Tag: Higher

  • Penn, U of Southern California Reject Trump Compact

    Penn, U of Southern California Reject Trump Compact

    Four of the nine universities initially asked to sign have rejected the document.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Jumping Rocks/Universal Images Group/Getty Images | Mario Tama/Getty Images

    The Universities of Pennsylvania and Southern California have now refused to sign the Trump administration’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” making them the third and fourth of the nine initial institutions that were presented the deal to publicly turn it down. No institution has agreed to sign so far.

    Both announcements came Thursday, a few days before the Oct. 20 deadline to provide feedback on the proposal. Beong-Soo Kim, interim president of the University of Southern California, shared his message to Education Secretary Linda McMahon, which outlined how USC already seems to adhere to the compact.

    “Notwithstanding these areas of alignment, we are concerned that even though the Compact would be voluntary, tying research benefits to it would, over time, undermine the same values of free inquiry and academic excellence that the Compact seeks to promote,” Kim wrote. “Other countries whose governments lack America’s commitment to freedom and democracy have shown how academic excellence can suffer when shifting external priorities tilt the research playing field away from free, meritocratic competition.”

    Kim added that the compact does raise issues “worthy of a broader national conversation to which USC would be eager to contribute its insights and expertise.”

    California governor Gavin Newsom, a possible Democratic presidential contender in 2028, had threatened that any university in his state that signed the compact would “instantly” lose billions of state dollars.

    Over at Penn, President J. Larry Jameson wrote in a message to his community Thursday that his university “respectfully declines to sign the proposed Compact.” He added that his university did provide feedback to the department on the proposal.

    Penn spokespeople didn’t say Thursday whether the university would sign any possible amended version of the compact that addressed the university’s concerns, nor did they provide Inside Higher Ed a copy of the feedback provided to the Trump administration. (Penn is the only university of the four that didn’t provide its response to McMahon.)

    The White House also didn’t provide a copy of Penn’s feedback, but it emailed a statement apparently threatening funding cuts for universities that don’t sign the compact.

    “Merit should be the primary criteria for federal grant funding. Yet too many universities have abandoned academic excellence in favor of divisive and destructive efforts such as ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion,’” spokesperson Liz Huston said in the statement. “The Compact for Academic Excellence embraces universities that reform their institutions to elevate common sense once again, ushering a new era of American innovation. Any higher education institution unwilling to assume accountability and confront these overdue and necessary reforms will find itself without future government and taxpayers support.”

    Brown University announced it had rejected the compact Wednesday, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology did the same last Friday. Following MIT’s rejection, the Trump administration said the compact was open to all colleges and universities that want to sign it.

    The compact is a boilerplate contract asking colleges to voluntarily agree to overhaul or abolish departments “that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas,” without further defining what those terms mean. It also asks universities to, among other things, commit to not considering transgender women to be women, to reject foreign applicants “who demonstrate hostility to the United States, its allies, or its values” and to freeze “effective tuition rates charged to American students for the next five years.”

    In exchange for these agreements, the White House has said signatories would “be given [funding] priority when possible as well as invitations to collaborate with the White House.” But the White House hasn’t revealed how much extra funding universities would be eligible for, and the nine-page compact doesn’t detail the potential benefits. The compact, and the Thursday statement from the White House, can also be read as threatening colleges’ current federal funding if they don’t sign. Multiple higher ed organizations have allied in calling on universities to reject the compact.

    Jameson said in his statement that “at Penn, we are committed to merit-based achievement and accountability.”

    Earlier this year, the Trump administration said that Penn violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 when it allowed a transgender woman to swim on the women’s team in 2022, and officials issued several demands to the university. Penn ultimately conceded to those demands over the summer, a decision that the administration said restored about $175 million in frozen federal funds.

    Marc Rowan, a Penn graduate with two degrees from its Wharton School of Business who’s now chief executive officer and board chair for Apollo Global Management, wrote in The New York Times that he “played a part in the compact’s initial formulation, working alongside an administration working group.” Rowan argued that the compact doesn’t threaten free speech or academic freedom.

    Apollo has funded the online, for-profit University of Phoenix. AP VIII Queso Holdings LP—the previous name for majority owner of the University of Phoenix—was the successor of Apollo Education Group, which went private in 2017 in a $1.1 billion deal backed by Apollo Global Management Inc. and the Vistria Group.

