Tag: Higher

Roundup of select spring university press titles (opinion)

Johns Hopkins University Press/MIT Press/University Press of Kentucky/Duke University Press/Princeton University Press/University of Minnesota Press/University of California Press

More catalogs from university presses started arriving almost immediately after the last roundup of spring titles appeared—and in going through them, a couple of topical clusters of books struck me as notable. Here is a quick overview. Quoted passages come from material provided by the publishers.

What do ant colonies, online subcultures, the publishing industry and the device you are using to read this all have in common? Each is, in some sense, a network embedded in still wider networks. They, like myriad other phenomena, can be depicted in geometric diagrams in which the components of a system (“vertices”) are connected by lines (“edges”) representing interactions or relationships.

Researchers across many disciplines understand how systems and processes can be conceptualized as networks. The lay public, on the whole, does not. Anthony Bonato’s Dots and Lines: Hidden Networks in Social Media, AI, and Nature (Hopkins University Press, May) aims to bring nonspecialist readers up to speed on elements of the network perspective. Everything from “Bitcoin transactions to neural connections” and “political landscapes to climate patterns” can be mapped via dots and lines. The author’s use of demotic labels seems well-advised, given that “Vertices and Edges” seems much less commercially viable as a title.

Some networks make it a priority to remain diagrammable, of course. Isak Ladegaard’s Open Secrecy: How Technology Empowers the Digital Underworld (University of California Press, May) looks into the “military-grade encryption, rerouting software, and cryptocurrencies” enabling “shadowy groups to organize collective action.” Examples include dark-web markets for illegal drugs, the activities of online hate groups and the efforts of Chinese citizens to remain connected to parts of the internet blocked by the Great Firewall. In each case, those running stealth networks “move through cyberspace like digital nomads, often with law enforcement and other powerful actors on their tails.”

Leif Weatherby’s Language Machines: Cultural AI and the End of Remainder Humanism (University of Minnesota Press, June) offers “a new theory of meaning in language and computation” applicable to the production of texts by artificial intelligence based on large language models.

Generative AI “does not simulate cognition, as widely believed,” he argues, “but rather creates culture” instead of just shuffling together fragments of it. (This is perhaps as good an occasion as any to issue my prediction that 2025 will see the first best-selling novel written by an AI algorithm.)

On an altogether more dire note, Daniel Oberhaus’s The Silicon Shrink: How Artificial Intelligence Made the World an Asylum (MIT Press, February) warns that the use of AI in psychiatry has shown “vanishingly little evidence” of improving patient outcomes. The problem is not one of engineering but of programming: The algorithms incorporate “deeply flawed psychiatric models of mental disorder at unprecedented scale,” posing “significant risks to vulnerable people.”

In old-school psychodynamic therapy, what’s said during the consultation does not leave the room. The author warns that a “psychiatric surveillance economy” is emerging, one “in which the emotions, behavior, and cognition of everyday people are subtly manipulated by psychologically savvy algorithms.”

Doubling down on a strictly defined and vigilantly enforced understanding of sex and gender as binary is high on the MAGA cultural agenda. A few books out this spring insist on the ambiguities and complexities, even so.

Agustín Fuentes offers perhaps the most basic challenge to traditional assumptions with Sex Is a Spectrum: The Biological Limits of the Binary (Princeton University Press, May). Arguing on the basis of recent scientific research, the book “explain[s] why the binary view of the sexes is fundamentally flawed,” with “compelling evidence from the fossil and archaeological record that attests to the diversity of our ancestors’ sexual bonds, gender roles, and family and community structures.”

The ability to survive and thrive in unwelcoming circumstances is a focus of the writings collected in To Belong Here: A New Generation of Queer, Trans, and Two-Spirit Appalachian Writers (University Press of Kentucky, April), edited by Rae Garringer. The term “two-spirit” refers to a nonbinary gender category recognized among some Indigenous peoples in North America. Contributors discuss “themes of erasure, environmentalism, violence, kinship, racism, Indigeneity, queer love, and trans liberation” in Appalachia, exploring “the writers’ resilience in reconciling their complex and often contradictory connections to home.”

Transgender philosophy is covered at some length in an entry recently added to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Talia Mae Bettcher, whose work figures prominently in the entry’s bibliography, continues her work in the field with Beyond Personhood (University of Minnesota Press, March), presenting “a theory of intimacy and distance” that proposes “an entirely new philosophical approach to trans experience, trans oppression, gender dysphoria, and the relationship between gender and identity.”

Engineering and programming enter transgender studies’ already interdisciplinary ambit with Oliver L. Haimson’s Trans Technologies (MIT Press, February), which draws on the author’s “in-depth interviews with more than 100 creators of technology” for trans people, showing “how trans people often must rely on community, technology, and the combination of the two to meet their basic needs and challenges.” From the book’s description and the author’s published articles, it seems that the technology in question tends to be digital: social networks, games, extended reality systems (akin to virtual reality but with additional capacities). The book also considers the factors shaping, and in some cases restricting, innovation in trans tech.

To close this list, there’s The Dream of a Common Movement (Duke University Press, April), a collection of writings by and interviews with Urvashi Vaid (1958–2022) edited by Jyotsna Vaid and Amy Hoffman. Urvashi Vaid was a feminist and a civil rights advocate whose work “over the course of four decades fundamentally shaped the LGBTQ movement.” Her perspective that “the goal of any liberation movement should be transformation, not assimilation” seems compatible with an older principle, which holds that an injury to one is an injury to all.

Scott McLemee is Inside Higher Ed’s “Intellectual Affairs” columnist. He was a contributing editor at Lingua Franca magazine and a senior writer at The Chronicle of Higher Education before joining Inside Higher Ed in 2005.

