Tag: Institutions

  • Banking on Human Capital: How RBC Sees the Future of Talent, Innovation, and the Role of Post-Secondary Institutions

    Banking on Human Capital: How RBC Sees the Future of Talent, Innovation, and the Role of Post-Secondary Institutions

    Canada’s heading into some pretty choppy waters in 2025. For a century or so, we’ve had a one track economic strategy, closer integration with the United States. Now, the Trump administration with its faith in tariffs as an instrument of both power and corruption, has essentially nuked that strategy, at least as far as the trading goods is concerned. There’s a lot of change coming to Canada, and it’ll be costly. In much the same way that diplomatic evolution and defense needs are forcing European countries to look at higher education in a different light, Canadian universities are looking around at their new situation very nervously too.

    In Canada right now, a few people are making the case for change as strongly as John Stackhouse. John’s the ex editor-in-chief of the Global Mail. He’s now a Senior Vice President at the Royal Bank of Canada, leading that organization’s economics and thought leadership group. He’s the lead author of a recent report called “A Smarter Path, the Case for Post-Secondary Reform.” This report makes a number of, shall we say, uncomfortable observations about the relationship between Canadian higher education and the Canadian knowledge economy, in particular, between high spending and high graduate numbers on the one hand, and low productivity and significant levels of graduate underemployment on the other.

    Though the report does not directly address the issue of Trump or tariffs — it was released 48 hours before Liberation Day — it has added to the sense in Canada that the higher education sector is headed for and indeed needs a shakeup. And just to come clean for a moment, we here at Higher Education Strategy Associates are in a partnership with John and RBC and the Business Higher Education Roundtable, putting together a series of events culminating in a policy summit on post-secondary education in late September of this year.

    In the interview today, I talked to John about what the Canadian system’s biggest challenges are, how universities and businesses can more effectively partner with one another, and why Canadian political parties are increasingly shy about betting on the knowledge economy. But enough for me. Let’s turn it over to John.

    The World of Higher Education Podcast
    Episode 3.30 | Banking on Human Capital: How RBC Sees the Future of Talent, Innovation, and the Role of Post-Secondary Institutions

    Transcript

    Alex Usher (AU): Okay, John, why does a bank care so much about post-secondary education?

    John Stackhouse (JS): That’s a fair question, Alex—and thank you for including us in the podcast. If I can put it in terms of capital, maybe that’s what people would expect from a bank. Our economy, and the society that depends on it, relies on different kinds of capital. We have natural capital, technology capital, and of course, financial capital—which you’d expect from a bank. But just as critical is human capital. That’s core to the economy.

    There’s nothing new in saying that, except to emphasize that from RBC’s perspective, when we look at Canada’s prospects through the 2030s and the prosperity we hope to achieve, we need to think seriously about how we harness all these forms of capital: natural, financial, technological—and critically—human capital.

    We need to develop a more prosperous economy and society, but also the kind of vibrant communities that companies want to be part of, and that we as individuals want to contribute to. As a bank, that matters to us. Our purpose is to help clients thrive and communities prosper—and both of those depend on human capital. We hear that from our clients, our community partners, and our employees. So those are just some of the reasons why RBC is leaning into the post-secondary conversation.

    AU: In the paper you co-wrote, you describe Canada’s post-secondary education system as being slow, costly, and often out of sync with the economy. I think those are fairly common criticisms of higher education around the world. Do you think there’s something specific to Canada in that critique? Or is this more of a general observation about modern higher ed?

    JS: There’s probably some parchment from a thousand years ago where an education critic wrote, “You’re too slow, too costly, and out of touch with the economy.” -Signed, the monks of higher education. But yes, it’s fair to say that Canada isn’t alone in facing these challenges. That said, there are a few things that may be more pronounced here. One is that we’ve been a bit of a victim of our own success. We have a lot of post-secondary education in this country, but we haven’t differentiated enough within the system.

    Continental Europe, for example, continues to differentiate in ways we haven’t. So we end up producing graduates with degrees and diplomas that are too similar—and not always aligned with specific needs.

    We also haven’t allowed the business model to evolve at the pace of the economy or society, or even the expectations of students and educators. Many of them know the world is moving faster than our institutions are.

    And then on the research side—which I’m sure we’ll get to—we really lag behind. As an advanced economy, a G7 country, we’re not where we should be in post-secondary research. Part of the issue lies with the private sector—we haven’t integrated research and business to the degree that an advanced economy will need to in the 2030s.

    AU: RBC has been a really strong voice on the education–work connection. What are employers still not getting from the current system? And what responsibility do you think they have in helping to improve it?

    JS: There’s definitely a shared responsibility—and thanks for mentioning RBC’s commitment to work-integrated learning. One of the reasons we’re so invested in this is because our CEO, Dave McKay, is a product of the co-op system at Waterloo. He has a deep belief that work-integrated learning not only improves the student experience, but also strengthens the education system itself.

    When students return to the classroom after applying their knowledge in the real world, it deepens their learning. And it also improves the organizations they work with. At RBC, we hire a couple thousand co-op students every year—not just programmers from Waterloo, but fantastic interns from TMU and a wide range of colleges and universities across the country.

    We benefit from that. It improves how we work. Yes, it creates a talent pipeline—but we’ve also seen something more transformative. Over the past decade, we’ve started giving our co-op students real challenges to solve. We form teams, provide some management support, and tell them: here are some of our biggest problems—see you in August. Then they present their ideas to senior leadership in what’s essentially a competitive showcase. We’ve had around a hundred patents come out of that system.

    Students bring critical thinking, fresh perspectives, and a collaborative mindset that they develop in post-secondary. They often arrive with stronger teamwork skills than we could teach them from scratch, and they’re able to apply those skills to real problems.

    So what do employers need to do? They need to treat this as a serious investment in their own businesses. It’s a way to drive change, but it requires resources. You have to hire people who are good at managing these programs. Students don’t just walk in and figure it out on their own—it’s not Lord of the Flies. It takes organizational effort.

    AU: Let’s talk about what educational institutions are doing. I got the impression from the report that you think they still need to do more to align educational outputs with labor market needs. That said, there’s been a lot of progress over the last decade: growth in work-integrated learning, the rise of microcredentials, experiments with competency-based learning. But it sounds like you don’t think that’s enough. What more needs to happen?

    JS: Sadly—or depending on your perspective, maybe excitingly—none of us are doing enough. That’s partly because of technology, but also because of broader global forces. The world around us is changing faster than most of us are able to keep up with—including large organizations, small businesses, and educational institutions.

    The pace of change is accelerating, and it will only continue to do so. Institutions need to become much more change-minded in how they operate. That’s hard in education, for all the reasons your listeners will understand.

    One major challenge is the business model. It’s becoming a crisis. Post-secondary institutions aren’t getting the funding they need. Everyone knows that—but they’re losing the argument in the public square when it comes to making the case for new funding. And given the pressures society is under, I don’t see that changing in a meaningful way anytime soon.

    So institutions need more freedom to change—to evolve their business models, including how they generate revenue. And that means becoming more connected to, and responsive to, the broader economy around them. That’s where many of the new opportunities lie.

    AU: John, we’ve been talking mostly about human capital, which you’ve said is a key concern for RBC. But what about research and the co-production of knowledge? What are the respective roles of post-secondary institutions and businesses? Why don’t we see the kind of close connection between enterprises and universities that exists in parts of Europe or the U.S.? What’s the missing link?

    JS: That’s a tough nut to crack—and one that people far smarter than me have studied and debated for decades. But part of the challenge lies in the private sector itself. In many ways, we’ve become too much of a “branch plant” and “hinterland” economy—living off the wealth of the land, our access to the U.S. market, and the dividends of an innovation economy.

    I wouldn’t say that’s coming to an end—because that would be overly dramatic—but we’re clearly experiencing a sharp shift. In an odd way, the Trump challenge to Canada is a bit of a gift. It’s forcing us to acknowledge that we can’t be so dependent on the U.S. market. That’s become a broadly shared Canadian view. We need to build stronger connections with other parts of the world—and that’s going to require more serious investment in R&D from our businesses.

    If we want to transform branch plants into independent, globally competitive facilities, especially ones that can succeed in European and Asian markets—despite the distance—we need to invest in research and development in a way we haven’t for a generation.

    New governments—federal and provincial—need to act with urgency. They should bring business leaders together and ask, “What do we need to build?” And not just through one-off tax incentives. We need to foster a culture of collaboration and dynamism between universities, colleges, polytechnics, and businesses to shape what I’d call a post-Trump Canadian economy.

