Tag: Institutional

  • Boards Must Fight for Institutional Independence (opinion)

    Boards Must Fight for Institutional Independence (opinion)

    The academy is facing a crisis of confidence. Where shared governance once nurtured robust debate and institutional progress, a climate of fear is taking hold, stifling dialogue and endangering the very mission of higher education. Decision-makers, ensnared in an atmosphere marked by uncertainty, are both terrified to act and paralyzed by inaction. They are troubled by a well-orchestrated effort that seeks to fundamentally alter higher education, forcing the sector into a state of existential terror for the foreseeable future. Consequently, we are witnessing a shift from shared governance to scared governance, and the consequences are profound.

    At present, presidents seem to be thunderously quiet, boards approach critical issues with trepidation and faculty members feel suppressed in their teaching and research. The insidious costs of these constraints—the lost opportunities, the stifled innovation, the further erosion of trust—are staggering. These costs must be exposed to public scrutiny, as they are not confined to higher education. The repercussions of external intrusion will manifest in every facet of our society.

    Governing boards—guardians of institutional mission and values—must recognize the gravity of this moment. This isn’t simply about diversity, equity and inclusion, though the attacks on DEI initiatives are a major part of the problem. This is about institutional independence, the freedom to pursue knowledge and the very DNA of our nation’s colleges and universities. Too often board members have permitted faculty or presidents to take the lead in governance and have used shared governance as an excuse, explanation or cover for their own lack of involvement. They have successfully hidden in plain sight.

    Governance, however, is not a spectator sport. Boards have to champion the preservation of institutional independence and recognize that inaction under the guise of shared governance is still inaction. They cannot afford to be passive observers, expecting others to shoulder the burden of defending the institution’s core values while they remain detached. This is not a middle school group project; everyone has to participate or we will all fail the assignment.

    The threats are widespread: curricula are under siege, co-curricular life is being dismantled, research programs are targeted, medical schools are undermined and free speech is gagged. This is not a series of isolated incidents; it is an orchestrated campaign to upend the foundations of higher learning, and it demands a unified, unwavering response.

    The responsibility falls on governing boards to work with presidents to answer (clearly and immediately) some key questions:

    • What principles defined our institutions before the current political climate?
    • Do we still stand for these principles? If so, how can we hold fast to them now?
    • What price are we willing to pay to uphold those foundational values?
    • If we abandon our values now, what remains of our institutional identity?

    Autonomy is not merely a privilege; it’s the bedrock of our academic mission. It is not only our institutional independence at stake, but our very integrity.

    Many boards, understandably, are hesitant to address these challenges directly. But silence and inaction are not options. Board members are the ultimate arbiters of their institutions’ destinies. It is time to abandon the narrow focus on isolated initiatives and confront the broader, systemic assault on academic freedom and institutional autonomy. Board leadership will determine how we navigate this defining moment.

    Boards of trustees are the protectors of institutional values. They carry the legacies of their institutions forward. If they fail in this duty, the consequences may be irreversible. While other higher education decision-makers respond to executive orders, policy shifts and legal rulings, the board’s role is clear and unchanging. The only uncertainty is whether members will fulfill their responsibilities in alignment with the institution’s mission.

    The future of higher education depends on boards of higher education. The 1966 Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities makes it clear that “The governing board has a special obligation to ensure that the history of the college or university shall serve as a prelude and inspiration to the future … When ignorance or ill will threaten the institution or any part of it, the governing board must be available for support. In grave crises, it will be expected to serve as a champion.”

    Board members: This is that moment. Your institutions—and the public they serve—are waiting for you to lead. The future of higher education depends on your courage, your convictions and your willingness to champion the values upon which your institutions were built. Will you rise to the occasion? We need you now more than ever.

    We’ve recently made some suggestions for concrete actions trustees and senior leaders of institutions can take immediately to advance the great work higher education does while partnering with good-faith collaborators to address the field’s challenges. For those boards that want to be proactive and not just reactive, here are a few ideas.

    One key action is to highlight the implications for resources. A public, transparent review of the university’s budget should explicitly showcase areas under threat—like research and DEI programs. To take this further, institutions could consider reallocating funds from traditionally “untouchable” areas, such as athletics, to fortify initiatives focused on inclusivity and academic freedom. Publicly challenging politicians to justify cuts in the face of these demonstrated priorities could push the conversation beyond rhetoric.

    Fundraising strategies also need reimagining. Universities could launch targeted campaigns specifically designed to offset federal funding cuts and support programs under siege. A bolder approach might frame these efforts as “impact investments,” emphasizing the societal returns on supporting research and DEI. This reframing could inspire donors who care deeply about the university’s role in shaping a more equitable future.

    Equally important is stressing the human cost. Universities should conduct and publish comprehensive reports that quantify the real-world consequences of funding cuts—measuring lives impacted, medical treatments delayed, rising attrition rates and mental health issues among students and staff. Presenting these findings to legislators and the public forces a direct reckoning with the human toll of these policy decisions. The facts, laid bare, can speak louder than fear.

    Finally, institutions must build collective strength through research consortia. By forming inter-institutional partnerships to pool resources and expertise, universities can ensure the continuation of vital research projects at risk. A more assertive stance could position these consortia as a direct counter to political interference, underscoring the importance of academic inquiry free from external pressure.

    The path forward is clear: Governing boards must lead with transparency, strategy and courage. Higher education’s survival—and its ability to serve the public good—depends on it.

    Raquel M. Rall and Demetri L. Morgan are co-founders and co-directors of the Center for Strategic & Inclusive Governance. Rall is an associate professor and associate dean of strategic initiatives in the School of Education at the University of California, Riverside. Morgan is an associate professor of education at the University of Michigan’s Marsal Family School of Education, within the Center for the Study of Postsecondary and Higher Education.

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  • OfS insight on institutional closure lacks a firm statutory foundation

    OfS insight on institutional closure lacks a firm statutory foundation

    The Office for Students’ (OfS) insight briefing “Protecting the interests of students when universities and colleges close” is as much a timely reminder of where the law falls short when providers are at risk of closure as it is a briefing on how to protect the student interest under the current policy framework.

    As we set out in our Connect more report which explored, among other things, the legal framework for institutional insolvency, market exit and/or merger, the role of OfS in any institution at risk situation is already unhelpfully ambiguous. Its concern may be the student interest, but it is not empowered to prevent institutional closure (even if, as is often likely to be the case, the student interest would be best served by completing the course they registered for at the institution they enrolled in) – or even to impose order on a disorderly market exit.

