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The European University Association (EUA), along with partners from across the European higher education sector are calling on policy makers to ensure an allocation of at least €60 billion for Erasmus+ in the EU’s next long-term budget.
Currently, the proposed budget sits at €40.8 billion for the period 2028-2034 but campaigners argue that this amount is not enough to fund “ambitious actions” that have been proposed for the next generation of the program.
EUA said that Europe now faces a “strategic choice” adding that “underinvestment in education would undermine the EU’s own political objectives”.
EUA secretary general Amanda Crowfoot commented: “When all factors, including inflation and new priorities, are taken into account, the proposed Erasmus+ budget for 2028-2034 would at best allow the program to continue as it is.
“However, it would not be able to fund enhanced and additional activities to underpin the Union of Skills and the European Education Area, as proposed by the European Commission.
“This means that there will not be enough to pay for more inclusive learning mobility nor properly funded alliances, let alone for the new scholarships in strategy priority fields. Education can make an invaluable contribution to the EU’s competitiveness agenda, but this requires concerted investment,” she explained.
In a joint letter by multiple partners – including the European Association for International Education, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), CESAER and many more – together representing thousands of higher education institutions, they make the case that Europe can only achieve its ambitions in education, skills and talent if Erasmus+ is “ambitiously resourced”.
They note Erasmus+ is one of Europe’s “most tangible success stories” and that such a significant “contribution to citizens’ lives and to Europe’s future needs investment that matches its proven impact”.
“For nearly 40 years, this popular flagship program has empowered millions of learners, strengthened institutional cooperation, deepened European integration and fostered global outreach,” the joint statement read.
It went on to argue that in a time of “heightened geopolitical tensions” the program “delivers long-term returns in skills, employability, innovation capacity and civic engagement”.
Education can make an invaluable contribution to the EU’s competitiveness agenda, but this requires concerted investment
Amanda Crowfoot, EUA secretary general
In December 2025, it was announced that the UK will rejoin Erasmus+ for the 2027/28 academic year, six years after leaving the scheme following Brexit.
As the voice of European universities, EUA worked closely with its UK members to advocate for their return to Erasmus+.
The agreement will mean UK students will be able to take part in the scheme without paying any extra fees from January 2027 and has been warmly welcomed by the international education sector. UK government modelling predicts that over 100,000 people in the UK could benefit from Erasmus+ within the first year of rejoining the scheme.
At the time, Josep M. Garrell, president of EUA, said that by restoring bridges between UK and European universities, the decision will “support student and staff mobility, cooperation between universities (including through the European Universities alliances) and joint policy development.”
The news prompted a wave of nostalgia across the sector as professionals, from the UK and elsewhere in Europe, reflected on the exchanges, encounters and opportunities that shaped their careers.
While for the average member of the public the industrial strategy might just be that thing the government drones on about while guaranteeing a £1.5bn loan for Jaguar Land Rover, it’s been one of the key talking points and organising principles in higher education policy in 2025 – at least in the English system, despite the strategy being UK-wide.
The run-up to June’s publication of the finalised strategy was characterised by plenty of debate about whether sufficient recognition was being paid to higher education’s role, and far less – depressingly, but rather characteristically for the sector – about how the strategy seeks to reshape the higher education and research systems to achieve its ends.
As an indicative example, one entirely unremarked on aspect of the strategy – admittedly buried in a complicated graphic on page 34 of the technical annex – was that one of its outputs is increased enrolments in higher education and apprenticeship subjects that address skills shortages in the eight chosen sectors. In the strategy’s theory of change, an output is the result of a policy intervention, and some 18 are chosen in all – one of them involves changing what subjects higher education students study. This was surely worthy of closer attention.
Six months after publication, we can see the industrial strategy showing up all across the new HE landscape that Labour is oh-so-gradually taking steps to unfurl – in the Lifelong Learning Entitlement, in maintenance grants, in capital funding, in high-cost subject premia, in local innovation funding, in PhD scholarships, in strategic research funding. In some of these areas we just have mere hints to go on, whereas in others the strategy is already a central organising idea. It’s also clear that in different areas of government, the strategy is being interpreted in different ways and used to achieve different priorities.
We’re going to take a run through all of this, and attempt to gauge where the strategy is cutting deep and where it’s running pretty shallow. But to begin with we need to look back over the development process since Labour came to power, in order to understand what the industrial strategy is seeking to achieve and – just as importantly – where.
The Invest 2035 green paper in autumn 2024 chose eight “growth-driving sectors” to be the focus of policy intervention and prioritisation (cue a degree of huffing and puffing that universities were not given enough prominence). This was followed by a consultation to greatly refine the detail and identify sub-sectors within each that were most key.
Each of those concepts got a rebrand – the growth-driving sectors became the IS-8, the sub-sectors were rebadged as “frontier industries” – but at heart this was the thrust of the move from green paper to finalised strategy: a process of concentrating on a subset of the initial sectors.
If you’re interested in how these choices were made, we are told that a five-point assessment of different possible sub-sectors took place, based around the criteria of growth potential, strategic alignment, sector interconnectedness, rationale for intervention, and presence of policy solutions.
Here they all are (the IS-8 are the headings in red boxes, while the frontier industries are the bullet points):
(the frontier industries in the finalised defence industrial strategy, published in September, were essentially unchanged)
So with the chosen priority areas selected, our next step would be to think about how higher education fits in, you would think. But there’s a further element that is regularly overlooked – how the industrial strategy relates to place.
The final strategy is clear throughout that its “picking winners” philosophy extends not just to specific parts of the economy, but also to the location in which they will be supported:
The Industrial Strategy will concentrate efforts on those places with the greatest growth potential for the IS-8 sectors, namely city regions and clusters.
The focus on sectors “cannot be divorced from considerations around place,” we are told – the “specific relationships between sectors and between places” has to be part of the equation. “All economic activity occurs somewhere,” it uncontroversially emphasised. All this focus on place “does not preclude” support for sectors in other, non-beknighted locations, however. And so:
We focused on identifying and prioritising those city regions and clusters most important to the delivery of the Industrial Strategy. This process identified a set of unique city regions and clusters across the IS-8. To drive effective policy and maximise their growth potential, we also considered the interconnections between them.
A cluster, in case you were wondering, for the purposes of the strategy is a geographically-connected network of “businesses, research capabilities, skilled talent, and support structures in related industries.” These ecosystems bring benefits of proximity for the businesses within them, including “deeper labour markets, knowledge sharing, innovation spillovers, and collaboration opportunities.” Their specificity makes them “well-suited to benefit from targeted support.”
Similarly to the frontier industries, the move from green to white paper saw a process of cluster identification, which we’re told in the technical annex involved qualitative and quantitative analysis and engagement within government and with external experts, all to draw up a longlist (which we don’t get to see). This was then winnowed down to retain those with “highest growth potential” for each sector. Here’s a diagram of the process, for reference:
In terms of the results – well, if you’re searching for specificity on exactly what is covered by each cluster, the finalised strategy documents don’t make it easy for you to pinpoint what’s included. Here’s the map for advanced manufacturing, taken from the technical annex again:
This, however, assigns geographies to the sector as a whole, rather than to particular priority industries. For that, we need to look at the sector plans which (for the most part) were released alongside the industrial strategy. Here’s the first part of the map for advanced manufacturing again, this time with the priority industries specified:
The regions in question are very broadly drawn at times – the clean energy industries map groups together Oxford and Solent (two areas which are not connected in any way, surely?) and has one “Scotland” cluster which includes Aberdeen, Highlands and Islands, the North Sea coast and, oh, the entire Central Belt. The bullet points are odd too, a mix of promotion of existing capacity and plans for future actions.
