Tag: interest

  • Whitney Brothers® elevatED™ CollectionReceives Design Journal BEST of 2024 Award

    Whitney Brothers® elevatED™ CollectionReceives Design Journal BEST of 2024 Award

    Keene, NH – Acclaimed furniture brand Whitney Brothers® today announced its new elevatED™ Collection of furniture for young learners received a BEST of 2024 award from Design Journal, a leading global trade resource for interior designers, architects and facility managers.

    A Design Journal panel of 2,400 internationally renowned interior designers, architects and facility managers cited the elevatED™ Collection’s distinct contemporary style and its inventive adaptation across 46 individual pieces in the collection. Each piece is constructed in textured white oak and white melamine structural elements that form crisp, pleasing lines with refined contrasting color accents. Brushed nickel legs add design counterpoint and rich visual interest.

    The elevatED™ Collection comprises 46 individual and modular pieces for young learner activities including art, STEM / sensory, literacy development, play, tables, seating, lockers and storage. Each piece is flexible, mobile or modular to enable furnishing a dynamic learning environment for young learners completely within the elevated™ Collection.

    Technical attributes of the collection include FSC certified wood material and Eco-Certified Composite (ECC) certification, an exemplary commitment to sustainability and environmental stewardship. The finish on each piece includes proven antimicrobial properties, an important attribute that contributes to the health and well-being of young children.

    “The Design Journal BEST of 2024 award recognizes how a fresh, modern expression of furniture can play a central role in creating a dynamic learning environment for our youngest learners,” said Mike Jablonski, president of Whitney Brothers®. “The elevatED™ Collection is another great example of our brand’s innovation and commitment to furnish learning environments that inspire and engage young children.”

    About Design Journal
    Design Journal is a leading international trade resource for interior designers, architects and facility managers since 1988. The Design Journal awards program is one of the most prominent design recognition platforms in the world for the fields of architecture and design. Each year, a global advisory board of 2,400 internationally renowned industry professionals preside over a rigorous evaluation process to select projects and products that represent the highest standards of design excellence.

    About Whitney Brothers®
    Founded in 1904, Whitney Brothers® is a 100% employee-owned producer of furniture for Early Learning and institutional childcare environments sold through educational distributors and dealers to schools, childcare centers, Head Start facilities, churches, libraries, museums and residential homes throughout North America and around the world. The brand’s rich 121-year history reflects old world craftsmanship blended with state of the art manufacturing technology to create products of uncompromising quality, design, innovation, safety, durability and value. Each product is UL GREENGUARD® Gold and antimicrobial certified, qualifies for LEED credits, meets or exceeds applicable CPSIA, ASTM and BIFMA requirements, supported by a Limited Lifetime Warranty and proudly made in America.

    eSchool News Staff
    Latest posts by eSchool News Staff (see all)

    Source link

  • OfS is starting to better understand the student interest

    OfS is starting to better understand the student interest

    Part of the point of having a regulator focused on students, rather than – say – a funding council or a department, was always about acting in “the student interest” rather than, say, the “provider” interest.

    But ever since HEFCE started talking about “the student interest” back when it made the Quality Assurance Agency bid to become its quality assurance agency, there’s always been a vague sense that “the student interest” is only ever really definable by reference to what it isn’t, rather than what it is.

    Can you define “a seminar”? Maybe not. Is 150 people in a room “a seminar?” Nope. And so on.

    In theory, once you know what “the student interest” actually is, you can then embed it into regulatory priority setting, regulatory design and regulatory activity.

    It’s a laudable principle, but as the idea hit reality it turned out that the sheer diversity and complementarity of student interests are not easily understood or quickly realised.

    As the Office for Students (OfS) has dealt with “monster of the week” framings of freedom of speech and grammar in assessment, a common criticism has been that student interest has been “ventriloquised” to back (sometimes questionable) ministerial priorities.

    And in areas where the body it has been using to define the student interest has gone against the views of ministers – for example on decolonisation and inclusive curricula – there appears to have been a concerning tendency to silence competing voices.