    That’s not going to happen by copying Germany’s Fraunhofer model or Japan’s approach—those are deeply rooted in specific cultural contexts. We need to develop something uniquely Canadian.

    And we can’t afford to spend years on a Royal Commission or slow-moving studies. This needs to happen quickly. A new federal government could seize this moment to bring together the provinces and private sector with a sense of urgency—and maybe even a crisis mindset.

    AU: I’ll come back to the Trump issue in a moment, but going back to the report—you lay out a number of challenges in the sector: outdated budget models, over-credentialed but under-skilled graduates, and so on. What do you think is the most pressing reform Canadian post-secondary needs right now? What’s the weakest link in the system?

    JS: That’s a great question—and a hard one to answer. But I’d go back to the funding model. Post-secondary institutions need more flexibility to innovate with how they’re funded. They need to move beyond the constraints of provincial funding and develop new approaches to tuition and fees—ones that are more closely tied to performance, outputs, and outcomes.

    There also needs to be more competition within the sector. Most people I know in post-secondary are pretty enthusiastic about that idea—though, understandably, they’d like the model to be structured so they have a good shot at succeeding.

    I think provinces need to be nudged—and maybe not even that much—to open the door to more innovation, more competition, and a bit more daring on the institutional side.

    AU: I think the words you used in the report were “reasonable deregulation.” Tell me more about increased competition—are there things we could do to incentivize more new players in the system who might be more disruptive?

    JS: There’s nothing quite like new players. I’ve studied enough sectors over the years to see that when it comes to innovation, nothing works quite as well as a vibrant, well-funded new entrant. Encouraging that kind of disruption would move us forward significantly—and it would give creative people across the sector permission to come up with ideas they’re not even thinking about yet. That’s the power of competition.

    So one key step is reducing the regulatory barriers that prevent those new players from entering the space.

    I also think employers can play a bigger role by sending clearer market signals. That could be as simple as hiring differently. We tend to recruit from the same institutions over and over—often for good reasons—but “like hires like.” If we want to encourage new entrants, we have to show that their graduates will have good job prospects. That kind of signal travels fast—even down to the high school level, where students are making decisions about their future.

    AU: Outside the scope of the report, you’ve been very outspoken in recent months about the gravity of the threat Canada faces from the U.S. under Trump. You spoke at the Business + Higher Education Roundtable event, and I know people who heard your remarks were quite sobered by them.

    There are clearly big changes coming to the country as a whole. What are the implications for universities? What changes do you think are now baked into the systems of government subsidy and regulation because of the shifting geopolitical situation?

    JS: It’s unfortunate that colleges and universities aren’t more central to the Trump-related conversation. We’re hearing a lot about pipelines, export infrastructure, and ports—which are all important. We’re also hearing a lot about trade-exposed sectors: autos, steel, aluminum, even pharmaceuticals. Guess what? All of those sectors depend on post-secondary institutions.

    So how are we thinking about the steel plant of the future that might be exporting more to Europe or Asia? It’s going to need incentives to retool. The same goes for auto plants that may need to shift into different kinds of manufacturing—including, potentially, defense production as we scale up defense spending. What kind of talent will be needed for that? How are schools in those regions adapting? And to your point about research—how can we better integrate the research side of those institutions into this transformation?

    They’ll need to develop new models—and we need to incentivize that shift. The good news is, I think there will be more money on the table. But it will be different kinds of research and institutional funding than what we’ve seen in the past. And that could be a good thing.

    So how do colleges and universities rise to that challenge? There could be tens of billions of dollars available to support economic transition. They’ll need to step up and play a leading role—and if they do, they’ll be rewarded for it.

    Interestingly, there’s already growing enthusiasm to attract academic talent from the U.S.—what some are calling “Trump intellectual refugees.”

    I’ve seen similar cycles before. After 9/11, during the Bush years, there was a similar kind of excitement. Star academics moved here as a sort of cultural vote for Canada. But that kind of movement doesn’t tend to be sustainable—or even all that interesting—from a long-term perspective.

    So how do we make it sustainable and interesting? One idea, from someone else, is to create a kind of Canada Research Chairs 2.0 for the late 2020s.

    Not a play to say “Come escape Trump,” but rather to say: if you’re an entrepreneurial, ambitious academic working in areas that matter to Canada, there’s no better place in the world to be right now than here.

    AU: One of the points you touched on earlier is that political parties seem to be responding to aggressive tariffs on exports by doubling down on producing goods. I find that kind of strange—surely one of the answers is to pivot more toward services. We’re not especially strong in that area, and in theory, that’s where universities should have an advantage. Why do you think we’re pushing so hard on goods while letting the services side drift?

    JS: That’s a great observation. We’ve become more of a services—or maybe better put, an intangibles—economy. A knowledge economy. That was a popular thing to say a decade ago, though it’s become a bit derided since.

    But we need both. You can have intangibles on their own, but the best ones tend to emerge from tangible activities.

    We need to play to our strengths, and that includes our resource economy. One of the things we noted in our study is that post-secondary doesn’t align with the resource economy as well as it should. That doesn’t mean just producing miners and rig operators—though those roles will still matter for years to come. There’s a whole spectrum of science and discovery we’ve long excelled at, and we need to scale that up if we want to lead in critical minerals, for example.

    It’s not just about having critical mineral mines or processing plants. We’ve shut down many of our best mining schools in this country, while China has established far more than we have—far more than you’d expect based on population size alone.

    So yes, we need to invest in the intangible—knowledge—side of that tangible sector. It’s not just manufacturing, as you said. It’s also processing and resource extraction, which are highly sophisticated fields. Those have earned Canada substantial academic recognition over the decades.

    We need to ensure that the intangible capacity we’re building in our universities and colleges remains closely tied to the real economy—especially to manufacturing and resource development.

    AU: Best case scenario—ten years from now—what does the Canadian post-secondary system look like? How is it different from today?

    JS: It would have much more variation. In fact, we might see something entirely new emerge—something that’s not quite a college, university, or polytechnic, but a distinct Canadian model.

    Just as Canada pioneered community colleges in the 1950s and ’60s, we have a chance to create a new tier. And this wouldn’t be at the expense of the existing systems—but something more suited to evolving needs.

    We’d have institutions that reflect and respond to the economy across all regions, including the far North. We don’t need to be physically present everywhere—we can do a lot of this remotely—but we do need our institutions to better reflect the realities of the country and the economy. And they need to be more connected to the world.

    You and I have talked a lot about the situation with international students. The real tragedy of what’s happened over the last decade would be if we abandoned the whole model. We had something that was largely good—it got mucked up—but that doesn’t mean we throw it out.

    We need to fix what went wrong. And we need to remain a destination for the best and most ambitious students from around the world. Ideally, we want them to stay—but even if they go back home, they can help connect us to the world.

    Because if we’re being honest with ourselves, what we’re really saying as Canadians—though maybe not quite this explicitly—is that we want to be a more global country. And our post-secondary system is one of the best tools we have to make that happen. But it will take a deliberate effort to reach out to the world—and there’s no sector better positioned to do that than post-secondary.

    AU: John, thanks so much for being with us today.

    JS: Thanks, Alex. I’ve really enjoyed it.

    Alex Usher: And it just remains for me to thank our excellent producers, Tiffany MacLennan, Sam Pufek, and you, our viewers, listeners, and readers for following us. If you have any questions or concerns about today’s episode or suggestions for future ones, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at podcast@higheredstrategy.com. Run, don’t walk to our YouTube page and hit subscribe. That way you’ll never miss an episode of the World of Higher Education Podcast.

    Join us next week when our guest will be Rómulo Pinheiro. He’s a professor at the University of Agder in Norway, and we’ll be talking about university’s role in the economic development strategies of rural and remote regions. Bye for now.

    *This podcast transcript was generated using an AI transcription service with limited editing. Please forgive any errors made through this service. Please note, the views and opinions expressed in each episode are those of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host and team, or our sponsors.

    This episode is sponsored by KnowMeQ. ArchieCPL is the first AI-enabled tool that massively streamlines credit for prior learning evaluation. Toronto based KnowMeQ makes ethical AI tools that boost and bottom line, achieving new efficiencies in higher ed and workforce upskilling. 

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  • At Least 15 Florida Institutions Have ICE Agreements

    At Least 15 Florida Institutions Have ICE Agreements

    At least three members of the Florida College System have signed agreements with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to allow their campus police departments to enforce immigration law, bringing the total to 15 institutions across the state.

