collaboration.” The promises are familiar, using AI “to augment—not replace—student learning,” as though this is something we know how to do, and that this is best explored en masse across all aspects of the university simultaneously, rather than through careful experimentation. I think I understand some of the motivation to these kinds of deals—to seize some sense of agency in uncertain times—but the idea that even an institution as august as Dartmouth with such a long history in the development of artificial intelligence will be “collaborators” with these two entities is wishful thinking, IMO.

    Purser’s piece details much of what I’ve heard in my travels from institution to institution to speak and consult on these issues. There is a lot of well-earned angst out there, particularly in places where administrations have made bets that look like a Texas Hold’em player pushing all in on a pair of eights. No consultation, no collaboration, no vision beyond vague promises of future abundance. A recent AAUP report stemming from a survey of 500 of its members shows that one of the chief fears of faculty is being sidelined entirely as administrations strike these deals.

    This uninvited guest has thrown much of what we would consider the core purpose of the university in doubt. As Purser says, “Students use AI to write papers, professors use AI to grade them, degrees become meaningless, and tech companies make fortunes. Welcome to the death of higher education.”

    While Purser’s account is accurate to a degree, I also want to say that it is not complete. As I wrote a couple of months ago, there are also great signs of progress in terms of addressing the challenges of the moment. The kind of administration and institutional carelessness that Purser documents is not universal, and even under those conditions, faculty and students are finding ways to do meaningful work. Many people are successfully addressing what I’ve long believed is the core problem, the “transactional model” of schooling that actively dissuades students from taking the required risks for learning and personal development.

    One of the most frequent observations I’ve made in doing this work is that many, perhaps even most, students have no real enthusiasm for an AI-mediated future where their thoughts and experiences are secondary to the outputs of an LLM model. The fact that they find the model outputs useful in school contexts is the problem.

    I was greatly cheered by this account from Matt Dinan, who details how he built the experiences of his course from root pedagogical values in a way that clearly signals to students the importance of doing the work for themselves, the importance of their thoughts and the sincere belief that taking a risk to learn is worth doing and well supported.

    What we see is that success comes from giving instructors the freedom to work the problem under conditions that allow the problem to be solved. Note that this does not de facto require a rejection of AI. There’s plenty of room for those more interested in AI to explore its integration, but it does mean doing more than signaling to faculty and students, “You’re going to use AI and you’re going to like it.”

    Much of what Purser describes is not only the imposition of AI, but the imposition of AI in a system that has been worn down through austerity measures over many decades, leaving it vulnerable to what is nothing more than an ideology promising increased efficiency and lower cost while still allowing the institutions to collect tuition revenue. This thinking reduces the “value proposition” of higher ed to its credentialing purpose.

    I know that the popular image of colleges and universities is that they are slow to change, but I have actually been surprised at the speed at which many institutions are making this AI future bet, particularly when we don’t know what future we’re betting on.

    Applying the tech ethos of “move fast and break things” to education has gained some traction because there is evidence to point toward and say, “This thing is already broken, so what do we have to lose?”

    We could lose a lot—and lose it forever.

    I remain open to the idea that generative AI and whatever comes after it can have positive effects on higher education, but I am increasingly convinced that when it comes to the experiences of learning, we know very little as to how this should be done. As Justin Reich wrote recently at The Chronicle, “stop pretending you know how to teach AI.”

    We shouldn’t abandon the things we do know how to teach (like writing) while we experiment with this new technology. We shouldn’t dodge the structural barriers that Ronald Purser outlines in his piece, hoping for an AI savior around the corner. This isn’t what students want, it’s not what students need and it is not a way to secure an ongoing value proposition for higher education.

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  • At UNC, Professors Must Soon Post Syllabi Publicly

    At UNC, Professors Must Soon Post Syllabi Publicly

    The new policy would also classify syllabi as “work made for hire,” which makes the institution—not the syllabus’s creator—the owner of the copyright.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | DNY59 and golibo/iStock/Getty Images

    Two months after legal teams at University of North Carolina system campuses split over whether syllabi are considered public documents, system president Peter Hans announced plans to adopt a new policy that will answer an unequivocal yes.