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December 20, 2024
College holiday videos feature mascots, movie references

It’s been another challenging year in higher ed, and colleges are unsure what 2025 could bring, especially with the Biden administration coming to an end and former president Trump returning to the White House. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing for them to celebrate this holiday season, whether it’s increased enrollment, new awards and recognitions, a close-knit campus community—or just the fact that there are students on campus willing to star in a silly holiday video.

Here are Inside Higher Ed’s favorite greetings of this holiday season, including five presidential cameos, four mascot stunts, three live music performances, two Die Hard references … and a partridge in a pear tree.

University of Wisconsin–Superior

Since when can yellowjackets ice-skate? Google tells me that wasps need to find somewhere warm to hide away when temperatures drop below 40 degrees—but Buzz the Yellowjacket, the University of Wisconsin at Superior’s mascot, appears to be the exception. In this holiday greeting video, Buzz not only makes an impressive ice hockey goal but also displays some figure skating prowess, pulling off a top-rate arabesque. Could Buzz become the nation’s first ever apian Olympian?

Riverland Community College, Austin, Minn.

In this video from Riverland Community College in southern Minnesota, different groups of students wish viewers a happy holiday in turn. Their greetings give glimpses into the unique programs, clubs and spaces on campus, from cosmetology students giving pedicures in a salon to handy welders- and electricians-in-training showing off their skills.

Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa

Iowa State’s Cyclone Marching Band comes together in perfect harmony in this artfully choreographed video, marching across campus to provide some brassy musical accompaniment for the campus’s tree lighting. From what I could find in my research, the group first plays the university’s alma mater, “The Bells of Iowa State,” which was written in 1931 by Iowa State English professor Jim Wilson, followed by a rousing rendition of ISU’s fight song.

Georgia State University College of the Arts, Atlanta

Coniferous trees spring from sidewalks and dance studios in this collage-like animation by a GSU alumnus, featuring background music by a current undergraduate student. The video concludes with punny well-wishes for the holidays: “May the arts spruce up your season with good cheer!”

Eastern Washington University, Cheney, Wash.

This sketch from Washington’s EWU opens with the university’s president, Shari McMahan, jokingly bemoaning the fact that she had run out of acorns on which to use her large collection of nutcrackers. But the campus community takes that joke seriously and shifts into high gear, with each department researching how to help her get her hands on more “nutcracker food.” I hope those math students were able to finally solve for the numeric value of acorn!

Howard University, Washington, D.C.

Howard president Ben Vinson III highlights the university’s 2024 achievements in this holiday message, including the D.C. university’s record-breaking freshman class and its 100th homecoming. “As we prepare for the holidays, I look forward to all that lies ahead. I wish everyone a joyful and restful break and a successful start to the new year,” Vinson said.

Whitman College, Walla Walla, Wash.

Rhythmic choral music rings out through Whitman College’s Memorial Building before the singers are eventually joined by an instrumental septet in this distinctive holiday video. What makes this video so unusual is the choice to use not a well-known holiday carol but a choral song by living composer Jeff Newberry with lyrics by Malcolm Guite, a poet and Anglican priest, that nevertheless speak to the gratitude and peace of the holiday season: “Become an open singing-bowl, whose chime / Is richness rising out of emptiness, / And timelessness resounding into time.”

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.

MIT’s video this year is a short animated sequence that shows what happens after it magically begins snowing inside one of the university’s academic buildings. A student walks through the snow-dusted hallway, eventually happening upon an atrium where her classmates are playing instruments crafted from ice, sledding and crafting a snow beaver in the image of the institution’s mascot.

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

What a beautiful message for this holiday season: the importance of friendship across differences. When Norm the Niner, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte’s gold-mining mascot, orders goose on a food delivery app, he’s expecting dinner to arrive. But instead, he finds a live goose at his door at ready to move onto UNC-Charlotte’s campus. At first, the goose only wants to cause chaos, but eventually he mellows out, learning to enjoy college basketball, fine art and taking selfies before eventually departing south for the winter.

Tarrant County College, Tarrant County, Tex.

In this heartfelt video from one of Texas’s largest counties, members of the Tarrant County College community join together at a beautifully set table for what looks to be a homemade holiday dinner, reminding TCC students that they will always “have a seat at the table.” Joining them is college chancellor Elva Concha LeBlanc and Toro the Trailblazer, the college’s blue bull mascot, which is dancing in the background.

Oral Roberts University, Tulsa, Okla.

Hot takes abound in this video of Oral Roberts students answering Christmas-related questions, like their favorite holiday songs and films. Is Home Alone 2 superior to the original? Does the Phineas and Ferb Christmas special really qualify as a Christmas movie? Does anyone actually know the words to “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer”? If you and your family don’t have enough to argue about this holiday, these are some questions you could bring up to really cause a ruckus.

Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

Why does it seem like there’s a trend this year of rebuffing all the classic carols in favor of introducing new songs to represent the spirit of the season? I’m not complaining; apparently the song in this video is from Frozen 2, a movie I have never seen, but Yale’s student performers make it sound as loved and lived-in as a warm woolen sweater. This video also features Handsome Dale, Yale’s bulldog mascot, and Angus, the university’s First Puppy.

Clackamas Community College, Oregon City, Ore.

One of two institutions returning to this list from last year, Clackamas Community College in Oregon is back with another parodic holiday heist. This year, the college took inspiration from Die Hard. It stars Adam Hall, a math instructor at the college, in the role of John McClane, having to fight against a plot to “encrypt the digits of pi to ruin their holiday joy.” I’ve never seen Die Hard, but I have to assume that’s extremely accurate to what happens in the movie.

Oakland Community College, Oakland County, Mich.