    Florida SouthWestern State College, Northwest Florida State College and Tallahassee State College have all signed 287(g) agreements with ICE, which allows the agency to delegate immigration enforcement powers to other law enforcement agencies, such as campus police. Those three agreements have been approved by ICE, according to a federal database. Others approved as participating agencies are the police at Florida A&M University, New College of Florida, the University of Central Florida, the University of Florida and the University of West Florida.

    None of the three latest colleges responded to requests for comment from Inside Higher Ed.

    Santa Fe College also has a draft agreement in place that has not yet been signed, a spokesperson said, noting the earliest that would be done is at a May 20 board meeting. A spokesperson for Pensacola State College said its campus police are considering an application to partner with ICE.

    Other institutions that have already signed agreements with ICE are:

    • Florida A&M University
    • Florida Atlantic University
    • Florida Gulf Coast University
    • Florida International University
    • Florida Polytechnic University
    • Florida State University
    • New College of Florida
    • University of Central Florida
    • University of Florida
    • University of North Florida
    • University of South Florida
    • University of West Florida

    While all 12 institutions in the State University System have signed on with ICE, Florida SouthWestern State, Northwest Florida State and Tallahassee State appear to be the first of the 28 members in the Florida College System to enter such arrangements.

    Not all of the state colleges have campus police departments. But of those that do have campus police departments, signing on with ICE isn’t a given. For instance, Florida State College of Jacksonville and Polk State College told Inside Higher Ed that neither have a memorandum of agreement with ICE.

    Leaders Defend Agreements

    The agreements with ICE come amid an immigration crackdown driven by Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature. In February, DeSantis directed state law enforcement agencies to sign agreements with ICE “to execute functions of immigration enforcement within the state” to make deportations more efficient, according to a news release.

    Florida colleges and universities soon followed by signing memorandums of understanding with ICE that will deputize campus police officers to carry out immigration duties on campus. Institutions have largely declined to speak publicly about the arrangements. However, a recent Faculty Senate meeting at Florida International University with FIU chief of police Alexander Casas yielded insights into why agreements were signed but left many lingering questions.

    Casas argued at the April 18 meeting that it would be better for university police to carry out immigration enforcement duties on campus than outside agencies.

    “I can’t control what ICE does. I can’t control what a state agency does that has jurisdiction. But if I don’t enter the agreement, I don’t even have the opportunity to say, ‘Call us first, let us deal with our community.’ That’s not even an option,” Casas said. He added he wanted to be “in the driver’s seat” but “without the agreement, I’m not even in the car.”

    FIU interim president Jeanette Nuñez, the former lieutenant governor under DeSantis, also defended the deal, telling the Faculty Senate the ICE agreement follows similar arrangements “at almost all of the state universities and many other universities across the country.”

    Immigration experts have told Inside Higher Ed they are unfamiliar with such agreements at universities in other states. Only Florida institutions appear in an ICE database that tracks active and pending 287(g) agreements. (FIU did not respond to questions about Nuñez’s claims.)

    FIU Faculty Senate members, however, did not seem swayed by Casas or Nuñez. Several professors spoke about their distrust for ICE—some clearly emotional—and referenced recent questionable actions by ICE, such as the widely publicized arrest of Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, an American citizen who was detained earlier this month and falsely accused of illegally entering Florida as an “unauthorized alien.” Federal officials later blamed Lopez-Gomez for his arrest.

    Ultimately, the Faculty Senate approved a resolution calling for the university to withdraw from the ICE agreement, which members argued ran counter to the values of the institution.

    Statewide Concerns

    Concerns about such agreements have also emerged at universities across the state.

    Students and faculty have protested such agreements at FIU, FAU and elsewhere. United Faculty of Florida, a union that represents professors across the state, condemned the agreements with ICE as a betrayal of the core values of higher education in a recent statement.

    “Our campuses must be institutions of learning, critical inquiry, and inclusion—not instruments of surveillance and state-sponsored oppression,” United Faculty of Florida officials said in a statement last week. “The presence and involvement of ICE on our campuses sows fear among students, staff, and faculty, particularly those from immigrant, undocumented, or international communities. It undermines the very mission of our higher education system: to foster open dialogue, intellectual freedom, and the free exchange of ideas across borders and identities.”

    The agreements also prompted pushback from the Florida Advisory Council of Faculty Senates, which issued a resolution that urged universities to withdraw from existing agreements with ICE.

    “To effectively protect our universities, campus police cultivate a unique relationship with campus communities,” council members wrote in a recent resolution. “They come to know our students, our educational spaces, and our communities. They are present at peaceful protests, in classrooms, and at student events. Repurposing this unique trust for federal immigration enforcement makes our campuses less safe, puts our officers in an untenable position, and chills students’ access to the support services they critically need to succeed.”

    That resolution has already been endorsed by some faculty senates, including at FAU.

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  • How Can Institutions Best Support Their Online Learners?

    How Can Institutions Best Support Their Online Learners?

    Title: Supporting Online Learners: Insights from SUNY’s Campus Coaching Programs

    Authors: Marjorie Dorimé-Williams, Jálynn Castleman, Parker Cellura, Rebekah O’Donoghue, and Makoto Toyoda

    Source: MDRC

    The structure and delivery of online programs can have significant impacts on a student’s ability to succeed. After examining success coaching practices at three State University of New York institutions, the authors of new analysis from MDRC offer several policy recommendations to support online learners.

    Within each university, there were a variety of approaches to providing help for online students. Analyzing and comparing the programs indicated there are three primary types of support for online learners: coaching communication strategies and technology applications, student engagement, and academic outcomes.

    Some of the most effective practices in each category are:

    Coaching Strategies

    Personalized support from coaches is one of the most effective ways to help students. By minimizing the coach-to-student ratio, institutions can ensure coaches have a manageable workload, enabling them to cater their coaching to fit individual students’ needs.

    Tracking student data can help coaches identify needs and tailor support. Performance and outcome metrics, such as grades, course attendance, and credit accumulation, can be used to identify struggling students and guide intervention strategies. Additionally, learning management systems that track student engagement can facilitate personalized communication to fit students’ needs and preferences.

    Opportunities for professional development help coaches provide the best support for their students. Institutions should continually provide training opportunities to help inform online pedagogy.

    Student Engagement

    Centralizing support services improves student access and awareness.A unified, easily accessible platform can ensure that students know about and use available resources.

    Building community is especially important—and especially challenging—for asynchronous learners. Faculty can foster connections through synchronous or asynchronous study groups and should be mindful of online students’ varied schedules.

    Responsive, innovative communication helps keep students engaged. Timely feedback and meeting students where they are—through tools and communication styles they prefer—can promote sustained engagement.

    Academic Outcomes

    Faculty need targeted training to effectively adapt courses for online delivery. Professional development can help instructors redesign courses for virtual environments and maintain instructional quality.

    Quality standards for course design can improve consistency and effectiveness. Standardized templates and interaction guidelines help ensure that all online courses meet a baseline of student support and instructional quality.

    Coaches and faculty can collaborate to provide holistic academic support. Integration of coaching within academic programs strengthens both in- and out-of-classroom support, creating a more cohesive experience for online students.

    With an increasing proportion of students participating in online courses, building capacity to support online learners promotes success for all students, especially those who are entirely online. Institutions committed to improving their online programs can dedicate resources to developing and evaluating courses and support systems.

    To read the full report, click here.

    —Erica Swirsky

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

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  • Challenge of Leading Elite Institutions in Populist Age of Distrust

    Challenge of Leading Elite Institutions in Populist Age of Distrust

    In the face of the Gaza protests, presidents at the nation’s most prestigious campuses were caught between a rock and a hard place—and somehow managed to trip over both.

    Pressured on one side by students and faculty demanding moral clarity and action and on the other by donors, trustees and politicians insisting on firm leadership and institutional neutrality, they found themselves in a no-win situation.

    In attempting to balance these competing forces, they pleased no one, offering statements too vague to satisfy activists yet too equivocal to reassure their critics.

    Instead of navigating the crisis with principled leadership, many stumbled into a public relations disaster, alienating both their campus communities and external stakeholders.

    What should have been a moment for measured, thoughtful leadership instead became a showcase of hesitation, miscalculation and rhetorical gymnastics that satisfied neither moral conviction nor strategic pragmatism.

    Could Presidents Have Done Better?

    Yes, the leading university presidents could have handled the Gaza protests more effectively, but doing so would have required a combination of patience, strategic engagement and deft leadership—qualities that many struggled to summon under intense pressure.

