Tag: Inform

A partnership across the Atlantic to inform the world

Preety Sharma is a public health and development consultant currently based in Northern India, near the border with Nepal. She is also a News Decoder correspondent, one of dozens who came to News Decoder through a journalism fellowship at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.

For more than five years, the University of Toronto and News Decoder have partnered to help train health professionals in journalism, with the goal of meeting this need: Too much disinformation in the world about important health issues and too much factual information presented to the public in articles that are difficult to read.

Under the program, mid-career professionals spend a year in journalism training at the University of Toronto and as part of the program, pitch stories to professional news organizations. But to get published, the articles must meet the strict standards of each news organization that accepts the story pitches.

To publish on News Decoder, for example, the stories must be written in way that is accessible to young people and to those who read English as a foreign language. This is challenging for many professional journalists. The stories must also have a global angle and show how the problems in the stories play out in different parts of the world.

Sharma’s first story for News Decoder was on how a relatively inexpensive food product made from algae could be the solution to ending world hunger. Another story she wrote, on the problem of plastics in children’s toys, became News Decoder’s most-read story of all time.

“My first couple of stories were with News Decoder,” Sharma said. “I am glad to have had an opportunity to share it with a diverse and young audience globally.”

Sharma is now a News Decoder correspondent, someone who writes periodically for the site.

Bringing specialized knowledge to journalism

Marcy Burstiner, News Decoder’s educational news director, has worked with Sharma on all her stories and thinks the Dalla Lana program and its partnership with News Decoder is unique and important. “When I taught university journalism, I often told science majors that they should consider going into journalism,” she said. “There are a thousand medical publications but they are not written with a general audience in mind and meanwhile most journalists lack the specialized knowledge to really understand and put into context what is happening in medicine and the hard sciences.”

For News Decoder, this problem is particularly important, she said. “Health and science are two subjects that young people are hungry for information on and that’s our target audience,” Burstiner said. “But, because so much of the information is dense, they turn to sites on the internet that present pseudo science and they can’t tell the difference.”

Sharma agrees. “In the age of fake news and social media information explosion, it is crucial to have a credible and trusted media outlet that can present complex issues, ideas and concepts to youth in a simple and educational style,” she said.

News Decoder Founder Nelson Graves said that the partnership between the University of Toronto and News Decoder was a win-win proposition from the start. “Fellows at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health have a chance to publish stories examining some of the world’s most pressing issues on our global platform,” he said. “They benefit from editing by journalists with deep international experience.”

The students in News Decoder’s global community and readers around the globe also benefit from the fellows’ reporting and insights, he said and that helps to maintain News Decoder’s breadth and depth.

“News Decoder’s association with the University of Toronto encapsulates our nonprofit’s commitment to global citizenship and to fostering connections across borders and between generations,” Graves said.

Connecting with young people

Correspondent Norma Hilton also came to News Decoder through the University of Toronto’s fellowship in global journalism. Her first story was on K-Pop and social media influencers, a topic that’s important to News Decoder’s teen audience. Hilton said it was a great learning experience. “I’d never really written for a youth audience or taken more of an education angle to my stories before,” she said. “So, it was great to understand what young people want to hear about and write for them.”

Hilton is also one of many University of Toronto fellows who have not only written stories for News Decoder, but become an integral part of the News Decoder team. She participated in workshops and cross-border roundtables with students and produced articles and videos that serve as journalism tutorials on such things as how to cover events, how to fact-check articles and how to cover traumatic situations.

“I’ve never really thought I’d be on a panel of any kind, but being able to talk about my journalism experience and hopefully help younger people be interested in journalism and its power, has been the honour of a lifetime,” Hilton said.

News Decoder Managing Director Maria Krasinski argued that the partnership with the University of Toronto is unique. “Neither of our organisations is a traditional journalism school,” she said. “Rather, we both recognize that learning journalism skills helps people, no matter their discipline or profession, communicate clearly and with impact.”

She said that, for the students News Decoder works with, journalism is an entry point, a way to take action and engage with the issues affecting their communities and participate meaningfully in civic dialogue. “Young people discover that journalism isn’t just writing stories, it’s about learning to question, to listen and to make sense of the world,” she said.