    In the absence of express powers or an insolvency or special administration regime for higher education, OfS’ role becomes one of a point person, facilitating conversations with other agencies and stakeholders, but with no powers itself to prevent a disorderly closure. The tone of the briefing is collaborative and collegiate but, in a world where students are no better protected than any other unsecured creditor if a provider becomes insolvent, it’s doubtful that, under the law as it currently stands, the interests of students will be protected to the degree to which OfS desires.

    While OfS may be primarily concerned with protecting students’ interests, the trustees of those providers that are constituted as charities have a statutory duty to act in the best interests of the charity and to pursue their charity’s purposes. This duty will, of course, encompass the needs of present students but will also encompass past students, future students, research activities and much more besides. While no one would disagree with the general sentiment that “throughout the process [of institutional closure] the interests of students, and their options for continued study, must be kept in mind” – and the briefing does offer lots of useful ideas for how to ensure sufficient attention is given to the many types of students who will be affected – the elevation of student interest to a pre-eminent concern is not what the law generally, nor what OfS’ statutory duties currently require.

    University executive teams and boards may wish, therefore, to read OfS guidance in light of these realities, and be aware of the limits of what is realistically possible or likely to occur in giving consideration to the sort of scenario planning and preparation OfS advocates in the briefing.

    A herd of elephants

    OfS’ recommendations about the need to have suitably durable and maintained student records and to have entered into binding contracts with validating and subcontracting partners that contain clauses that deal realistically with the end of the relationship and contain adequate data sharing agreements clauses are all well made.

    But once things actually start to get tricky in real life there is a level of reliance on transparency, for example, in sharing information both with OfS but also with other organisations such as funding or regulatory bodies, or government departments, or even other institutions who might be prevailed upon to welcome displaced students. In the absence of a systematised notification process, any ambiguity about whose role it is to liaise with the various potentially affected stakeholders or the timing of any such communication has high potential to create problems. There are obvious issues raised by disclosing or revealing another institution’s “at risk” status, some of which may have the effect of accelerating the very process everyone is seeking to avoid.

    If OfS considers a registered institution is at risk of closure, it can impose a student protection direction under condition C4 of the conditions of registration. The briefing provides a helpful reminder of what a student protection direction might include and encourages regular thought about these issues to avoid the need for a provider to “improvise at speed and under stress if an institutional closure becomes possible.” That sounds very laudable at first glance, but it confuses the regulatory obligation with the real-world outcome. A provider at risk of closure may well come under pressure from OfS to produce a market exit plan and to map courses at a time when university teams have the least bandwidth to undertake such tasks. In any case, it is highly doubtful whether an insolvency practitioner would be bound by such planning in the event that a provider goes into an insolvency process.

    In scenario planning, OfS moots the idea that higher education providers might consider setting up “agreements in principle” with other institutions “to take on relevant students if one or the other closes” or even “possibly multiple agreements, for different courses and subjects.” It is surprising not to see competition law mentioned in this context. The higher education sector contains a broad range of institution types, with varied teaching and delivery methods, attracting students with different needs and expectations as regards learning and study.

    This means that in practice the providers that pair up to take on one another’s students in the event of institutional failure will need to be similar types of provider – precisely those that are in competition for students in the first place. As Kate Newman has argued in an article on the impact of competition law on higher education collaboration, it would be helpful if OfS and the Competition and Markets Authority could jointly consider these kinds of circumstances for the sector as a whole rather than providers having to navigate this complex legal territory on an individual basis.

    We’re also concerned that any such “agreement in principle” will not be legally binding and will have been reached at a single point in time, when conditions may be quite different to the time when the institutions seek to rely on them. There is a very real risk that unless these agreements are refreshed annually (a time consuming and potentially collusive activity) they will turn out to be like the original student protection plans in being not terribly helpful.

    A sector like no other

    In issuing its briefing OfS argues that “this sort of risk and contingency planning is normal in other regulated sectors,” citing the examples of customer supply contingency plans for energy suppliers and the need for banks to have recovery and resolution plans. However, both of these sectors have highly developed insolvency regimes. Drafting recovery and resolution plans is much easier to achieve when there is a viable insolvency process in place. Both the energy and banking sectors have special administration processes in place and there has been much recent press coverage on the water sector special administration process, in light of Thames Water’s difficulties.

    OfS encourages institutions to undertake extensive course mapping. However, given the scale of the financial pressures facing the sector, it’s doubtful how valuable such course mapping is likely to be where potential recipient institutions are perhaps equally likely to be at risk of closure. To be fair to OfS, the briefing stresses that mapping is particularly relevant for those institutions that offer specialist provision.

    And here, of course, lies the essential problem. As OfS states: “We have drawn on our experience of managing two relevant cases at small and specialist higher education providers during the past year, and of instances where there was a serious risk of a closure which did not materialise.” The counterfactual – closure of a large and generalist provider which does materialise – remains the biggest elephant in the room. While OfS’ openness in sharing its insights is to be welcomed, it does nothing to diminish the need for urgent structural change.

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  • How can evolving student attitudes inform institutional Gen-AI initiatives?

    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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  • Navigating the Kafkaesque nightmare of Columbia’s Office of Institutional Equity

    Navigating the Kafkaesque nightmare of Columbia’s Office of Institutional Equity

    Franz Kafka’s masterpiece “The Trial” begins when Josef K discovers that “one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested.”

    What follows is the story of his desperate attempt to navigate a nightmarishly opaque bureaucracy — and the bleak results. Like Josef K, Columbia students awoke one morning to find themselves at the mercy of the university’s new Office of Institutional Equity.

    In recent weeks, the OIE sent dozens of warnings to students telling them they were under investigation for alleged discriminatory harassment simply for engaging in pro-Palestinian advocacy on campus. Individual acts of protected political expression — social media posts, peaceful demonstrations, and op-eds in the student newspaper — were treated as creating a “hostile environment” for criticizing Israel, with accusations framed in expansive interpretations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

    FIRE has since heard from a number of students lost in the maze of Columbia’s cryptic dispatches and confusing accusations, and one thing is clear: the OIE has cast a late-winter chill across campus. 

    These investigations can take months or even years, and leave students in fear of what they can and cannot do or say while they await the results. 

    Take the two Columbia seniors who were notified just months before graduation that they were under investigation and subject to expulsion for allegedly writing a student newspaper article signed by a consortium of pro-Palestinian student groups urging divestment from Israel. One student described the situation as “dystopian” and said she is now reluctant to speak out on the issue again. Even worse, the two students were targeted not because there was any evidence they’d actually authored the article, much less created a hostile environment by doing so, but merely because of their involvement with the pro-Palestinian student group consortium.

