In the education industry, cloud-based technologies are driving a major revolution. Over 70% of colleges use cloud solutions to streamline operations and cut expenses as they balance budgets. Recent studies show that institutions that have adopted Cloud based higher education management solutions have seen an average reduction of 30% in reduce operational costs in higher educations, enabling them to reinvest in areas that enhance the student experience and drive academic success.
Keeping on budget while managing admissions, money, HR, and learning systems is no small task. Often caught handling costly, ineffective, error-prone fragmented systems are IT teams are assigned. Still, there is a smarter road forward. Higher education management solutions housed on clouds are meant to streamline your life. These tools are meant to combine all those disparate systems, automate tedious chores, and clear the mess of documentation. Consider it your default method for simplifying university processes.
In this blog, we’ll dive deep into how cloud based higher education management solutions are optimizing university operations, enabling smarter decision-making, and unlocking efficiencies that were once unimaginable with legacy systems.
Cloud based higher education management solutions: why?
Cloud technology is improving campus operations, including:
Automating and removing paper workflows saves institutions up to 30%.
Efficiency: Real-time data and better cooperation boost productivity.
Scales smoothly: A rise in students? Program expansion? Your needs shape cloud systems.
Upgraded Security: Multi-factor authentication, encryption, and compliance safeguard data.
Disjointed Systems Breakup
Even the most efficient teams can be slowed by obsolete technologies and paper processes. To reduce redundancies and streamline operations, cloud solutions combine these systems into a single, easy platform. IT teams can focus on strategic innovations instead of segregated platform troubleshooting.
Future-Ready Change
Agility and resilience are essential for the future of higher education. Enabling seamless scalability, strengthening cybersecurity measures, and fostering innovation, cloud-based systems guarantee that your institution remains at the forefront. Not only do these solutions address current challenges, but they also establish your campus as a leader in adapting to the constantly changing educational landscape.
Improving Efficiency with Creatrix Campus Cloud-Based Solutions
Creative Campus provides a complete solution for your university. The automation of financial operations and real-time course registration are meant to simplify and improve your work.
The platform’s easy design and customized modules let you solve campus issues. Because it’s cloud-based, Creatrix Campus integrates across departments, fosters collaboration, and supports growth without costly infrastructure updates.
Young people today spend a large amount of time online, with a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report noting teens ages 12 to 17 had four or more hours of daily screen time during July 2021 to December 2023.
This digital exposure can impact teens’ mental health, according to Pew Research, with four in 10 young people saying they’re anxious when they don’t have their smartphones and 39 percent saying they have cut back their time on social media. But online presences can also impact how individuals process information, as well as their ability to distinguish between news, advertisement, opinion and entertainment.
A December Student Voice survey by Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab found seven out of 10 of college students would rate their current level of media literacy as somewhat or very high, but they consider their college peers’ literacy less highly, with only 32 percent rating students as a whole as somewhat or very highly media literate.
A majority of students (62 percent) also indicate they are at least moderately concerned about the spread of misinformation among their college peers, with 26 percent saying their concern was very high.
To address students’ digital literacy, colleges and universities can provide education and support in a variety of ways. The greatest share of Student Voice respondents (35 percent) say colleges and universities should create digital resources to learn about media literacy. But few institutions offer this kind of service or refer students to relevant resources for self-education.
Methodology
Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab polled 1,026 students at 181 two- and four-year institutions from Dec. 19 to 23. The margin of error is 3 percent. Explore the findings yourself here, here and here.
What is media literacy? Media literacy, as defined in the survey, is the ability or skills to critically analyze for accuracy, credibility or evidence of bias in the content created and consumed in sources including radio, television, the internet and social media.
A majority of survey respondents indicate they use at least one measure regularly to check the accuracy of information they’re receiving, including thinking critically about the message delivered, analyzing the source’s perspective or bias, verifying information with other sources, or pausing to check information before sharing with others.
A missing resource: While there are many groups that offer digital resources or online curriculum for teachers, particularly in the K-12 space, less common are self-guided digital resources tailored to young people in higher education.
“Create digital resources for students” was the No. 1 response across respondent groups and characteristics and was even more popular among community college respondents (38 percent) and adult learners (42 percent), which may highlight students’ preferences for learning outside the classroom, particularly for those who may be employed or caregivers.
Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism offers a free self-directed media literacy course that includes webinars with journalism and media experts, as well as exercises for reflection. Similarly, Baylor University’s library offers a microcourse, lasting 10 minutes, that can be embedded into Canvas and that awards students a badge upon completion.
The University of North Carolina at Charlotte provides a collection of resources on a Respectful Conversation website that includes information on free expression, media literacy, constructive dialogue and critical thinking. On this website, users can also identify online classes, many of which are free, that provide an overview or a deeper level look at additional topics such as misinformation and deepfakes.
The American Library Association has a project, Media Literacy Education in Libraries for Adult Audiences, that is designed to assist libraries in their work to improve media literacy skills among adults in the community. The project includes webinars, a resource guide for practitioners.
Does your college or university have a self-guided digital resource for students to engage in media literacy education? Tell us more.
During my five years working in postdoctoral affairs at two higher education institutions, current postdoctoral associates have often shared their frustrations with me.
Some feel they aren’t getting the credit they deserve in their research group. Others share they feel pressured to work long hours. And in terms of relationships with their mentors, some sense a lack of feedback and support from their faculty supervisor, while others feel they are micromanaged and lack autonomy.
When I hear these things, it strengthens my belief that many of the problems that emerge during the postdoctoral experience could be reduced by more proactive communication prior to an individual accepting a position. Talking through personality, leadership and communication styles can help both postdocs and mentors better understand the relational dynamics, as well as the expectations and needs each bring to the partnership.
So, while earlier “Carpe Careers” pieces have focused on the pragmatics of a postdoc job search and discovering postdoc opportunities, including those outside the traditional academic postdoc, I want to share the thought process late-stage Ph.D. students should be working their way through prior to and during a postdoc search, as well as advice on navigating the start of a postdoc position. My hope is that by carefully considering their own values and needs, graduate students can better understand if a postdoc position is the best career path for them, and if so, which postdoc position might be the right fit.
The Right People and the Right Questions
The first piece of advice I would give any prospective postdoc is that you must take ownership of your postdoc search. This includes talking to the right people and asking the right questions, which begins with asking yourself the most critical one: Why am I considering a postdoc position?
People pursue postdocs for a variety of reasons. None are necessarily more appropriate than others, but your motivations for engaging in a postdoc should be clear to you. Some motivations might include:
To gain training and increase metrics of scholarly productivity in order to be a more competitive candidate for positions at research-intensive universities.
To learn new skills or techniques that will increase marketability, perhaps outside academia.
For international trainees, a postdoc path may allow for continued work in the United States while pursuing a green card and citizenship.
To increase time to think about career paths.
To explore a geographic location that might seem ideal for one’s career prospects.
There is nothing wrong with any of these reasons, but understanding your reason will help you find the postdoc position that best fits your academic and professional journeys.
Understanding Expectations
Even if your goal is not to pursue an academic career and you don’t believe you will be in a postdoc position longer than a year, it is critical to take the postdoc experience seriously as professional experience, and accept and understand its responsibilities and deliverables.
I fully acknowledge that the postdoc role can be nuanced and, ideally, it is some hybrid of employment, extended training and apprenticeship under a more senior faculty member. In nearly all cases, however, an individual is hired into a postdoc role to help make progress on a funded research project. This may involve funding from federal agencies such as the National Institutes of Health or National Science Foundation, a nonprofit foundation, or the institution itself. Regardless, a postdoc is hired to help deliver important outputs associated with a project that’s being paid for. From this perspective, the postdoc’s job is to help move the project forward and ultimately produce data and findings for further dissemination. Successful postdocs understand what these deliverables are and their importance to their faculty mentor.
Of course, this does not mean postdocs should devote 100 percent of their time to producing research products. In fact, many years ago, the Office of Management and Budget made clear to federally funded U.S. agencies supporting graduate students and postdocs that such roles have dual functions of employee and trainee. The notice specifically states that postdocs “are expected to be actively engaged in their training and career development under their research appointments.” Additionally, the NIH is seeking to explicitly specify the percentage of time a postdoc should be devoting to their career and professional development through recommendations from a Working Group on Re-envisioning NIH-Supported Postdoctoral Training. In a report published in December 2023, the group suggests postdocs should have a minimum of 10 percent of their effort devoted to career and professional development activities.