For the University of Toronto fellows, meanwhile, the journalism fellowship adds a powerful new skill to their already impressive toolkits. “It helps them translate their knowledge and expertise into stories that resonate beyond academic and industry circles,” Krasinski said. “Many of the fellows stay connected to News Decoder well after their fellowship ends. They are based all over the world and bring a diversity of perspectives and experience that enriches our news platform.”

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November 27, 2025
WEEKEND READING: Should the seminal Robbins report inform the forthcoming post-16 strategy?
HEPI’s Director, Nick Hillman, spent Friday at a conference organised by SKOPE (the Centre for Skills, Knowledge, and Organisational Performance), part of the University of Oxford’s Department of Education. It was overseen by James Robson, Professor of Tertiary Education Systems, and featured the Minister for Skills, Baroness (Jacqui) Smith, among many others.

In his opening address, Professor Robson articulated the growing consensus that, when it comes to post-school education, the time has come:
1. to replace competition with coordination;
2. to allow place-based approaches to flourish; and
3. to unlock new opportunities for the benefit of students and employers.
In her remarks, Jacqui Smith agreed, arguing for an end to ‘town / gown’ splits. The Minister emphasised she thinks higher education must reach out to other parts of the education sector: while she recognises the majority of future skills needs will be at a higher level, she wants to bring down the ‘artificial’ barriers between FE and HE in a ‘coordinated’ and ‘facilitated’ way.

Some people in the audience interpreted this as meaning universities’ only hope of more money is to do the Government’s bidding and, either way, the higher education sector clearly needs to get ready for a more directive approach from a more active state. The basic idea seems to be to have everyone work together to raise productivity, level up the regions outside London and deliver more social mobility.

It may sound lovely but these issues are as old as houses and, whenever I think of them, I think of those paragraphs from the Robbins committee – which was designed ‘to review the pattern of full-time higher education’ – that wrestle with freedom versus direction. The Robbins report struggled with the right level of co-ordination and, while much of what it said reflected Lionel Robbins’s liberal views, it also envisaged a role for oversight and direction:

Will it be possible to secure the advantages of co-ordination while preserving the advantages of liberty? The question is of critical importance. Freedom of institutions as well as individual freedom is an essential constituent of a free society and the tradition of academic freedom in this country has deep roots in the whole history of our people. We are convinced also that such freedom is a necessary condition of the highest efficiency and the proper progress of academic institutions, and that encroachments upon their liberty, in the supposed interests of greater efficiency, would in fact diminish their efficiency and stultify their development. …

We believe that a system that aims at the maximum of independence compatible with the necessary degree of public control is good in itself, as reflecting the ultimate values of a free society. We believe that a multiplicity of centres of initiative safeguards spontaneity and variety, and therefore provides the surest guarantee of intellectual progress and moral responsibility. We do not regard such freedom as a privilege but rather as a necessary condition for the proper discharge of the higher academic functions as we conceive them. …

The difficulties are greatest when it is a question whether institutions of higher education should have the ultimate right to determine their own size. … if funds are available, refusal to co-operate in national policies or to meet national emergencies is an unsympathetic attitude, and it would be easy to think of reasons why it should be overruled. … If, when all the reasons for change have been explained, the institution still prefers not to co-operate it is better that it should be allowed to follow its own path. This being so, it must not complain if various benefits going to co-operating institutions do not come its way. … [My emphasis]

it is unlikely that separate consideration by independent institutions of their own affairs in their own circumstances will always result in a pattern that is comprehensive and appropriate in relation to the needs of society and the demands of the national economy. There is no guarantee of the emergence of any coherent policy. And this being so, it is not reasonable to expect that the Government, which is the source of finance, should be content with an absence of co-ordination or should be without influence thereon. …

It all goes to show, yet again, that there is no such thing as a new education policy question.

There are a number of tests we should perhaps apply to the let’s-coordinate-everything-to-elevate-skills approach that is likely to form the core of the forthcoming post-16 strategy / white paper that is due ‘soon’ – very soon if some of those attending the conference are to be believed and not at all soon if others there are to be believed.

First, if we can’t even build a high-speed speed trainline on budget and on time, why are we so confident we can easily build an integrated skills and education system (and without a material increase in spending)? It is surely right to at least ask whether public authorities really do know so much about the future economy’s needs that individuals should cede control over who should study what and where. Clearly, Skills England could be important here, but it is an untested beast. (I note in passing that the Smiths, Jacqui and Phil [Chair of Skills England], are getting back together to do a webinar this week.)