    In his forthcoming memoir, former Harvard president Neil Rudenstine argues that navigating the crisis required time, strong relationships with key stakeholders, active faculty involvement and innovative problem-solving—qualities that were largely absent in the response.

    1. Patience: A Scarce Commodity in a Crisis

    Rudenstine’s call for patience underscores a fundamental challenge: Neither protesters nor institutional critics were willing to wait for careful deliberation. Protesters demanded immediate moral clarity and action, while external stakeholders—donors, trustees, politicians—expected firm and unequivocal leadership.

    University presidents, caught between these forces, often reacted hastily, issuing statements that satisfied neither side. A more patient approach would have required resisting the impulse to make rapid, reactive pronouncements and instead creating structured, ongoing dialogue with campus constituencies. It would have meant acknowledging the urgency of the moment while also emphasizing the need for thoughtful decision-making.

    1. Rapport With Stakeholders: The Perils of New Leadership

    Building trust with students, faculty, alumni, trustees and external critics is difficult in the best of times, and it is even harder for new university presidents who have not yet cemented their authority or personal relationships within their institutions. Many of the university leaders embroiled in the controversy were relatively new to their positions, inheriting polarized political environments without deep reservoirs of goodwill to draw from.

    In moments of crisis, long-standing relationships and credibility matter. Presidents who had not yet established rapport with key stakeholders found themselves viewed with suspicion from all sides, making it difficult to act decisively or persuasively. This underscores the importance of proactive engagement: University leaders must invest in relationship-building early, so that when crises inevitably arise, they have a foundation of trust to rely upon.

    1. Faculty Engagement: An Untapped Resource

    University faculty represent a deep well of institutional knowledge and intellectual expertise, yet in many cases, faculty were sidelined as presidents struggled to navigate the crisis.

    A more effective response would have involved drawing on faculty members—especially those with expertise in history, diplomacy, political science and conflict resolution—to help craft statements, advise on messaging and offer guidance on institutional policy.

    Faculty could have also served as intermediaries between student activists and administrators, helping to create structured conversations rather than performative clashes. By failing to engage faculty early, many presidents lost an opportunity to ground their responses in scholarly insight and institutional legitimacy.

    1. Creative Responses: Beyond the Standard Playbook

    The default approach to campus protests—issue a statement, enforce campus policies and hope the storm passes—was woefully inadequate in this case. Rudenstine’s emphasis on creativity suggests that university leaders needed to think beyond standard crisis-management tactics. Instead of simply trying to placate or rebuff different constituencies, presidents could have:

    • Convened structured debates or forums featuring scholars and public intellectuals with diverse perspectives, transforming conflict into an opportunity for rigorous academic engagement.
    • Established faculty-led committees to develop thoughtful, universitywide policies on how the institution engages with global conflicts, providing a long-term framework for future crises.
    • Created dedicated spaces for dialogue, ensuring that protesters had a platform for their voices to be heard while also setting clear boundaries on disruptions to academic life.

    The Leadership Test They Failed

    The Gaza protests revealed deep weaknesses in university leadership, exposing the inability of many presidents to navigate the complex intersections of free speech, academic integrity, donor pressure and campus activism. A better response would have required patience, trust-building, faculty engagement and creative problem-solving—qualities that were largely absent in the moment.

    The lesson for future leaders is clear: Effective university leadership is not just about managing crises when they arise but about laying the groundwork well in advance, ensuring that when the inevitable storm comes, the institution has the resilience and credibility to weather it.

    The High Cost of Leadership: Neil Rudenstine’s Harvard Presidency

    In a 2001 Harvard Crimson article entitled “The Final Word on Neil Rudenstine,” Catherine E. Shoichet, now a senior writer for CNN, offers a detailed account of that president’s tenure at Harvard—dissecting both his successes and the significant sacrifices and costs it exacted.

    Presidents are chosen to solve particular problems, and Rudenstine was tasked with two major challenges: overseeing Harvard’s first universitywide capital campaign and knitting together a sprawling, fragmented, disjointed institution. As president, he transformed the university’s financial standing—adding billions to its endowment—and initiated wide-ranging administrative reforms, including the re-establishment of the provost position.

    His most notable achievement was increasing Harvard’s endowment from roughly $4 billion to $19 billion in just 10 years, laying the financial foundation that sustains the university’s wealth today.

    However, the article also stresses the heavy personal toll these challenges took on him—a topic that Rudenstine’s own account surprisingly omits.

    Few presidents were better prepared for the job; he had been a respected faculty member, a productive scholar, a well-regarded dean of students, an effective provost and an extraordinarily hard worker. Yet his relentless focus on fundraising and institutional overhaul led to a three-month leave of absence in 1994, fueling rumors of a nervous breakdown. Remarkably, he went on to serve for another seven years after that difficult period.

    Shoichet notes that for all his accomplishments, including launching development of a new campus in Allston and revitalizing Harvard’s Afro-American Studies Department and establishing a then-novel interdisciplinary initiative in mind, brain and behavior, his presidency also resulted in a perceived disconnect between the administration and the student body—a criticism that has followed him since his Princeton days.

    His reserved public persona, which contrasted with the more overtly engaging styles of his predecessors, led to both admiration for his methodical, inclusive approach and criticism for being too detached from everyday campus life.

    The Shoichet article exposes the inherent trade-offs of his approach. Rudenstine’s intensive focus on high-stakes fundraising and administrative restructuring appears to have come at the expense of deeper engagement with the student body. His humility was confused with weakness and a lack of strong convictions. His leave of absence illustrates how the pressures of managing an institution as vast and complex as Harvard can affect even the most capable leaders.

    This duality—the balance between transformative success and the personal, institutional costs—forms the crux of Shoichet’s argument.

    Her narrative situates Rudenstine within a broader historical context. By comparing his tenure with those of former Harvard presidents such as Nathan M. Pusey and Derek Bok, Shoichet argues convincingly that the challenges Rudenstine faced were unique to a new era of higher education—one marked by rapid expansion, increased institutional complexity and a heightened focus on financial management.

    Despite his remarkable achievements, Rudenstine never garnered the same level of acclaim as his illustrious predecessors. In much the same way, many of his successors—including Lawrence Summers, Lawrence Bacow and Claudine Gay—have often been met with ambivalence or even disdain.

    The reality is that leading an institution as formidable as Harvard has become nearly impossible. It is no wonder that the average tenure of college presidents nationwide has shrunk from around eight years to just about five—hardly enough time to make a lasting impact.

    Rudenstine’s legacy, therefore, is not simply measured by his achievements but by the enduring questions it raises about the nature of leadership in a modern academic institution.

    The Daunting Realities of University Leadership: A Seat of Prestige, Not Power

    We often imagine university presidents as powerful figures—intellectual stewards shaping the future of higher education. But Rudenstine’s Our Contentious Universities flips this perception on its head. He’s not speaking truth to power; he’s speaking truth about power—revealing that university presidencies are as much about constraint as they are about command.

    The title of university president carries an air of authority, but Rudenstine’s message is clear: The power of the office is often more symbolic than substantive. Instead of wielding control, presidents juggle competing interests, manage crises and navigate the impossible demands of faculty, students, donors and politicians. The real truth? The presidency is more burden than throne.

    Holding the most prestigious seat in higher education, Rudenstine isn’t telling us how to wield power—he’s telling us how little of it university presidents actually have. His book dismantles the myth of the omnipotent academic leader and replaces it with a far grittier reality: that influence is fragmented, authority is constrained and leadership is often just crisis management in an ivory tower.

    If “speaking truth to power” is about confronting authority, Our Contentious Universities reveals an unexpected reversal: Often, those in power are the ones struggling to be heard. Rudenstine lays bare the paradox of university leadership—an office that looks commanding from the outside but feels impossibly constrained from within.

    The real work of a university president is not about wielding authority but about navigating limits, managing expectations and negotiating between forces that are often beyond their control.

    The power we imagine? It’s largely an illusion.

    Why University Presidents Have Less Power Than We Think

    Through a mix of historical analysis, personal experience and candid reflection, Rudenstine argues that the role of the modern university president is far more constrained than many outsiders assume.

    Three overarching arguments structure his book:

    1. The Paradox of Institutional Wealth and Administrative Complexity

    Elite universities have never been wealthier, yet they have become significantly more challenging to manage. The sheer scale and bureaucratic complexity of modern research institutions—coupled with the decentralized governance structures of many elite universities—make it extraordinarily difficult for a president to assert a unifying vision.