    Another student contacted FIRE to report that they were afraid to return to campus because they feared the administration would retaliate against them for their previous advocacy with Students for Justice in Palestine. 

    Moreover, Columbia made national headlines this week when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detained former student Mahmoud Khalil, who previously tried to fight the OIE. Though he had already successfully appealed the university’s disciplinary charges against him, federal agents showed up on his doorstep and hauled him off to an ICE detention center based on accusations that he led campus protest activities aligned with Hamas. 

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    Khalil reported that just before he was due to graduate this past December, the OIE buried him in allegations relating to social media posts with which he was uninvolved. Furthermore, when he stood up for himself and refused to sign a nondisclosure agreement, the university put a hold on his transcript and threatened to block his graduation — until he hired counsel, and the OIE seemed to temporarily back off. The timing of the ICE raid and the OIE’s investigation into Khalil leaves students and faculty with more questions than answers, especially as he has still not yet been criminally charged for anything and is facing deportation.

    While Columbia’s OIE is charged with addressing claims of unlawful discrimination and harassment, it cannot do so by employing an overly broad definition of harassment that stretches the meaning beyond recognition. Yet the OIE has done exactly that in interpreting Title VI harassment to include protected criticism of Israel, suppressing political activism under the guise of maintaining a “safe” environment by defining speech against another country as possible discriminatory harassment if “directed at or infused with discriminatory comments about persons from, or associated with, that country.” 

    Is it possible for such speech to be part of a pattern of discriminatory harassment? Yes. It’s also possible for it not to be harassment. The way Columbia is treating such speech, though, makes that impossible to discern. 

    The OIE’s needlessly murky investigatory process is also deeply troubling. Students report being left in the dark about the specifics of the charges against them, and being required to sign a nondisclosure agreement in order to see the evidence. In other words, they can’t talk to anyone about their case or get help until after it’s too late and the OIE has already decided their case and potentially sealed their fate. 

    These investigations can take months or even years, and leave students in fear of what they can and cannot do or say while they await the results. When students are forced to endure lengthy investigations that may result in serious sanctions such as suspension and expulsion, it’s obvious that the process, even if it results in a student’s favor, is the punishment. 

    The original title of “The Trial” was Der Prozess, or literally “The Process,” because the true horror Josef was forced to confront was that of a Byzantine and convoluted process custom-built to crush dissent. If nothing else, we can perhaps thank Columbia, like so many schools before it, for bringing classic literature to life.

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  • One-day event creates institutional goals for student success

    One-day event creates institutional goals for student success

    Across higher education, identifying stakeholders who are engaging in similar initiatives or working toward mutual student success goals can be a challenge, and this is true at the institutional level as well.

    In a 2024 survey of student success professionals conducted by Inside Higher Ed and Hanover, over half (59 percent) of respondents said they believe their institution is very or extremely effective at making student success an institutional priority.

    Two administrators at DePaul University in Chicago created a one-day event on campus to unite practitioners and leaders who care about student success to identify common goals and challenges.

    “It’s so necessary … to think about the gathering of individuals, because it really elevates what was most important for us, which is student success being everyone’s job,” says Ashley Williams, director of student success initiatives.

    Gathering together: The inaugural summit took place Dec. 3, 2024, with 350 staff, faculty members and administrators participating. The event featured outside experts, such as Monica Hall-Porter from the University of Texas at Austin as the keynote speaker, and the university president and provost addressed institutional goals for student success and closing achievement gaps.

    The goals for the summit, as outlined by organizers, included defining student success, determining how success is measured, fostering a coordinated culture for student success, charting a road map for enhancing student success and creating awareness of technology, systems and data relevant to student success, as well as sharing of best practices in place at the institution.

    The summit was titled Charting Student Success From Orientation Through Graduation, to reflect the student life cycle and how each practitioner contributes to student success. DePaul, as a Catholic institution, also frames student success through St. Vincent DePaul’s mission.

    Organizers were intentional about selecting individuals from various areas and disciplines across the university to drive creative and diverse conversations, says Michael Roberts, senior assistant dean for student success.

    DePaul’s summit united diverse professionals from a variety of areas and disciplines on campus.

    “I think folks can get … tunnel vision in trying to solve their problems and [trying] to cultivate expertise within their immediate or closest community,” Williams says. “We know there’s a lot of knowledge and strengths that exist across in the institution and in places you may not necessarily [be] thinking about in your day-to-day.”

    Unsiloing the institution and breaking organizational barriers allows for sharing resources, strengths, ideas and innovation through collaboration, Williams says.

    Putting it together: When creating the summit, Roberts and Williams prioritized institutional buy-in and ensuring their work was collaborative and not in competition with the work of others who engaged in student success spaces.

    The organizers engaged with others who were leaders in student success to contribute to planning and guide decision-making to ensure the event could execute goals in the ways they intended, Williams says.

    Partnerships also included identifying internal and external groups that could contribute resources and serve as sponsors to finance and run the event.

    One facet that was important to Roberts was not having the summit be a pep rally to gather enthusiasm, but something that could apply to faculty or staff members’ work directly. “Like, ‘this event is going to matter to me, and I’m going to be able to take something away from this and actually make use of it,’” he says.

    Looking ahead: The inaugural summit had a goal of 50 attendees, so reaching over 300 was a happy surprise, Roberts says. Attendees were a mix of faculty and staff, and feedback was overwhelmingly positive, Williams shares.

    Anecdotally, organizers heard that having a space to discuss topics and be exposed to other work happening across campus was valuable to attendees, as was building community with peers.

    “People felt informed; they walked away enlightened and kind of motivated, inspired to think about how they could lead, how they could pivot some of their work to better fit within a standard model of student success,” Williams says.

    In the future, organizers are looking to implement more programming that allows practitioners to participate in hands-on activities that allow them to engage in work directly.

    What’s being done at your institution to ensure administrators and practitioners in various areas are aware of and using data relevant to student success? Tell us about it.

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  • Shifting institutional thinking about commuter students

    Shifting institutional thinking about commuter students

    As more and more students travel from their home to study, grappling with all the challenges of supporting commuter students has become the norm for the sector.

    How do we create a sense of belonging for these students, how do we make their time on campus as positive as possible and how do we increase attendance and then keep them on campus? It’s often approached as a problem to fix.