Secondly, the broken model that tends to be held up in contrast to the coming smooth one is a market in which there is lots of wasteful competition, excessive homogeneity and a lack of focus on the country’s needs. But the idea that the only alternative to a coordinated system is a pure and chaotic market is bunkum. We’ve not had a pure market in higher education and I’ve never met anyone who wants one. Neither the political centre nor the Far-byn (or is it Cor-age?) axis want one. Perhaps we are letting ourselves be blinded by the idea that there are only two options: a pure red-in-tooth-and-claw market, which is a caricature of what we have, and a cuddly coordinated system, which will be harder to deliver than we pretend.

Thirdly, where is the space for education for education’s sake? As one member of the audience pointed out at the SKOPE conference, current discussions are so focused on ‘skills’ and the economy that education is sometimes becoming lost. Yet FE and HE collaboration is difficult at a practical and day-to-day level. Kath Mitchell, the Vice-Chancellor of Derby University, pointed out the challenges of running an FE college and a university together – for example pointing out that Buxton and Leek College is (absurdly) barred from receiving FE capital funding because it counts as part of the University of Derby.

Fourthly, we should question the assumption underlying current critiques that our universities are much too homogeneous. They do have some things in common, though one might just as well point out that all education institutions that share a legally-protected title controlled by strict criteria, such as ‘university’, are always going to have some things in common. But I’ve visited pretty much every UK university, and many of them multiple times, and I would urge anyone who thinks they’re all the same to do something similar. Just compare the two universities I know best (as I’m on their boards), Manchester and Buckingham: the former is a research-intensive institution with a turnover of £1.4 billion, 12,000 staff and 47,000 students while the other is a teaching-intensive place (‘the home of two-year degrees’) with a turnover of £50 million, 500 staff and 3,500 students as well as the only private medical school in the UK. Or compare the LSE and UCA (the University of the Creative Arts). Or Falmouth University and Newcastle University. These things are not the same.

Finally / fifthly, as Andy Westwood pointed out in his remarks at the SKOPE conference, devolution is ‘non-existent’ in large parts of the country. So what does ‘a coordinated place-based approach’ really mean there? It’s one thing if you’re in Greater Manchester; it’s quite another if you’re in a rural area far from the nearest town or city, college or university. Moreover, while it is true that the old Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) had a regional aspect to its work which we could well copy today, it was a big funder as well as a regulator and it had a substantial regional presence.
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July 5, 2025
How can evolving student attitudes inform institutional Gen-AI initiatives?
This HEPI blog was authored by Isabelle Bristow, Managing Director UK and Europe at Studiosity.

In a HEPI blog published almost a year ago, Student Voices on AI: Navigating Expectations and Opportunities, I reported the findings of global research Studiosity commissioned with YouGov on students’ attitudes towards artificial intelligence (AI). The intervening year would be considered a relatively small time period in a more regular higher education setting. However, given the rapid pace of change within the Gen-AI sphere, this one year is practically aeons.

We have recently commissioned a further YouGov survey to explore the motivations, emotions, and needs of over 2,200 students from 151 universities in the UK.

Below, I will cover the top five takeaways from this new round of research, but first, which students are using AI?
- 64% of all students have used AI tools to help with assignments or study tasks.
- International student use (87%) is a staggering 27% higher than their domestic student counterparts (60%).
- There’s a 21% difference between students who identify as female who said they have never used AI tools for study tasks (42%) compared with those identifying as male (21%).
- Only 17% of students studying business said they have never used it, compared with 46% studying Humanities and Social Sciences.
- The highest reported use is by students studying in London at 78%, and conversely, the highest non-use was reported by students studying in Scotland at 44%.
The Top Five Takeaways:
1. There is an 11% increase from last year in students thinking that their university is adapting fast enough to provide AI study support tools.
Following a year of global Gen-AI development and another year for institutions to adapt, students who believe their university is adjusting quickly enough remain in the minority this year at 47%, up from 36% in 2024. The remaining 53% of student respondents believe their institution has more to do.