    AP VIII Queso Holdings LP was recently renamed Phoenix Education Partners as part of a new deal to take the company public once again. Phoenix Education Partners, now owner of the University of Phoenix and backed by both Apollo and Vistria, started trading on the stock market last week and was valued at about $1.35 billion after the first day.

    Source link

  • Penn, U of Southern California Reject Trump Compact

    Penn, U of Southern California Reject Trump Compact

    Four of the nine universities initially asked to sign have rejected the document.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Jumping Rocks/Universal Images Group/Getty Images | Mario Tama/Getty Images

    The Universities of Pennsylvania and Southern California have now refused to sign the Trump administration’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” making them the third and fourth of the nine initial institutions that were presented the deal to publicly turn it down. No institution has agreed to sign so far.

    Both announcements came Thursday, a few days before the Oct. 20 deadline to provide feedback on the proposal. Beong-Soo Kim, interim president of the University of Southern California, shared his message to Education Secretary Linda McMahon, which outlined how USC already seems to adhere to the compact.

    “Notwithstanding these areas of alignment, we are concerned that even though the Compact would be voluntary, tying research benefits to it would, over time, undermine the same values of free inquiry and academic excellence that the Compact seeks to promote,” Kim wrote. “Other countries whose governments lack America’s commitment to freedom and democracy have shown how academic excellence can suffer when shifting external priorities tilt the research playing field away from free, meritocratic competition.”

    Kim added that the compact does raise issues “worthy of a broader national conversation to which USC would be eager to contribute its insights and expertise.”

    California governor Gavin Newsom, a possible Democratic presidential contender in 2028, had threatened that any university in his state that signed the compact would “instantly” lose billions of state dollars.

    Over at Penn, President J. Larry Jameson wrote in a message to his community Thursday that his university “respectfully declines to sign the proposed Compact.” He added that his university did provide feedback to the department on the proposal.

    Penn spokespeople didn’t say Thursday whether the university would sign any possible amended version of the compact that addressed the university’s concerns, nor did they provide Inside Higher Ed a copy of the feedback provided to the Trump administration. (Penn is the only university of the four that didn’t provide its response to McMahon.)

    The White House also didn’t provide a copy of Penn’s feedback, but it emailed a statement apparently threatening funding cuts for universities that don’t sign the compact.

    “Merit should be the primary criteria for federal grant funding. Yet too many universities have abandoned academic excellence in favor of divisive and destructive efforts such as ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion,’” spokesperson Liz Huston said in the statement. “The Compact for Academic Excellence embraces universities that reform their institutions to elevate common sense once again, ushering a new era of American innovation. Any higher education institution unwilling to assume accountability and confront these overdue and necessary reforms will find itself without future government and taxpayers support.”

    Brown University announced it had rejected the compact Wednesday, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology did the same last Friday. Following MIT’s rejection, the Trump administration said the compact was open to all colleges and universities that want to sign it.

    The compact is a boilerplate contract asking colleges to voluntarily agree to overhaul or abolish departments “that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas,” without further defining what those terms mean. It also asks universities to, among other things, commit to not considering transgender women to be women, to reject foreign applicants “who demonstrate hostility to the United States, its allies, or its values” and to freeze “effective tuition rates charged to American students for the next five years.”

    In exchange for these agreements, the White House has said signatories would “be given [funding] priority when possible as well as invitations to collaborate with the White House.” But the White House hasn’t revealed how much extra funding universities would be eligible for, and the nine-page compact doesn’t detail the potential benefits. The compact, and the Thursday statement from the White House, can also be read as threatening colleges’ current federal funding if they don’t sign. Multiple higher ed organizations have allied in calling on universities to reject the compact.

    Jameson said in his statement that “at Penn, we are committed to merit-based achievement and accountability.”

    Earlier this year, the Trump administration said that Penn violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 when it allowed a transgender woman to swim on the women’s team in 2022, and officials issued several demands to the university. Penn ultimately conceded to those demands over the summer, a decision that the administration said restored about $175 million in frozen federal funds.

    Marc Rowan, a Penn graduate with two degrees from its Wharton School of Business who’s now chief executive officer and board chair for Apollo Global Management, wrote in The New York Times that he “played a part in the compact’s initial formulation, working alongside an administration working group.” Rowan argued that the compact doesn’t threaten free speech or academic freedom.