    And at the University of Worcester we did just this. And we’ve had some great solutions – providing fridges and microwaves, so commuters could bring and store food. Students services have run “fancy a cuppa” sessions throughout the week so that students have space to gather at no cost and many academic teams are developing flexible approaches to delivery that recognise the challenges of travel.

    But behind the scenes colleagues were starting to recognise that the reasons for commuting and the challenges this created were complex, multi-faceted and far reaching.

    Commuting students are now the majority of our students and this impacts on the experience for all students – getting it right for commuting students means getting it right for all students.

    We need to shift our thinking from commuters as a problem to solve to instead how can the university change and adapt across the institution to meet the evolving needs of our students.

    We needed to listen

    We needed to understand the why, the how and the impact of daily travel to university. And to do this we needed to raise the profile of these students with those tasked with decision making across the university.

    We launched “listening lunches” to combat survey fatigue and facilitate comfortable spaces in the middle of the day where students could drop in on their own terms, have a free lunch and share anything that was on their minds.

    Travelling to campus daily involved managing caring responsibilities, school runs, late or cancelled trains and the impact of travel disruption caused by flooding and road closures. When students were unable to attend it meant disrupted classes, low attendance and made it harder for students to maintain group assignments.

    It wasn’t all negative. Students shared examples of thoughtful and reactive responses from staff who were aware of these challenges and were adapting their practice accordingly. Crucially, this wasn’t formalised or widely applied.

    Where staff were finding ways to support students’ engagement and students had the opportunity to talk to staff about their experience and seeing things being done as a result, this improved how students felt about the university.

    Examples where students felt heard, and where their engagement was not measured in attendance but in participation, were particularly positive.

    Making a case for change.

    While we had anecdotal evidence from multiple sources, it wasn’t being captured in our formal feedback mechanisms, and therefore wasn’t being centred in discussions.

    As part of our sustainability initiatives, we have run a student travel survey for a number of years – surveys were widely seen as important in shaping students’ experience – this was an opportunity to formally gather the feedback we had had anecdotally.

    The surveys were adapted to incorporate questions relating to “commuting students” and we asked students what measures could be put in place to support their participation. Unsurprisingly a lot of the feedback was around the cost of travel, including the cost and availability of car parking and the impact of poor public transport.

    Our second round of listening lunches took the feedback from this survey back to the students as a series of discussion prompts. A complex picture started to emerge that touched on areas such as sustainability, widening participation, retention, campus experience, learning and teaching and support services.

    These are not necessarily areas that have always had a central focus on commuters.

    We need to talk about commuter students on a much broader scale across institutions.

    To do this, we’re sharing our understanding across the university, via formal committees and working groups as well as building a diverse network of colleagues who can centre the needs of commuter students in any and all conversations about the student experience.

    For example, colleagues who are now members of the transport and travel group have been able to support campus-based students needing to travel to placement with timely and affordable university managed transport.

    Building an institutional agenda

    In order to adequately support commuter students, support can’t be centred in one department. Here’s some ways to think about commuter students across an institution.

    Find ways to first centre the student voice in building your understanding of how students participate and engage when living off campus. Then consider ways to broaden the conversation to include colleagues from less obvious areas of the university such as sustainability, EDI, retention and outcomes, resources and facilities as well as continuing to include colleagues from student services and academic schools.

    Reframe the way you consider engagement to go beyond attendance and towards participation and consider that there are more students impacted by commuting than you may first think.

    Don’t view commuters as the problem, but instead a valued and core part of your student community. Making sure your university works for commuters means that it also works for all students.

    Long breaks between lectures on campus are common and when it comes to downtime between lectures, a study or hospitality space isn’t always sufficient. Meaningful things to do on campus makes commuters feel part of a community. At Worcester we’ve co-created the “You Matter” programme to facilitate this with drop-in creative focused activities during the day.

    Finally commuter students’ lives are busy and complex. They place a great deal of importance on how close the university is to their home, i.e. relocating is not a priority or an option due to complex responsibilities. The cost and availability of transport options have a significant impact on students’ ability to attend and students are often juggling family, part-time work and study in an increasingly challenging financial climate.

    The more institutions begin by understanding this, the better. Only then can you build an agenda across an institution to recognise, value and support commuters.

     

    This blog is part of our series on commuter students, click here to read more.

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  • Effect of Institutional Autonomy on Academic Freedom in Higher Education Institutions in Ghana

    Effect of Institutional Autonomy on Academic Freedom in Higher Education Institutions in Ghana

    By Mohammed Bashiru and Professor Cai Yonghong

    Introduction

    The idea of institutional autonomy in higher education institutions (HEIs) naturally comes up when discussing academic freedom. These two ideas are connected, and the simplest way to define how they relate to one another is that they are intertwined through several procedures and agreements that link people, institutions, the state, and civil society. Academic freedom and institutional autonomy cannot be compared, but they also cannot be separated and the loss of one diminishes the other. Protecting academic freedom and institutional autonomy is viewed by academics as a crucial requirement for a successful HEI. For instance, institutional autonomy and academic freedom are widely acknowledged as essential for the optimization of university operations in most African nations.

    How does institutional autonomy influence academic freedom in higher education institutions in Ghana?

    In some countries, universities have been subject to government control, with appointments and administrative positions influenced by political interests, leading to violations of academic autonomy and freedom. Autonomy is a crucial element in safeguarding academic freedom, which requires universities to uphold the academic freedom of their community and for the state to respect the right to science of the broader community. Universities offer the necessary space for the exercise of academic freedom, and thus, institutional autonomy is necessary for its preservation. The violation of institutional autonomy undermines not only academic freedom but also the pillars of self-governance, tenure, and individual rights and freedoms of academics and students. Universities should be self-governed by an academic community to uphold academic freedom, which allows for unrestricted advancement of scientific knowledge through critical thinking, without external limitations.

    How does corporate governance affect the relationship between institutional autonomy and academic freedom?

    Corporate governance mechanisms, such as board diversity, board independence, transparency, and accountability, can ensure that the interests of various stakeholders, including students, faculty, and the government, are represented and balanced. The incorporation of corporate governance into academia introduces a set of values and priorities that can restrict the traditional autonomy and academic freedom that define a self-governing profession. This growing tension has led to concerns about the erosion of academia’s self-governance, with calls for policies that safeguard academic independence and uphold the values of intellectual freedom and collaboration that are foundational to higher education institutions. Nonetheless, promoting efficient corporate governance, higher education institutions can help safeguard academic freedom and institutional autonomy, despite external pressures.