When asked if they expect their university to offer AI support tools to students, the result is the same as last year – with 39% of students answering yes to this question. This was significantly higher for male students at 51% (up by 3% from last year) and for international students 61% (up by 4% from last year). Once again, this year, business students have the highest expectations at 58% (just 1% higher than last year). Following this, medicine (53%), nursing (48%) and STEM (46%) were more likely to respond ‘Yes’ when asked if they expect their university to provide AI tools.
1. Some students have concerns over academic integrity.
When asked if they felt their university should provide AI tools, students who answered’ no’ were given a free text box to explain their reasoning. Most of these responses related to academic integrity.

‘I don’t think unis support its use because it helps students plagiarise and cheat.’

‘I think AI beats the whole idea of a degree, but it can be used for grammar correction and general fluidity.’

‘Because it would be unfair and result in the student not really learning or thinking for themselves.’

Only 7% of students said they would use an AI tool for help with plagiarism or referencing (‘Ask my lecturer’ was at 30% and ‘Use a 24/7 university online writing feedback tool’ was at 21%).
1. Students who use AI regularly are less likely to rank ‘fear of failing’ as one of their top three study stresses
We asked all students – regardless of their AI use – of their top three reasons for feeling stressed about studying the responses were as follows:
- 61% of all UK students included ‘fear of failing’ in their top 3 reasons for feeling stressed about studying;
- 52% of all students included ‘balancing other commitments’; and
- 41% of all students included ‘preparing for exams and assessments’.
These statistics change when we filter by students who use AI tools to help with assignments or study tasks. Fear of failing is still the highest-ranked study stress. The percentage of respondents who rank fear of failing in their top three study stresses by AI use are as follows:
- 69% for those who never use AI;
- 62% for those who have used AI once or twice;
- 58% for those who have used AI a few times and;
- 50% for those who use AI regularly.
Looking at the main reasons students want to use the university’s AI service for support or feedback, this year, ‘confidence’ (25%) overtook ‘speed’ (16%). Female respondents, in particular, are using AI for reasons relating to confidence at 29%, compared to 20% for male students. International students valued ‘skills’ the most at 20%, significantly higher than their domestic student counterparts at 11%.
1. Students who feel like they belong are more likely to use AI.
We examined the correlation between students’ sense of belonging in their university community, and the amount they use AI tools to help with assignments or study tasks.

For students who feel like they belong, 67% said they have used AI tools to help with assignments or study tasks; this compares with 47% for students who do not feel like they belong.

5. Cognitive offloading (using technology to circumvent the ‘learning element’ of a task) is a top concern of academics and institutional leadership in 2025. However, student responses suggest they feel they are both learning and improving their skills when using generative tools.

When asked if they were confident they are learning as well as improving their own skills when using generative tools, students responded as follows:
- 12% ‘were extremely confident that they were learning and developing skills;
- 31% were very confident;
- 29% were moderately confident;
- 26% were moderately confident; and
- Only 5% were not at all confident that this was true.
Conclusion:

Reflecting on the three years since Gen-AI’s disruptive entrance into the mainstream, the sector has now come to terms with the power, potential, and risks of Gen-AI. There is also a significantly better understanding of the importance of ensuring these tools enhance student learning rather than undermining it by offloading cognitive effort.

Leaders can look to a holistic approach to university-approved, trusted Gen-AI support, to improve student outcomes, experience and wellbeing.

—

You can download the full Annual Global Student Wellbeing Survey – UK report here.

Studiosity is a HEPI Partner. Studiosity is AI-for-Learning, not corrections – to scale student success, empower educators, and improve retention with a proven 4.4x ROI, while ensuring integrity and reducing institutional risk. Studiosity delivers ethical and formative feedback at scale to over 250 institutions worldwide. With unique AI-for-Learning technology, all students can benefit from formative feedback in minutes. From their first draft to just before submission, students receive personalised feedback – including guidance on how they can demonstrably improve their own work and critical thinking skills. Actionable insight is accessible to faculty and leaders, revealing the scale of engagement with support, cohorts requiring intervention, and measurable learning progress.
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March 13, 2025
7 Trends to Inform Online Program Expansion in 2025

As I reviewed the new IPEDS data release last week, I was looking for the data and intelligence that would be most helpful for online enrollment leaders to have in hand to underpin and inform this year’s success. These points, in combination with key trends that became clear in other sources I reviewed late last year will enable online leaders to succeed this year as well as plan for the future.