It’s clear that the job of a postdoc is to both deliver on research products and invest in one’s own training and professional development. Given the need to effectively balance these two activities, it is critical that prospective postdocs seek to understand how the group they might work in, or the faculty member they might work with, understands the position. And likewise, it is important for the candidate to convey their expectations to the same parties.
A proactive conversation can be intimidating for some, but the Institute for Broadening Participation has created a list of questions taken from a National Academies report on enhancing the postdoc experience to get you started.
Exploring the Landscape
Potential postdocs should also consider speaking to current and/or past postdocs with experiences in groups and with people with whom they are interested in working. Past postdocs can often more freely enlighten others as to faculty members’ working and communications styles and their willingness to provide support.
Another important factor prospective postdocs should consider is the support and resources institutions provide. This can range from employee benefits and postdoc compensation to career and professional development opportunities.
A critical resource to help you understand the current institutional landscape for postdoc support in the United States is the National Postdoctoral Association’s Institutional Policy Report and Database. You can leverage this data by benchmarking the benefits of institutions you are considering for your postdoc. For example, in the most recently published report from 2023, 52 percent of responding U.S. institutions reported offering matching retirement benefits to their employee postdocs.
Considering the entire package around a postdoc position is yet another important step in evaluating if a potential position aligns with your academic, professional and personal goals.
Putting Together a Plan
Once you have decided to accept a postdoc position, I advise communicating proactively with your new faculty supervisor to ensure all expectations are aligned. A great document to help with framing your potential responsibilities is the Compact Between Postdoctoral Appointees and Their Mentors from the Association of American Medical Colleges.
Finally, I highly encourage any new postdoc to create an individual development plan to outline their project completion, skill development and career advancement goals. This can be shared with the supervisor to ensure both parties’ project completion goals match and the postdoc’s other goals will be supported. If faculty supervisors could benefit from additional resources that stress the importance of IDPs, I suggest this piece published in Molecular Celland this Inside Higher Ed essay.
Deciding whether to pursue a postdoc position, and how to pursue one proactively, is important to maximize your future prospects as a Ph.D. holder. Leveraging this advice, plus that of other online resources— such as the Strategic Postdoc online course from the Science Communication Lab and the Postdoc Academy’s Succeeding as a Postdoc online course and mentoring resources—will help you to choose a position with intention and engage in deliberate discussions prior to accepting it. This will increase the likelihood that your postdoc experience will align with your needs and help successfully launch the next stage in your career.
Chris Smith is Virginia Tech’s postdoctoral affairs program administrator. He serves on the National Postdoctoral Association’s Board of Directors and is a member of the Graduate Career Consortium—an organization providing a national voice for graduate-level career and professional development leaders.
First-generation students make up around 20 percent of the University of South Carolina student population.
University of South Carolina
While first-generation students are a growing population in higher education, they remain less likely to retain or complete a credential, compared to their continuing-generation peers.
A new initiative at the University of South Carolina unifies assistance for students who are the first in their families to attend college to guide them through the university and provide a sense of belonging. The First-Generation Student Center is connected to a first-generation living-learning community and offers embedded academic and socioemotional support, which reduces the need for students to seek support independently.
“We know from our campus data on students in our long-standing TRIO program that they do not have the gaps in retention and graduation that our other first-generation students have,” says Shelley Dempsey, assistant provost for graduation and retention. “However, the program is at max capacity. It was time for our university to provide additional options to serve students in a similar demographic who are not able to be a part of the TRIO program.”
The center was designed to provide increased and more specialized services for learners in a physical space that promotes students’ feelings of belonging.
Dempsey sees particular benefits with first-generation student support, including social capital growth and impacting future generations of their families. But Dempsey also notes improving processes and the student experience for first-generation degree attainment is a benefit for the institution as a whole.
How it works: The First-Generation Center (FGC), which opened in fall 2024 within Maxcy College residence hall on campus, includes a variety of support services and resources.
A dedicated director and assistant director support the center, as does a faculty director, who oversees the living and learning community for 151 first-generation students.
Within the center, students can engage with an embedded mental health counselor for one-on-one in-person or virtual sessions, as well as group sessions on common themes like homesickness and exam anxiety. The Student Success Center has embedded staff presence for drop-in hours, and the FGC hosts other partners across campus, including financial aid, the career center and the meal card office, to provide insights into navigating higher ed.