    Have students historically been able to trust OfS to advocate for their interests? It’s not entirely clear. The publication of new research into student priorities is therefore supposed to centre aspects of the authentic student voice within regulation and policy.

    Research findings

    OfS has worked with polling companies and conducted its own surveys and focus groups to gather information. Sources include:

    • Polling conducted by Savanta (1,761 students and graduates)
    • Two online focus groups conducted by YouGov
    • A YouGov online survey (750 responses) with prospective students, current students and graduates
    • An online focus group with students from small and specialist providers, arranged with the support of GuildHE
    • The Office for Students Student Panel

    Though this is a fair amount of evidence, OfS is clear that what is presented is a snapshot – the interests and priorities of students will evolve in future. The outputs from this exercise have helped to shape the recent OfS strategy – future strategic thinking would need to be shaped by more recent examples of this kind of engagement.

    The research is presented in four themes, covering student experiences and expectations, the idea of students as consumers, student interests in the long and short term, and the relationship between the student interest and the public interest.

    As presented, each section offers headline findings and key results from polling followed by a range of illustrative quotes from individual students.

    Students expect a high quality education that “reflects their financial investment and the promise that was made to them” – this includes opportunities to engage in social and extra-curricular activities. Academic and personal needs should be supported, and students also expect opportunities that will help their future careers.

    Yougov polling found that 79 per cent of undergraduates believed that university had either met or exceeded their expectations – 91 per cent felt they would end up with a credible qualification, 90 per cent felt they would leave with credible knowledge of their subject area.

    In contrast students do not feel they have received sufficient one-on-one support from staff, and have experienced disruption from the Covid-19 restrictions on activity and industrial action. More widely, the cost of living has had an impact on studies (60 per cent of students polled by Savanta agreed) – students were clear there is insufficient financial support available. And there is a persistent feeling that tuition fees are too high – 60 per cent felt their degree represented value for money.

    Specific issues have included difficulties in finding suitable and affordable accommodation, and a lack of mental health support for those who need it. Savanta polling suggested that 28 per cent of undergraduates felt contact hours had been insufficient to support their learning, 32 per cent of undergraduates had issues with the way their course has been taught, and 40 per cent said that one of the three biggest influences on their success was financial support.

    I was promised x amount of hours in person and I wasn’t able to due to strikes/Covid. Online lectures/seminars were not fruitful at all. (Male, 23, graduate, YouGov focus group)

    You can’t do anything without your health and with the stress that can come with the intense study and financial restraints of university life it is particularly important that the university supports students so they can maintain good wellbeing. (Male, 20, higher education student, YouGov focus group)

    Lots of different things can influence student interests. Cultural differences can mean some students might need varying levels of support to properly enjoy university life. Socioeconomic backgrounds for example can require that students will have an interest in needing either more financial support or the ability to balance part time work with studies.’ (Female, 23, higher education student, YouGov focus group)

    As signalled over the summer, students as a whole do not like the term “consumer”, feeling that the term implied education could be bought rather than acquired through personal effort. That said, there was an identification with the idea of “student rights” – both in terms of promises being met and access to refunds.

    And the idea of students as “investors” in their education was not viewed favourably either – students don’t consider their financial contribution as a choice, preferring to think about how they invest their time and effort.

    Students are not really given consumers rights, as seen by Covid year students who want money back. If you are given a false promise … there should be a way to complain … but [there] is not really. (Female, 18, further education student, YouGov focus group)

    It is much more difficult to complain, and essentially impossible to claim a refund. (Female, 20, higher education student, YouGov focus group)

    I have a right to get what I was expecting when I signed up for the degree… This means having teaching provision in line with what was advertised. (Female, 20, higher education student, YouGov focus group)

    There is a slight preference (60 to 40 per cent) for a provider focus on long-term rather than short-term student interests.

    By “short term”, students mean their day-to-day experiences – so stuff like academic support, progression and success, costs of living, and mental well being. “Long term” interests extend beyond graduation, revolving around career preparation and progression, skills for employment, and networking.