    Apollo has funded the online, for-profit University of Phoenix. AP VIII Queso Holdings LP—the previous name for majority owner of the University of Phoenix—was the successor of Apollo Education Group, which went private in 2017 in a $1.1 billion deal backed by Apollo Global Management Inc. and the Vistria Group.

    AP VIII Queso Holdings LP was recently renamed Phoenix Education Partners as part of a new deal to take the company public once again. Phoenix Education Partners, now owner of the University of Phoenix and backed by both Apollo and Vistria, started trading on the stock market last week and was valued at about $1.35 billion after the first day.

    Source link

  • ACUE and ACE Deepen Alliance, Marking Nearly a Decade of Transforming Faculty Development and Advancing Excellence in Higher Education

    ACUE and ACE Deepen Alliance, Marking Nearly a Decade of Transforming Faculty Development and Advancing Excellence in Higher Education

    ACE and the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE) have reaffirmed our long-standing collaboration to continue driving transformative change in faculty development and elevate teaching excellence across higher education. For more information about the updates to this nearly decade-long alliance, click here.

    To learn more and register for an Oct. 29 webinar that will feature ACE President Ted Mitchell and ACUE Chairman and CEO Andrew Hermalyn, click here.

    If you have any questions or comments about this blog post, please contact us.

    Source link

  • Higher ed groups blast Trump plan to expand applicant data collection

    Higher ed groups blast Trump plan to expand applicant data collection

    This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.

    More than three dozen higher education organizations, led by the American Council on Education, are urging the Trump administration to reconsider its plan to require colleges to submit years of new data on applicants and enrolled students, disaggregated by race and sex.

    As proposed, the reporting requirements would begin on Dec. 3., giving colleges just 17 weeks to provide extensive new admissions data, ACE President Ted Mitchell wrote in an Oct. 7 public comment. Mitchell argued that isn’t enough time for most colleges to effectively comply and would lead to significant errors.

    ACE’s comment came as part of a chorus of higher education groups and colleges panning the proposal. The plan’s public comment period ended Tuesday, drawing over 3,000 responses.

    A survey conducted by ACE and the Association for Institutional Research found that 91% of polled college leaders expressed concern about the proposed timeline, and 84% said they didn’t have the resources and staff necessary to collect and process the data.

    Delaying new reporting requirements would leave time for necessary trainings and support services to be created, Mitchell said. The Education Department — which has cut about half its staff under President Donald Trump — should also ensure that its help desk is fully crewed to assist colleges during implementation, Mitchell said.

    Unreliable and misleading data?

    In August, Trump issued a memo requiring colleges to annually report significantly more admissions data to the National Center for Education Statistics, which oversees the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.

    The Education Department’s resulting proposal would require colleges to submit six years’ worth of undergraduate and graduate data in the first year of the IPEDS reporting cycle, including information on standardized test scores, parental education level and GPA. 

    In a Federal Register notice, the Education Department said this information would increase transparency and “help to expose unlawful practices″ at colleges. The initial multi-year data requirement would “establish a baseline of admissions practices” before the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling against race-conscious admissions, it said.

    But the department’s proposal and comments have caused unease among colleges, higher ed systems and advocacy groups in the sector.

    “While we support better data collection that will help students and families make informed decisions regarding postsecondary education, we fear that the new survey component will instead result in unreliable and misleading data that is intended to be used against institutions of higher education,” Mitchell said in the coalition’s public comment.

    The wording of the data collection survey — or lack thereof — also raised some red flags.

    Mitchell criticized the Trump administration for introducing the plan without including the text of the proposed questions. Without having the actual survey to examine, “determining whether the Department is using ‘effective and efficient’ statistical survey methodology seems unachievable,” he said.

    The Education Department said in the Federal Register notice that the additional reporting requirements will likely apply to four-year colleges with selective admissions processes, contending their admissions and scholarships “have an elevated risk of noncompliance with the civil rights laws.”

    During the public comment period, the department specifically sought feedback on which types of colleges should be required to submit the new data.

    The strain on institutions ‘cannot be overstated’

    Several religious colleges voiced concerns about the feasibility of completing the Education Department’s proposed request without additional manpower.

    “Meeting the new requirements would necessitate developing new data extracts, coding structures, validation routines, and quality assurance checks — all while maintaining existing reporting obligations,” Ryon Kaopuiki, vice president for enrollment management at the University of Indianapolis, said in a submitted comment. 