“The idea is that if we can have all of these offices have a presence in the FGC as a safe space, then we build comfort and confidence with the first-generation students to utilize them in their locations outside the FGC as well,” Dempsey says.
This fall, the center hosted a series called First-Gen Connections that provided relevant information related to campus experiences and deadlines. Athletics staff led a discussion on how students can earn ticket priority for sporting events and offered students a behind-the-scenes tour of the football stadium, for example.
How it’s going: Since launching the center, USC leaders have seen an increase in first-generation student involvement. The center was advertised through meetings, events and campus media including newsletters, but word of mouth has been the most effective marketing campaign.
Several sections of University 101, USC’s first-year seminar program, also meet in the center, which helps raise awareness of the support offerings.
This fall, efforts to include first-generation students were noticeable in mini-grant applications for research and creative projects alongside a mentor, with 55 percent of applicants being first-gen learners.
“We want our first-generation students to know that they are just as capable, and sometimes that takes bringing the info to them in a designated space so that they don’t have to navigate the large university and unfamiliar lingo or jargon for themselves,” Dempsey says.
What’s next: The current target is incoming and first-year students, with the hopes of continuing to involve them as they progress through the institution, but administrators hope to reach graduate students, as well.
“We are in the process of conducting a needs assessment to know how to increase our supports going forward,” Dempsey says.
The university will also track other student metrics including involvement in high-impact practices, GPA, DFW rates, campus involvement and leadership opportunities. Additionally, leaders will compare utilization of support services among first-gen students who engage with the center compared to their peers who are also first-gen but not associated with the center.
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Australian universities and TAFEs are embracing and combining emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR).
These innovations are reshaping the further and higher education sectors, offering more engaging, accessible, data-based learning experiences for students, educators and institutions alike.
As students and institutions seek value amidst economic and work-life challenges, these technologies are crucial in delivering sustainable and scalable skilling and workforce-development goals. Integrating AI, VR, and AR can provide more personalised and cost-effective learning pathways for students facing daily pressures, making education more accessible and financially viable.
The transformative role of AI in personalised learning
AI is becoming a game-changer in Australian education by enabling personalised learning and providing data-driven insights. AI-powered platforms can analyse the complex interplay of factors impacting student performance and customise immersive content delivery to improve persistence, resilience and success.
This integrated approach can serve personalised springboard content that matches students’ strengths, promotes growth in areas of weakness, and builds both capability and confidence.
In this way, AI is not just about student learning; it also directly benefits teachers and professional staff. It streamlines the development of educational materials, from video and interactive content to branched lessons and adaptive learning paths.
A few Australian higher and vocational education institutions have already demonstrated this by exploring the affordances of AI-driven platforms to offer personalised learning programs tailored to students’ career goals and development needs.
Researchers from the University of South Australia are proving how AI can enhance students’ learning outcomes, equip teachers with advanced education tools and overhaul the education sector for good.
At the University of Sydney, AI-driven learning platforms offer personalised learning experiences via the university’s generative AI platform, Cogniti, which shows that generative AI is a powerful way to support teachers and their teaching, not supplant them.
Immersive learning through VR
Virtual reality also continues to revolutionise Australian further and higher education, providing immersive learning environments that make complex subjects more accessible and engaging.
From medical schools to engineering programs and advanced manufacturing, VR allows students to engage with practical scenarios that realistically present workplace problems, assess skills application and assess complex tasks.
VR is a technology with tremendous promise in scaling high-quality and safe immersive learning by doing training at TAFE NSW.
Its Ultimo campus utilises a high-tech, remarkably lifelike canine mannequin to provide aspiring veterinary nurses with invaluable hands-on training.
Recently imported from the USA, this highly advanced model enables animal studies and veterinary nursing students to develop essential clinical skills, including intubation, CPR, bandaging and ear cleaning.
By implementing VR as a training tool, TAFE NSW Ultimo plumbing students can learn to recognise potential risk from return electrical current via copper pipes into a residence, which can cause serious, even fatal, electric shock, in a safe and protected environment.
Additionally, its welding students were able to identify and solve potentially hazardous scenarios when preparing for welding work.
AR brings practical training to life
AR is another immersive technology revolutionising Australian education by deepening the interaction between students and their learning materials. AR overlays digital content in the real world, making abstract concepts more tangible and understandable.