    Starting as early as next fall, faculty members at UNC institutions will be required to upload their syllabi to a searchable public database, according to a draft of the policy provided to Inside Higher Ed by student journalists at The Daily Tar Heel. These public syllabi must include the course name, prefix, description, course objectives and student learning outcomes, as well as “a breakdown of how student performance will be assessed, including the grading scale, percentage breakdown of major assignments, and how attendance or participation will affect a student’s final grade.” Faculty must also include any course materials that students are required to purchase.

    “Public university syllabi should be public records, and that will be the official policy of the UNC System,” Hans wrote in a Thursday op-ed in the News & Observer. “We are living through an age of dangerously low trust in some of society’s most important institutions. While support for North Carolina’s public universities remains strong and bipartisan, confidence in higher education generally has dropped in recent years, driven by concerns about value and a perception that some colleges and universities have drifted from their core mission.”

    The system is currently seeking feedback on the draft policy, a system spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed, and “after receiving input from elected faculty representatives and other stakeholders, the system office will revise the draft as needed.” Only Hans, and not the Board of Governors, will need to approve the policy.

    In October, system campuses disagreed over whether to give up syllabi in response to a broad public records request by the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project. Alongside other conservative groups, the Heritage Foundation has used open records laws to gather information on and expose public university faculty members who teach about race, gender, sexuality and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Syllabi that include classroom policies, required readings and instructor’s names are particularly valuable to conservative critics. The UNC system flagship in Chapel Hill determined that syllabi are not automatically subject to such requests. But officials at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro declared the opposite.

    “Having a consistent rule on syllabi transparency, instead of 16 campuses coming up with different rules, helps ensure that everyone is on the same page and similarly committed heading into each new semester,” Hans wrote in his op-ed.

    The Florida Board of Governors recently enacted a policy that makes syllabi, required or recommended textbooks, and instructional materials available online and searchable for students and the general public for five years. Indiana, Texas and the University System of Georgia also maintain similar rules.

    Belle Boggs, an English professor at North Carolina State University and president of the North Carolina American Association of University Professors chapter, is worried that many professors, busy with end-of-semester grading, are unaware of the forthcoming policy; administrators have yet to send out any formal announcement of the rule, Boggs said. But many of those that do know of it are pushing back. A petition started by the North Carolina AAUP chapter has garnered more than 2,100 signatures as of Thursday afternoon. The group plans to deliver it in person to Hans on Friday.

    The draft policy does not explicitly require instructors to list their names on their syllabi and states that “nothing within this regulation shall be construed to require a publicly available syllabus to include the location or time of day at which a course is being held.” This stipulation provides little comfort to faculty members, Boggs said.

    “As many of us have noted, there are many of us who are the only faculty who teach a particular class, and it is very easy to find out when our class is and where our classes are,” she said. “That does not make me feel safer.”

    Hans acknowledged critics’ weaponization of syllabi in his op-ed.

    “There is no question that making course syllabi publicly available will mean hearing feedback and criticism from people who may disagree with what’s being taught or how it’s being presented. That’s a normal fact of life at a public institution, and we should expect a vibrant and open society to have debates that extend beyond the walls of campus,” Hans wrote. “It’s awful that we live in a time when healthy discussion too often descends into outright harassment. We will do everything we can to safeguard faculty and staff who may be subject to threats or intimidation simply for doing their jobs.”

    The new policy would also classify syllabi as “work made for hire,” which makes the institution—not the syllabus’s creator—the copyright owner of the syllabus, according to U.S. copyright law.

    “As such, instructors do not retain personal copyright in these materials, and syllabi owned by a public agency generated in the course of public business, are not copyrightable in a manner that would exempt syllabi from public access to these records, consistent with state and federal public records laws,” the draft policy stated.