Oakland Community College is the second to make another appearance on this list from last year. In this year’s self-aware video, chancellor Peter Provenzano decides to use ChatGPT—one its few, if only, appearances in any of these videos!—to gather ideas for a Christmas movie parody that Talon, OCC’s owl mascot, could star in. The AI spits out It’s a Wonderful Life, Die Hard, A Charlie Brown Christmas and more, but none satisfy Provenzano. The moral of the story? “There are a lot of stories Talon can tell to capture the season’s joy, but none better than the story we tell at OCC,” he says. (And stick around to the end for bloopers!)

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December 20, 2024
AI-authored abstracts “more authentic” than human-written ones

Journal abstracts written with the help of artificial intelligence are perceived as more authentic, clear and compelling than those created solely by academics, a study suggests.

While many academics may scorn the idea of outsourcing article summaries to generative AI, a new investigation by researchers at Ontario’s University of Waterloo found peer reviewers rated abstracts written by humans—but paraphrased using generative AI—far more highly than those authored without algorithmic assistance.

Abstracts written entirely by AI—in which a large language model was asked to provide a summary of a paper—were rated slightly less favorably on qualities such as honesty, clarity, reliability and accuracy, although not significantly so, explains the study, published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior: Artificial Humans.

For instance, the mean score for honesty for an entirely robot-written abstract was 3.32, based on a five-point Likert scale (where 5 is the highest rating), but just 3.38 for a human-written one.

For an AI-paraphrased abstract, it was 3.82, according to the paper, which asked 17 experienced peer reviewers in the field of computer game design to assess a range of abstracts for readability and guess whether they were AI-written.

On some measures, such as perceived clarity and compellingness, entirely AI-written abstracts did better than entirely human-written summaries, although were not seen as superior to AI-paraphrased work.

One of the study’s co-authors, Lennart Nacke, from Waterloo’s Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business, told Times Higher Education that the study’s results showed “AI-paraphrased abstracts were well received” but added that the “researchers should view AI as an augmentation tool” rather than a “replacement for researcher expertise.”

“Although peer reviewers were not able to reliably distinguish between AI and human writing, they were able to clearly assess the quality of underlying research described in the manuscript,” he said.

“You could say that one key takeaway from our research is that researchers should use AI to enhance clarity and precision in their writing. They should not use it as an autonomous content producer. The human researcher should remain the intellectual driver of the work.”

Emphasizing that “researchers should be the primary drivers of their manuscript writing,” Nacke continued, “AI [can] polish language and improve readability, but it cannot replace the deep understanding that comes with years of experience in a research field.”

Stressing the importance of having distinctive academic writing—a desire expressed by several reviewers—he added that, “In our AI era, it’s perhaps more essential than ever to have some human touch or subjective expressions from human researchers in research writing.”

“Because this is really what makes academia a creative, curious and collaborative community,” said Nacke, adding it would be a pity if scholars became “impersonal paper-producing machines.”

“Leave that last part to the Daleks,” he said.

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December 20, 2024
The hypocrisy of community-engaged research (opinion)
Any critique about the neoliberal university ought to confront and acknowledge its colonial roots. Victoria Reyes, in her book Academic Outsider (Stanford University Press, 2022), highlights that higher education was never designed for the global majority, particularly people of color from low-income backgrounds. It was built by and for the elite—predominantly white, cisgender, male and affluent individuals—whose privilege shaped the norms that dominate higher education today. These norms actively harm oppressed communities. People of color in positions of power within higher education, such as tenured faculty or administrators, often perpetuate these systems of oppression when they conform to institutional norms instead of challenging them.

The positivist research paradigm (a.k.a. positivism) sustains oppression in academia by prioritizing quantifiable data while dismissing subjective experiences and social contexts in pursuit of “objective” truths. This fragmented approach erases the complexity of lived experiences and ignores the interplay of privilege and oppression in shaping identities. Positivism fuels deficit-based research, white saviorism and helicopter science, invalidating diverse epistemologies and methodologies. Deficit-based research highlights negative conditions in oppressed communities, framing them as lacking while ignoring systemic causes of inequities, such as settler colonialism and structural racism. Legacies of positivism reinforce harmful stereotypes and stigmatization toward communities of color in higher education.

In contrast, a transformative paradigm offers an alternative to positivism by centering the voices and experiences of oppressed communities. It prioritizes knowledge democracy and dismantling of power imbalances that have historically excluded marginalized communities from the research process. Over the past 25 years, community-engaged research (CEnR) and community-based participatory research (CBPR) have emerged as crucial approaches in health education, public health and the social sciences to address social inequities. Both approaches emphasize equitable, reciprocal community-academic partnerships, to foster genuine collaboration and systemic change.

As a woman of color from the Global South and an immigrant scientist who studies health equity, I have witnessed firsthand both the transformative potential of CEnR in addressing social injustice and the discriminatory practices that neoliberal universities perpetuate in my own research with low-income and immigrant communities of color. While CEnR and CBPR are integral to addressing complex health and social inequities by empowering communities and fostering sustainable interventions, a question remains: Can these approaches thrive within the neoliberal university?

White Saviorism and the Neoliberal University

Unfortunately, the rise of CEnR within neoliberal universities, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, was driven not by a genuine shift toward equity, but by a desire for funding and institutional prestige. As Megan Snider Bailey notes, “Market forces … shape university-community partnerships,” reinforcing a colonial mindset rooted in the white savior complex. This complex positions universities as gatekeepers of resources and legitimacy, exploiting oppressed communities under the appearance of “helping” them to secure funding from entities like the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.