    I think in the short-term, academic and pastoral support with exams and coursework deadlines is most important, as well as general support with aspects of student life such as managing finances, finding accommodation etc. (Female, 20, higher education student, YouGov focus group)

    For me long-term encompasses the whole of the time I spend at university and then the years after where my degree affects my career progression etc. (Female, 23, higher education student, YouGov focus group)

    You’ll have spotted that there’s less information in these sections as we go on – the last one gives another inconclusive split – according to students, providers should focus on delivering student benefits (66 per cent) rather than public benefits (36 per cent).

    There were “a number of perceived conflicts” between student and public interest – these were “related” to tuition fees and accommodation, but we are not told what they are precisely.

    From the focus group quotes we can deduce that there is a public interest in developing graduates. The public interest may be to minimise student debt, while individual students might benefit by not paying off loans – the public might not like student accommodation blocks in city centres, while students do.

    That these hang off a mere handful of focus group quotes is frustrating and limits the usefulness of the insights. That “provider interest” is missing is also frustrating – plenty of students will argue with themselves and each other about the extent to which their personal interests can conflict with those of “the university”.

    I think a long-term interest of developing inquisitive, interested graduates who want to continue to learn about and critically analyse the world around them is an incredibly important part of a robust society. (Female, 33, higher education student, YouGov focus group)

    Student debt is a clear conflict of interest between students and the public interest. It is in the public interest to minimise student debt as a lot of it is not paid off by the students, however an individual student is benefiting by not paying off their student loans. (Female, 20, higher education student, YouGov focus group)

    Student accommodation is another example. Generally, members of the public don’t like having large student accommodation blocks built in city centres, however many students would like to live close to university and of course, in a cheaper accommodation. (Female, 20, higher education student, YouGov focus group)

    Also frustrating is the extent to which the findings seem to assume that students can’t or won’t consider their community or collective interests – understanding the extent to which, for example, student A is prepared to cross-subsidise student B’s mental health support or more expensive teaching probably matters much more than knowing who’s thinking short-term or longer-term, when surely pretty much everyone has both rattling around in their head.

    So what?

    For anyone who works with students, or has met students, none of these findings will come as a huge surprise. There are many formal and informal surveys of students and graduates, and this new research largely acts as a way of reinforcing what is already known.

    For critics, not being able to see the underpinning polling data raises all sorts of questions – like what was asked, who was asked, when were they asked it, what the differences were by characteristic or provider type, and how the results were weighted – partly because one way for a regulator to prioritise is by focussing in on those most at risk, or most unhappy, and so on.

    It’s also possible to raise an eyebrow at some of the conclusions that OfS Director for Fair Access and Participation John Blake draws from the research. When he says, for example, that he has “discovered” that students have two categories of expectation – one relating to their experiences of higher education (what studying feels like) and the other relating to what it gets them in the future – you are left thinking “well what else would they have expectations about” if not “good job the whole of your quality improvement medals scheme, a review of which involved a shed ton of research with students, also framed things in terms of experience and outcomes”.

    It’s possible to have expectations that are too high given OfS’ form, legal remit and the realities of day to day expectations. Jim often notes that while students’ unions will carry out plenty of research into “the student interest”, they’re still going to run a freshers fair, a course rep system and elect some full-time sabbatical officers in March – just as for all the research that providers do on their strategies, they pretty much all still vow to deliver excellent teaching, groundbreaking research, something something knowledge exchange and civic, and something something buildings HR and finance. For all the high blown rhetoric about change on inception, OfS is still a cruise ship not a speedboat.

    One thing that does still feel missing is not so much the recognition that diverse students have different priorities and interests – that does come out vividly in Blake’s blog – but that when you have a fixed remit and limited resources, you do have to prioritise. Add in that sometimes diverse interests are opposed, and you then have to set out how and who makes the calls, and then demonstrate that that has impacted what you do and how you do it. You do get the sense that there are passionate people in there who recognise that – but that there’s still a way to go in delivering the old “whole provider strategy” thing inside OfS.

    There’s also the partner question. Perhaps the newly souped-up interest board will get to do some of this, but if you take that two-thirds/one-thirds split on student v public interest, the point about student as partner is that they are seen both as capable of holding both thoughts in their head at once, and capable of contributing to a discussion about how you find a way through what can feel like a contradiction. It’s true on freedom of speech v freedom from harm , it’s true on “high academic standards” v “supporting students to succeed”, and true on the often contested balance between student feedback and academic authority. Education is always co-produced, even if one side is young and paying for it and the other “provides” it.