AR is broadly applicable across diverse fields such as healthcare, technical trades, and construction, allowing students to practice and refine their skills in a controlled, simulated environment.
At TAFE Queensland, welding students use AR to identify and solve potentially hazardous scenarios when preparing for welding work.
With a screen inside the helmet, students position their virtual welding torch, with sparks flying like in real life, against a plastic board and press the torch trigger to see the welds they have made.
The screen flashes red when they are incorrect and gives them a score at the end. Using AR in welding has reduced raw material wastage by 68 per cent at a time of scarcity.
TAFE Box Hill Institute’s Advanced Welder Training Centre is equipped with the latest augmented reality simulators, allowing students to use best-practice technology and quality systems in a hands-on environment.
It was developed in collaboration with Weld Australia, which represents Australian welding professionals, and will help address the current shortage of qualified and skilled welders in Australia.
Monash University’s Engineering Student Pilot Plant is designed to reflect real-world industrial environments and requirements.
AR experiences are being developed in Vuforia Studio using 3D CAD models of the pilot plant, enabling visualisation of proposed equipment before installation.
These AR interfaces will integrate with Internet of Things (IoT) devices, Digital Twin models and process simulations, creating an AR-based Human Machine Interface (HMI) that enhances on-site accessibility by providing remote, simultaneous interaction with the physical equipment and its Digital Twin.
The future of Australian further and higher education
The future of further and higher education in Australia will likely see these advanced digital technologies integrated further into the curriculum, offering new opportunities and skills for students to thrive in a competitive, tech-driven environment.
Australia’s educational institutions have a rich history of effectively using educational technology to further learning and teaching.
Assessing and leveraging rapidly evolving tools like AR and Gen AI will ensure they remain at the forefront of global education by providing students with the relevant and engaging learning experiences they need to succeed.
Tony Maguire is regional director of ANZ at global learning technology company D2L.
“Engagement, to me, is probably…getting the most out of university…taking and making the most of available opportunities.”
This quote, from Queen’s University Belfast students’ union president Kieron Minto sums up a lot of the essential elements of what we talk about when we talk about student engagement.
It captures the sense that the higher education experience has multiple dimensions, incorporating personal and professional development as well as academic study. Students will be – and feel – successful to the extent that they invest time and energy in those activities that are the most purposeful. Critically, it captures the element of student agency in their own engagement – higher education institutions might make opportunities available but students need to decide to engage to get the most from them.
In recent years “student engagement” has suffered from the curse of ubiquity. Its meanings and applications are endlessly debated. Is it about satisfaction, academic success, personal growth, or a combination of factors? There is a wealth of examples of discrete projects and frameworks for thinking about student engagement, but often little read-across from one context to another. We can celebrate the enormous amount of learning and insight that has been created while at the same time accepting that as the environment for higher education changes some of the practices that have evolved may no longer be fit for purpose.
Higher education institutions and the students that are enrolled in them face a brace of challenges, from the learning and development losses of the Covid pandemic, to rising costs and income constraints, to technological change. Institutions are less able to support provision of the breadth of enriching opportunities to students at the same time as students have less money, time, and emotional bandwidth to devote to making the most of university.
The answer, as ever, is not to bemoan the circumstances, or worse, blame students for being less able to engage, but to tool up, get strategic, and adapt.
Students still want to make the most of the opportunities that higher education has to offer. The question is how to design and configure those opportunities so that current and future students continue to experience them as purposeful and meaningful.
Fresh student engagement thinking
Our report, Future-proofing student engagement in higher education, brings together the perspectives of academic and professional services staff, higher education leaders, and students, all from a range of institutions, to establish a firm foundation of principles and practices that can support coherent, intentional student engagement strategies.
A foundational principle for student engagement is that students’ motivations and engagement behaviours are shaped by their backgrounds, prior experiences, current environments, and hopes and expectations for their futures – as explained by Ella Kahu in her socio-cultural framework for student engagement (2013).
It follows that it is impossible to think about or have any kind of meaningful organisational strategy about student engagement without working closely in partnership with students, drawing on a wide range of data and insight about the breadth of students’ opinions, behaviours, and experiences. Similarly, it follows that a data-informed approach to student engagement must mean that the strategy evolves as students do – taking student engagement seriously means adopting an institutional mindset of preparedness to adapt in light of feedback.