    Is there a significant difference between the perceptions of males and females regarding institutional autonomy, academic freedom, and their relationship?

    The appointment process for university staff varies across countries, but it is essential that non-academic factors such as gender, ethnicity, or interests do not influence the selection of qualified individuals who are necessary for the institution’s quality. Unfortunately, studies indicate that women are often underrepresented in leadership positions and decision-making processes related to academic freedom and institutional autonomy. This underrepresentation can perpetuate biases and lead to a lack of diversity in decision-making. One solution to address these disparities is to examine gender as a factor of difference to identify areas for improvement and promote gender equality in decision-making processes. By promoting diversity and inclusivity, academic institutions can create a more equitable environment that protects institutional autonomy and promotes academic freedom for everyone, regardless of their gender.

    Methodology and Conceptual framework

    The quantitative and predictive nature of the investigation necessitated the use of an explanatory research design. Because it enabled the us to establish a clear causal relationship between the exogenous and endogenous latent variables, the explanatory study design was chosen. The simple random sample technique was utilised to collect data from an online survey administered to 128 academicians from chosen Ghanaian universities.

    The conceptual framework, explaining the interrelationships among the constructs in the context of the study is presented. The formulation of the conceptual model was influenced by the nature of proposed research questions backed by the supporting theories purported in the context of the study.

    Conclusions and Implications

    Institutional autonomy significantly predicts academic freedom at a strong level within higher education institutions in Ghana. Corporate governance can restrict academic freedom when its directed to yield immediate financial or marketable benefits but in this study it plays a key role in transmitting the effect of institutional autonomy. Additionally, there is a significant difference in perception between females and males concerning the institutional autonomy – academic freedom predictive relationship. Practically, higher education institutions, particularly in Ghana, should strive to maintain a level of autonomy while also ensuring that academic freedom is respected and protected. This can be achieved through decentralized governance structures that allow for greater participation of academics in decision-making processes. Institutions should actively engage stakeholders, including academics, in discussions and decisions related to institutional autonomy and academic freedom. This will ensure that diverse perspectives are considered in policy development.

    This blog is based on an article published in Policy Reviews in Higher Education (online 02 January 2025) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23322969.2024.2444609

    Bashiru Mohammed is a final year PhD student at the faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University. He also holds Masters in Higher education and students’ affairs from the same university. His research interest includes School management and administration, TVET education and skills development.

    Professor Cai Yonghong is a professor at Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University. She has published many articles and presided over several domestic and international educational projects and written several government consultant reports. Her research interest includes teacher innovation, teacher expertise, teacher’s salary, and school management.

    References

    AAU, (2001). ‘Declaration on the African University in the Third Millennium’.

    Akpan, K. P., & Amadi, G. (2017). University autonomy and academic freedom in Nigeria: A theoretical overview. International Journal of Academic Research and Development,

    Altbach, P. G. (2001). Academic freedom: International realities and challenges. Higher Education,

    Aslam, S., & Joshith, V. (2019). Higher Education Commission of India Act 2018: A Critical Analysis of the Policy in the Context of Institutional Autonomy.

    Becker, J. M., Cheah, J. H., Gholamzade, R., Ringle, C. M., & Sarstedt, M. (2023). PLS-SEM’s most wanted guidance.

    Hair, J., Hollingsworth, C. L., Randolph, A. B., & Chong, A. Y. L. (2017). An updated and expanded
    assessment of PLS-SEM in information systems research. Industrial management & data
    systems,

    Lippa, R. A. (2005). Gender, nature, and nurture. Routledge.

    Lock, I., & Seele, P. (2016). CSR governance and departmental organization: A typology of best practices. Corporate Governance: The International Journal of Business in Society.

    Neave, G. (2005). The supermarketed university: Reform, vision and ambiguity in British higher education. Perspectives:.

    Nicol, D. (1972) Academic Freedom and Social Responsibility: The Tasks of Universities in a Changing World, Stephen Kertesz (Ed), Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press.

    Nokkala, T., & Bacevic, J. (2014). University autonomy, agenda setting and the construction of agency: The case of the European university association in the European higher education area..

    Olsen, J. P. (2007). The institutional dynamics of the European university Springer Netherlands.

    Tricker, R. I. (2015). Corporate governance: Principles, policies, and practices. Oxford University Press, USA.

    Zikmund, W.G., Babin, B.J., Carr, J.C. & Griffin, M. (2012). Business Research Methods. Boston: Cengage Learning.

    Zulu, C (2016) ‘Gender equity and equality in higher education leadership: What’s social justice and substantive equality got to do with it?’ A paper presented at the inaugural lecture, North West University, South Africa

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

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  • A plea for institutional modesty

    A plea for institutional modesty

    This article originally appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review on Feb. 6, 2025.

    “When someone tells you where they stand on free speech, they’ve told you just about everything you need to know about their position on government power.” — X post by FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, September 1, 2024

    Dear Chairman Carr,

    As a First Amendment advocate and former chief counsel to a Federal Communications Commission chairman, I respectfully offer some thoughts for your consideration as you head the agency tasked with regulating broadcast stations and certain other electronic media in the United States: be modest in your assertion of power.

    With all due respect, it is not enough to hear what a government official may say about his or her commitment to freedom of expression. What matters is how that person acts once entrusted with the power of the office. 

    That is especially true for those who serve at the FCC, an agency that “works in the shadow of the First Amendment,” as former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer put it. Both by statutory and constitutional command, the FCC is prohibited from engaging in “censorship” or “interfering with the right of free speech.” 

    To be sure, the FCC has not always been consistent in living up to these principles in its eighty-nine-year history. So it is always refreshing to hear commissioners praise our nation’s foundational values, which necessarily implies accepting limits to their own authority. In that regard, your history of speaking out to restrict government power and in support of the First Amendment has, at times, been encouraging.

    Free Speech Warrior

    You have been called a “free speech warrior,” and some of your past statements support that label. In 2021, when two Democratic members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee wrote to media outlets castigating them for spreading misinformation about the 2020 election and the COVID epidemic and demanding answers to a list of questions, you properly denounced it as “a chilling transgression of the free speech rights that every media outlet in this country enjoys.” As you observed at the time, “[a] newsroom’s decision about what stories to cover and how to frame them should be beyond the reach of any government official, not targeted by them.” 

    Or when members of Congress urged the commission to reject a Miami radio station transfer based on the political viewpoints of the proposed new owner, you rejected this effort “to inject partisan politics into our licensing process,” correctly calling it “a deeply troubling transgression of free speech and the FCC’s status as an independent agency.” 