Note that I am not discussing changes that may emerge after January 20, but I will be doing so after a long talk I have scheduled with Cheryl Dowd from WCET who tracks online regulations and with whom I will be co-presenting at the RNL National Conference this summer.

So, what do you need to know?

1. Online and partially online enrollment continue to dominate growth.

Four years after the pandemic, more students each year are continuing to decide to enroll in either fully or partially online study. While year-over-year change in every post-pandemic year has seen some “return to the classroom,” when compared with pre-pandemic enrollment (2019), 2.3 million more undergraduates and 450k more graduate students are choosing fully or partially online study. Perhaps more important, 3.2 million fewer undergraduates and 288k fewer graduate students are choosing classroom-only programs. Institutions seeking to grow enrollment must develop processes to quickly determine the best online programs to offer and get them “to market” within 12 months.

2. Institutions seeking to grow online enrollment are now competing with non-profit institutions.

As recently as five years ago, your strongest competition came from for-profit institutions. In some ways, these institutions were easy to beat (excepting their huge marketing budgets). They had taken a beating in the press to the extent that students knew about it, and they were far away and unknown. Today, institutions face no less of a competitive environment, but the institutions dominating the scene – and most likely a students’ search results – are national non-profits. These institutions are, of course, not local so they aren’t well known, but they have not been through the scrutiny which eroded interest in the for-profits. Student search engine results are also now filled with ambitious public and private institutions seeking to “diversity their revenue streams.” As such, institutional marketers need to adjust their strategies focused on successfully positioning their programs in a crowded market, knowing that they can “win” the student over the national online providers if they ensure that they rise to the top of search results.

3. Online enrollment growth is being led by non-profit institutions.

Seventeen of the 20 institutions reporting the greatest growth in online enrollment over the last five years are nonprofit institutions—a mix of ambitious public and private institutions and national non-profits. What is more, the total growth among institutions after the two behemoths far exceeds Southern New Hampshire University and Western Governors University. These nimble and dynamic institutions include a variety of institution types (with community colleges well represented) across the higher education sector. Institutions seeking to grow online enrollment should research what these institutions are offering and how they are positioning their programs in the market and emulate some of their best practices.

4. New graduate program growth is dominated by online/partially online offerings.

In 2024, a research study by Robert Kelchen documented growth in the number of available master’s programs in the U.S. over the last 15 years. Not only did Kelchen document a massive expansion in availability (over the 15-year period, institutions launched nearly 14,000 new master’s programs on a base of about 20,000), but also that the pace of launching online or hybrid programs dramatically outpaces classroom programs. This rise in available offerings far outpaces the rate of growth of the online student market, resulting in significantly higher levels of competition for each online student. Institutions seeking to grow their online footprint must ensure that they fully understand both the specific demand dynamics for each of their programs and the specifics of what online students want in their program. A mismatch on either factor will inhibit growth.

5. Online success is breeding scrutiny of outcomes.

We all know something of the power of social media today. This was reinforced for me recently by an Inside Higher Education story which focused on the 8-year rates of degree completion among the biggest online providers. The story was triggered by a widely read Linked IN post and followed up by numerous other stories and posts and comments across the platform. This is just the kind of exposure that is most likely to generate real scrutiny of the outcomes of online learning – which were already taking shape over the last year or more. In fact, this focus on outcomes ended up as one of the unfulfilled priorities of the Biden Education Department. I have long said that institutions seeking to enter the online space have an opportunity to tackle some of the quality issues that first plagued the for-profits, now challenge the national online non-profits, and will confront others if not addressed soon.

6. Key preferences for online study have been changed by the pandemic.

RNL’s own 2024 online student survey surfaced dozens of important findings that online leaders should consider as they chart their course. Two findings stand out as reflecting profound changes in online student preferences, and both are likely the result of pandemic-era experiences. First, all but 11 percent of online students told us that they are open to at least some synchronous activities in their program, likely the result of hundreds of online meetings during the pandemic. Similarly, they told us that the ideal time to communicate with recruiters/counselors from online programs is now during business hours. This is also likely to be related to the pandemic period, in which millions of people working from home began to regularly contend with some personal business during their day. Institutions should assess both of these factors as they think through student engagement (to address point #5), and the intense competition of the online space (to address point #3).