    Source link

  • 3 Questions for Professor Mary Wright

    3 Questions for Professor Mary Wright

    Last year, Brown University announced that Mary Wright was embarking on a new adventure in early 2025.

    If you are anywhere near or around the CTL world, you likely know (or know about) Mary Wright. Her 2023 JHU Press publication, Centers for Teaching and Learning: The New Landscape in Higher Education, is a must-read for every university leader. Mary—along with Tracie Addy, Bret Eynon and Jaclyn Rivard—also has a forthcoming book with Johns Hopkins (2026), which will provide a 20-plus-year look at continuities and changes in the field of educational development.

    Therefore, it was big news earlier this year when Mary moved from her role as associate provost for teaching and learning and executive director of Sheridan Center at Brown to a new position as a professor of education scholarship at the University of Sydney. With Mary now more than six months in her new role, this was a good time to catch up with how things are going.

    Q: Tell us about your new role at the University of Sydney. What does a faculty appointment in Australia constitute in terms of teaching, research and administrative responsibilities?

    A: As in the U.S., a faculty appointment (here, called an academic appointment) varies greatly across and even within Australian institutions. In my role, I serve as a Horizon Educator, an education-focused academic role, which carries a heuristic of 70 percent time to education, 20 percent to scholarship and 10 percent to leadership or service-related activities. Like my prior 20-plus years of experience in the U.S., I am still an academic developer (called an educational developer in the U.S.), which means that education most frequently involves teaching and mentoring other academics as learners.

    I am a level-E academic, which is akin to a full professor role in the U.S. (The trajectory starts at level A, which encompasses associate lecturer and postdoctoral fellows and goes through level B [lecturer], level C [senior lecturer], level D [associate professor] and level E [professor].)

    There are many differences between U.S. and Australian higher education, but I’ll highlight two here in relation to those who work in CTLs. The first and most significant is that, in the U.S., educational developers are often positioned as professional staff. In Australia, many universities treat this work with parity to other academics. I feel that this substantially raises the credibility and value of academic development.

    Second, professional learning around teaching is a required part of many academics’ contracts, initially or for “confirmation,” and it is structured into their workloads. I first worried that this would prompt a good deal of reactance, but I have not found this to be the case. I now find this to be a more equitable system for students (and academic success), compared to the U.S.’s (primarily) voluntary approach.

    Q: Moving from Rhode Island to Australia is a big move. What is it about the University of Sydney that attracted you to the institution, and why did you make this big move at this point in your career?

    A: Three factors attracted me to the University of Sydney. First, I was attracted to what I will call their organizational honesty. The institution was very open that they were not where they wanted to be in regard to teaching and the student experience; they wanted to be a different kind of institution. They also had a very clear theory of change, mapping very much onto metaphors I write about elsewhere: requiring convening and community building (hub); support of individual career advancement (incubator); development of evidence-based practice, such as the scholarship of teaching and learning (sieve); and advancing the value of teaching and learning through recognition and reward (temple).

    Specifically, USyd was investing in over 200 new Horizon Educator positions, education-focused academics charged to be educational leaders. One part of my role is to work with this amazing group of academics to advance their own careers, as well as to realize the institution’s ambitions for enhanced teaching effectiveness. To anchor this work at a macro level, USyd also had been working very hard on developing and rolling out a new Academic Excellence Framework, which provides a clear pathway to the recognition and reward of education—in addition to other aspects of the academic role

    The University of Sydney is also making a significant investment in grants to foster the scholarship of teaching and learning, which has been a long-standing interest of mine but was often done “off the side of the desk.” My role involves working with people, programs and practices to facilitate SoTL.

    In addition to university strategy, I was attracted by the opportunity to work with Adam Bridgeman and colleagues in the university’s central teaching and learning unit. Educational Innovation has been engaged in very interesting high-level work around AI and assessment, as well as holistic professional learning to support academics, but like many CTLs, it has been stretched since COVID to advance a growing number of institutional aims. Because of my prior leadership in CTLs, I felt like I could also contribute in this space.

    Q: Pivoting from a university leadership staff role to a faculty role is appealing to many of us in the nonfaculty educator world. (Although I know you also had a faculty position at Brown). Can you share any advice for those who might want to follow in your footsteps?

    A: For some context, I started my career in the early 2000s in a professional staff role in a CTL and also occasionally adjuncted. I became a research scientist in the CTL, then moved to direct a CTL in 2016 and had an affiliate faculty position (with the staff/administrative role as primary). In 2020, I then moved to a senior administration role (again, my primary role was professional staff). So, I have worn a number of hats.