The white savior complex describes privileged individuals, often white, who see themselves as “saviors” or “benevolent rescuers” of oppressed communities. This paternalistic mindset creates exploitative dynamics and replicates patterns of subjugation. For instance, universities often profit significantly from research with oppressed communities, taking up to 50 percent of grant funds as indirect costs for expenses such as facility maintenance and administration. These funds rarely return to the communities that need them most. Instead, universities divert these resources to maintain their own operations, exposing the hypocrisy of institutions that claim to support equity and justice. These exploitative practices raise a critical question: Who benefits the most from the oppression and illness of communities of color?

The answer often points back to the universities themselves. They profit from the appearance of equity while perpetuating social injustice. The harm caused by white saviorism extends beyond finances. Transactional and extractive research methods are normalized in the neoliberal university. These methods reinforce patterns of subjugation and undermine long-term partnerships that could foster social justice and radical healing. As scholars have shown, a human-centered, liberatory approach must replace the transactional and extractive methods often associated with white supremacy and settler colonialism.

Precarity in the Academy

Universities that claim to promote social justice and CEnR often perpetuate exploitative practices and precarious working conditions. They frequently hire community leaders, promotoras de salud (community health workers), students and scholars of color on short-term contracts with little job security and no benefits. These precarious positions create dependency on higher institutions that exploit labor while controlling access to resources.

As Anne Cafer and Meagen Rosenthal explain, moral outrage often drives short-term involvement in community projects. CEnR that fails to address inequitable power dynamics becomes another tool of oppression disguised as allyship. Superficial, performative community-academic partnerships deepen mistrust of academic institutions in oppressed communities and reinforce power dynamics and social injustice.

Raquel Wright-Mair and Samuel Museus highlight how academia’s power hierarchies instill a fear of retaliation, silencing junior scholars of color from challenging systemic inequities. Scholars of color are often forced to align their work with institutional goals while sickening their bodies and damaging their mental health. The market-driven model of the neoliberal university prioritizes profits and productivity, limiting justice-oriented research. To address these issues in higher education, we must ask urgent questions:
- What can we do to dismantle white-led initiatives that perpetuate dependence and subjugation?
- How can institutions eliminate the white savior complex embedded in their structures?
- How can we ensure fair calculation of indirect costs in CEnR that prevent the exploitation of community needs for grant funding and institutional prestige?
Recommendations for Conducting Respectful and Liberatory CEnR

The neoliberal university perpetuates the white savior complex, commodifies community needs and exploits people of color through short-term appointments designed to maintain systemic inequities. Therefore, it is pivotal to embrace the liberatory nature of CEnR that prioritizes social justice and structural change.
- Transformative practices. Researchers must critically reflect on how their own positionality and privilege influence the liberation or oppression of marginalized communities. Universities must recognize and amplify the expertise of community members in shaping research agendas and outcomes. Furthermore, institutions must actively embrace linguistic justice and culturally relevant methods, respecting the languages, traditions and cultural contexts of the communities they engage. By prioritizing these practices, institutions can foster decolonial, respectful and inclusive collaborations that effectively challenge and dismantle oppressive systems in higher education.
- Accountability is essential. Funding agencies must prioritize equitable representation and tangible benefits for communities over superficial metrics when evaluating CEnR. Neoliberal universities must stop exploiting community researchers and scholars of color through precarious, short-term appointments that reinforce tokenization and systemic inequities. Universities often hire people of color temporarily to build trust for community-academic partnerships while maintaining the overrepresentation of white faculty. To disrupt this cycle, funding agencies must require universities to intentionally hire and retain leaders, scholars and students from oppressed communities, ensuring they have job security. Empowering these voices permits CEnR to address community-specific needs, build local infrastructure and foster authentic partnerships rooted in equity, respect and shared power, dismantling the traditional hierarchies of academic research.
- Rejecting unpaid labor is nonnegotiable. Unpaid labor perpetuates inequities, exploiting oppressed communities. Ethical CEnR demands equitable compensation, collaboration and empowerment, ensuring all participants are treated with dignity and are compensated fairly. These principles are critical to advancing liberation and driving systemic change.
Advancing CEnR that truly serves oppressed communities requires dismantling the colonial, patriarchal and exploitative structures underpinning higher education. Embracing a transformative paradigm prioritizes genuine representation, community needs and liberation over market-driven motives, creating a model for lasting social change and liberation in an increasingly inequitable world.
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December 20, 2024
Brown faces $46 million budget deficit

Brown University, one of the nation’s wealthiest institutions, is facing a $46 million structural deficit, prompting efforts to limit growth in hiring and doctoral programs.

“Without changes to the way Brown operates, the structural deficit is expected to continue to deepen significantly, including a deficit next year that would grow to more than $90 million, with steady increases in subsequent years. Although the current deficit of $46 million is only 3% of Brown’s total operating budget, increases in the deficit over time are not sustainable,” Provost Francis J. Doyle III and Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration Sarah Latham announced in a letter to the community on Dec. 17.

Officials noted a range of factors driving the deficit, including flat undergraduate tuition revenue growth, increased financial aid, inflation and rising salaries and benefits.

Brown announced a four-pronged plan to “constrain the deficit.”

First, the institution will “hold faculty headcount growth to 1%” and limit the growth of staff members “not fully funded externally by grants and gifts” at zero percent, according to the letter from administrators. In addition, Brown will reduce admissions targets for Ph.D. programs, which have grown rapidly in recent years. The university also plans to “hold growth in unrestricted operating expenses to 3%.” Finally, the letter noted the university will work to “continue to grow master’s [program] revenue, ultimately doubling the number of residential master’s students and increasing online learners to 2,000 in five years.”

While officials did not announce job cuts as they grapple with the yawning budget deficit, the message noted Brown will review vacancies “to determine if they will be refilled.”