There’s a much more thorough mapping of industrial strategy sector geographies available in the form of the DSIT cluster map, which was one of the inputs to the selection process. However, it’s only currently available for five of the IS-8, and is at the sector, rather than subsector, level.
Handily, the map lets you superimpose university and R&D facility locations onto the clusters, which in theory would let you assess which are the “right” places for different kinds of higher education provision and research, were you so minded.
It’s not clear this is on the government’s radar for tying together industrial strategy and HE policy, however – rather, what we’ve seen so far largely has its roots in a different way of thinking about the country’s skills needs.
To recap: in order to finalise the industrial strategy, the Department for Business and Trade identified priority sectors (and “frontier” sub-sectors) of the economy, and engaged in a degree of prioritising certain places. At the same time, Skills England was taking a complementary but at the same time rather different approach – identifying priority occupations and priority skills.
The main piece of work here was the quango’s Assessment of priority skills to 2030 report, which we looked at when it first arrived in August. But it’s worth going over some of the main beats of the analysis performed, and recognising how it represents certain choices beyond what the industrial strategy itself set out.
The report looks at “future employment demand across 10 key sectors important for delivering the government’s Industrial Strategy and Plan for Change priorities” – see our initial coverage for some of the oddities in how this forecasting was performed, but what’s done is done – and then goes on to pinpoint the “key education pathways” associated with the priority occupations in these sectors.
In addition to the IS-8, Skills England had been asked to roll in both health and social care and construction. For each of the ten sectors, it looks at a specific subset of occupations – those where there is expected growth in employment, current skills shortages, general “high demand” or which are otherwise judged important in some way. Each list was chosen by the lead government department for the sector in question.
By my calculations – removing the duplicates on the “priority occupations” tab of this spreadsheet – this brings us to 148 unique occupational areas which, in theory at least, are now the government’s priorities. This is as defined by SOC20 units (the four-digit codes), of which there are 412 in total. Feel free to check whether your job is there or not.
This wasn’t all though. Skills England then took an additional step – some might say leap – in plotting a link between these priority occupations and higher education subject of study. In coming to a judgement about what education pathways “feed” the priority occupations, one approach would be to actually look at the occupations themselves (for example, musicians are one of the priority occupations in the creative industries sector, so surely music degrees would be a winner?). But a different approach was taken, one that aggregates up degree choice and field of employment.
As seen in table 6 of the report (and in an expanded version in the accompanying spreadsheet), what Skills England chose to do instead was to generate a percentage for each subject area – at the very top level of the Common Academic Hierarchy classification, i.e. the broadest possible brush – according to the historic likelihood that a graduate of a degree in that field would go on to be employed in a priority occupation:
The probabilities were applied to a cohort of education leavers from LEO Graduate and Postgraduate Outcomes who were in sustained employment in the year after education, to estimate their occupations at 4-digit SOC. We include graduates and post-graduates employed in the 2021 to 2022 tax year and who graduated in 2019 to 2020 academic year.
This, essentially, generates a ranking of higher education subjects, by their past propensity to funnel graduates into a list of priority occupations chosen by government departments. These choices tie in with – but are very much not the same as – the industrial strategy. They are also place-blind, in a way that the strategy sought to avoid.
While the fact of the Westminster government deciding that there are certain occupations that are more of a priority than others is notable in itself, the Skills England report isn’t just a fun bit of modelling – policy consequences have followed, even if they haven’t been spelled out.
For one thing, the top ten ranking of priority subject areas has given rise to the list of subjects eligible for modular provision under the Lifelong Learning Entitlement. It took a bit of digging at the time for us to make that connection, but it’s since been essentially confirmed by DfE.
The list isn’t exactly the same – medicine and pharmacy aren’t given the LLE nod, presumably not being seen as well-suited for unbundling. And Skills England’s analysis found that business and management degrees had a higher likelihood (53 per cent) of leading to employment in a priority occupation than health and social care degrees (51 per cent) – again, you can imagine the careful political choices being made there, though further transparency from the department about what exactly its thinking is for modular study would have been welcome.
If you’re not a big believer in the presence of much demand for loan-backed modular study, this may seem like only a minor exercise in picking winners, especially as the government has said that the current list is, in theory, just a starting point. More important, perhaps, are the clear indications that a similar process will be used for determining which courses of study are eligible for maintenance grants. The department had previously indicated that it would use much the same list as for the LLE, only to somewhat walk this back in the slight policy paper that accompanied the Budget:
It is crucial that the list of subjects eligible for maintenance grants is informed by the best and most up-to-date evidence on skills needs. This list will be confirmed in advance of grants being introduced in the 2028 to 2029 academic year.
We will: draw on further stakeholder engagement and ongoing work from Skills England to assess future employment and skills priorities; explore alignment with the subject lists for Lifelong learning entitlement (LLE) modular and priority additional entitlement funding.
What we can read into this is that a similar process will probably be employed, though coverage might not match up precisely, especially if you are erring on the side of scepticism regarding how much funding is going to be put towards the grants (or optimistically pinning hopes on ministerial nods to rolling it out further in future years).
The third area where we might expect the Skills England subject ranking to show up in policy relates to the ongoing reforms to the Strategic Priorities Grant (SPG). Returning to the parliamentary written answer referred to above – which in passing I will observe seems an odd thing for former Reform MP James McMurdock to have been asking after – the Skills England list is also juxtaposed with plans to align SPG funding with “the priority sectors which support the Industrial Strategy and the Plan for Change and future skills needs.” Making high-cost subject funding more effectively targeted towards what was then termed “priority provision” was first announced in the SPG guidance letter to the Office for Students back in May.
Given the specific choices made in translating “priority sectors” into “priority subjects”, it’s worth considering a few further consequences of the department’s decision to use Skills England’s analysis in Assessment of priority skills to 2030 as a basis for determining subject-level policy decisions. First, even if you go along with the logic steps in the process, it is noticeably based on old data. Is it possible that at some point the modelling gets updated with new graduate outcomes figures, and we see (say) chemistry no longer make the top ten, with its spot taken by languages and area studies (for example – it was only a handful of percentage points lower down on the ranking generated by data from the 2021–22 tax year)?
This wouldn’t be any kind of stable basis on which to determine which subjects are funded as high cost, which are in scope for modular provision, and which attract small maintenance grants for disadvantaged students. Yet taken to the extreme it’s the consequence of the way DfE has gone about its planning.
The approach also bundles together subjects into top-level classifications and then applies broad-brush percentage propensity scores to them, ignoring essentially any other factor, such as applicant or institution characteristics. Once you go down this road of picking priority subject areas, some loss of resolution is probably inevitable. But it didn’t have to be done in this way (indeed, as was much remarked at the time someone from the department stepped in and took out landscape gardening from the architecture, building and planning subject group, with no explanation given). If you’re going to pile one methodological assumption on top of another, shouldn’t the chosen process at least go out to consultation?