    Three factors have been helpful in transitioning across roles. First, I love to write, and while the scholarly work rarely “counted” for anything in these series of positions, I think it helped me advance to the next step. Second, it’s important to read a lot to stay current with the vast literature on teaching and learning. I think this can add value to my work with individual academics—to help them publish—as well as my work on committees, where there is often some literature to cite on the topic at hand.

    Finally, I think professional associations can be very helpful in building bridges and networks, especially for those considering an international transition. In the U.S., the POD Network was a key source of support. Now, before even applying to my current role, I subscribed to the newsletter of HERDSA (Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia) and I participated in one of their mentoring programs. I also serve as a co-editor of the International Journal for Academic Development, which exposed me to articles about Australian academic development, and I got some generous and wise advice from Australian and New Zealand IJAD colleagues about the job search.

    Source link

  • Judge Halts UT’s Comprehensive Ban on Student Speech

    Judge Halts UT’s Comprehensive Ban on Student Speech

    SB 2972 was passed after students at several public Texas universities protested the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

    Jon Shapley/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images

    A Texas district court judge on Tuesday ordered the University of Texas system to hold off on enforcing new, sweeping limits on student expression that would prohibit any “expressive activity” protected by the First Amendment between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. 

    “The First Amendment does not have a bedtime of 10 p.m.,” wrote U.S. district court judge David Alan Ezra in his order granting the plaintiff’s request for a preliminary injunction. “Giving administrators discretion to decide what is prohibited ‘disruptive’ speech gives the school the ability to weaponize the policy against speech it disagrees with. As an example, the Overnight Expression Ban would, by its terms, prohibit a sunrise Easter service. While the university may not find this disruptive, the story may change if it’s a Muslim or Jewish sunrise ceremony. The songs and prayer of the Muslim and Jewish ceremonies, while entirely harmless, may be considered ‘disruptive’ by some.”

    A coalition of student groups—including the student-run Retrograde Newspaper, the Fellowship of Christian University Students at the University of Texas at Dallas and the student music group Strings Attached—sued to challenge the restrictions, which, in addition to prohibiting expression overnight, also sought to ban campus public speakers, the use of drums and amplified noise during the last two weeks of the semester. The restrictive policies align with Texas Senate Bill 2972, called the Campus Protection Act, which requires public universities to adopt restrictions on student speech and expression. The bill took effect on Sept. 1. 

    “Texas’ law is so overbroad that any public university student chatting in the dorms past 10 p.m. would have been in violation,” said Adam Steinbaugh, a senior attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, in a press release. “We’re thankful that the court stepped in and halted a speech ban that inevitably would’ve been weaponized to censor speech that administrators disagreed with.”

    Source link

  • Students Weigh In on AI-Assisted Job Searches

    Students Weigh In on AI-Assisted Job Searches

    Employers say they want students to have experience using artificial intelligence tools, but most students in the Class of 2025 are not using such tools for the job hunt, according to a new survey.

    The study, conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, included data from 1,400 recent graduates.

    Students who do use AI tools for their job search most commonly apply them to writing cover letters (65 percent), preparing for interviews (64 percent) and tailoring their résumés to specific positions (62 percent). In an Oct. 14 webinar hosted by NACE, students explained the benefits of using AI when searching for career opportunities.

    Among student job seekers who don’t employ AI, nearly 30 percent of respondents said they had ethical concerns about using the tools, and 25 percent said they lacked the expertise to apply them to their job search. An additional 16 percent worried about an employer’s reaction to AI-assisted applications, and 15 percent expressed concern about personal data collection.

    “If you listen to the media hype, it’s that everybody’s using AI and all of these students who are graduating are flooding the market with applications because of AI, et cetera,” NACE CEO Shawn Van Derziel said during the webinar. “What we’re finding in our data is that’s just not the case.”

    About one in five employers use AI in recruiting efforts, according to a separate NACE study.

    Students say: Brandon Poplar, a senior at Delaware State University studying finance and prelaw, said during the webinar that he uses AI for internship searches.

    “It has been pretty successful for me; I’ve been able to use it to tailor my résumé, which I think is almost the cliché thing to do now,” Poplar said. “Even to respond to emails from employers, it’s allowed me to go through as many applications as I can and find things that fit my niche.”