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    You have warned against extending FCC authority and common-carrier type regulation to online media, observing that the “American people want more freedom on the internet — not freewheeling micromanagement by government bureaucrats.” And you urged the commission to exercise caution before extending its jurisdiction to regulate artificial intelligence used in political advertising. The United States does not need “the FCC to operate as the nation’s speech police,” you explained, adding that “if there ever were a time for a federal agency to show restraint when it comes to the regulation of political speech and to ensure that it is operating within the statutorily defined bounds of its authority, now would be that time.” 

    So in light of your earlier statements about the essential importance of free expression in our society and your repeated claims about the need to tightly cabin regulatory control over media, some of your first pronouncements after being elevated to FCC chair have been quite jarring.

    Promise Versus Performance

    Two days after assuming your new position, you set aside agency orders from the previous week dismissing complaints against television stations for their news and political programming decisions. One complaint claimed WCBS engaged in “news distortion” because of the way “60 Minutes” edited its interview with Kamala Harris. Another charged an ABC network affiliate with “news distortion” based on how the network handled fact-checking during a presidential debate. And a third involved an alleged “equal opportunities” violation when Harris appeared on “Saturday Night Live” shortly before the November election. 

    These complaints, in which avowedly politically motivated organizations asked the federal government to punish broadcasters for news judgments they disliked, are precisely the kind of efforts you have condemned in the past. When the FCC dismissed those complaints a few days before President Trump’s inauguration, then-chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said the FCC “should not be the president’s speech police” and cannot act as “journalism’s censor-in-chief.” Her comments sounded a lot like you when, in earlier cases, you warned against political interference with the broadcast press.

    The Constitution bars government officials from using indirect means to do what they cannot do directly, and that includes both threats to impose sanctions if the target doesn’t give in and promises of leniency if it does. 

    But in walking back the three dismissals, the commission’s media bureau only said, cryptically, that the orders “were issued prematurely based on an insufficient investigatory record.” Of course, embarking on a federal “investigation” into editorial decision-making only magnifies the incursion into the freedom of the press, as you have noted in the past. Nevertheless, the commission has since demanded — and CBS has agreed to provide — a full transcript of the “60 Minutes” interview.

    The commission staff dismissed a fourth complaint right before the inauguration as well, this one opposing the license renewal of Fox network affiliate WTXF-TV in Philadelphia for its news reporting on the 2020 presidential election. In doing so, it stressed that the FCC cannot “act as a self-appointed, free-roving arbiter of truth in journalism.” This dismissal you let ride — which was obviously correct — but the more favorable treatment of Fox, compared with CBS, NBC, and ABC, could lead some cynics to wonder whether the decision might have something to do with the perceived political alignments of the particular broadcasters. Any partisan application of the law would make the First Amendment problem even worse, as you well know.

    Ominous Foreshadowing

    Even before your elevation to the top spot at the FCC, some of your public statements were quite concerning from a free speech perspective. For example, you told an interviewer on Fox News that the news distortion complaint against “60 Minutes” should be considered when the FCC rules on Skydance Media’s proposed $8 billion merger with Paramount (which includes transfer of twenty-eight local CBS stations). And you suggested in another interview that the FCC should investigate Harris’s appearance on SNL, with station licenses potentially revoked, even though NBC promptly provided response time to the Trump campaign. You have posted on X that “broadcast licenses are not sacred cows,” and that media companies “are going to be held accountable” under the FCC’s public interest standard. And you wrote to the head of ABC, complaining about the state of network news (and ABC’s coverage of Donald Trump in particular), and used that concern to leverage negotiations between the network and its affiliates over their compensation arrangements, adding, “I will be monitoring the outcome of your ongoing discussions with local broadcast TV stations.”

    Beyond the area of broadcast regulation, where the FCC at least has jurisdiction to act, you wrote to the heads of Alphabet Inc. (Google), Meta (Facebook), Apple, and Microsoft to complain about a Big Tech “censorship cartel” and to demand that it be “completely dismantled.” Oddly, not all these companies operate online platforms that make moderation decisions that have raised political hackles, and they are not under the FCC’s jurisdiction. Yet you demanded that the companies provide information “that can inform the FCC’s work to promote free speech and a diversity of viewpoints” and made vague threats about Section 230 of the Communications Act, which you called “Big Tech’s prized liability shield.” Much of your ire was directed at NewsGuard, a private business (over which the FCC has zero authority) that rates the credibility of news sources based on transparent journalistic criteria. Although your demands were framed as a kind of appeal to free speech, it is impossible to miss the irony that a high government official was demanding that private business make changes in their speech policies. And it is difficult to reconcile the demands you make in this letter with your previous statements opposing bureaucratic micromanagement of the internet.

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    The Supreme Court addressed this irony head-on last term when it reviewed Texas and Florida laws that were predicated on the notion that Big Tech was engaging in “censorship” and that government regulation of moderation practices was the “cure.” While the court didn’t issue an ultimate ruling on the constitutionality of the laws, it dispensed with the notion that the government has any legitimate authority to “balance” the marketplace of ideas. The First Amendment limits government action; it does not empower the FCC or any other government body to impose on private businesses what it thinks is fair. As the court observed, “[o]n the spectrum of dangers to free expression, there are few greater than allowing the government to change the speech of private actors in order to achieve its own conception of speech nirvana.”

    It is well known you were appointed to your position by a president who routinely calls for investigations and license revocations when late-night TV hosts mock him or reporters aggressively question him. And perhaps it is too much to ask that you tell your political benefactor this isn’t how any of this works. But you did swear an oath to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States, and you know very well how these things work. You might at least consider not actively reinforcing uninformed social media rants.

    Of course, you are not the first chairman to use the FCC as a pulpit — nor, I suspect, will you be the last. But there is one thing you should keep in mind: you don’t have as much power as you may think.

    Regulating in the Public Interest

    It is true that broadcasters are licensed to operate in the “public interest” by the federal government because of their use of the electromagnetic spectrum that the FCC regulates. And it is also true that, historically, this has allowed the government to engage in some control over content that is impermissible for other, unlicensed media. But this authority has always been in tension with the First Amendment, and the FCC’s ability to regulate broadcast content is probably at its lowest point since the commission was created, in 1934. Any effort to punish a broadcaster over its political coverage or its news judgment (not to mention jokes on late-night TV) would quickly be thrown out in court.