    Harvard, perhaps the most extreme case, operates under the philosophy of “every tub on its own bottom,” meaning that each of its schools, institutes and centers manages its own budget and academic affairs with substantial autonomy. Its endowment, divided into over 11,000 different funds with various restrictions, further complicates efforts to mobilize financial resources for cross-university initiatives.

    But Harvard is not unique in this regard—many elite institutions lack a clear common mission or identity beyond their reputation for excellence. As a result, university presidents often find themselves in the role of coordinators rather than decision-makers, navigating a complex web of faculty interests, donor expectations and institutional traditions.

    1. Student Protests: A Recurring but Intensifying Challenge

    Student activism has long been a defining feature of American higher education, and today’s campus protests are in many ways a continuation of past movements—whether over free speech, civil rights, the Vietnam War, South African apartheid, a living wage and labor rights, or fossil fuel divestment.

    Rudenstine reminds readers that campus unrest is not a new phenomenon and, in many cases, past protests were just as contentious as, if not more so than, those of today.

    However, he argues that contemporary campus protests present a unique set of challenges that make them especially difficult to resolve.

    First, the media and political spotlight on higher education is more intense than ever before, amplifying every controversy into a national debate. Social media accelerates and inflames conflicts, often distorting the reality of what is happening on the ground.

    Second, outside political actors—including legislators, donors and advocacy groups—now intervene more aggressively in campus affairs, using protests as flash points in larger ideological battles over academic freedom, free speech and institutional neutrality.

    Third, many of today’s most contentious issues—such as foreign conflicts, racial justice and free speech—extend far beyond the authority of any university administration. Unlike past movements that targeted specific institutional policies (e.g., divestment from apartheid South Africa), today’s protests often demand action on global or national issues that university leaders have little power to directly influence.

    1. The Constraints of the University Presidency

    While university presidents are often seen as the face of their institutions, their actual power is far more limited than public perception suggests. Much of their time is spent off campus, engaged in fundraising and alumni relations, rather than in direct governance. This distance often creates a perception—among both students and faculty—that they are out of touch with the daily realities of campus life.

    Moreover, while presidents are expected to be moral leaders, crisis managers and public intellectuals, they operate within institutional structures that limit their ability to enact significant change. The vast majority of academic decisions are made at the department and faculty level, not by the president’s office.

    Their financial resources, while seemingly vast, are often constrained by donor restrictions and endowment policies. And while they are expected to foster dialogue and intellectual engagement, they must also navigate intense political and ideological pressures that make consensus-building nearly impossible.

    The Unwinnable Presidency in a Populist Age of Distrust

    Leading an elite university in a populist era of distrust is an unwinnable job. University presidents are expected to be moral leaders, crisis managers and public intellectuals—yet they wield less power than ever before. They must balance the demands of faculty, students, donors, trustees, politicians and the public, all while navigating an institutional landscape that is more fragmented, more scrutinized and more politically charged than at any point in recent history.

    Between a rock, a hard place and a social media firestorm, university leaders face an impossible equation. Caught between student activists demanding moral clarity, faculty insisting on academic freedom, donors expecting institutional stability and politicians eager to score ideological points, they must navigate a minefield with no safe path forward.

    Every decision, no matter how carefully considered, is met with outrage from one side or another. When every choice is controversial, the safest option is still the wrong one.

    Speaking truth to power is one thing—leading an institution when you are the power, yet have none, is another. A university president’s job isn’t to lead; it’s to survive. The modern presidency is less about shaping the intellectual future of a university and more about managing crises, defusing conflicts and enduring public scrutiny.

    Part fundraiser, part diplomat, part scapegoat, today’s university leader embodies a paradox: prestigious, powerful and profoundly constrained.

    The university presidency is a job where everyone expects everything, but no one is ever satisfied. And yet, the ambitious vie for this job. The challenge for future university leaders is not just to weather the storm but to prove that, even in an era of distrust and division, higher education still has a role to play in the pursuit of truth, knowledge and the public good.

    Reclaiming the Visionary College Presidency: The Legacy of the Big Three B’s

    At a time when the university presidency has become synonymous with crisis management, political crossfire and institutional paralysis, we would do well to reclaim an older vision of academic leadership—one embodied by the Big Three B’s: Derek Bok, William Bowen and Kingman Brewster.

    These men were not just administrators; they were visionaries. They understood that a great university is not simply a collection of departments, endowments and buildings, but a living intellectual community that requires bold leadership, principled decision-making and a deep appreciation for the institution’s unique identity.

    Unlike today’s university presidents, who often appear hemmed in by competing pressures, Bok, Bowen and Brewster exuded a sense of command. They were coalition builders who understood how to navigate the tensions of their time—not by appeasement or retreat, but by articulating a clear and compelling vision for their institutions.

    They did not shy away from controversy; they faced it head-on, using their moral authority and intellectual gravitas to persuade rather than merely pacify. Their leadership was not about survival—it was about transformation.

    The Power of Institutional Identity

    One of the defining strengths of these presidents was their deep understanding of what made their universities distinctive. They did not try to turn their institutions into all-purpose, generic centers of higher learning. Instead, they leaned into their unique strengths and traditions, reinforcing the core values that defined them.

    • Kingman Brewster at Yale championed the arts and humanities, elevating Yale as a beacon of intellectual and cultural leadership. He understood that Yale’s prestige was not just in its research output, but in its commitment to a broad, humanistic education that shaped future leaders in the arts, government and public service.
    • William Bowen at Princeton preserved and reinforced the university’s distinctive commitment to undergraduate education, mentoring and close faculty-student engagement. He saw Princeton as the ideal blend of a research university and a liberal arts college, where students could experience the best of both worlds.
    • Derek Bok at Harvard expanded the university’s reach and redefined its role in shaping society. He recognized Harvard’s unique position as an institution that was not just educating students, but cultivating thought leaders in law, government, business and the sciences. Bok’s presidency was marked by efforts to bring in a broader, more diverse array of scholars and students who were shaping the world outside the academy.

    These men understood that universities are not interchangeable—they have distinctive missions, histories and cultures that must be nurtured, not diluted. They resisted the impulse to make their institutions all things to all people and instead worked to sharpen and deepen their defining strengths.

    Leadership With Gravitas and Moral Authority

    What made the Big Three B’s remarkable was not just their institutional savvy, but their personal presence and sense of moral authority. These were men who commanded respect, not because of their titles, but because they embodied the very ideals their universities stood for. They were not timid bureaucrats, nor were they detached figureheads. They were intellectuals, statesmen and educators who carried themselves with the weight of their institutions behind them.

    More importantly, they were unafraid to make tough decisions and stand firm in the face of opposition. Brewster took a bold stance in support of civil rights and coeducation and against the Vietnam War, even when it made him a target of political backlash. Bowen helped lead Princeton through transformative changes in financial aid and faculty governance, navigating opposition with both decisiveness and diplomacy. Bok spearheaded Harvard’s expansion into applied learning and professional education, while also defending the university’s core commitment to academic freedom.

    Each of these presidents had the ability to thread the needle—to stand up for their principles without alienating key constituencies. They were neither populists nor technocrats; they were strategic leaders who understood how to bring faculty, students, trustees and alumni into alignment around a shared purpose.

    Reclaiming a Lost Model of Leadership

    The contrast between the Big Three B’s and today’s university presidents is stark. Where they projected confidence and authority, many modern university leaders appear cautious and reactive. It’s quipped that their present-day counterparts can’t go to the bathroom without consulting their general counsel. Where the Big Three articulated grand visions for their institutions, many of today’s presidents are consumed by damage control. Where they commanded the respect of faculty and students, today’s leaders often seem disconnected from both.

    Of course, the world of higher education has changed. Universities are larger, more complex and more deeply entangled in political and cultural battles than ever before. But that is precisely why we need a new generation of university presidents who can reclaim the mantle of true leadership.

    The university presidency should not be reduced to a balancing act of donor relations, media messaging and political risk management. It must once again become a platform for vision, courage and institution-building.

    The lesson of the Big Three B’s is clear: Great universities do not thrive under timid leadership. They flourish when they are guided by bold, intellectually rigorous and morally grounded presidents who understand both the weight of their office and the enduring value of higher education. The future of our great universities depends on whether we can find leaders who, like Bok, Bowen and Brewster, embody the very ideals their institutions were meant to uphold.

    Steven Mintz is professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin and recipient of the AAC&U’s 2025 President’s Award for Outstanding Contributions to Liberal Education.