Where our research indicates that there needs to be a strategic shift is in the embrace of what might be termed a more holistic approach to student engagement, in two important senses.
The first is understanding at a conceptual level how student engagement is realised in practice throughout every aspect of the student journey, and not just manifested in traditional metrics around attendance and academic performance.
The second is in how institutions, in partnership with students, map out a shared strategic intent for student engagement for every stage of that journey. That includes designing inclusive and purposeful interventions and opportunities to engage, and using data and insight from students to deepen understanding of what factors enable engagement and what makes an experience feel purposeful and engaging – and ideally creating a flow of data and insight that can inform continuous enhancement of engagement.
Theory into practice
Our research also points to how some of that shift might be realised in practice. For example, student wellbeing is intimately linked to engagement, because tired, anxious, excluded or overwhelmed students are much less able to engage. When we spoke to university staff about wellbeing support they were generally likely to focus on student services provision. But students highlighted a need for a more proactive culture of wellbeing throughout the institution, including embedding wellbeing considerations into the curriculum and nurturing a supportive campus culture. Similarly, on the themes of community and belonging, while university staff were likely to point to institutional strategic initiatives to cultivate belonging, students talked more about their need for genuine individual connections, especially with peers.
There was also a strong theme emerging about how institutions think about actively empowering students to have the confidence and skills to “navigate the maze” of higher education opportunities and future career possibilities. Pedagogies of active learning, for example, build confidence and a sense of ownership over learning, contributing to behavioural and psychological engagement. Developing students’ digital literacy means that students can more readily deploy technology to support connection with academics and course peers, make active critical choices about how they invest time in different platforms, and prepare for their future workplace. Before getting exercised about how today’s students do not arrive in higher education “prepared to engage,” it’s worth remembering just how much larger and more complicated the contemporary university is, and with these, the increased demands on students.
While there is a lot that institutions can do to move forward their student engagement agenda independently, there is also a need for a renewed focus on student engagement from the higher education sector as a whole. The megathemes contributing to shifting student engagement patterns are shared; they are not distinctive to any institution type, geography, or student demographic.
The promise of higher education – that you can transform your life, your identity and your future through a higher education experience – only holds true if students are willing and able to engage with it. This demands a unified effort from all involved.
Institutions must prioritise student engagement, placing it at the heart of their strategies and decisions. Furthermore, the higher education sector as a whole must renew its focus on student engagement, recognising its fundamental role in achieving the goals of higher education. Finally, as regulatory bodies evolve their approach to the assessment and enhancement of academic quality, student engagement must once again be put front and centre of the higher education endeavour.
For the first time, there are now more commuter students in the UK – students who continue to live at home whilst studying, rather than relocating to attend university – than traditional residential students.
Surprised? You’re not alone. My research on commuter students suggests that even commuter students themselves don’t realise that there are others like them. In common with most of those who shape higher education pedagogy, policy, practices and plans for the future, they believe that they are a minority, an anomaly, inconsistent with the (presumed) majority of “normal,” residential students.
The sector is increasingly waking up to the needs and experiences of commuter students, supported by the inclusion of commuters in the Office for Students Equality of Opportunity Risk Register in England – Emma Maslin has explored this further on the site.
It is essential, for students, higher education institutions and the future viability of our sector, that we increase awareness of commuter students – who they are and what they need – and that we reshape higher education provision for this growing cohort.
Students will benefit from a better experience and outcomes. Institutions will benefit from higher retention, league table position and therefore recruitment. The sector as a whole will benefit from greater financial stability and clear evidence to the government that we are meeting their priorities and truly expanding access and improving outcomes for non-traditional students.
Who commutes – and why?
Commuter students are diverse. However, there is a strong correlation between being a non-traditional student – those targeted by widening participation initiatives – and being a commuter student.
This is because many of the reasons that students have historically been unable or unwilling to enrol in higher education are the same as those that make them unable or unwilling to relocate. These include affordability, being first in family to higher education, from a low-participation neighbourhood, having caring or family commitments, over 25. Commuters are also likely to be in employment, be home owners, to be studying part time, at lower-tariff universities. Finally, my research suggests that commuter students are more likely to be local students, not long-distance learners.