But methodology aside, there’s also a question of whether this approach is in the spirit of the industrial strategy, which as we have seen in its purified form had a focus on frontier industries and their geographical distribution.
Let’s take the Lifelong Learning Entitlement modular provision process as an example. If you want to apply to deliver a module of a full degree programme at level 4, 5 and 6, as we’ve already seen it will need to be in one of the subject areas generated from Skills England’s calculations – but also, you will need the Department for Education’s approval for it to qualify for loan funding.
The process of applying was set up in an interesting way. Providers are required to demonstrate that their modular “offer” has been developed in response to employer and learner needs. Applications will be required to have established relationships with employers or industry bodies relevant to the subject area, and show that specific employer (and/or learner) engagement in the module’s design has taken place. Indicative evidence includes letters of support from industry bodies, evidence of co-design of curricula, and even “learner or employer consultation summaries, surveys or focus group findings.”
This is quite the thing – the proportion of full degree programmes that could say they have been through such a process of due diligence is probably pretty slim. It’s a level of reflective employer engagement quite rarely seen in the sector, as opposed to gestures at the promise of fairly generic “employability” outcomes. Part of the reason for this is how time-consuming it appears.
There’s certainly a question whether all this admin is worth it – there are various other hoops to jump through as well, in order to demonstrate to DfE a track record of delivery over time as well as evidencing quality [sic] through continuation and completion data. It would make more sense if being able to offer modular provision through the LLE was really the treat that the government seems to be hoping, and you could be confident (as opposed to extremely sceptical) that you would have potential students knocking on your door to enrol on your freshly approved course.
But we could certainly draw some lines to the industrial strategy – not only has the provision been restricted (in a manner of speaking) to those subjects most relevant to the strategy, this provision is also directly linked up with the industries in question, and stems from engagement with specific areas, both in terms of prospective students and graduate employers. It’s also of a piece with the recent moves on local skills improvement plans that Labour is looking to nudge universities towards. Put simply, it is very out of character for higher education policy over the last decade or more to have the government approving whether provision can go ahead based on individual provider contexts, rather than what we might term the “have at” approach of letting anyone anywhere deliver anything and then seeing if the market will accommodate (if that is not too much of a simplification of post-2010 policy).
There is one mammoth caveat, however. The issue is that everything I’ve outlined above only applies to a small proportion of providers in England – anyone with a TEF gold or silver, or who had a suitable headline Ofsted rating back when they were not obsolete, can skip all of this. So all the finickety detail which gestures at a move to a different kind of system is basically irrelevant for all but a small number of providers who both performed poorly in the 2023 TEF (wait, wasn’t bronze a mark of “high quality”?) and who fancy throwing their very expensive hat into the LLE’s very small ring.
This is the perfect encapsulation of how the Department for Education’s adoption of the industrial strategy has – so far at least – the appearance of a performance rather than a real sea change. It is to an extent choosing priority subject provision that meshes with the strategy, though in a way that is very STEM-focused in a way that plenty of the strategy is not. And then it is more or less letting anyone participate who fancies taking a crack at it, with a small number of exceptions for whom the process would actually be much more in keeping with the strategy’s principles.
There are pragmatic reasons for taking an expansive approach to the LLE rollout, of course, given the well-founded fears about how much demand is there. It will be interesting to see how the approvals process develops over time.
The same could be said for both maintenance grants and SPG reforms. Tying them (in some way yet to be determined) to the Skills England list is a kind of gesture towards the strategy, but a more thorough engagement would involve thinking much more deeply about types of provision, specific subject choice rather than top-line groupings, and – most of all – place. At time of writing, there is little indication the department is minded to go in this direction for either policy.
And there is surely little appetite in the sector for it to do so. It would be highly interventionist, get bogged down in bureaucracy, and result in far more by way of “picking winners” than the current vibe of endorsing the idea of specialisation but doing little to make it happen. But you could make the case that it’s what an industrial strategy-led higher education policy should look like.
These particular moves are only a small slice of the much greater volume of work the industrial strategy has kicked off, much of it very relevant to higher education. For a start, the way the capital funding element of this year’s SPG allocations was set up was structured around the IS-8 sectors directly, rather than Skills England’s interpretation of which subject provision is most likely to feed them. In the winning bids we can see plenty of projects linked to areas of the strategy, such as creative industries or financial services, that have not made the cut for the LLE and presumably will not for maintenance grants either.
Skills England’s own future moves are important to watch as well. The work-in-progress UK Standard Skills Classification holds the potential for much more nuanced work about the links between study, employment and place than has filtered into policy so far.
On a larger scale, the sweeping changes to R&D funding which the government is slowly bringing to bear show a much more thorough engagement with the industrial strategy, even if the place elements are not always there. From our vantage point at the end of 2025, we can see a range of different ways the strategy is reflected in new initiatives, and different levels of prominence, from lip service to central governing principle.
The half a billion pounds in investment for the Local Innovation Partnership Fund has one of the tightest connections. Each “triple helix partnership” (which will include an academic institution) that wants to bid will need to define a cluster in which it will operate and link its proposal to strategic objectives such as the industrial strategy. For the open bidding competition, expert panel recommendations will inform a final decision from ministers – but in picking successful applications, the government will also “seek to ensure adequate geographic and sectoral balancing that aligns with regional assets and national capability.”
On the Innovate UK end of R&D, the industrial strategy is exceedingly directive. In advanced manufacturing, the government’s desire to directly support automotive industry R&D was so strong that it had to refer itself to the Competition and Markets Authority to ensure it wasn’t breaching laws around state aid.
For funding flowing solely to universities, the picture is not yet as clear. The reforms to Higher Education Innovation Funding (HEIF) announced in the autumn are more focused on economic growth in general. Revised accountability statements ask higher education providers to “consider” how to support the industrial strategy’s “key foundations”, but for now at least this sounds like an instruction to make passing reference to the strategy in one’s narratives, rather than a spur for deeper changes.
Over in the curiosity-driven “bucket” – with apologies to anyone who’s already sick of that terminology – the strategy’s influence is less clear. The post-16 white paper did promise that institutions will be recognised and rewarded, including through REF and QR, for “demonstrating clarity of purpose, demonstrating alignment with government priorities, and for measurable impact.” This seems to be a reference to the ongoing review of strategic institutional research funding – but as Research England’s Steven Hill said on Wonkhe last week, this is a complex piece of work where change will take time.
At the very least the government will start to understand university research through the industrial strategy lens. As the white paper put it:
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, together with UK Research and Innovation, will audit the provision of research activity which delivers against the Industrial Strategy, missions and sovereign capability, and assess changes in capability against our needs.
We should also expect to see more further intervention to support doctoral provision in areas linked to the industrial strategy. The TechExpert scholarships, for example, are explicitly targeted not just at the broad industrial strategy sectors, but at specific “frontier industry” sub-sectors within them.
There are many models for how the industrial strategy could dictate or at least influence higher education and research across the UK (even if, as I started by saying, for political reasons much if not all of the impact is focused on England). Some of the ones we’ve seen different government departments and arm’s length bodies apply so far have the potential to be quite transformative, while others feel superficial as it stands.