    The N.C. AAUP has focused its efforts on publicizing faculty safety concerns, but the work-made-for-hire provision is also worrisome, Boggs said.

    “That causes severe damage to academic freedom and how much control we have over our classes,” she said. “It may also make many faculty not want to work here, because the syllabi that they teach from or the syllabi that they’ve honed over decades in other places … [will belong to the university].”

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  • Emporia State Gets $1.4M From Retiring President

    Emporia State Gets $1.4M From Retiring President

    ESU’s outgoing president, Ken Hush, faced backlash in 2022 after laying off tenured faculty.

    Ethan James Scherrer/Wikimedia Commons

    Ken Hush, outgoing president of Emporia State University in Kansas, is donating roughly $1.4 million—equivalent to the last four years of his salary—to the university.

    Since taking the helm in 2021, Hush oversaw a controversial workforce-management policy that included firing 23 tenured faculty members. The American Association of University Professors publicly censured ESU for that decision, and some of the laid-off faculty sued. Emporia officials, including Hush, defended the job cuts, saying they were needed to address a budget deficit and falling enrollment.

    Enrollment plunged in the fallout from the cuts, but according to ESU’s statement this week, the university has now eliminated a $19 million budget deficit and grown enrollment 6 percent since fall 2024.

    Hush’s donation is one of the largest one-time individual gifts in ESU’s history, according to an announcement the university posted on its website Wednesday. The nonendowed gift from Hush, who is set to retire next week, will be paid out over the next three years. The money will support scholarships, new student recruitment and university operations.

    “This gift is in appreciation for the meaningful impact ESU has had on our community and on me, both as a student and in my role as president. It has been a great honor to serve my home state of Kansas, in my hometown of Emporia for the institution that has changed so many lives for the better,” Hush said in the announcement. “Emporia State is focused on [students] like never before. We cannot afford to go back to the old ways of higher education that focused more on the institution than those the institution is here to serve.”

    Hush—an ESU alumnus and longtime former executive for Koch Inc.’s carbon and minerals division—became interim president in 2021 and permanent president in 2022. Hush in July announced plans to retire at the end of this year.

    On Thursday, The Emporia Gazette reported that the Kansas Board of Regents selected Matthew Baker, who has served as vice president of student affairs at Northwest Missouri State University for the past 14 years, as ESU’s next president. Baker is slated to begin serving in early March.

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  • House Ed Panel Advances Financial Aid Transparency Bills

    House Ed Panel Advances Financial Aid Transparency Bills

    Rep. Tim Walberg, the Michigan Republican who chairs the House committee, said the legislation was an answer to waning public trust in postsecondary education.

    Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

    A House education panel voted Thursday to advance two bills aimed at ensuring that students know more about the price of college and their options to pay for it.

    One of the bills, the Student Financial Clarity Act, would require the Education Department to create a universal net price calculator that would give students an estimate of what they might have to pay for a particular program or institution. That legislation, which passed with bipartisan support, would also expand the College Scorecard to include more program-level statistics so students could compare outcomes and costs.

    Under the other bill, the College Financial Aid Clarity Act, the Education Department would develop a standardized format for college financial aid offers. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have sought for years to improve institutional offer letters—efforts that picked up steam in 2023 after the Government Accountability Office found that most colleges failed to clearly and accurately tell students how much their education would cost.

    After the department creates the standard format, colleges that receive federal funding will have to adopt it by July 1, 2029, according to the legislation, which also received bipartisan backing.

    The House and Senate education committees have explored the issue of college price transparency in hearings this fall, showing that it’s a priority for key lawmakers. Rep. Tim Walberg, the Michigan Republican who chairs the House committee, framed the legislation as an answer to waning public trust in postsecondary education.

    “Too many students face bureaucracy, hidden costs and student debt for programs that don’t deliver a return on investment,” Walberg said. “These bills take important steps to fix that.”