Brown is among the richest universities in the U.S. with an endowment valued at $7.2 billion. Last year, a study of endowments put Brown just beyond the top 25 wealthiest institutions.

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December 20, 2024
Books reviewed in 2024

Mostly, I’m interested in what books you read in 2024.

Let me know if there is any overlap between the books I reviewed and what you read.

Here are the books I wrote about in 2024:

‘Never Enough’ and the Roots of Our College Student Mental Health Crisis: Can universities be a counterweight to a toxic achievement culture?

Failure, Academic Careers and ‘Right Kind of Wrong’: Care to share your career failures with our Inside Higher Ed community?

The Ed-Tech ‘Blood in the Machine’: Can the 19th-century Luddite movement help us think about the corporate digitization of education?

An Imagined ‘Economics in America’ Dinner Conversation on Inequality in Higher Education: What I’d ask Sir Angus Deaton.

U niversities and the ‘Material World’: What is higher education made of?

Scaled Online Learning as Higher Ed’s ‘Pandora’s Box’: And other imperfect academic equivalencies inspired by a fantastic book on the history of prestige TV.

Is ‘Filterworld’ Coming for Higher Ed? On algorithms and educators.

Campuses, Climate Change and ‘How Infrastructure Works’:
Understanding how the infrastructural systems that enable our campuses to run are dependent on stable climate.

Reading ‘On the Move’ and Thinking Mostly About Climate Change:
Another excellent book to place in conversation with Universities on Fire.

‘The Uninhabitable Earth’ and the Adaptable Campus: Climate change and higher education’s built environment.

Higher Ed and ‘Charleston: Race, Water, and the Coming Storm’: Climate change and the eight most interesting colleges and universities in the U.S.

‘The Displacements’ and the Need for a Climate Change Academic Novel: A call to combine climate and campus fiction.

‘The English Experience’ Rounds Out the ‘Dear Committee’ Trilogy:
Wondering how this novel, which is in part about teaching students to write, might have been different if written after the release of ChatGPT.

‘Supercommunicators’ and the Challenges of Hybrid Professional Academic Work: Why hybrid university work is better but feels worse, and where learning to be better digital communicators may help.

Why Universities Need to Decarbonize ‘Five Times Faster’: Higher education and the economics of climate change.

The Election, ‘Our Final Warning’ and Us: Where Universities on Fire meets Six Degrees of Climate Emergency.

‘How the World Ran Out of Everything’ and ‘Recentering Learning’: Economic and higher education lessons from the pandemic.

University Culture and ‘The Geek Way’: What higher ed should absorb and reject from tech culture.

Introducing ‘Recentering Learning’: The sections, chapter titles and authors from our new co-edited book.

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December 20, 2024
What were we reading about higher education in 2024?

As 2024 draws to a close, Josh Freeman, Policy Manager, and the HEPI team look back on a remarkable year in higher education policy.

We have a fantastic programme of events to look forward to in 2025, which you can read all about here.

One of the best things about working at HEPI is that we can take a bird’s eye view of the sector. Today, we gaze over quite a different policy landscape from the one I wrote about this time last year. We have a new Government which, unlike the last one, is not afraid to raise tuition fees. The Graduate Route visa survived in its current form, largely because of the international fee income it helps bring to struggling institutions. Universities UK published its Blueprint, proving it is possible to get 140 vice-chancellors (or thereabouts) to agree on something. Despite all this, nothing seems to stop the interminable slide into financial precarity with up to three-quarters of institutions at risk of running deficits in 2025.

It has been a privilege to capture many of these moments and more on the HEPI blog, which had another exceptionally busy year. As we approach the end of 2024, the HEPI team reflects on the pieces which set the tone for the year, struck a chord in institutions, led policy change or were just a great read.

Winter

In January, we heard from Laura Coryton MBE about period poverty in higher education, the stigma attached to it and the strategies institutions can take to address it. HEPI intern Famke Veenstra-Ashmore also discussed this issue, among many others, in her report on the gender awarding gap at Oxbridge in November.

Richard Courtney of the University of East London won the prize for best analogy of the year with his comparison of a Chinese meal to higher education qualification types in February.

And HEPI published its best-read report of the year, Provide or punish? Students’ views on generative AI in higher education. (Watch out for an update in early 2025!) Our other top reports of the year include:

Spring

This spring was a season of reflection, with Susan Mueller, Director at Stand Alone, bidding farewell and marking the closure of a charity which supported estranged students since 2015.

And Naimat Zafary, PhD researcher at the University of Sussex, marked 1,000 days since girls’ education was banned in Afghanistan with an extraordinarily powerful piece reminding us not to take education for granted:

Last week, I visited the British Library, one of my favourite places in London. I was attracted by the Magna Carta which declared: ‘No free man shall be seized, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, exiled or ruined in any way, nor in any way proceeded against, except by the lawful judgment’.

But where is lawful judgment for those denied? What fault in Afghan girls? My little nieces don’t understand their crime. Is love of education a criminal act if you happen to be female?

Summer

As we absorbed the previous day’s General Election results, attention turned to its consequences for higher education. While some of us were struggling to function on two hours’ sleep, HEPI Director Nick Hillman was already analysing how far students’ had swayed the results, building on his own analysis of the 2019 General Election and my analysis ahead of the 2024 vote.

University of Southampton Chief of Staff Giles Carden made his pitch for 10 policies the new Government could implement to fill the policy vacuum, including ‘fundamental reform’ to the Office for Students and setting out a new strategy for digital education.

And our political commentary came to a head when Rose Stephenson, Director of Policy and Advocacy, and I described what we had seen and heard at the Labour Party Conference.