On paper, the government’s desire to push further ahead with the strategy as an organising principle for the state’s engagement with industry and geography should intertwine with a less place-blind higher education policy, though there are many forms this could take. Currently, whether for reasons of capacity, politics or inertia it doesn’t feel like this will be comprehensively realised any time soon. On the education side of things in particular, the government’s nods towards cold spots and local collaboration don’t yet seem to be reaching deep into the longer-term thinking which Jim Dickinson has characterised as “more graduates, just not that sort and not there” – a proper consideration of how place and subject of study interact.
The political challenges around setting out a vision for higher education can’t be shrugged off either. It’s relatively painless for DfE to trumpet more apprenticeships, more engineering, and more computing. But as written, the industrial strategy should also support more creative arts provision, and it should encourage the delivery of more management training. And all the while it ought to be thinking about which places are most suitable for each.
At the end of the day, the strategy is a recipe for a highly planned higher education system – and one that encroaches heavily on university autonomy. The initial indicators are that the government, at least in part, is happy to perform a certain coordination between it and the English higher education system, rather than follow some of its more radical possibilities through to their logical conclusion. There are plenty of reasons why this is probably something of a relief for the sector. But it also runs the risk of leaving higher education adrift from the government’s most important agenda for reshaping the state and the country, and ducking the big long-term questions about what universities do, and what they are for.
In the summer of 2025, the CLOP hacking group—operating from Russia—exploited weaknesses at the University of Phoenix, exposing sensitive data on thousands of students and staff. The breach was devastating, yet Russia was not officially condemned as an adversary.
The contrast with U.S. policy toward countries like Venezuela is striking. Venezuela faces crippling sanctions, economic isolation, and constant political pressure under the banner of protecting democracy and human rights. Meanwhile, Russian-based cybercriminals are allowed to inflict real harm on U.S. institutions with little official pushback. The reason, officials say, is a lack of direct evidence tying these attacks to the Russian state. But the discrepancy reveals a deeper hypocrisy: punitive measures are applied selectively, often based on geopolitical convenience rather than consistent principles.
CLOP-style attacks exploit vulnerabilities in U.S. institutions. Universities, especially those operating on outdated IT systems and under private equity pressures, are frequent targets. Students—many already burdened by debt and systemic inequities—bear the brunt when personal data is exposed. Yet the broader conversation rarely extends to foreign actors who take advantage of these weaknesses or to the structural failures within U.S. education.
Venezuela’s citizens suffer sanctions and economic hardship, while Russian cybercriminals operate from the safety of a country that tolerates them, so long as domestic interests remain untouched. This double standard undermines the credibility of U.S. claims to principled leadership and exposes the uneven moral framework guiding foreign policy.
Higher education becomes a battleground in this selective application of power. Cyberattacks, fraud, and systemic negligence converge to threaten students and faculty, revealing the real victims of international hypocrisy. Protecting U.S. institutions requires acknowledging both the foreign actors who exploit weaknesses and the domestic policies and practices that leave them vulnerable.
The CLOP breach is more than a single incident—it is a reflection of a system that punishes some nations for internal crises while tolerating damage inflicted by others on critical domestic infrastructure. Until U.S. policy addresses both sides of this equation, the cost will continue to fall on the most vulnerable: the students, staff, and faculty caught in the crossfire.
Sources: U.S. Department of Education reports; investigative journalism on CLOP and Russian cybercrime; analyses of U.S.-Venezuela sanctions and policy.
The recent controversies surrounding Charlie Kirk — and the extraordinary reaction that followed his campus appearances and commentary — offer a revealing window into the fragile state of free expression in contemporary America.
Two recent New York Times opinion pieces examining the backlash were right to highlight how quickly public discourse has hardened into a zero-sum contest in which speech itself becomes grounds for professional punishment, social ostracism, and institutional retaliation. But the deeper lesson is even more unsettling: Free speech is increasingly treated not as a constitutional principle, but as a conditional privilege — one that applies only when speech is politically comfortable.
This concern is not confined to the Kirk episode alone.
A mature liberal democracy does not protect speech because it is agreeable. It protects speech precisely because it is controversial.
In recent essays and commentary in the Times, Steven Pinker and Greg Lukianoff have voiced parallel anxieties about the narrowing of permissible speech in American life. Pinker, writing in response to the wave of cancellations following Kirk’s assassination, argued that the public reaction revealed something larger than partisan outrage: It exposed a culture increasingly governed by moral intimidation rather than democratic confidence. He warned that Americans have begun to treat disagreement itself as a form of complicity, a dynamic that pressures institutions to distance themselves from speakers not because of what they say, but because of how others might react.
In Pinker’s telling, this logic shrinks what he calls the “theater of ideas,” replacing open argument with reputational panic, association anxiety, and pre-emptive suppression. When leaders apologize not for their own actions but for the mere fact of conversation, he argued, they signal their inability to withstand the volatility of public outrage — a sign that our intellectual ecosystem is growing narrower, thinner, and more brittle.
Lukianoff’s column makes a complementary point from a different angle. Drawing on years of work at FIRE, he noted how quickly both institutions and individuals abandon their stated commitments to free expression the moment those commitments become uncomfortable. The Kirk episode, he wrote, was simply the latest example of a pattern he has watched unfold across campuses for more than a decade: a willingness to tolerate speech only when it fits within prevailing ideological or cultural fashions.
Lukianoff emphasized that the most troubling aspect is not the criticism of Kirk — criticism is central to free speech — but the eagerness to impose professional penalties, public shaming, or formal censure on anyone associated with him. The principle collapses the instant it is tested. Taken together, Pinker and Lukianoff reveal with unusual clarity that America is drifting toward a model of free expression that survives only when it flatters majority sentiment — a vision entirely at odds with the core purpose of the First Amendment.
In the wake of political violence, calls to criminalize rhetoric are growing louder. But Brandenburg v. Ohio set the bar — and it’s a high one.
This is not an argument about whether one agrees with Kirk’s public statements. Many do not. Nor is it a defense of every remark, posture, or provocation associated with his political brand. That is beside the point. A mature liberal democracy does not protect speech because it is agreeable. It protects speech precisely because it is controversial — because democracy requires open contestation, not the selective silencing of whatever unsettles the cultural majority.
And yet, across universities, professional settings and online spaces, we have witnessed a familiar pattern repeat itself: organized efforts to deplatform, disrupt, shame, or punish those associated with political positions deemed unacceptable. Speakers are shouted down. Venues are pressured. Faculty and students who express dissenting views risk reputational harm or institutional discipline. Even civil engagement becomes suspect if it involves “the wrong people.”
This reflex is often defended as moral clarity. In reality, it is institutional cowardice.
There is a great irony here. The very individuals and institutions that loudly proclaim their commitment to diversity, inclusion, and pluralism often prove least capable of tolerating genuine intellectual diversity. They champion the language of openness even as they tighten the boundaries of permissible speech. What results is a shallow performance of tolerance that collapses the moment speech becomes genuinely uncomfortable.
Free speech is not a decorative ideal meant for ceremonial brochures or abstract jurisprudence seminars. It is a living civic discipline, and it demands that we cultivate tolerance even — especially — when it offends our sensibilities. That discipline has historically been one of the United States’ most distinguishing features: the belief that robust public debate, rather than enforced consensus, is the engine of democratic resilience.