    American Council on Education president Ted Mitchell wrote to the committee that a federally mandated financial aid award letter would be difficult to adjust in response to consumer feedback and changes to federal student aid. ACE and others have spearheaded a voluntary effort to improve the letters known as the College Cost Transparency Initiative, which includes about 760 colleges and universities.

    “It is also important to note that new requirements regarding financial aid award letters will impose significant administrative, financial, and technical challenges that will divert institutional resources away from student support,” Mitchell wrote.

    Democrats generally supported the legislation, though they indicated that they wanted to see more changes that would actually lower the cost of college and hold the Education Department accountable.

    Democrats expressed worry that a diminished Education Department wouldn’t be able to implement the changes called for in the legislation. They also pushed for language in the bills that would require the Education Department itself to perform the work. Education Secretary Linda McMahon recently outsourced several grant programs to other federal agencies, raising concerns among Democrats on the committee.

    “Based on the secretary’s track record, it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s already devising a way to pass these requirements on to someone else or some other agency,” said Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, an Oregon Democrat.

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  • Friday Fragments

    Friday Fragments

    Friday Fragments

    Sara Brady

    Fri, 12/12/2025 – 03:00 AM

    Sans-serif fonts, passing along great literature, Middle States.

    Byline(s)
    Matt Reed

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  • Policy Impact Undervalued by Universities

    Policy Impact Undervalued by Universities

    Barely a third of social scientists believe their university would promote them based on the strength of their research impact, a global poll of researchers has found.

    Asked whether their institution would promote or give tenure to a scholar for their efforts to apply research outside academia, only 37 percent of 1,805 social scientists surveyed by Sage agreed.

    Only 28 percent of respondents said their efforts to make a difference outside academia would lead to additional research funding from their institution, while just 35 percent said their university offered awards or prizes to recognize impact.

    Thirty percent of the survey’s respondents, who came from 92 countries, say they receive no recognition at all for this work.

    Instead, the survey by the U.S.-based social sciences publisher suggested institutions tend to value and reward publication in highly cited journals more than academics. Asked whether the ultimate goal of research is to make a positive impact on society, 92 percent agreed this is the case for themselves, but only 68 percent believe it’s true for institutions.

    “I don’t care about impacting my colleagues and being cited—I want to impact practice in the field,” explained one U.S.-based respondent, who added there is “no good way to know if this happens.”

    “All the other metrics (like rejection rates, Google scores) are internal to the discipline and don’t really measure anything useful,” the researcher continued, according to the Sage report, titled “Do Social Scientists Care If They Make Societal Impact?” and published Tuesday.

    Similarly, 91 percent of researchers agree the ultimate goal of research is to build on the literature and enable future research, but only 71 percent think the leaders at their institution agree with this.

    That perceived misalignment between the motivation of social scientists and institutions should prompt a rethink on whether prestige metrics used in academia are misaligned with values, argues the Sage report.

    It notes that researchers value peer regard more than citation metrics, yet they perceive that administrators prioritize impact factors, creating tension in tenure and promotion decisions.

    “At times, this means we have to challenge the status quo of what matters in higher education—for example, by moving beyond an overemphasis on scholarly impact measures [and] toward recognizing research that benefits people through policy, practice and public life,” said Ziyad Marar, president of global publishing at Sage.

    “It’s important that we listen closely to researchers themselves as we do this work—understanding what motivates them, where they focus their efforts and what barriers stand in their way. This report does exactly that,” he added.

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  • Harvard Health and Human Rights Director Stepping Down

    Harvard Health and Human Rights Director Stepping Down

    Officials also announced that the center will hone its primary focus to children’s health.

    John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe/Getty Images

    The director of Harvard University’s François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights will step down in January after seven years at the helm, dean of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health Andrea Baccarelli announced Tuesday. News of her departure follows months of criticism of the center’s Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights.