    Through his AI-assisted searches, Poplar learned he’s interested in management consulting roles and then determined how to best align his cover letters to communicate that to an employer.

    Morgan Miles, a senior at Spelman College majoring in economics, said she used a large language model to create a résumé that fits an insurance role, despite not having experience in the insurance industry. “I ended up actually getting a full-time offer,” Miles said.

    She prefers to use an AI-powered chatbot rather than engage with career center staff because it’s convenient and provides her with a visual checklist of her next steps, she said, whether that’s prepping for interview questions or figuring out what skills she needs to add to application materials.

    Panelists at the webinar didn’t think using ChatGPT was “cheating” the system but rather required human creativity and input. “It can be a tool to align with your values and what you’re marketing to the employers and still being yourself,” said Dandrea Oestricher, a recent graduate of the City College of New York.

    Maria Wroblewska, a junior at the University of California, Irvine, where she works as a career center intern, said she was shocked by how few students said they use AI. “I use it pretty much every time I search for a job,” to investigate the company, past internship offerings and application deadlines, she said.

    Other student trends: NACE leaders also shared results from the organization’s 2025 Student Survey, which included responses from 13,000 students across the U.S.

    The job market continues to present challenges for students, with the average senior submitting 30 job applications before landing a role, according to the survey. In recent years that number has skyrocketed, said Josh Kahn, associate director of research and public policy at NACE. “It was about 16 or 17, if I remember correctly, two years ago. That is quite large growth in just two years,” he said during the webinar.

    Students who met with an employer representative or attended a job fair were more likely to apply for additional jobs, but they were also more likely to report that the role they were hired in is related to their major program.

    Students who used an AI search engine (approximately 15 percent of all respondents) were more likely to apply for jobs—averaging about 60 applications—and less likely to say the job they landed matched their major. “That was a little surprising,” Kahn said. “It does line up anecdotally with what we’re hearing about AI’s impact on the number of applications that employers are receiving.”

    Two in five students said they’d heard the term “skills-based hiring” and understood what it meant, while one-third had never heard the term and one-quarter weren’t sure.

    Student panelists at the webinar said they experienced skills-based hiring practices during their internship applications, when employers would instruct them to complete a work exercise to demonstrate technical skills.

    NACE’s survey respondents completed 1.26 internships on average and received 0.78 job offers. A majority of internships took place in person (79 percent) or in a hybrid format (16 percent). Almost two-thirds of interns were paid (62 percent), which is the highest rate NACE has seen in the past seven years, Kahn said. Seven in 10 students said they did not receive a job offer from their internship employer.

    Do you have a career-focused intervention that might help others promote student success? Tell us about it.

    Source link

  • Report Cards, Reshuffles, and Resilience: What Ofsted’s new model could mean for higher education 

    Report Cards, Reshuffles, and Resilience: What Ofsted’s new model could mean for higher education 

    This blog was kindly authored by Dr. Ismini Vasileiou, Associate Professor at De Montfort University. 

    The UK Higher Education sector is at a crossroads. With the government’s skills agenda being reshaped, institutions under growing financial pressure, and the first-ever merger between two English universities announced, the landscape is shifting faster than many had anticipated. Into this mix comes Ofsted’s new Report Card for Further Education & Skills (September 2025), which introduces a sharper accountability framework for further education providers. 

    The report card grades institutions across areas such as Leadership & Governance, Inclusion, Safeguarding, and Contribution to Meeting Skills Needs. At programme level, it assesses Curriculum, Teaching & Training, Achievement, and Participation & Development against a tiered scale ranging from Exceptional to Urgent Improvement. 

    While this is designed for further education and skills providers, its arrival raises an uncomfortable but necessary question for universities: what if higher education were graded in the same way? 

    The case for simplicity and transparency 

    Universities are already subject to layers of oversight through the Office for Students (OfS), the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), the National Student Survey (NSS), and graduate outcomes data. Yet, as I noted in the recent Cyber Workforce of the Future white paper, these mechanisms often appear fragmented to policymakers and incomprehensible to the public. 

    By contrast, the further education report card is direct. A parent, student, or employer can understand at a glance whether a provider is exceptional, strong, or in urgent need of improvement. Were higher education to adopt a similar model, judgments might cover: 

    • Leadership & Governance: financial resilience, strategic direction, governance quality. 
    • Inclusion: widening participation, closing attainment gaps, embedding equity strategies. 
    • Safeguarding/Wellbeing: provision for student welfare, mental health, harassment and misconduct. 
    • Skills Contribution: alignment with regional economic needs, national priorities in AI and cybersecurity, and graduate employment outcomes. 