But today’s culture increasingly treats emotional discomfort as a kind of injury, speech as a form of violence, and dissent as a moral failing. Within that framework, the logic of suppression becomes not only tempting but virtuous: If speech causes harm, then silencing it becomes an act of justice. Once adopted, that logic expands rapidly. Today it is Charlie Kirk. Tomorrow it will be someone else. The principle does not survive the politics.
The Times essays were right to note how the fear of association now extends far beyond extremist rhetoric to include basic engagement. Students who meet with controversial speakers, professors who host debates, and institutions that tolerate ideological diversity all find themselves scrutinized. The mere act of conversation becomes dangerous territory. That should alarm anyone who values the university as a space for intellectual exploration rather than ideological enforcement.
This is not merely a cultural concern. It is institutional. When administrators respond to pressure campaigns by canceling speakers, disciplining faculty, or issuing vague statements about “community harm,” they send a powerful message: Conformity is safer than inquiry. Over time, this breeds self-censorship. Students learn that advancement depends not on argumentation but on alignment. Faculty learn that silence is prudent. The public sphere narrows, not because debate has been resolved, but because people have learned to be afraid.
After an assassin cut short a campus speech, colleges must keep in mind that passing security costs to speakers or canceling events under the guise of “safety” hands victory to the heckler’s veto — and invites more violence.
History tells us where this road leads. Societies that abandon free expression do not become kinder or more just. They become brittle. They lose the capacity for correction. Without dissent, errors calcify into doctrine. Without debate, divisions deepen underground until they erupt elsewhere; often violently.
A healthy society requires a different posture: one that refuses to reward political violence or celebrate rhetorical cruelty, but also refuses to treat speech as a crime. It is possible and necessary to maintain both moral standards and civic tolerance. We can condemn genuinely hateful language without constructing an environment where only preapproved opinions are allowed to exist.
This distinction matters. There is a difference between criticism and coercion, between moral disagreement and institutional suppression. The first is essential to democratic life. The second corrodes it.
The American tradition of free speech was never intended to be easy. It was built to withstand tension, disagreement, even anger. It requires a certain moral maturity — the ability to hear something one detests without immediately seeking to destroy the speaker. That maturity is thinning. And institutional leadership has not helped. Rather than modeling resilience and restraint, too many leaders respond to every controversy with ritualized apologies and performative distancing.
This, in turn, reinforces a culture in which power flows not through argument but through outrage. The loudest voices do not persuade; they intimidate. The most extreme reactions set the rules. The center retreats.
Defending free speech in this environment is not a partisan exercise; it is a civic one. Conservatives should care when progressive speech is suppressed. Progressives should care when conservative speech is silenced. And all citizens should recognize that the erosion of expressive freedom is rarely symmetrical or stable. It expands. It metastasizes. It eventually reaches those who once applauded it.
If free speech only survives during moments of convenience, it’s not really free.
Supporting the right to speak does not mean endorsing what is said. It means believing that a free society is strong enough to withstand unpopular ideas without resorting to coercion. It means valuing persuasion over prohibition. It means recognizing that democracy requires friction.
Charlie Kirk may be a lightning rod, but the underlying issue is larger than any one figure. The question is whether we still believe in a public square robust enough to sustain disagreement. Whether our institutions still trust citizens to confront ideas rather than suppress them. Whether discomfort is something to be navigated or eliminated.
If free speech only survives during moments of convenience, it’s not really free. It is permission masquerading as principle. And permission always has an expiration date.
What this moment demands is not perfect harmony but civic courage: the willingness to say that speech should be protected even when we dislike the speaker, that debate should remain open even when it unsettles us, and that the strength of a liberal society lies not in silencing dissent but in enduring it.
That endurance is not weakness. It is democracy.
When people talk about a “duty of care” in higher education, the conversation almost always circles back to mental health – to counselling services, wellbeing strategies, or suicide prevention.
It’s understandable. Those are visible, urgent needs. But the phrase “duty of care” carries far more weight than any one policy or pastoral initiative.
It reaches into every space where universities hold power over students’ lives, and every context where harm is foreseeable and preventable.
That misunderstanding has shaped national policy, too. When over 128,000 people petitioned Parliament for a statutory duty of care in 2023, the Government’s response was to establish the Higher Education Mental Health Implementation Taskforce – a body focused on mental health and suicide prevention.
Its four objectives spoke volumes – boosting University Mental Health Charter sign-ups, expanding data analytics to flag students in distress, promoting “compassionate communications” to guide staff interactions with students and, where appropriate, with families, and overseeing a National Review of Higher Education Student Suicides.
These were not bad aims – but they did not speak to the duty that had been demanded. None addressed the legal, structural, or preventative responsibilities that underpin a real duty of care.
The Taskforce has tackled symptoms, not systems – outcomes, not obligations. By focusing on “student mental health,” the issue became more comfortable – easier to manage within existing policy frameworks and reputational boundaries.
It allowed the sector to appear to act, while sidestepping the harder questions of legal clarity, parity, and the accountability owed to those who were harmed, failed, or lost.
In a 2023 Wonkhe article, Sunday Blake made this point with striking clarity. “Duty of care,” she wrote, “is not just about suicide prevention.”
Nor, by extension, is duty of care just about mental health. Universities shape students’ experiences through housing, assessment, social structures, disciplinary systems, placement arrangements, and daily communications.
They wield influence that can support, endanger, empower or neglect. If the phrase “duty of care” is to mean anything, it must cover the full spectrum of foreseeable harm – not only the moments of crisis but the conditions that allow harm to build unseen.
Importantly, this broader understanding of duty of care is not confined to campaigners or bereaved families. The British Medical Association has also recently called for a statutory duty of care across higher education, after hundreds of medical students reported sexual misconduct, harassment, and institutional neglect in a UK-wide survey.
Drawing on evidence from its Medical Students Committee, the BMA argued that universities hold both knowledge and control, and therefore must bear legal responsibility for preventing foreseeable harm. Crucially, the BMA understands duty of care as a legal obligation – not a wellbeing initiative. Their intervention shows that this is not a niche debate about mental health, but a structural failure across the entire higher-education sector.
That wider perspective is not a theoretical question. It has been tested – violently, publicly, and avoidably – in real life.
In October 2009, Katherine Rosen was a third-year pre-med student at UCLA, one of America’s leading public universities. She was attending a routine chemistry class – an ordinary academic setting – when another student, Damon Thompson, approached her from behind and stabbed her in the neck and chest with a kitchen knife. He nearly killed her.
It was sudden. It was unprovoked. But it was not unexpected.
Thompson had a long, documented history of paranoid delusions. University psychiatrists had diagnosed him with schizophrenia and major depressive disorder. He reported hearing voices and believed classmates were plotting against him.
He had been expelled from university housing after multiple altercations. He told staff he was thinking about hurting others. He had specifically named Katherine in a complaint – claiming she had called him “stupid” during lab work.
Staff knew. Multiple professionals were aware of his condition – and the risks he posed. Just one day before the attack, he was discussed at a campus risk assessment meeting. And yet – no action was taken. No warning was issued, no protection was offered, and no safeguarding plan was put in place.
Katherine was left completely unaware. Because the university chose to do nothing.