Autumn

The introduction of the Renters’ Rights Bill to Parliament in September 2024 generated much discussion, including several pieces by former Unipol CEO Martin Blakey. His essential primer from October is a must-read for those trying to get their heads around the draft legislation. Martin also wrote for us in June and November on the same topic.

HEPI Director Nick Hillman asked whether restricting access to the Russell Group would improve social mobility (he was sceptical).

Also in October, outgoing Open University Vice-Chancellor Tim Blackman asked, responding to Office for Students (OfS) analysis of degree classifications, whether and how we should measure ‘grade inflation’. In the words of our Director of Partnerships, Lucy Haire, the blog:

poses challenges to the OfS’s methods and use of data, but even more than that, it gets to the heart of what learning is all about and how it is achieved. It tackles prejudice about disadvantage and weak prior learning and, above all, recognises the strides that students take, the role of good teaching and the importance of skilled teachers.

Our piece with a star-studded lineup, including former Welsh Director of Skills, Higher Education and Lifelong Learning Professor Huw Morris and Professor of Public Policy at Manchester Andy Westwood, set out a vision for a new tertiary system.

And particular credit goes to one of our highest-performing pieces of the year from Meti Basiri, CEO of ApplyBoard. He asks which international student populations institutions should be recruiting from. He also wins the (coveted) prize for best graphics.

That’s it from us

Thank you to everyone who has written for us, supported our research, kept up with our daily 6:30am blogs and engaged with us in any way over the past year.

The HEPI blog will continue in a limited form over the break, so do keep an eye out between mince pies. We will be back in full force in January.

Until then, have a wonderful festive break and we will see you for more in 2025!

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December 20, 2024
It’s the higher education Christmas movie and TV guide

There’s nothing on the telly this Christmas.

There never is. Unless you’re searching for some hidden nuance in repeats of The Chase.

But if, like me, you have trouble switching off from work but also enjoy being slumped in front of the box with a tub of Quality Street, I have good news.

I’ve picked out ten films and TV shows released this year that either have something to say about higher education, are set on campus and/or depict contemporary student life.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll shell out for a VPN, you’ll get frustrated by torrent ratios, and you’ll almost certainly switch off, which is what the break is for – eventually.

It really was slim pickings this year from a UK perspective. Everyone talks a lot about how universities are portrayed “in the media”, but I think they mean on Newsnight or in the Telegraph. The sector will probably win more hearts and minds on Netflix, if anyone knows anyone that might be able to help.

Before you take to the comments, I’ve not put in books or podcasts. I do enough reading in this job, and I edit ours, so my appetite for either is fairly thin – but do pop suggestions below if there are any.

You’re welcome – and apologies in advance if you’re at work over the next couple of weeks.

If having worked in or around the sector you’ve not quite had your fill of toxic and manipulative relationships this year, the second season of Tell Me Lies is a good bet. Filmed largely on the picturesque campus of Agnes Scott College in Georgia, we’re whisked into a world of 2008 fashions, messy frat parties, tense dorm room interactions and academics’ office hours – all used to illustrate how central character Lucy Albright’s university experiences shaped her later life. It’s all a bit soapy, but the deep discomfort at having to hang out with your exes that campus life can require is very well played.

There are more depictions of dorm life in Sweethearts, a romantic comedy whose set-up centres on two friends breaking up with their girlfriends from home over a holiday weekend. It’s all a bit loaded lads retro – flying urine and a flaccid full-frontal give you a sense of the tone here – but treat it like gazing out of the window on a train, and you’ll take in some lovely interior scenes from Ramapo College in Mahwah, and some lush exterior shots from the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

This is a low-budget “feminist horror thriller” that follows a fraternity pledge who, during a brutal hazing ritual, is pressured to lose his virginity by leading a drugged girl upstairs at a party – something that has unexpected and increasingly disturbing consequences. It’s cleverly filmed, there’s a cracking soundtrack and it’s comically gruesome – until you remember that without the blood and gore of act three, it’s depicting an unsettlingly common scenario.

Yôji Minamimaru, the central character of Land of Tanabata, navigates all the typical challenges of being a student – academic life, social relationships, self-discovery, and a supernatural ability to create small holes in objects, something he shows off as the President of the New Skills Development Research Society. It’s an unlikely hook for a series, and the murder (of a professor) mystery that ensues is a struggle to stick with in this manga adaptation.

Two old friends enroll in an adult university, looking for adventure, love and fun. What could go wrong? Quite a lot, it seems, in this Dominican go at mature student life that drags up some particularly dated caricatures of women and LGBT+ people. I got about 15 minutes in before I was tired of the buffering.

What do you fancy watching. A drama? A rom-com? A thriller? An overdone Indonesian horror film based on a viral Twitter thread from 2016? On the assumption that it’s the latter, Dosen Ghaib: Sudah Malam atau Sudah Tahu (The Ghost Lecturer: Is It Night Already or Do You Already Know) follows four university students who fail the year and are required to enrol onto a catch-up module over the holiday, who pitch up only to get a message that the lecturer can’t make it – so who is the person already in the room? For clarity, it’s a murdery ghost man, not one of his PhD students.

You might remember a story from 2023 that involved an academic specialising in the social impacts of climate change avoiding air travel to minimise his carbon footprint – only to get sacked for doing so. The Researcher chronicles Gianluca Grimalda’s 40-day journey via trains, buses, and ships to reach his research site in Papua New Guinea. Maybe he was sacked for not using Key Travel to book it all.