    Even in the heyday of the public interest standard, the Supreme Court made clear that “the First Amendment must inform and give shape to the manner in which Congress exercises its regulatory power in this area” and the FCC must accord broadcasters “the widest journalistic freedom consistent with their public [duties].” The court has stressed that the FCC must “walk a ‘tightrope’” to preserve the First Amendment values written into the Communications Act and described this as “a task of great delicacy and difficulty.” These concerns existed even when the FCC’s authority under the public interest standard was at its zenith, and even at that time, the court cautioned that it would not hesitate to intervene if the commission went too far.

    Since then, both Congress and the commission itself have recognized that the “scarcity rationale” that was used to justify broadcast regulation in the past is no longer valid, and the Supreme Court has observed that to whatever extent the rationale retains any force at all, it provides only “minimal” authority for the FCC to influence broadcast programming. It has flatly stated that “the FCC’s oversight responsibilities do not grant it the power to ordain any particular type of programming that must be offered by broadcast stations.”

    In 2025, any aggressive action by the FCC to regulate broadcast programming would provide an opportunity to challenge whatever remains of the public interest standard as a reason to treat broadcasters differently from other media. And FCC meddling in editorial decisions regarding political coverage and news judgment would provide an easy case for limiting the FCC’s authority. That is especially true if the commission’s actions are perceived as politically motivated.

    Regulatory Mission Creep

    Your foray into regulating what you call “Big Tech” is even more tenuous. The FCC only has the jurisdiction Congress has delegated to it, and it has never been vested with authority to regulate social media platforms, much less computer companies. The FCC during the first Trump administration floated the theory that the commission could influence online media because it has a role in interpreting Section 230, claiming that courts must defer to the agency’s “reasonable interpretations of all ambiguous terms in the Communications Act.” Your November 2024 letter to the tech companies suggested the same thing, when you asserted that the FCC administers Section 230.

    I read the law differently and see no role for the FCC here. But no matter, the Supreme Court spoke to this broader question of federal agency jurisdiction just last term, making clear it is the job of federal courts — not administrative agencies — to interpret the meaning and scope of federal laws. As the court made clear, “even when an ambiguity happens to implicate a technical matter, it does not follow that Congress has taken the power to authoritatively interpret the statute from the courts and given it to [an administrative] agency.” This rule does not change because of “individual policy preferences.” Put bluntly, interpreting Section 230 isn’t in the FCC’s job description.

    Lower courts have already applied the Supreme Court’s ruling to curtail the FCC’s ability to interpret the law to impose so-called “network neutrality” rules and to treat online information service providers as common carriers. In limiting the FCC’s authority in this area, the Sixth Circuit cited Section 230 as setting forth the congressional policy to leave the internet and other interactive computer services “unfettered by Federal or State regulation.” It would be paradoxical indeed to try to use Section 230 as the “hook” by which to impose greater federal control over online businesses.

    Even if congressional policy were unclear on this point, the First Amendment limits any role for the FCC, as the Supreme Court also made clear last term. While you have framed your position as a desire to prevent Big Tech “censorship” and to smash what you have called the “censorship-industrial complex,” the court explained that using government power in this way rests on “a serious misunderstanding of First Amendment precedent and principle.” Leveraging state authority to prevent private “censorship” is not even a valid governmental purpose, and efforts to use such power would fail under any level of constitutional scrutiny. As the court observed, the First Amendment bars “the government from tilting public debate in a preferred direction.”

    Regulation by Raised Eyebrow

    To be sure, FCC commissioners and chairmen have not always been entirely fastidious in respecting the statutory and constitutional limits of their office. The practice of making threats (veiled or otherwise), demanding answers or documents from licensees, or otherwise exerting informal pressure has been sufficiently common that the courts have given it a name: regulation by raised eyebrow. It is also generally called “jawboning.” Some officials believe they can avoid judicial scrutiny if they only act informally, confining their actions to bullying through unofficial actions. But they are wrong. 

    The DC Circuit is keenly aware that the FCC can abuse its authority in this way and has limited “raised eyebrow” tactics in past cases. And the Supreme Court again last term reaffirmed that government officials violate the First Amendment if they use coercive threats to restrict speech. That case involved a New York State financial services regulator that put pressure on insurance companies to cut their ties with the National Rifle Association because of the state’s disagreement with the NRA’s pro-gun advocacy. The court observed that public officials may denounce disfavored speech all they like, but they cannot flex their regulatory muscles in order to silence the speaker.

    In reaching this conclusion, it unanimously reaffirmed that the Constitution bars government officials from using indirect means to do what they cannot do directly, and that includes both threats to impose sanctions if the target doesn’t give in and promises of leniency if it does. Such jawboning is a particular concern when officials seek to “expand their regulatory jurisdiction to suppress the speech of organizations they have no direct control over.” While this rule covers all government officials, it applies with special force to the FCC because your agency regulates communications media and is bound by law to respect constitutional limits. Bottom line, given your position, writing threatening letters may be enough to get you into constitutional hot water.

    Political Reality 101

    Ultimately, if the president is happy with the public positions you have been taking, why should you care if the rest of the world describes your rhetoric about free speech as empty and your conflicting positions hypocritical? You must be doing something right if your statements helped get you the appointment as chair, and you have the political winds at your back. Fair enough, but I respectfully suggest this represents short-term thinking.

    Sooner or later, you (or someone at the FCC) will be required to defend the various inconsistent positions in court, and in that forum, notions of “political reality” tend to fall short. Former FCC general counsel Jack Smith learned this lesson the hard way when he was directed by the Court of Appeals to explain why the FCC was continuing to enforce the fairness doctrine after the commission had concluded that the scarcity rationale could no longer support it. The answer, of course, was that key members of Congress liked having an FCC rule they could hold over broadcasters’ heads, and they pressured the commission not to end it. So when Smith had to explain the FCC’s inconsistent positions in court, he said “we are not talking law school enforcement, legal textbook arguments; we’re talking political reality here.”

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    The judges, less than impressed, reminded Smith and the agency that “federal officials are not only bound by the Constitution, they must also take a specific oath to support and defend it.” The court compelled the commission to discharge its constitutional obligations regardless of whether “the resolution would be politically awkward,” a ruling that set the fairness doctrine on the road to oblivion. Think of it as a cautionary tale if you really want to be known as a free speech warrior.

    It also is worth keeping your longer-term legacy in mind. Officials who have tried to use their power to muzzle the press for short-term political gain have not been treated well by history. The Nixon administration was particularly antagonistic to the press and used a variety of tools to intimidate and punish disfavored reporters and critical news organizations. The White House tapes recorded Nixon threatening to act against broadcast stations owned by The Washington Post in retaliation for its coverage of the Watergate scandal, and he arranged for political allies to challenge license renewals of “unfriendly” stations. Nixon failed, the rule of law held, and his abusive tactics have been remembered as a black mark on the presidency and a cautionary tale.