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  • Students and Institutions in Limbo After Mass Layoffs at OCR

    Students and Institutions in Limbo After Mass Layoffs at OCR

    A month after the Department of Education closed seven of its 12 regional civil rights offices and laid off nearly half the staff in the Office for Civil Rights, there’s still uncertainty about how the agency will perform its functions with such reduced numbers.

    OCR was founded to ensure equal access to education for all students and is responsible for investigating claims that schools and institutions of higher education failed to protect their students from discrimination. But under the current administration, the office has shifted gears to focus on President Donald Trump’s top priorities: removing trans women from women’s sports teams, protecting against alleged discrimination against white students, and protecting students against alleged antisemitism.

    Back in February, the office’s acting head, Craig Trainor, told employees to pause all investigations except for a handful that aligned with those priorities, according to ProPublica. Trainor quickly told investigators they could once again begin investigating disability-related complaints, which made up the largest share of the pending complaints, but not those related to race- or sex-based discrimination.

    Tracey Vitchers, the executive director of It’s On Us, a nonprofit advocacy organization focused on combating campus sexual violence, says this harks back to the first Trump administration: At the time, a large number of complaints were “quietly ignored” by OCR, leading to a massive backlog for former president Joe Biden’s administration to handle when he came into office in 2021.

    “That was the playbook during the first administration, and it was just that they just sat on shelves, essentially—digital shelves. Those cases were put on the digital shelf, ignored, not opened, not investigated,” she said.

    When Trump took office, more than 12,000 cases were open with OCR, including over 3,000 at institutions of higher education, according to a database of open OCR cases.

    Over half of all OCR cases were being handled by a regional office that is now closed, according to a report from Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Independent who is the ranking member on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Following the layoffs, each investigator’s caseload—which was already at an all-time high of 42 cases—is expected to skyrocket to 86 cases as a result of the cuts, significantly reducing investigators’ ability to resolve each complaint, per the report.

    The data in the report reflects concerns from former OCR staffers who warned that the layoffs would make protecting students’ civil rights more difficult.

    Experts say that OCR complaints going unresolved can be a serious impediment to a student’s ability to learn.

    “At the postsecondary level, common complaints are refusals to accommodate,” said Paul Grossman, an attorney who worked at OCR for 41 years and is now executive counsel for the Association for Higher Education and Disability. “A student wants a particular kind of accommodation, and the school says, ‘No, that’s a fundamental alteration or an undue burden,’ and the student, as a result, may get dismissed because they don’t meet the academic standards, may get dismissed because they don’t meet conduct standards, whatever the case may be. Or the student may just be unhealthy—they may not be well enough to continue, because they don’t get the accommodation.”

    The public repository of open OCR cases, which used to be updated weekly, has not been updated since Jan. 14, just before Inauguration Day. But ProPublica reported in late February that only about 20 new cases have been opened since Trump took office, whereas about 250 cases were opened in the same period last year.

    That most likely comes down to OCR’s decisions about what to investigate. But Vitchers also noted that, since even before Trump’s second term began, she hasn’t been as eager to advise students to open a case with OCR in response to their institutions mishandling Title IX complaints. After the Biden administration finalized its Title IX regulations, which offered protections to transgender students and which organizations like It’s On Us said were much more sympathetic to victims of sexual violence than Trump’s previous regulations, in the summer of 2024, numerous states sued to block the regulations. The legal tussle made for a complicated environment for students seeking justice for sexual harassment or assault through Title IX, and the Biden rule was eventually vacated just over a week before Inauguration Day.

    “Very honestly, with the back-and-forth on Title IX, and particularly once we saw the Biden rule get challenged, we sort of, somewhat quietly, encouraged students to really pause and take a hard look at, what was the outcome that they were looking for? And help them assess, is the OCR complaint going to get you the outcome that you’re actually looking for here?” she said. “If it is, then we will support you in finding an attorney and filing a case. But with so many of the students that we work with, many of them made the decision to, essentially, protect their own peace.”

    ED did not respond to a request for comment.

    Mediation, Digital Accessibility and More

    On top of concerns about the backlog of complaints going unanswered, experts are also worried about other, lesser-known functions of OCR that likely are not currently happening.

    In some cases, complainants can opt for early mediation, a type of resolution that is more informal and generally quicker than an investigation. But it is unclear if such mediations are happening currently; Grossman said he has heard one example of a planned mediation being canceled, and ED did not respond to a question from Inside Higher Ed about the issue. Grossman also noted that OCR is responsible for continuing to monitor the aftermath of investigations that have already been resolved.

    Jamie Axelrod, director of disability resources at Northern Arizona University and a past president of AHEAD, pointed out that OCR is responsible for conducting digital compliance reviews, in-depth surveys of whether a school or university’s digital resources, such as its website and learning management systems, are accessible to students with disabilities. During the previous Trump administration, Axelrod said, ED stood up a specialized team to complete these reviews and provide technical assistance to institutions to help them make their digital resources more accessible. Now, that team has been reduced significantly, according to Axelrod.

    He also noted that OCR is supposed to be a tool schools and universities can turn to in order to answer any questions about how to appropriately accommodate their students.

    “The point of that is to avoid circumstances that wind up causing discrimination against students with disabilities, and so that’s a key role,” he said. “And it’s hard to really calculate how many instances of discrimination [that prevented from] happening in the first place. It’s hard to count what you prevented, but that is an important role, and I’m sure it leads to resolution of lots of complicated circumstances.”

    The impacts of the cuts are likely to go even deeper than the individual cases that have been displaced to new investigators and the specific programs that will likely fall by the wayside.

    “Like any postsecondary educational institution, there’s a lot of institutional memory that’s developed,” Grossman said. “You have to develop connections, relationships, understandings, insights, experience, and all these people who are going out the door, you’re just lighting a match to all that expertise and experience. And to me, that’s a really sad thing.”

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  • Heat networks could help institutions meet net zero targets

    Heat networks could help institutions meet net zero targets

    Heat networks enable heat and hot water to be distributed from a central ‘energy centre’, via mainly underground pipes, to multiple buildings.

    Boiler systems in connected buildings would be replaced with new infrastructure, to enable circulation of heat from the network. The energy centre becomes the source of the heat supply.

    Heat networks have a long history — with the first networks being tested nearly 150 years ago. Distribution of heat from a centralised heat source was taken forward in New York city in the late nineteenth century. In the UK, heat networks were used in blocks of flats in the 1960s and 70s. Denmark was one of the first countries to start using heat networks on a wide scale, in response to the oil crisis in 1973. Currently, heat networks are commonly used in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe and in cities across the USA and Canada. There are around 14,000 heat networks in the UK with many being campus-style, providing heat to groups of social housing or hospital/NHS campuses.

    Modern heat networks can utilise sources of low carbon heat. These include energy from waste facilities, geothermal sources, solar thermal arrays, air and ground source heat pumps and data centres.

    Participating in a heat network is likely to be more environmentally friendly and, in some cases, more cost-effective than maintaining older, inefficient gas-fired heating systems.

    Funding available

    It’s estimated that fifty per cent of buildings in the UK are located in areas suitable for the construction of a heat network, which currently supply around 2 to 3 per cent of the UK’s heat. The Committee on Climate Change predicts that in order to meet net zero targets (with around 20 per cent of heat supply being from heat networks), it is estimated that investment will need to be around £60 to £80 billion by 2050.

    The government has confirmed its support for the sector, as re-iterated at November’s Association for Decentralised Energy Conference by Miatta Fahnbulleh, Minister for Energy Consumers. The government has set a target for at least 18 per cent of the UK’s heat demand to be met from heat networks by 2050. Over £600 million of government funding has been allocated to develop and improve heat networks.

    The government’s recently published “Clean Power 2030” action plan sets out that the national wealth fund will make available an expanded suite of financial instruments, as part of investment in heat networks and other clean energy sectors.

    The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero already significantly supports the sector via capital grant funding from the Green Heat Network Fund. Education institutions have a range of grant options available to them. One example is the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (via its delivery body, Salix Finance), being a fund dedicated to supporting energy efficiency and decarbonisation initiatives.

    Financial support for heat networks is supplemented by the work of other bodies such as the Heat Networks Industry Council, which is a joint industry and Government forum that aims to grow the heat network sector.

    Taken together, it is clear that there is genuine ambition to ensure that heat networks play a key role in helping the UK meet its net zero ambitions.

    Notable heat network developments

    A number of major heat network projects are underway, including the hugely ambitious South Westminster Area Network (referred to as “SWAN”), which will supply low carbon heating to the Houses of Parliament, the National Gallery and large areas of Whitehall, and the Leeds PIPES heat network, which connects to over 3000 dwellings.