Decades on from the end of apartheid, Afrikaans media is only just starting to break away from its historically conservative roots. Wyfie – opening up conversations about rape, sexuality and politics – caused quite a stir when it appeared in 2023, and this year’s second season of the show, about four mismatched university roommates at a womens’ residence at the fictional Eike University, takes things up a notch. It’s especially fascinating for the insights into university life – first-year initiation ceremonies, cheating on a test to maintain academic standing and a mother-and-daughter tea event all make it in, as does a whole bunch of drama over an annual photo of those in the halls. It’s especially good on both portraying and dramatising that “you befriend people that aren’t like you” cliche.

If all of these sensitive and revealing portrayals of student life are a bit woke for your liking, and you’ve never got around to reading The Coddling of the American Mind, you’ll be pleased to learn that you watch it now instead. The central conceit of the Lukianoff and Haidt viral article-cum-bestseller gains some visuals, voxpops and dramatic music here – but decent evidence for their claims, which to these eyes and ears is age-old generational indignation dressed up as science – is still in short supply. That said, the idea that pervasive racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia are merely bad ideas that a good debate will solve is at least in the solid tradition of Christmas TV escapism.

This is set in Kota, Rajasthan – a city known as a hothousing hub for coaching centers that prepare students for India’s highly competitive IIT-JEE entrance exams. Back for a darker yet compelling third season this year, there’s plenty to learn here about the coaching system’s human impact as the focus shifts a little to draw in the coaches themselves and the choices made between the gifted students and everyone else. If there’s a fault with it, it’s the season ending – a crowbarred bit of plotting presumably designed to hang out the prospect of a fourth run.

Admissions were quite a big story in the US in 2023 – the supreme court banned the use of affirmative action policies that had been in place for decades – and Bad Genius plays into the slipstream by overlaying some higher education race politics to a remake of a Thai blockbuster from 2017. The plot centres around a clever student who helps her friends cheat on their entrance exams to reflect the struggles of first-generation Americans pressured to support their immigrant families. If you’re a fan of the original you’ll be wondering why they bothered – but given you’ve not seen the original, this is a fun way to while away an afternoon if you’re into watching the underdog poor outmaneuvering the rich.

Finally, (and no I’m not including One Day), I won’t have a word said against Big Boys, which had a criminally under-celebrated season 2 this year. The search for student housing, mental health, student sex work and plenty of students’ union activity all feature at Brent University, where Jack and Danny’s decidedly uncool struggles with the second year manage to be both laugh-out loud funny, heart-wrenching and revealing often all in the same scene. Set somewhere near Watford (and filmed largely on the Harrow campus of the University of Westminster), it’s the polar opposite of glamorous, and all the better for it.

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December 20, 2024
Higher education postcard: Christ Church, Oxford

We’re well into advent, so it seems apposite to look at Christmas and, in the context of higher education postcards, a college named after its eponymous protagonist.

We’ll start in 1002, which is well before there was a university at Oxford, let alone a college. King Æethelred had ordered a massacre of Danes within his kingdom, which took place on 13 November, St Brice’s day. Amidst the massacring, St Frideswide’s nunnery was destroyed (with, presumably, woeful consequences for the nuns). As a result of the massacre of the Danes – which Æethelred had apparently been advised would be an effective pre-emptive strike – the Danes, led by Sweyn Forkbeard, went on a bit of a rampage. This, by the way, was why Æethelred was the unrede – not “unready” but “badly advised”.

Anyway, back to the main story. Æethelred had St Frideswide rebuilt as a priory, and under Henry I this became an Augustinian foundation. Which rubbed along with the people of Oxford until in 1524 it was suppressed, by Cardinal Wolsey. He used the proceeds from the suppression of other priories, including Wallingford Priory, to repurpose the priory’s buildings and establish Cardinal College.

Which you may never have heard of, at least until now. And that’s because Wolsey had a spectacular fall from grace. Having failed to secure a divorce for psychopathic king Henry VIII, he was cast from the inner court. In 1530, ill with dysentery, he died in Nottingham as he was returning to London to face trial for treason.

Now Henry was not the sort of king to let bygones be bygones. He suppressed Cardinal College in 1531, and the following year re-founded it. As King Henry VIII’s College. He wasn’t a modest man.

And in 1546 he was a much richer man. Using the Protestant reformation as cover for personal aggrandisement, he broke from Rome, founded the Church of England with himself as its head (like I said, he wasn’t a modest man), and moved from dissolving priories to dissolving monasteries – far richer pickings. This enabled him to re-found King Henry VIII’s College as Christ Church College, and simultaneously made the priory church into the cathedral of the Church of England diocese of Oxford. The college’s full formal name reflects all of this: the Dean and Chapter of the Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford of the Foundation of King Henry the Eighth.

The buildings started by Wolsey were completed, and added to. Christoper Wren designed the Tom Tower, the one on the card. This holds the Great Tom bell, which is rung 101 times every night at 9pm Oxford time (yes, of course it has its own time zone), or about five minutes past 9pm Greenwich Mean Time.

Let’s fast forward to 1642. Supporters of Parliament were at war with supporters of the king; armies had been raised. A pitched battle had been fought at Edgehill; it was indecisive, enabling the king – Charles I, or Charles as he was known at the time – to continue his march on London. Realising London could not be taken by force, Charles retreated to Oxford, and made his base there. (In the meantime, parliamentarian forces had arrested the university’s vice chancellor, John Prideaux, an event which must, even today, give hope to people across higher education.)

Charles set up shop in Christ Church. He used the deanery as his royal apartments, and the college’s great hall became the meeting place for the parliament. (Parliament had not been dissolved before the outbreak of the war. Charles summoned it to Oxford. Most of the Lords attended, and about a third of the Commons. It met from January to April 1644 and again from October 1644 to March 1645. What did it do? We don’t really know, as its records were burnt in 1646 before parliamentary forces retook the city.)