    At the programme level, Achievement and Participation could map onto retention, progression, and graduate success, offering students and employers a clear view of performance. 

    Risks and rewards for higher education 

    Of course, importing a schools-style accountability regime into higher education carries risks. Universities are not homogeneous, and reducing their diverse missions to a traffic-light system risks oversimplification. A specialist arts institution and a research-intensive university might both be rated ‘Needs Attention’ on skills contribution, despite playing very different roles in the national ecosystem. 

    There is also the danger of gaming the system: universities optimising for ratings rather than long-term innovation. And autonomy, long a cornerstone of higher education, would be at stake. 

    Yet there are potential rewards. Public trust in higher education has been under strain, with questions over value for money and financial viability dominating the narrative. Transparent, comprehensible reporting could rebuild confidence and demonstrate sector-wide commitment to accountability. It could also strengthen alignment with further education at a time when government is explicitly seeking a joined-up skills system. 

    A shifting policy landscape 

    The September 2025 government reshuffle underscores why this debate matters. The resignation of Angela Rayner triggered a wide Cabinet reorganisation, with skills responsibilities moving out of the Department for Education and into a new ‘growth’ portfolio under the Department for Work and Pensions, led by Pat McFadden. This shift signals that some elements of skills policy are now seen primarily through an economic and labour market lens. 

    For Higher Education, this presents both challenges and opportunities. As argued in Bridging the Skills Divide: Higher Education’s Role in Delivering the UK’s Plan for Change, universities must demonstrate that they are not just centres of academic excellence but engines of workforce development, innovation, and regional growth. A report-card style framework could make these contributions more visible, but only if universities are part of its design. 

    Structural Change: The Kent–Greenwich merger 

    The announcement that the Universities of Kent and Greenwich will merge in autumn 2026 to form the London and South East University Group is a watershed moment for the sector. It is the first merger of its kind in England, driven by financial pressures from declining international student enrolments, static domestic fees, and mounting operational costs. 

    The merged entity will serve around 28,000 undergraduates, retain the identities of both institutions, and be led by Greenwich Vice-Chancellor Professor Jane Harrington. Yet concerns remain. The University and College Union (UCU) has warned that ‘this isn’t a merger; it is a takeover’ and called for urgent reassurance on staff jobs and student provision. 

    In a system with Ofsted-style ratings, such a merger would be scrutinised not just for its financial logic but also for its impact on governance, inclusion, and skills contribution. A transparent rating system might reassure stakeholders that the merged institution is not only viable but also delivering quality and meeting regional needs. 

    Building on skills agendas 

    National initiatives like Skills England, the Digital Skills Partnership, and programmes such as CyberLocal demonstrate how higher education can contribute to workforce resilience at scale. The Ofsted report card reinforces this agenda. Its emphasis on contribution to meeting skills needs aligns directly with the notion that higher education must play a central role in the UK’s skills ecosystem, not only through degree provision but through continuous upskilling, regional collaboration, and adaptive curricula. 

    Shaping the framework before it shapes us 

    Ofsted’s further education report card is not just an accountability mechanism; it is a signal of where education policy is heading, toward clarity, comparability, and alignment with skills needs. 

    For higher education, the choice is stark. Resist the model and risk having it imposed in ways that do not fit the sector’s diversity. Or lead the design, shaping a framework that balances accountability with autonomy, and skills with scholarship. 

    As Universities confront financial pressures, policy reshuffles, and structural change, one thing is clear: the sector cannot afford to sit this debate out. The real question is not whether Higher Education should be graded, but what kind of grading system we would design if given the chance. 

    Source link

  • ‘Right here, right now’: New report on how AI is transforming higher education

    ‘Right here, right now’: New report on how AI is transforming higher education

    Author:
    Edited by Dr Giles Carden and Josh Freeman

    Published:

    A new collection of essays, AI and the Future of Universities published by HEPI and the University of Southampton, edited by Dr Giles Carden and Josh Freeman, brings together leading voices from universities, industry and policy. The collection comes at a point when Artificial Intelligence (AI) is projected to have a profound and transformative impact on virtually every sector of society and the economy, driving changes that are both beneficial and challenging. The various pieces look at how AI is reshaping higher education – from strategy, teaching and assessment to research and professional services.