After surviving the attack, Katherine took an action that would shape the future of student safety law in the United States – she sued her university.
Her claim was simple but profound. UCLA, she argued, had a special relationship with her as a student. That relationship – based on enrolment, proximity, institutional control, and expectation of care – created a legal duty to protect her from foreseeable harm. And that duty, she said, had been breached.
She wasn’t demanding perfection or suggesting universities could prevent every imaginable harm. She asked a basic question – if a student has been clearly identified as a threat, and the university knows it, doesn’t it have a legal responsibility to act before someone gets seriously hurt – or killed?
UCLA’s response? No. The university claimed it had no legal duty to protect adult students from the criminal acts of others – even when it was aware of a risk. This wasn’t their responsibility, they said. Universities weren’t guardians, and students weren’t children. No duty, no breach, no liability.
Their argument rested on a key principle of common law, shared by both the US and UK – that legal duties of care only arise in specific, established situations. Traditionally, adult-to-adult relationships – like those between a university and its students – did not automatically create such duties. Courts are cautious – they don’t want to impose sweeping responsibilities on institutions that may be unreasonable or unmanageable. But that argument ignores a crucial reality – the power imbalance, the structure, and the unique environment of university life.
Katherine’s case wound its way through the California courts for almost ten years. At every level, the same question remained – does a university owe a duty of care to its students in classroom settings, especially when it is aware of a specific risk?
Finally, in 2018, the California Supreme Court delivered a landmark ruling in her favour.
The Court held – by a clear majority – that yes, universities do owe such a duty. Not universally, not in every context – but during curricular activities, and particularly when risks are foreseeable, they must take reasonable protective measures.
The judgment clarified that a “special relationship” exists between universities and their students, based on the student’s dependence on the university for a “safe environment.” That relationship created not just moral expectations but legal ones.
In the Court’s own words:
Phrased at the appropriate level of generality, then, the question here is not whether UCLA could predict that Damon Thompson would stab Katherine Rosen in the chemistry lab. It is whether a reasonable university could foresee that its negligent failure to control a potentially violent student, or to warn students who were foreseeable targets of his ire, could result in harm to one of those students.
That emphasis on warning mattered. The Court was clear that the duty it recognised did not demand extraordinary measures or perfect foresight. The minimum reasonable step UCLA could have taken — and failed to take — was to warn Katherine or put in place basic protective actions once staff knew she was a potential target. It was this failure at the most elementary level of safeguarding that brought the duty sharply into focus.
And again:
Colleges [universities] provide academic courses in exchange for a fee, but a college is far more to its students than a business. Residential colleges provide living spaces, but they are more than mere landlords. Along with educational services, colleges provide students social, athletic, and cultural opportunities. Regardless of the campus layout, colleges provide a discrete community for their students. For many students, college is the first time they have lived away from home. Although college students may no longer be minors under the law, they may still be learning how to navigate the world as adults. They are dependent on their college communities to provide structure, guidance, and a safe learning environment.
This ruling was a seismic moment. It wasn’t just about Katherine – it was about thousands of other students, across hundreds of other classrooms, who could now expect, not merely hope, that their university would act when danger loomed.
This victory came at a cost. It took nearly a decade of litigation, immense emotional strength, and personal resilience. And even in success, the ruling was carefully limited in scope:
… that universities owe a duty to protect students from foreseeable violence during curricular activities.
The duty applied only to harm that was:
It did not impose a sweeping obligation on universities to protect students in all circumstances – nor should it. But it decisively rejected the idea that universities have no duty to protect.
This distinction – between the impossible and the reasonable – is crucial. The court did not ask universities to do the impossible. It simply expected them to act reasonably when aware of a real and specific risk to student safety. That principle sets a clear floor, not an unreachable ceiling, for institutional responsibility.
It also highlights a broader truth – duty of care in higher education is not a binary. It is not all or nothing. A range of duties may arise depending on the setting – academic, residential, or social – or the nature of the risk. The more control a university exercises, and the more vulnerable the student, the greater the duty it may owe.
This is not about creating impossible expectations – it is about recognising that responsibility must follow power.
That same logic – and the emerging recognition of limited but enforceable duties – has begun to surface in UK courts. In Feder and McCamish v The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, a County Court held that higher education institutions have a duty of care to carry out reasonable investigations when they receive allegations of sexual assault:
…by taking reasonable protective, supportive, investigatory and, when appropriate, disciplinary steps and in associated communications.
Again, where institutions have knowledge and control, the law expects a proportionate response.
But it is important to recognise just how narrow the duty was in Feder & McCamish. The College already had safeguarding procedures in place, and liability arose only because it failed to follow the process it had voluntarily adopted when students reported serious sexual assault.
The court did not recognise any general duty to protect student welfare – it simply enforced the College’s own promises. It illustrates the limits of UK law – duties arise only in piecemeal, procedural ways, leaving large gaps in protection whenever an institution has not explicitly committed itself to a particular process, or chooses not to follow it.
The Rosen judgment exposes a truth that too many still miss. Duty of care in higher education is not about expanding counselling teams or implementing wellbeing charters. It’s about the structure of responsibility itself – who knows what, who can act, and who must act when risk is foreseeable.
In Katherine Rosen’s case, mental health support for Damon Thompson already existed. What failed was the system around him – communication, coordination, and the willingness to protect others. The danger was known, the mechanisms to prevent it were available, and the decision to use them was not taken.
That is why framing “duty of care” as a question of mental health provision misses the point. Whether the risk is psychological, physical, financial, or reputational, the same principle applies – when institutions hold both knowledge and control, they owe a duty to act with care.
From assaults in halls to exploitation on placements, from harassment ignored to risks left unmonitored, the duty of care spans far more than mental health. It is about foreseeable harm in any form. It is about accountability that matches authority. It is about creating a culture in which doing nothing or ignoring what you know is no longer an option.
As Parliament prepares to debate the issue once again, the Rosen case stands as a reminder that this conversation cannot stop at wellbeing. The question is not whether universities should care about students’ mental health – of course they should. The question is whether they will take responsibility for the predictable consequences of their own systems, structures, and decisions.
Katherine Rosen’s survival – and her long legal struggle – gave the world a clearer definition of that responsibility. It showed that duty of care is not about offering sympathy after the fact, but about preventing foreseeable harm before it happens. That is the real meaning of duty of care in higher education – and it is the clarity the UK still urgently lacks.
A YouTube video about Spotify popped into my feed this weekend, and it’s been rattling around my head ever since.
Partly because it’s about music streaming, but mostly because it’s all about what’s wrong with how we think about student choice in higher education.
The premise runs like this. A guy decides to do “No Stream November” – a month without Spotify, using only physical media instead.
His argument, backed by Barry Schwartz’s paradox of choice research and a raft of behavioural economics, is that unlimited access to millions of songs has made us less satisfied, not more.
We skip tracks every 20 to 30 seconds. We never reach the guitar solo. We’re treating music like a discount buffet – trying a bit of everything but never really savouring anything. And then going back to the playlists we created earlier.
The video’s conclusion is that scarcity creates satisfaction. Ritual and effort (opening the album, dropping the needle, sitting down to actually listen) make music meaningful.