    Nevertheless, while eight years in is a bit late to be properly considering how the “student interest” is defined strategically, this is a good start. Over the coming year it says it will share further student insight based on polls and engagement that it has done – that might be on a topic with direct links back into its regulation, or something of regulatory interest to OfS but where it’s not yet planning direct regulation, or unable to act directly. The theory of change is that that sort of information can suggest areas of focus for providers (and while it doesn’t say so, for ministers) and support informed choice by students.

    If nothing else, it should allow students and their representatives to test whether the issues they’ve spoken on – on accommodation, on support, on their rights, and on value for money – will be acted on meaningfully by a regulator that is starting to realise just how important keeping promises to students is.

    Source link

  • Interest in QuestBridge students on the rise

    Interest in QuestBridge students on the rise

    As colleges and universities look for new ways to diversify their student bodies and increase access to low-income students, one national program is emerging as an increasingly popular tool in those efforts.

    QuestBridge, a national match program that places high-achieving low-income students at selective partner colleges, saw early-admission rates for its applicants rise by 17 percent this year, according to data released in December. A total of 2,627 students from QuestBridge’s program were accepted early to the Class of 2029, and that number will likely grow as regular-decision acceptance letters roll in.

    And that growth will likely continue into the future after the 21-year-old organization recently added three new university partners to its roster: Bates College, the University of Richmond and, most notably, Harvard University—the last Ivy League institution to join forces with the organization.

    QuestBridge students go through a competitive application process to become finalists: Only 7,288 were selected this cycle out of more than 25,000 applicants. The finalists rank their top choices out of the organization’s 55 partner colleges, and QuestBridge matches them with a full scholarship at the highest-ranking institution on their list that accepts them.

    A spokesperson for QuestBridge chalked up this cycle’s record-breaking early acceptances to typical growth. But the numbers are hard to ignore: QuestBridge went from having 1,755 early admits in 2023 to 2,627 in 2025, during which time it only added two partner universities.

    Institutions say that QuestBridge helps deliver talented students from diverse backgrounds, filling in where their resources fall short. That’s become especially important since the Supreme Court’s decision in June 2023 banning affirmative action. In fact, universities’ interest in QuestBridge scholars surged last year, too, right after the ruling, when admit rates went up by a whopping 28 percent and the program added Cornell University and Skidmore College as partners.

    The vast majority of QuestBridge’s partner schools practiced affirmative action before the court decision. After a slew of selective colleges reported declines in Black and Hispanic enrollment this fall, they have been looking for race-neutral recruitment and admissions tools to enhance incoming classes’ diversity, including expanded financial aid programs and a commitment to first-generation students.

    Bryan Cook, director of higher education policy at the Urban Institute and the author of an ongoing study on the wide-reaching effects of the Supreme Court decision, said that whether colleges were looking to boost racial diversity or expand on efforts to admit more low-income students post–affirmative action, QuestBridge fits the bill.

    “My sense from talking to admissions professionals across the country is that they’re utilizing every tool available to them to identify diverse students,” Cook said. “Before [the Supreme Court decision], QuestBridge was a good resource but maybe not necessary,” so “it’s not surprising to see an uptick after the fact.”

    Some of the colleges with the steepest declines in underrepresented student enrollment are doubling down on QuestBridge during this early admissions cycle. Brown University, which saw a 10 percent decline in Black, Hispanic and Indigenous students, admitted 90 QuestBridge finalists early, up from 64 the prior year. Tufts University had a six-percentage-point drop in underrepresented students this fall and admitted 42 QuestBridge applicants early, up from 30 in 2023–24. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which reported a nine-point drop in minority students, admitted 100 QuestBridge students early, nearly double the 56 it accepted last year and comprising more than 10 percent of its early-action cohort this cycle. Black, Hispanic and Indigenous enrollment also fell by 10 percentage points this fall at Cornell, which is welcoming its first class of QuestBridge scholars this cycle.