    The existence of these projects, and numerous others, is evidence of a growing trend in the emergence of heat networks as a major contributor to the UK’s net zero ambitions.

    Campus based networks

    Heat networks can work well on campus-style facilities. Given the location of the projects mentioned above, city-based higher education institutions should also consider whether it is feasible for their buildings to connect to a heat network, and whether a heat network is planned in their area.

    There are a number of recent adopters of heat networks in the education sector, including the University of Liverpool, the University of Bradford and the University of Warwick, with many more universities considering becoming heat off-takers.

    Heat networks present academic institutions with an exciting opportunity to forge the way in supporting both new sources of heat, and decarbonising heat in urban areas.

    Regulation matters

    Aside from regulations that govern billing and metering, the heat network sector is not regulated. This, however, will change – the heat networks market framework regulations 2025 (currently in draft) is to come into force in stages over the next 12 months.

    Future regulation is subject to ongoing consultation, which includes consideration of how different groups of consumers are to be protected, and specific arrangements on standards of conduct and billing transparency.

    In particular, the proposed regulations do not specifically refer to a ‘supplier of last resort’ regime, which would enable a state-nominated entity to continue the operation of a heat network where the relevant operator had become insolvent. We understand that Ofgem and the government are considering how this would work, given the complexity of arranging for the ownership transfer of infrastructure and capital assets. We await further developments on this.

    The scheme rules of the Heat Trust, which operates to protect the interests of domestic and micro-business customers of heat networks, partly informed the content of forthcoming regulations. The Heat Trust’s voluntary scheme is intended to establish common standards of heat supply and associated customer service (with standards of service comparable to those required by Ofgem of electricity and gas suppliers). We therefore anticipate robust standards to be introduced within the regulations, for a wider group of consumers.

    Connecting to a heat network involves technical aspects relating to design, maintenance, service standards, and availability of a ‘green’ heat supply. Legal support is essential in navigating new networks as well as specialised technical support. For example, procurement risks, design and delivery risks, real estate and contamination issues, constructions issues, particularly around connection work and secondary side works, exclusivity arrangements and “change in law” provisions given forthcoming regulatory requirements.

    Mills & Reeve advises a number of Universities and other bodies on their participation in heat networks.

    If you are considering participating in a heat network and would like to speak to us about how we can help, please do contact any member of the M&R team.

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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.

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    Author: SRHE News Blog

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

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  • Here’s how institutions are faring in handling harassment and sexual misconduct complaints

    Here’s how institutions are faring in handling harassment and sexual misconduct complaints

    Evidence suggests that significant numbers of students experience or are affected by harassment and sexual misconduct each year. Yet student complaints to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA) about harassment and sexual misconduct have historically formed a very small proportion of our overall caseload.

    The number of complaints about harassment and sexual misconduct we have received has been rising slowly but steadily in recent months. This may in part be a result of greater visibility at providers about mechanisms to disclose, such as “report and support” tools. This is a positive step, but there is more to be done to raise students’ confidence in how their providers can respond to reports.

    Today we have published ten case summaries and a casework note on harassment and sexual misconduct, highlighting some key issues for providers to consider when addressing complaints. Although these examples focus on sexual misconduct, the broad principles of good practice can apply across other forms of harassment.

    Taking reports seriously

    Our recent casework shows that some providers are demonstrating, via the disciplinary action they take against students reported for harassment and sexual misconduct, how seriously they view breaches of their codes of conduct. We’ve seen providers taking swift action to investigate, make findings and apply penalties. In some cases, we have seen well-reasoned and documented decisions and clearly explained outcomes.

    However, we have upheld a high proportion of the complaints we have reviewed about harassment and sexual misconduct. We have identified procedural errors and unfairness that have significantly undermined the value of the process for reporting students, and the validity of findings made against reported students.

    Overall, providers seem to have more confidence in addressing the disciplinary aspect of these complaints. Disciplinary processes are usually well established and are supported by guidance and tools such as classification of the severity of any breaches of a code of conduct and accompanying tariffs of penalties.

    There is less certainty and consistency of approach across the sector in responding to the reporting student. There may be fine nuances between a disclosure, a report or a complaint about harassment and sexual misconduct, and the manner of response to each might be slightly different. Many providers intend to be led by the reporting student’s needs, which is an admirable principle – but not always effective if the student has not been clearly informed about the options available to them and the differences between these routes.

    Sharing an outcome

    In several cases, providers haven’t understood that informing a reporting student that a disciplinary process has taken place is not a complete outcome.

    Providers need to consider how they can support students and lessen the impact upon them of the harassment or sexual misconduct they have experienced. This is especially important when the report concerns the conduct of a member of staff. In our experience, providers have tended to be more transparent about incidents between two students than they have been when a member of staff is involved.

    While providers have particular responsibilities to their employees that may be different to the obligations they have towards students, the imbalance of power makes it even more important that students understand how their complaint has been investigated and what will happen next.

    Gathering and probing evidence

    We recognise that complaints about harassment and sexual misconduct are often complex, and may involve events that unfold over a period of time, multiple incidents or involve numerous individuals. There can be constraints because of concurrent police action, which may not result in a clear outcome for several months. Cases may involve claims and counter-complaints, or turn on the credibility of the parties on nuanced issues such as consent.

    Our experience suggests that in some cases, decision makers have not fully understood the importance of moving carefully through a process that genuinely gives all parties an opportunity to tell their own story and allows for gaps and inconsistencies to be explored. It is right that all parties in these processes must be treated with respect, with kindness, and with an awareness of the impact that re-visiting an experience of harassment or sexual misconduct may have.

    But panel members who must test evidence appear to feel constrained in asking questions. Trying to re-examine or gather additional evidence at a later date can place an undue burden on all parties and prevent individuals from moving forward.

    Consultation on a new section of the Good Practice Framework

    The increased focus on tackling harassment and sexual misconduct across the sector – including the new E6 OfS regulatory condition that applies to some of the providers in our membership – is to be welcomed. The emphasis on clear information that is easy to access, and on well-resourced training for both staff and students may go some way to addressing some issues we have seen in complaints.

    In 2025, we will consult on a new section of the Good Practice Framework addressing these complex issues. It will build on the learning we have identified from our rising volume of casework. Our intention will be to draw together in one place the principles that apply to complaints about harassment and misconduct.

    We look forward to engaging with the sector to benefit from the extensive expertise of hands-on practitioners, to make this as useful a resource as possible. If you’d like to feed in at an early stage, please get in touch with us at outreach@oiahe.org.uk.

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  • Higher education institutions have invested time, effort and money in level 7 apprenticeships

    Higher education institutions have invested time, effort and money in level 7 apprenticeships

    Many readers might have had an experience along the following lines. You’re on a call, in a meeting, at an event – and someone just happens to let slip that they are doing a postgraduate apprenticeship through their work.

    Questions bubble up: isn’t this person someone in a position to fund their own studies? Or perhaps: don’t they already have a master’s degree? You might even be thinking: your manager really lets you duck out of work for training so often?

    Now this is pure anecdote – and forgive me if it’s not quite as frequent as I’m assuming – but it’s proved to be a pretty powerful one as debates over apprenticeships have percolated in the press and in the back of policymakers’ minds for the last few years. Allied with controversies over supposed “MBA apprenticeships” (or more recently, MBA top-ups and management training for senior executives), it’s led fairly directly to where we are now.

    The government has announced that “a significant number” of level 7 apprenticeships will be removed from levy eligibility in England. The accompanying enjoinder for employers to fund them by other means (if they so choose) is likely the death knell for most of the affected courses, given that without the incentive of levy spending they will largely look like ungainly, over-regulated and rather long bits of exec ed.

    Now we still don’t know exactly what decision the government is going to take. And Labour’s moves here do have other motivations – the policy intention is to stop employers spending their allowances on (older, already qualified) existing staff, and therefore give them a free hand to take on younger apprentices at lower levels, including with so-called “foundation apprenticeships”, though there is zero detail on how this shift in employer training priorities is expected to come about.

    But still – if this was the only priority, money could have come from elsewhere. The fact remains that level 7 apprenticeships have various black marks hanging over them, whether or not justified, which have made them a safe target to go after. Is it really a good use of taxpayers’ money to fund long and expensive courses of what is overwhelmingly in-work training?

    Whose fund is it anyway?