This said, commuting isn’t always about widening participation. It is likely that the undersupply of student accommodation and resultant increasing prices, alongside the cost-of-living crisis, are encouraging traditional students to remain at home. There is also evidence to suggest that international and postgraduate students are more likely to be commuters, both key target markets for UK higher education institutions.
Relocation as a predictor of success
But why does this matter? Data tell us that commuter students have a poorer experience throughout the student lifecycle. Choice of institution, access to learning, resources, support and extra-curricular activities, are all restricted. Commuters are less able to engage with in-person learning activities and are isolated from their learning community.
They feel less a sense of belonging, more a sense of burden. In consequence, commuter students have lower attainment, continuation and graduate outcomes than their residential counterparts.
In part, this is because higher education has been designed without consideration of the need to travel. Pedagogy, policy and processes have historically been and continue to be shaped around residential students. Assessments, extracurricular activities, facilities, learning and wellbeing support, teaching activities, timetabling—all continue to be premised on the residential model, structured for the residential student, provided at a time and in a place that assumes that students live on or near to campus.
What next?
The first step is to see our commuters. Count them, to make them count. Make them visible, not only to decision makers and practitioners, but also to each other. Provide information for commuters, before, during and after application. Create a sense of belonging, building community through awareness, acceptance and actions such as repurposing unused parts of the estate, for commuter students – a common room, sleeping areas.
Next, review all policies for accessibility, with particular focus on timetabling, attendance, learning and teaching, support services and skills development.
Make changes where necessary, enabling students to maximise access, whilst minimising travel. Rethink in-person learning and make attendance worth it. Consider online learning, but avoid hybrid learning and include on-commute learning options.
Myth busting
For commuter students, access to learning isn’t just about distance. It’s not even just about transport. We need to look at the acceptability, accessibility, affordability and availability of transport. However, we also need to recognise that access and participation are also about students’ activities, responsibilities and relationships, outside of the classroom.
The data tell us that our commuter students are struggling to adapt to pedagogy, policies and practices that are based on the assumption that they will relocate to attend university. Our ability to adapt our provision to their needs is likely to be key to the future sustainability of many of our institutions, if not the sector as a whole.
This article is the first in our series on commuter students where we’ll explore their student journey and what support institutions and the sector can provide to enhance their experience. If you’d like to get involved in the series, we’d welcome further contributions, email [email protected] to pitch us an article.
The Higher Education continues to grow. We believe our growth stems largely from our increasing relevance and in our truth telling, which other higher education news outlets are unwilling to do in these times.
We invite a diverse group of guest authors who are willing to share their truths. The list includes academics from various disciplines, advocates, activists, journalists, consultants, and whistleblowers. We back up all of this work with data and critical analysis, irrespective of politics and social conventions. We are willing to challenge the higher education establishment, including trustees, donors, and university presidents.
Our focus, though mainly on US higher education, also has an international appeal.
Some of our work takes years to produce, through careful documentation of primary and secondary sources, database analysis, and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. We share all of this information for everyone to see, at no cost.
Of course, we could not operate without all your voices. We welcome all your voices. Something few other sources are willing to do.
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WASHINGTON — On the 2024 campaign trail, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump accused the nation’s faculty of being “obsessed with indoctrinating America’s youth” and declared, “The time has come to reclaim our once great educational institutions from the radical Left.”
His administration’s “secret weapon” in this conflict would be the accreditation system for colleges and universities.
“When I return to the White House, I will fire the radical Left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist maniacs and lunatics,” he said in a July 2023 campaign video. “We will then accept applications for new accreditors who will impose real standards on colleges once again and once and for all.”
Earlier this week, officials and professionals from the accreditation system that Trump vowed to upend met in Washington, D.C., for the Council for Higher Education Accreditation’s annual conference to discuss the major topics facing the sector — not least among them being the second Trump administration that took office a week earlier.
Along with the wholesale replacement of accreditors that Trump promised, plenty of other aspects of accreditation work could change under the new administration andwith a Republican majority in Congress. Here is a look at some of the big political and policy questions under discussion.
Working with a new Education Department
The U.S. Department of Education recognizes accreditors, which in turn vet and accredit institutions, rendering them eligible for Title IV federal financial aid, such as student loans and Pell Grants.
That makes the department’s relationship with accreditors of paramount importance to the latter group, and it would make the department the agent for enacting Trump’s policies.