    QuestBridge, crucially, is not a race-based program—if it were, it might earn the scrutiny being given other race-conscious scholarships and admission-adjacent initiatives. Instead, its criteria are income-based; this past year, 90 percent of applicants came from families who earn less than $65,000. While the organization’s website breaks down data on certain applicant characteristics—81 percent first-generation, 37 percent Southerners, 5 percent noncitizens—it offers no information on racial demographics. As recently as 2020, the organization did publish those breakdowns; that year, about 41 percent of finalists were white, 24 percent were Asian American, 14 percent Latino and 9 percent Black.

    “As an organization focused on socioeconomic status, we do not currently publish race data, although there have not been significant shifts in our demographics by race pre and post the [Supreme Court] decision,” a QuestBridge spokesperson wrote in an email.

    Chazz Robinson, education policy adviser at the left-of-center think tank Third Way, said the affirmative action ban isn’t the only important context for the rise in QuestBridge admits. Heightening scrutiny of wealthy colleges has increased pressure to boost financial aid programs and increase socioeconomic diversity—both problems that QuestBridge can be part of addressing.

    “There’s growing concern from students about costs. There’s growing questions for administrators about value, about the students they’re serving,” Robinson said. QuestBridge “can be part of building the case that they’re helping students from struggling backgrounds achieve socioeconomic mobility.”

    In a statement, Harvard admissions director William Fitzsimmons said the partnership reflected the university’s commitment to “bringing the most promising students to Harvard from all socioeconomic backgrounds.”

    Leigh Weisenburger, dean of admission and vice president for enrollment at Bates, said the new partnership isn’t specifically aimed at increasing racial diversity, but it is part of the university’s commitment to increasing “all kinds of diversity.”

    “Given the law, I don’t want to misconstrue [the QuestBridge partnership] as an attempt to racially diversify our class,” she said. “While we can’t consider race any longer, we obviously are continuing to do everything in our power to feed our prospect applicant pools in access-oriented ways.”

    Extending Recruiters’ Reach

    Stephanie Dupaul, vice president for enrollment management at the University of Richmond, wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed that the university had been entertaining a partnership with QuestBridge for “many years.” She emphasized the program’s potential to amplify the university’s recruitment range geographically and reach high schools outside its normal recruitment zone.

    “We were particularly interested in their connections with rural students who might not have exposure to schools like Richmond,” she wrote.

    Weisenburger also stressed the benefits of QuestBridge’s broad geographic reach.

    “Bates is on the smaller scale of many of the institutions with whom QuestBridge partners and so for us to be present in Oklahoma as much as we’re present in California, as much as we’re present in rural Vermont, just isn’t feasible,” she said. “This allows us to be in those students’ conversations.”

    Geographic gaps aren’t the only recruitment concern for selective private colleges. Bates, like many small New England liberal arts colleges, has historically struggled to diversify its student body, which is currently about 72 percent white; its most diverse cohort yet, admitted last year, was made up of 32 percent domestic students of color. Bates’s student body is also disproportionately wealthy. Fewer than half of students receive any kind of need-based aid, and a 2023 New York Times report ranked Bates as tied for last in socioeconomic diversity out of a pool of 283 colleges. The Times report also found that only 8 percent of Bates students receive Pell Grants, and the share of Pell recipients in the student body fell by five percentage points from 2011 to 2023.

    Weisenburger said that while Bates has always striven to welcome a wide variety of students to its Lewiston, Me., campus, finding the resources to not only recruit those students but support them once they arrive on campus can be a challenge. And though she maintains Bates has a better history of diversity than many of its peers, Weisenburger acknowledged the college has a reputation for being “undiverse and privileged.”

    “We do have limited resources, looking at the college’s overall operating budget and our financial aid budget, and so we have to think really strategically and critically about how we’re going to best use those funds,” Weisenburger said. “That’s where QuestBridge for us just seems obvious.”

    Cook said that QuestBridge, with only a few thousand finalists a year, is not a cure for colleges’ diversity woes. But as admissions offices scramble to plug the hole left by the affirmative action ban, he said, partnering with outside organizations like QuestBridge can be a good short-term solution—and based on growing interest in the program, colleges may be thinking the same thing.