    A big part of the issue, however, is this sense that the levy is really “taxpayers’ money”. It isn’t – it’s half a per cent of an employer’s annual pay bill, assuming said pay bill is £3m or more. Alison Wolf’s recent report for the Social Market Foundation vividly spells out the issue here – employers have become hyper-aware of what they “owe” and are incentivised to spend it as fast as they can, a perverse incentive of the current system which has made level 7 programmes more attractive than policymakers assumed.

    Much of Labour’s current skills policies have their genesis in a period when employers were not successfully deploying their own levy contributions, and there was a question of how better to direct underspends. This is very much not where we are now. And there are many employers who are not well set-up to pivot to entry-level apprenticeships (think solicitors, for example), or who are stressing their own workforce’s need for higher-level upskilling and pursuing productivity gains rather than a larger headcount.

    It could be that the non-apprenticeship part of the growth and skills levy will help square this circle – employers will be able to invest in shorter, possibly more useful workforce training this way, rather than running headlong towards level 7 programmes as the only game in town. The problem is that the government has gone very quiet about this, and we have no sense of what kind of courses will be in scope here.

    And much like with the employer national insurance rise, it doesn’t seem to have been thought through how publicly-funded bodies are meant to respond here – NHS trusts and local councils being big users of the apprenticeship levy, by dint of their size. If the government doesn’t want them spending their levy funds on this type of provision, is it asking them to spend cash from elsewhere in their budgets?

    Caught in the middle

    Stuck between employers’ wishes and government’s aims (or the imagined taxpayer investment) are those education and training providers who have poured resources into making higher-level apprenticeships work. And when we’re talking about level 7 qualifications, it’s universities that have done a lot of the running.

    If you had said a decade ago that many if not most universities would be founding and scaling up teams dedicated to reaching out to employers, thinking about training needs, even coordinating levy transfers across partners and supply chains (as the Edge Foundation’s recent research found) – well, it would have sounded like something dreamed up by a think tank, a laudable ambition unlikely to ever come true. And yet, here we are.

    The Department for Education and Skills England may decide to limit only a couple of standards – as the chart below shows, simply scrapping the Accountancy and Taxation Professional and Senior Leader standards would dramatically change the landscape (though we’d likely be back in the same position in a few years having a similar conversation about the Senior People Professional and Systems Thinking Practitioner ones).

    But once the government starts taking a pick-and-mix approach to standards (as opposed to letting a properly independent arms-length body do so), it opens the door to it happening again and again. If there is a substantial defunding of level 7 apprenticeship standards, expect the next few years to see targets on the back of others, even at level 6 – and an accompanying disincentive for universities to keep pressing ahead seeking out partnerships with employers.

    The removal from levy eligibility of standards that currently have a high uptake will have an immediate impact on those providers invested in them. Below, DK has charted apprenticeship starts by higher education institution (and a few other public bodies as they are lumped together in the DfE data, though as you may have noticed above some for-profit universities appear in the private sector category instead).

    The default view in this chart shows level 7 starts in 2023–24, broken down by standards, so that you can plumb the impact on different providers of different approaches to defunding. And if you’re getting nervous about what else Skills England might fancy doing once it’s finally got the level 7 announcement out of the way, you can look at provision at other levels too.

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  • How removing funding disparities for ‘disruptor institutions’ could help fulfil the ambition of the Lifelong Learning Entitlement

    How removing funding disparities for ‘disruptor institutions’ could help fulfil the ambition of the Lifelong Learning Entitlement

    • Professor Harriet Dunbar-Morris is Pro Vice-Chancellor Academic and Provost at The University of Buckingham.

    Whilst we are still waiting for the government to decide on the operationalisation of the future direction of the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE), it is easy to agree that providing all new learners with a tuition fee loan entitlement to the equivalent of four years of post-18 education to use up to the age of 60 is a good thing in principle.

    In recent articles, Professor Deborah Johnston and Rose Stephenson have both presented useful positions and summaries on the status quo. For the University of Buckingham, the merits of the LLE are clear, but it is the relationship between the LLE and courses of different lengths that is central to our concern.

    At Buckingham, we take pride in our unique approach to education. As a disruptor institution and the only private university in the UK with a Royal Charter, we emphasise our small and independent nature. Our distinctive positioning has enabled us to create a unique learning environment. We have successfully developed ‘accelerated degrees’, including our flagship degree models: the two-year undergraduate degree and the four-and-a-half-year undergraduate medical degree.

    Where other institutions have a long summer holiday, at Buckingham we have a fourth term – the same amount of classroom time over a whole degree as in other universities, but a term in the summer which means that students can enter the labour market a year earlier and incur a year’s less accommodation and living expenses as well. 

    Alternatively, in three years, our students at Buckingham can undertake two qualifications: a foundation plus an undergraduate or an undergraduate plus a postgraduate degree. The year’s shape also more closely resembles the world of work and therefore ably prepares students more authentically for their future careers. We know this approach is working, and adds value. We are in the Top 10 for Graduate Prospects (outcomes) and:

    • 92% of our graduates agree their current activity is meaningful (sector 85%).
    • 88% of our graduates feel their current activity fits with their future plans (sector 78%).
    • 83% of our graduates say they are using what they learn while studying (sector 69%).
    • 97% of our graduates are in work or study (sector 89%).
    • 72% of our graduates are in full-time employment (sector 61%).

    Buckingham has been a beacon for accelerated degrees to help students achieve their degrees in a shorter period and get out into the workplace or onto further study sooner. We can also see this model allowing students to interrupt their studies and take their degrees in shorter chunks (each of our terms, for example), which would be possible with the LLE framework once it is implemented. However, there is a fundamental unfairness facing Buckingham and others that needs to be addressed.

    To understand this issue, we must first delve into the technical world of registering with the Office for Students (OfS), the regulator for higher education in England. Providers of higher education can (although not at the moment as new registrations are paused) register with the OfS under two categories:

    1) Approved (fee cap)

      Providers in the Approved (fee cap) category can only charge up to the fee cap of £9,250 (2024/25) / £9,535 (2025/26) for full-time students. Students can take out a tuition fee loan to cover their entire fee (for undergraduate courses). Approved (fee cap) providers can also access teaching and research grant funding. Most institutions are in this category.

      2) Approved

      Providers in the Approved category, which includes Buckingham, can charge tuition fees above the cap. However, students at these institutions can only access tuition fee loans up to the lower limit (£6,355 per annum for three-year programmes and £7,625 per annum for two-year programmes). Any additional fees charged need to be covered privately. Further, these institutions cannot access teaching and research grants.

      Because of our category of registration, students can only get the fee loan for the accelerated (two-year) degree programmes at the lower fee loan limit. Our students study for more of the year, and in each of their two years, yet they are entitled to less of a loan each year to support their learning, meaning that through the current category of registration they are discriminated against, even though our accelerated degrees are clearly better for getting students into the workforce and for the skills agenda being pushed by the new Labour government.

      What is also grossly unfair is that despite approved providers being unable to access direct government funding for learning and teaching, research, or capital activity, they remain subject to nearly every aspect of OfS regulation. One exception is the Access and Participation Plan (although we still produce an Access Statement). Yet, re-stating the above, students at approved category institutions cannot benefit from a full loan for the studying they do.

      So, as the government considers how to support the skills agenda and deliver on skills shortages, here at Buckingham we make a request on behalf of the sector and the potential students: implement the LLE and remove the disparities.

      We are calling for one of two developments:

      • A government review to address tuition fee loan eligibility (tied to current categorisations). Why should students be disadvantaged for the loan they can apply for by the category of their institution’s registration? In The University of Buckingham’s case, we have a TEF, we meet OfS requirements, and we even directly support the government’s desire to get students into work faster. Should it not be £9,250 (or now £9,535 from 2025/26) for all?
      • If not that, a change to loans for the credits studied will allow the students studying in that fourth term with us at Buckingham, and completing in two years, to be able to seek loans for the full amount of their two years of full-time study. The point here is that the implementation of the LLE means that the loan is for the credit instead, so this inequity is removed. All students can get a loan for the credit they study. Our students then would, as a bonus, gain the credit quicker, as they would study over two years.

      Most students, due to the cost of living and other responsibilities, should now be considered part-time students, and we need to consider ways to help them fit their lives around their studies – something we certainly pride ourselves on. To support those who also need to work during their intensive studies, we timetable differently and teach differently. Ultimately this is about helping every one of our students to study more effectively (and in a shorter timescale), and as presented in The University of Buckingham’s Strategic Plan 2023-28, supporting our students by embedding employability and entrepreneurship within the curriculum.

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