Six carefully chosen options produce more satisfaction than 24, let alone millions. It’s the IKEA effect applied to music – we value what we labour over.
I’m interested in choice. Notwithstanding the debate over what a “course” is, Unistats data shows that there were 36,421 of them on offer in 2015/16. This year that figure is 30,801.
That still feels like a lot, given that the University of Helsinki only offers 34 bachelor’s degree programmes.
Of course a lot of the entries on DiscoverUni separately list “with a foundation year” and there’s plenty of subject combinations.
But nevertheless, the UK’s bewildering range of programmes must be quite a nightmare for applicants to pick through – it’s just that once they’re on them, job cuts and switches to block teaching are delivering increasingly less choice in elective pathways than they used to.
We appear to have a system that combines overwhelming choice at the point of least knowledge (age 17, alongside A-levels, with imperfect information) with rigid narrowness at the point of most knowledge (once enrolled, when students actually understand what they want to study and why). It’s the worst of both worlds.
The government’s vision for improving student choice runs to a couple of paragraphs in the Skills White Paper, and it’s worth quoting in full:
We will work with UCAS, the Office for Students and the sector to improve the quality of information for individuals, informed by the best evidence on the factors that influence the choices people make as they consider their higher education options. Providing applicants with high-quality, impartial, personalised and timely information is essential to ensuring they can make informed decisions when choosing what to study. Recent UCAS reforms aimed at increasing transparency and improving student choice include historic entry grades data, allowing students, along with their teachers and advisers, to see both offer rates and the historic grades of previous successful applicants admitted to a particular course, in addition to the entry requirements published by universities and colleges.
As we see more students motivated by career prospects, we will work with UCAS and Universities UK to ensure that graduate outcomes information spanning employment rates, earnings and the design and nature of work (currently available on Discover Uni) are available on the UCAS website. We will also work with the Office for Students to ensure their new approach to assessing quality produces clear ratings which will help prospective students understand the quality of the courses on offer, including clear information on how many students successfully complete their courses.”
The implicit theory of change is straightforward – if we just give students more data about each of the courses, they’ll make better choices, and everyone wins. It’s the same logic that says if Spotify added more metadata to every track (BPM, lyrical themes, engineer credits), you’d finally find the perfect song. I doubt it.
If the Department for Education (DfE) was serious about deploying the best evidence on the factors that influence the choices people make, it would know about the research showing that more information doesn’t solve choice overload, because choice overload is a cognitive capacity problem, not an information quality problem.
Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper’s foundational 2000 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that when students faced 30 essay topic options versus six options, completion rates dropped from 74 per cent to 60 per cent, and essay quality declined significantly on both content and form measures. That’s a 14 percentage point completion drop from excessive choice alone, and objectively worse work from those who did complete.
A study on Jam showed customers were ten times more likely to buy when presented with six flavours rather than 24, despite 60 per cent more people initially stopping at the extensive display. More choice is simultaneously more appealing and more demotivating. That’s the paradox.
CFE Research’s 2018 study for the Office for Students (back when providing useful research for the sector was something it did) laid this all out explicitly for higher education contexts.
Decision making about HE is challenging because the system is complex and there are lots of alternatives and attributes to consider. Those considering HE are making decisions in conditions of uncertainty, and in these circumstances, individuals tend to rely on convenient but flawed mental shortcuts rather than solely rational criteria. There’s no “one size fits all” information solution, nor is there a shortlist of criteria that those considering HE use.
The study found that students rely heavily on family, friends, and university visits, and many choices ultimately come down to whether a decision “feels right” rather than rational analysis of data. When asked to explain their decisions retrospectively, students’ explanations differ from their actual decision-making processes – we’re not reliable informants about why we made certain choices.
A 2015 meta-analysis by Chernev, Böckenholt, and Goodman in the Journal of Consumer Psychology identified the conditions under which choice overload occurs – it’s moderated by choice set complexity, decision task difficulty, and individual differences in decision-making style. Working memory capacity limits humans to processing approximately seven items simultaneously. When options exceed this cognitive threshold, students experience decision paralysis.
Maximiser students (those seeking the absolute best option) make objectively better decisions but feel significantly worse about them. They selected jobs with 20 per cent higher salaries yet felt less satisfied, more stressed, frustrated, anxious, and regretful than satisficers (those accepting “good enough”). For UK applicants facing tens of thousands of courses, maximisers face a nearly impossible optimisation problem, leading to chronic second-guessing and regret.
The equality dimension is especially stark. Bailey, Jaggars, and Jenkins’s research found that students in “cafeteria college” systems with abundant disconnected choices “often have difficulty navigating these choices and end up making poor decisions about what programme to enter, what courses to take, and when to seek help.” Only 30 per cent completed three-year degrees within three years.
First-generation students, students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, and students of colour are systematically disadvantaged by overwhelming choice because they lack the cultural capital and family knowledge to navigate it effectively.
But if unlimited choice at entry is a cognitive overload problem, what happens once students enrol should balance that with flexibility and breadth. Students gain expertise, develop clearer goals, and should have more autonomy to explore and specialise as they progress.
Except that’s not what’s happening. Financial pressures across the sector are driving institutions to reduce module offerings – exactly when research suggests students need more flexibility, not less.
The Benefits of Hindsight research on graduate regret says it all. A sizeable share of applicants later wish they’d chosen differently – not usually to avoid higher education, but to pick a different subject or provider. The regret grows once graduates hit the labour market.
Many students who felt mismatched would have liked to change course or university once enrolled – about three in five undergraduates and nearly two in three graduates among those expressing regret – but didn’t, often because they didn’t know how, thought it was too late, or feared the cost and disruption.
The report argues there’s “inherent rigidity” in UK provision – a presumption that the initial choice should stick despite evolving interests, new information, and labour-market realities. Students described courses being less practical or less aligned to work than expected, or modules being withdrawn as finances tightened. That dynamic narrows options precisely when students are learning what they do and don’t want.
Career options become the dominant reason graduates cite for wishing they’d chosen differently. But that’s not because they lacked earnings data at 17. It’s because their interests evolved, they discovered new fields, labour market signals changed, and the rigid structure gave them no way to pivot without starting again.
The Competition and Markets Authority now explicitly identifies as misleading actions “where an HE provider gives a misleading impression about the number of optional modules that will be available.” Students have contractual rights to the module catalogue promised during recruitment. Yet redundancy rounds repeatedly reduce the size and scope of optional module catalogues for students who remain.
There’s also an emerging consensus from the research on what actually works for module choice. An LSE analysis found that adding core modules within the home department was associated with higher satisfaction, whereas mandatory modules outside the home department depressed it. Students want depth and coherence in their chosen subject. They also value autonomous choice over breadth options.
Research repeatedly shows that elective modules are evaluated more positively than required ones (autonomy effects), and interdisciplinary breadth is associated with stronger cross-disciplinary skills and higher post-HE earnings when it’s purposeful and scaffolded.
So what does this all suggest?
As I’ve discussed on the site before, at the University of Helsinki – Finland’s flagship institution with 40,000 students – there’s 32 undergraduate programmes. Within each programme, students must take 90 ECTS credits in their major subject, but the other 75 ECTS credits must come from other programmes’ modules. That’s 42 per cent of the degree as mandatory breadth, but students choose which modules from clear disciplinary categories.