    “A lot of admissions professionals are still trying to figure out what are the best tools and options available to achieve the type of diverse student bodies they want. And most of them, to my knowledge, have not found a magic bullet,” he said. “I wouldn’t say that QuestBridge is a replacement for doing the hard work of figuring out other strategies. But understanding that’s not going to happen overnight, why not use it to help in the interim?”

    Source link

  • Ventriloquising the student interest | Wonkhe

    Ventriloquising the student interest | Wonkhe

    Following the devastating review offered by the 2023 report of the Industry and Regulators Committee of the House of Lords, the Office for Students’ (OfS) proposed strategy makes a great play of being centred around “the student interest”.

    But while it recognises that students have diverse and changeable views about their interests, it is still significant that it characterises these as “the student interest” rather than “students’ interests”.

    The reason for doing this is that it makes it much more rhetorically powerful to claim you are doing something in relation to an interest that is definitive, rather than interests which are multivarious and shifting.

    And be clear, the OfS proposed strategy shows a huge appetite to intervene in higher education in the name of “the student interest”.

    Much talk, no sources

    In the draft, OfS boasts that it has done a great deal of work to renew its understanding of the student interest – polling students, holding focus groups, hosting engagement sessions and talking to their own student panel.

    But two things are particularly noticeable about this work. First, whilst a lot of other sources are referenced in their strategy consultation, this is one area where no evidence is provided.

    This means the OfS interpretation of the outcomes of this consultation cannot be interrogated in any way. Clearly OfS knows best how to interpret this interest and isn’t interested in collective conversations to explore its ambiguities and complexities.

    Second, none of this work involves open ended engagement with students and their representative organisations (who appear to have been excluded completely, or at least their involvement is not detailed). They are all forms of consultation in which OfS would have framed the terms and agenda of the discussions (non-decision-making power, as Steven Lukes would have it). It’s consultation – but within tightly defined limits of what can legitimately be said.

    This seems to explain the remarkable number of priorities in the strategy (freedom of speech, mental health, sexual harassment) that are said to be in the student interest but previously appeared in ministerial letters outlining the strategic priorities of the OfS.

    Get a job

    Perhaps most concerning is that the government/treasury logic that the only real reason for going to university is to get a well-paid job is now central to the student interest. Sometimes this is done more subtly by positioning it in the (never-)popular student language of “a return on investment”:

    …in return for their investment of time, money and hard work they [students] expect that education to continue to provide value into the longer-term, including in ways that they may not be able to anticipate while they study (p.12).

    At other times, we are left in no doubt that the primary function of higher education is to serve the economy:

    Our proposals…will support a higher education system equipped to cultivate the skills the country needs and increase employer confidence in the value of English higher education qualifications. High quality higher education will be accessible to more people, and students from all backgrounds will be better able to engage with and benefit from high quality higher education, supporting a more equal society which makes better use of untapped talent and latent potential. The supply of skilled graduates will support local and national economies alike, while the ‘public goods’ associated with high quality higher education will accrue to a wide range of individuals and communities. Public goods include economic growth, a more equal society and greater knowledge understanding (OfS 2024 p.30-31).

    So what we are left with is a proposed strategy that makes powerful claims to be grounded in the student interest – but which could have easily formed part of the last government’s response to the Augar review.

    Whose priorities?

    Through its consultation on its proposed strategy, OfS has presented the priorities of the previous government as if they are drawn straight from its engagement with students.

    We don’t yet know the higher education priorities of the current government, but given the proposed strategy was published under their watch it looks like we are moving in a depressingly familiar direction.

    It is worth reflecting on the profound injustice of this. Students are expected to pay back the cost of their higher education and now have the previous government’s priorities presented as their interest so that OfS can intervene in higher education.

    Yes, you have to pay – but the government and its friendly neighbourhood regulator are here to tell you why you want to pay! It seems that despite the excoriating criticism of the House of Lords Committee, OfS have not really learned how to engage with students or to reflect and reconcile their interests.

    Source link