    Mary Bassett’s last day as director will be Jan. 9, 2026, after which she will remain a professor of practice in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department. Kari Nadeau, a professor of climate and population studies at Harvard, will serve as interim director. Bassett did not respond to a request for an interview Thursday. A Harvard spokesperson did not answer Inside Higher Ed’s questions about Bassett’s departure, including whether she was asked to step down, and instead pointed to Baccarelli’s message. 

    Baccarelli also announced that the center will shift its primary focus to children’s health.

    “Over the past years, FXB has worked on a wide range of programs within the context of human rights, extending across varied projects, including those related to oppression, poverty, and stigma around the world,” he wrote. “We believe we can accomplish more, and have greater impact, if we go deeper in a primary area of focus.”

    The center’s Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights drew increased scrutiny after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel, including from former Harvard president Larry Summers and New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik. In previous years, the program partnered with Birzeit University in the West Bank, but Harvard declined to renew that partnership in the spring. In their April report on antisemitism on campus, Harvard officials detailed complaints from students about the program’s webinars, in which speakers allegedly “presented a demonizing view of Israel and Israelis.”

    “One student told us that the FXB programming created the impression that ‘Israel exists solely to oppress Palestinians, and nothing else,’” the report stated.

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  • An opportunity to reset the higher education environment?

    An opportunity to reset the higher education environment?

    Author:
    Bahram Bekhradnia

    Published:

    This blog was authored by Bahram Bekhradnia, HEPI’s founder and President, and was first written before yesterday’s news about the Chief Executive of the Office for Students standing down at Easter 2026.

    The recently published OfS Strategy states that, in addition to being ambitious and vigilant, in future the organisation will be ‘collaborative’ and ‘vocal’ in promoting English higher education as a force for good. If that really is its intention, it will represent a huge and welcome change from its past behaviour. No doubt this new approach reflects that of a new Government and Secretary of State. But this leopard will not find it easy to change its spots so suddenly.

    These spots derive from the environment and ideology that gave rise to its creation. In that respect, the recent Post-16 Education and Skills white paper represents a great missed opportunity to correct one of the more egregious faults of the present regime – an ideology which underpinned the 2011 white paper and the changes that followed: the ideology of higher education as a marketplace

    The 2010/11 regime, enshrined in legislation and which continues even now, is based on the notion that higher education – indeed, perhaps education more generally – is a ‘product’ and that students are ‘consumers’ of that product.  And consequently, as is the case with respect to consumers of other monopoly (or monopolistic) products like gas, water, telecoms etc they need a ‘market’ regulator to protect their interests.  So in the same way as we now have Ofgem, Ofwat and Ofcom, we needed an OfStud.

    But even those other ‘Offices for’ recognise the need for a healthy sector and are concerned with the national interest and their sector as a whole. Not so the Office for Students, which has steadfastly avoided any concern to ensure that England has a healthy and successful higher education sector, but has focused firmly and exclusively on protecting student interests – or at least what it has perceived as being student interests.

    For more than a decade, its modus operandi has been to wag its finger sternly at higher education institutions and tell them that they must do better – however well they are doing – and to say nothing to advocate for higher education. Indeed, constantly telling universities that they must do better has fed the anti-university environment fostered by previous ministers (even the previous Prime Minister spoke of ‘rip-off degrees’) and a hostile press.

    The leadership of the OfS could not be expected to change its spots. New leadership was clearly required, and the replacement of the Chair represents a good start. But after more than a decade of undermining the higher education sector, it will take more than a new Chair at the top of the organisation to enable it credibly to discharge its new stated aim of being ‘collaborative’ and ‘vocal that higher education is a force for good’.

    New leadership is certainly required, but beyond that, the Government needs to create a body that is more than a regulator – one that has explicit responsibility for fostering the health of the sector as a whole and ensuring that England has the higher education sector that it needs. It should reject the ideology of higher education as a marketplace, of education as a product and of students as ‘consumers’ of that product.

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