7. Contracting institutions are not focusing on online enrollment.

Finally, we return to the new IPEDS data to see that institutions that have experienced the greatest enrollment contraction over the last five years demonstrate almost no access to fully online study (dark blue lines in the chart below), and only limited access to programs in which students can enroll in both online and classroom courses (light blue lines). Even where there has been some online or partially online growth, these efforts have not been given adequate attention to counterbalance contraction among students enrolled in classroom-only programs (green lines). These data again make it clear (as stated in point #1) that institutions facing classroom-only contraction must either amend their goals to account for reduced enrollment or determine which online or hybrid programs would be most attractive to students in their region and then ensure that such offerings are visible in a highly competitive higher education market.

Explore more at our webinar

Join us for a deeper dive into trends during our webinar, 5 Enrollment Trends You Need to Know for 2025. This discussion with me and a number of my RNL expert colleagues will look at research and trends that should shape strategic and tactical planning over the next 12 months. Particularly, as we enter what has been identified as the first year of the “demographic cliff,” data-informed decision-making will be more important to enrollment health than ever before. Register now.

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January 21, 2025
4 Considerations for Using Salary Data to Inform Compensation Decisions – CUPA-HR

by Missy Kline | November 15, 2022

Editor’s note: This blog post, originally published in April 2019, has been updated with additional resources and related content.

Salary benchmarking is not one-size-fits-all — especially when you’re looking at groups as varied as administrators, professionals, staff and faculty on a college or university campus that is unique in its combination of Carnegie class, affiliation, regional location and mission. The question, then, is how to tailor your benchmarking efforts to take these variables into account and choose data that is appropriate to your unique needs.

Here are four considerations to help you make the best use of salary data for compensation budget planning for your faculty and staff:

1) Which institutions should your institution’s salaries be benchmarked against? Making the right comparisons — using position-specific data and carefully selected peers — can make all the difference when planning salaries that will make your institution competitive in the labor market. When you use CUPA-HR’s DataOnDemand, you can narrow down peer institutions by one or several institution-level criteria such as affiliation (public, private indephttp://cupahr.org/surveys/dataondemand/endent or private religious), Carnegie classification, enrollment size, geographic region, total expenses or other characteristics. Remember, balance is key: a larger comparison group gets you more robust data for comparison, but you must also make sure you are comparing to the right types of institutions that make sense for your goals.

2) Not all faculty are the same. Tenure track faculty, non-tenure track teaching faculty, non-tenure track research faculty and adjunct faculty may each require unique compensation strategies, as do faculty members from different disciplines and ranks. Will the same salary increase help retain both tenured and non-tenured faculty? Does collective bargaining impact salary targets for some, but not all, of these faculty sub-groups? Are there unique, fast-growing, or in-demand departments/disciplines that require a separate strategy?

3) Keep in mind that administrator salaries are broadly competitive. Like faculty, many administrative positions in higher ed are competitive at a national level. Often, institutions seek administrators with experience at other institutions of a similar size or mission, and with this experience and mobility comes an expectation of a competitive salary. As higher ed moves toward a “business model” where innovative leadership strategies are displacing more traditional shared governance models, finding administrators with the appropriate skills and expertise is becoming increasingly competitive, not only within higher education but sometimes against the broader executive employment market.

4) Employment competition varies for staff and professionals. Many non-exempt staff are hired from within local labor markets, and therefore other institutions or companies in your state or local Metropolitan Statistical Area might be a better salary comparison than a nationwide set of peer institutions. Exempt or professional staff, however, may be more limited to competition from the higher ed sector, perhaps on a state or regional level. In addition, changes brought about by the pandemic (e.g., remote work opportunities, a desire to relocate) have made many professional positions more globally competitive. Are your institution’s salaries for these employees appropriately scoped for the market in which you need to compete?

Additional Articles and Resources

How One College Is Using Salary Data to Ensure Pay Equity and Market-Par Compensation

Compensation Programs/Plans, Executive Compensation in Higher Ed, Equal Pay Act (CUPA-HR Toolkits)

Working in a Fish Bowl: How One Community College System Navigated a Compensation Study in a Transparent Environment (Higher Ed HR Magazine)

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November 15, 2022