Christ Church’s alumni include thirteen British Prime Ministers, although one of the them, William Pulteney, first Earl of Bath, held office for two (2) days only, and whether he actually ever was Prime Minister is now disputed by historians. The parliamentary history records that after his two-day prime ministership he “spent the rest of his life in retirement, consoling himself with the pleasures of avarice, to which he had always been notoriously, indeed scandalously, addicted.”

Alumni also include many politicians of ministerial rank (for example, Nigel Lawson, David Willetts, Chris Skidmore); monarchs (including Edward VII, although he transferred to Trinity Cambridge); scientists (such as Robert Hooke, Martin Ryle); a whole gaggle of top-drawer philosophers (such as John Locke, Freddie Ayer, Daniel Dennett, John Rawls, and a personal favourite, Gilbert Ryle); literary figures including Lewis Carroll, W H Auden, and John Ruskin; and, perhaps best of all, both Flanders and Swann.

There are a few additional points to cover before I wrap up this account.

Firstly, an epic disagreement between the former dean of Christ Church and the college. This long statement by the college sets out one side of the issue.

Secondly, what a wonderful set of buildings! They’ve inspired the buildings of the University of Galway, and have also, apparently, featured in the Harry Potter films, although as your correspondent has never seen any of these we have to take this on trust.

And finally, Christ Church’s arms: these are Cardinal Wolsey’s arms; properly described they are Sable, on a cross engrailed argent, between four leopards’ faces azure a lion passant gules; on a chief or between two Cornish choughs proper a rose gules barbed vert and seeded or. And its always good to see a chough, whether from Cornwall or anywhere else.

Here’s a jigsaw of the postcard, to give you a bit of festive diversion; and a bonus jigsaw of the college kitchen, which is a bit harder, should you need an excuse to spend more time secluded with your computer over the festive season.

And that’s it for 2024’s higher education postcards. I’ll be back in January with more; in the meantime, a very merry Christmas to you all.

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December 20, 2024
What does Christmas shopping have to do with higher education?

For the time being, John Cater is the longest-serving Vice-Chancellor in UK higher education, having held his current post for approaching 32 years. He hands over the reins at Edge Hill University at the end of January 2025. In the blog below he finds parallels between what is happening in the high street and in the university sector…

This week Mark Allen, the Chief Executive of Land Securities, announced that his company had paid £490m for a 92% stake in Liverpool One, the shopping centre. In quotes, he explained that the top one per cent of UK retail shopping destinations provide access to 30 per cent of all in-store retail spend, “which is why we continue to see brands focus on fewer but bigger and better stores in the best locations”.

You may well ask, ‘What has this to do with higher education?’ First, there is a tangential link, in that Mark Allen is a former Chief Executive of Unite Students, the sector’s largest housing provider and a company that has, indeed, sought to maximise access to student residential spend and in the ‘best’ locations, typically cities with universities that are part of the perceptual elite.

But are we seeing this in higher education too? Any graph of higher education participation since the removal of the student number cap in 2015 has seen an increasing bifurcation between high-tariff institutions and, initially, low and, more recently, mid-tariff institutions. If you’re in the latter categories and you look at the 2024 intake data, the new cohort is in the sector, just not, in all probability, in your institution.

So, are we seeing Land Securities’ retail revolution, a race to the best locations, a clear focus of demand, in higher education? A decade of ‘spending’ decisions by each new intake, their friends, families and schools and colleges – ‘where do I go to draw down my loan?’ – says so. The UCAS 2024 End of Cycle data, as ever ably summarised by David Kernohan for Wonkhe, makes it clear that “higher tariff providers have been fishing in deeper waters”, with both lower tariff offers and a more flexible approach to clearing. And this is clearly understood by those making ‘purchasing’ decisions, with the exponential growth of self-release highlighting (perceived) trading-up.

With no constraints on an institution’s numbers, this trend appears inexorable, whilst a constraint on numbers would constitute a significant reduction in choice. There may be a middle road, a managed market, with limitations on the pace of growth, possibly determined by discipline, but the howls of protest would reverberate, particularly in elements of the media, constituency postbags and selective schools. And, whilst the Department for Education has indicated that it is no longer using Russell Group entries as a measure of a school’s success, the Treasury has yet to mirror that action.

The crunch is coming. With very few exceptions, university sustainability depends on two variables, number and price. The failure to secure, at least to date, a five-year index-linked settlement has curtailed price, and, with it, investment and forward planning. And a broadly static market, with no signs of an increase in all-age participation, is reflected in curtailed demand and fewer numbers.

From 2030 the age cohort declines by one-sixth. Demand for traditional higher education is broadly static and increasingly differentiated by tariff. Innovation, be it Lifelong Learning or apprenticeships, has yet to grip the market.

In retail investment has headed in two directions, niche providers in up-market ‘village’ style communities, whilst the big city retail brands, such as those in Liverpool One, acquire floor space and greater market penetration. Quoted companies pay nine figure sums for a piece of the big city pie, whilst non-niche players, the poor, the periphery, the ‘red wall’ towns, suffer.

Is this relevant to higher education? I believe so. Demand for higher education is broadly static and increasingly concentrated in a smaller number of providers. In-migration is severely constrained and the number of UK-resident eighteen-year-olds is heading towards a cliff edge.

I have written previously on the possible shape of higher education in the coming decade. Trifurcation: a three-way split. A perceptual elite offering three-year away from home residential degrees. Sub-regional providers closely tied to further education, anchor institutions in their communities. And, a (re-) emergence of global online players in the education marketplace, with strong brands and an almost uncapped resource; providers with the capacity, largely unfettered, to shape opinions and behaviours on whim.

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December 19, 2024