    You can read the press release and access the full report here.

    Source link

  • Trump’s Latest Layoffs Gut the Office of Postsecondary Ed

    Trump’s Latest Layoffs Gut the Office of Postsecondary Ed

    The Department of Education’s second round of layoffs affected nearly 500 employees and left several offices with a few or no staffers.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Tierney L. Cross/Getty Images | Matveev_Aleksandr/iStock/Getty Images

    Education Secretary Linda McMahon has essentially gutted the postsecondary student services division of her department, leaving TRIO grant recipients and leaders of other college preparation programs with no one to turn to.

    Prior to the latest round of layoffs, executed on Friday and now paused by a federal judge, the Student Services division in the Office of Postsecondary Education had about 40 staffers, one former OPE employee told Inside Higher Ed. Now, he and others say it’s down to just two or three.

    The consequence, college-access advocates say, is that institutions might not be able to offer the same level of support to thousands of low-income and first-generation prospective students.

    “It’s enormously disruptive to the students who are reliant on these services to answer questions and get the information they need about college enrollment and financial aid as they apply and student supports once they enroll,” said Antoinette Flores, a former department official during the Biden administration who now works at New America, a left-leaning think tank. “This [reduction in force] puts all of those services at stake.”

    The layoffs are another blow to the federal TRIO programs, which help underrepresented and low-income students get to and through college. President Trump unsuccessfully proposed defunding the programs earlier this year, and the administration has canceled dozens of TRIO grants. Now, those that did get funding likely will have a difficult time connecting with the department for guidance.

    In a statement Wednesday, McMahon described the government shutdown and the RIF as an opportunity for agencies to “evaluate what federal responsibilities are truly critical for the American people.”

    “Two weeks in, millions of American students are still going to school, teachers are getting paid and schools are operating as normal. It confirms what the president has said: the federal Department of Education is unnecessary,” she wrote on social media.

    This is the second round of layoffs at the Education Department since Trump took office. The first, which took place in March, slashed the department’s staff nearly in half, from about 4,200 to just over 2,400, affecting almost every realm of the agency, including Student Services and the Office of Federal Student Aid.

    Nearly 500 employees lost their jobs in this most recent round, which the administration blamed on the government shutdown that began Oct. 1. No employees in FSA were affected, but the Office of Postsecondary Education was hit hard.

    Jason Cottrell, a former data coordinator for OPE who worked in student and institution services for more than nine years, lost his job in March but stayed in close contact with his colleagues who remained. The majority of them were let go on Friday, leaving just the senior directors and a few front-office administrators for each of the two divisions. That’s down from about 60 employees total in September and about 100 at the beginning of the year, he said.

    At the beginning of the year, OPE included five offices but now is down to the Office of Policy, Planning and Innovation, which includes oversight of accreditation, and the group working to update new policies and regulations.

    Cottrell said the layoffs at OPE will leave grantees who relied on these officers for guidance without a clear point of contact at the department. Further, he said there won’t be nonpartisan staffers to oversee how taxpayer dollars are spent.

    “Long-term, I’m thinking about the next round of grant applications that are going to be coming in … some of [the grant programs] receive 1,100 to 1,200 applications,” he explained. “Who is going to be there to actually organize and set up those grant-application processes to ensure that the regulations and statutes are being followed accurately?”

    Flores has similar concerns.

    “These [cuts] are the staff within the department that provide funding and technical assistance to institutions that are underresourced and serve some of the most vulnerable students within the higher education system,” she said. “Going forward, it creates uncertainty about funding, and these are institutions that are heavily reliant on funding.”

    Other parts of the department affected by the layoffs include the Offices of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services, Communications and Outreach, Formula Grants, and Program and Grantee Support Services.

    Although the remaining TRIO programs and other grant recipients that report to OPE likely already received a large chunk of their funding for the year, Cottrell noted that they often have to check in with their grant officer throughout the year to access the remainder of the award. Without those staff members in place, colleges could have a difficult time taking full advantage of their grants.

    “It’s going to harm the institutions, and most importantly, it’s going to harm the students who are supposed to be beneficiaries of these programs,” he said. “These programs are really reserved for underresourced institutions and underserved students. When I look at the overall picture of what has been happening at the department and across higher education, I see this as a strategic use of an opportunity that this administration has created.”

    Source link