    If I were your adviser, this is not how I would want history to remember you.

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  • National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity Meets February 19-20. (US Department of Education)

    National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity Meets February 19-20. (US Department of Education)

     

    Education Department

    Hearings, Meetings, Proceedings, etc.:

    National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity

    FR Document: 2025-01459
    Citation: 90 FR 7677 PDF Pages 7677-7679 (3 pages)
    Permalink
    Abstract: This notice sets forth the agenda, time, and instructions to access or participate in the February 19-20, 2025 meeting of NACIQI, and provides information to members of the public regarding the meeting, including requesting to make written or oral comments. Committee members will meet in-person while accrediting agency representatives and public attendees will participate virtually.

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  • Institutional constraints to higher education datafication: an English case study

    Institutional constraints to higher education datafication: an English case study

    by Rachel Brooks

    ‘Intractable’ datafication?

    Over recent years, both policymakers and university leaders have extolled the virtues of moving to a more metricised higher education sector: statistics about student satisfaction with their degree programme are held to improve the decision-making processes of prospective students, while data analytics are purported to help the shift to more personalised learning, for example. Moreover, academic studies have contended that datafication has become an ‘intractable’ part of higher education institutions (HEIs) across the world.

    Nevertheless, our research (conducted in ten English HEIs, funded by TASO) – of data use with respect to widening participation to undergraduate ‘sandwich’ courses (where students spend a year on a work placement, typically during the third year of a four-year degree programme) – indicates that, despite the strong claims about the advantages of making more and better use of data, in this particular area of activity at least, significant constraints operate, limiting the advantages that can accrue through datafication.

    Little evidence of widespread data use

    Our interviewees were those responsible for sandwich course provision in their HEI. While most thought that data could offer useful insights into the effectiveness of their area of activity, there was little evidence of ‘intractable’ data use. This was for three main reasons. First, in some cases, interviewees explained that no relevant data were collected – in relation to access to sandwich courses and/or the outcomes of such courses. Second, in some HEIs, relevant data were collected but not analysed. Such evidence tends to support the contention that ‘data lakes’ are emerging, as HEIs collect more and more data that often remain untapped. Third, in other cases, appropriate data were collected and analysed, but in a very limited manner. For example, one interviewee explained how data were collected and analysed in relation to the participation of students from under-represented ethnic groups, but not with respect to any other widening participation categories. This limited form of datafication, in which only some social characteristics were datafied, was not, therefore, able to inform any action with respect to the participation of widening participation students generally. Indeed, across all ten HEIs, there was only one example of where data were used in a systematic fashion to help analyse who was accessing sandwich courses within the institution, and the extent to which they were representative of the wider student population.

    Constraints on data use

    Lack of institutional capacity

    In explaining this absence of data use, the most commonly identified constraint was the lack of institutional capacity to collect and/or analyse appropriate data. For example, one interviewee commented that they did not have a very good data system for placements – ‘we are still quite Excel- based’. Excel spreadsheets were viewed as limited as they could not be easily shared or updated, and data were relatively hard to manipulate. This, according to the interviewee, made collection of appropriate data laborious, and systematic analysis of the data difficult. Interviewees also pointed to the limited time staff had available to analyse data that the institution had collected.

    Prioritisation of ‘externally-facing’ data

    Several interviewees described how ‘externally-facing data’ – i.e. that required by regulatory bodies and/or that fed into national and international league tables – was commonly prioritised, leaving little time for information officers to devote to generating and/or analysing data for internal purposes. One interviewee, for example, was unclear about what data, if any, were collected about equity gaps but believed that they were generally only pulled together for high-level reports ‘such as for the TEF’.

    Institutional cultures

    A further barrier to using data to analyse access to and outcomes of sandwich courses was perceived to be the wider culture of the institution, including its attitude to risk. An interviewee explained that the data collected in their institution was limited to two main variables – subject of study and fee status (home or international) – because of ‘ongoing cautiousness at the university about how some of that data is used and how it’s shared with different teams’.

    In addition, many participants outlined the struggles they had faced in gaining access to relevant data, and in influencing decisions about what should be collected and what analyses should be run. Several spoke of having to ‘request’ particular analyses to be run (which could be turned down), leading to a fairly ad hoc and inefficient way of proceeding, and illustrating the relative lack of agency accorded to staff – typically occupying mid-level organisational roles – in accessing and manipulating data.

    Reflections

    Examining a discrete set of activities within the UK higher education sector – those relating to sandwich courses – provides a useful lens to examine quotidian practices with respect to the availability and use of data. Despite the strong emphasis on data by government bodies and HEI senior management teams, as well as the claims made about the ‘intractability’ of HEI data use in the academic literature, our research suggests that datafication is perhaps not as widespread as some have claimed. Indeed, it indicates that some areas of activity – even those linked to high profile political and institutional priorities (in this case, employability and widening participation) – have remained largely untouched by ‘intractable’ datafication, with relevant data either not being collected or, where it is collected, not being made available to staff working in pertinent areas.

    As a consequence, the extent to which students from widening participation backgrounds were accessing sandwich courses – and then succeeding on them – relative to their peers typically remained invisible. While the majority of our interviewees were able to speculate on the extent of any under-representation and/or poor experience, this was typically on the basis of anecdotal evidence and their own ‘sense’ of how inequalities were played out in this area. Although reflecting on professional experience is obviously important, many inequalities may not be visible to staff (for example, if a student chooses not to talk about their neurodiversity or first-in-family status), even if they have regular contact with those eligible to take a sandwich course. Moreover, given the status often accorded to quantitative data within the senior management teams of universities, the lack of any statistical reporting about inequalities by social characteristic, as they pertain to sandwich courses, makes it highly likely that such issues will struggle to gain the attention of senior leaders. The barriers to the effective use of metrics highlighted above may thus have a direct impact on HEIs’ capacity to recognise and address inequalities.  

    The research on which this blog is based was carried out with Jill Timms (University of Surrey) and is discussed in more detail in this article Institutional constraints to higher education datafication: an English case study | Higher Education

    Rachel Brooks is Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford and current President of the British Sociological Association. She has conducted a wide range of research on the sociology of higher education; her most recent book is Constructing the Higher Education Student: perspectives from across Europe, published (open access) with Policy Press.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

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