“There will be — and we don’t know the scope of it yet — efforts to use accreditors to advance the administration’s policies, particularly around areas of DEI,” Jon Fansmith, senior vice president of government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education, said during a panel Wednesday.
One of Trump’s campaign pledges was to remove “all DEI bureaucrats” from higher education. As a senator, Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, introduced a federal bill last year that would have barred accreditors from enacting DEI requirements at colleges. A bill with a similar aim passed the House last year, but died in committee in the Senate.
With the change in administration will come a new Education Secretary. Fansmith described Trump’s pick to head the Education Department, Linda McMahon, as “pragmatic.” He also said her stint as head of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term went “remarkably smoothly.”
“There are reasons to think that where she has weighed into the [higher ed] policy space, there’s opportunities to work with her,” Fansmith added.
As for Trump’s stated desire to eliminate the department altogether? “Spoiler, the department won’t be abolished,” Fansmith said.
Jan Friis, CHEA’s senior vice president for government affairs, pointed out that the first bill proposing the elimination of the Education Departmentso far during the current House of Representatives term had no cosponsors.
Further attacks on DEI
Colleges across the country have faced a Republican-led crusade against their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts over the past few years — and those attacks are only poised to grow stronger under the Trump administration.
On the first full day of his presidency, Trump issued an executive order calling for agencies to identify organizations, including colleges with endowments worth over $1 billion, for potential investigations into their DEI work.
The mounting backlash against DEI means that higher education leaders will have to frame “compelling narratives” about their equity work to help people see what they’re doing and why, Debra Humphreys, vice president of strategic engagement at Lumina Foundation, told conference attendees Tuesday.
“How do we talk about all of that work in a way that more people can understand?” Humphreys said. “That’s become harder.”
That’s because people who hear words like “equity” and “inclusion” often fall into two camps, Humphreys said.
“One, they have listened to all the weaponization of those words, and they think they are horrible things,” Humphreys said. “Or, they don’t know what we’re talking about. A big chunk of them do not know what we mean at all when we say equity.”
To counter those reactions, higher ed leaders should use plain language to describe initiatives and who they intend to help while avoiding “insider language” — which includes DEI. Leaders should also frame their initiatives in terms of shared values held by the public.
“There are some still out there that cut across all our differences,” Humphreys said. “Fairness is one of them, opportunities another one. I actually think freedom of thought and expression, which has become a very hot button thing, is a shared value in America.”
A harsher climate for immigration and international students
Trump’s first two weeks in office brought several shifts in immigration policy, including a directive from the administration that opens colleges to immigration raids and a newly signed law that requires federal immigration enforcers to detain migrants accused of certain crimes, including shoplifting and larceny.
More immigration policies could be coming, given Trump’s promise on the campaign trailto implement an expanded travel ban and fiery rhetoric aimed at other countries such as China, Colombia and Mexico.
Some of Trump’s policies could put colleges in uncomfortable positions, should they be the site of immigration raids. More broadly, Trump’s actions and messaging on immigration and other countries could make it harder to recruit international students, some said at the CHEA conference.
“It is as important for foreign students to be part of our system as it is for our students to be part of other systems,” Luis Maldonado, American Association of State Colleges and Universities’ vice president of government relations and policy analysis, told attendees Wednesday.
Maldonado gave an example of an AASCU exchange program for students from China studying at U.S. institutions, which he described as a “vital part” of international higher ed.
The Trump administration “shares a different set of values” and “wants to control who can access our institutions, and to what end are foreign students seeking when they enter and enroll in our institutions,” Maldonado said.
Uncertainty amid the funding freeze
On Wednesday, two days after the White House budget office issued a memo declaring a pause on potentially huge swaths of federal grants, loans and other aid, panelists noted the widespread confusion overtaking the higher ed world in its wake.
“The backlash across multiple levels of government seems to indicate that this was not done with a level of coordination and forethought that gives you comfort in how your government is functioning,” Fansmith said.
The administration rescinded the memo after a judge ordered it to halt the funding freeze. However, officials said the freeze was still in place, with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt saying on X on Wednesday, “The President’s EO’s on federal funding remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented.”
Fansmith said at the panel, “It’s easy to look at say, ‘This was unintended consequences, that they got too far over their skis and did something hastily.’ I don’t find that especially reassuring, given the scale of what was being proposed.”