The structure is simple – six five-credit introductory courses in your subject, then 60 credits of intermediate study with substantial module choice, including proseminars, thesis work, and electives. Add 15 credits for general studies (study planning, digital skills, communication), and you’ve got a degree. The two “modules” (what we’d call stages) get a single grade each on a one-to-five scale, producing a simple, legible transcript.
Helsinki runs this on a 22.2 to one staff-student ratio, significantly worse than the UK average, after Finland faced €500 million in higher education cuts. It’s not lavishly resourced – it’s structurally efficient.
Maynooth University in Ireland reduced CAO (their UCAS) entry routes from about 50 to roughly 20 specifically to “ease choice and deflate points inflation.” Students can start with up to four subjects in year one, then move to single major, double major, or major with minor. Switching options are kept open through first year. It’s progressive specialisation – broad exploration early when students have least context, increasing focus as they develop expertise.
Also elsewhere on the site, Técnico in Lisbon – the engineering and technology faculty of the University of Lisbon – rationalised to 18 undergraduate courses following a student-led reform process. Those 18 courses contain hundreds of what the UK system would call “courses” via module combinations, but without the administrative overhead. They require nine ECTS credits (of 180) in social sciences and humanities for all engineering programmes because “engineers need to be equipped not just to build systems, but to understand the societies they shape.”
Crucially, students themselves pushed for this structure. They conducted structured interviews, staged debates, and developed reform positions. They wanted shared first years, fewer concurrent modules to reduce cognitive load, more active learning methods, and more curricular flexibility including free electives and minors.
The University of Vilnius allows up to 25 per cent of the degree as “individual studies” – but it’s structured into clear categories – minors (30 to 60 credits in a secondary field, potentially leading to double diploma), languages (20-plus options with specific registration windows), interdisciplinary modules (curated themes), and cross-institution courses (formal cooperation with arts and music academies). Not unlimited chaos, just structured exploration within categorical choices.
What all these models share is a recognition that you can have both depth and breadth, structure and flexibility, coherence and exploration – if you design programmes properly. You need roughly 60 to 70 per cent core pathway in the major for depth and satisfaction, 20 to 30 per cent guided electives organised into three to five clear categories per decision point, and maybe 10 to 15 per cent completely free electives.
The UK’s subject benchmark statements, if properly refreshed (and consolidated down a bit) could provide the regulatory infrastructure for it all. Australia undertook a version of this in 2010 through their Learning and Teaching Academic Standards project, which defined threshold learning outcomes for major discipline groupings through extensive sector consultation (over 420 meetings with more than 6,100 attendees). Those TLOs now underpin TEQSA’s quality regime and enable programme-level approval while protecting autonomy.
The white paper’s information provision agenda isn’t wrong – it’s just addressing the wrong problem at the wrong end of the process. Publishing earnings data doesn’t solve cognitive overload from tens of thousands of courses, quality ratings don’t help students whose interests evolve and who need flexibility to pivot, and historic entry grades don’t fix the rigidity that manufactures regret.
What would actually help is structural reform that the international evidence consistently supports – consolidation to roughly 20 to 40 programmes per institution (aligned with subject benchmark statement areas), with substantial protected module choice within those programmes, organised into clear categories like minors, languages, and interdisciplinary options.
Some of those groups of individual modules might struggle to recruit if they were whole courses – think music and languages. They may well (and across Europe, do) sustain research-active academics if they could exist in broader structures. Fewer, clearer programmes at entry when students have least context, and more, structured flexibility during the degree when students have expertise to choose wisely.
The efficiency argument is real – maintaining thousands of separate course codes, each with approval processes, quality assurance, marketing materials, and UCAS coordination is absurd overhead for what’s often just different permutations of the same modules. See also hundreds of “programme leaders” each having to be chased to fill a form in.
Fewer programme directors with more module convenors beneath them is far more rational. And crucially, modules serve multiple student populations (what other systems would call majors and minors, and students taking breadth from elsewhere), making specialist provision viable even with smaller cohorts.
The equality case is compelling – guided pathways with structured choice demonstrably improve outcomes for first-in-family students, students of colour, and low-income students, populations that regulators are charged with protecting. If current choice architecture systematically disadvantages exactly these students, that’s not pedagogical preference – it’s a regulatory failure.
And the evidence on what students actually want once enrolled validates it all – they value depth in their chosen subject, they want autonomous choice over breadth options (not forced generic modules), they benefit from interdisciplinary exposure when it’s purposeful, and they need flexibility to correct course when their goals evolve.
The white paper could have engaged with any of this. Instead, we get promises to publish more data on UCAS. It’s more Spotify features when what students need is a curated record collection and the freedom to build their own mixtape once they know what they actually like.
What little reform is coming is informed by the assumption that if students just had better search filters, unlimited streaming would finally work. It won’t.
It was a bit of a relief to have well-traveled terrain as the today’s topic in Harold Jarche’s Personal Knowledge Mastery workshop: Aggregators and RSS.
While I still want to drop everything going on in my life right now and dive deep into the topic from two days ago (the Cynefin Framework), that just isn’t realistic. This PKMastery workshop has been a wonderful blend of ideas that challenge me, coupled with topics that I always enjoy learning more about, but am not starting from scratch with…
It seems RSS could really have used some help from Galinda in the musical, Wicked, in terms of getting popular. I wish aggregators and RSS were something that the vast majority of people knew about and had incorporated into their lifelong learning and sense-making. It’s strange to me that RSS has been around such a long time, yet still isn’t very common in organizations at all.
In case the terms (RSS and aggregators) are new to you, Common Craft’s RSS in Plain English from 18 years ago still checks out:
I’ve got some good news for you, some bad news, and some real ugly news.
The good: There’s a ton of information on the internet, which has the potential to be transformative for us, as sense-making human beings.
The bad: We can’t keep up and the quantity of information just keeps on growing, yet not enough of us know ways to harness the possibilities.
The ugly: Some of us give up on thinking we’ll never be able to have a way of seeking, sensing, and sharing, so we resolve to just search for things at the exact moment we realize we have a specific question about something (a gap in our knowledge that we are aware of in that moment).
What gets missed here in “the ugly” (among other things) are the questions we don’t even realize that we have… The unknown unknowns… Not to mention misinformation/disinformation, etc.
Here are some RSS-related articles that I’ve saved on my digital bookmarking tool of choice: Raindrop:
Next, let’s take a look at how I’ve set things up to be a tap away from a world of possibilities for sense-making…
I use Inoreader as my RSS aggregator. That means that when I discover a source (news site, blog, newsletter, YouTube channel, etc.) that I discern will serve me up potentially useful information, I add it to Inoreader inside my existing folders (e.g. News, Technology, Business, Digital Pedagogy, Higher Ed, Thinkers). Each time one of those sources (called feeds in RSS nomenclature) posts something new, it automatically shows up as an unread item on Inoreader.
They download Inoreader’s app(s) and read their feeds on their computers or smart phones and they’re off to the races. Inoreader is both an RSS aggregator (keeping track of what feeds the user subscribes to, as well as which stories they have read/not read).
However, I’m picky about my reading experience and have gotten particular about being able to read via my iPad and navigate everything with just one thumb.
This is where you insert a joke about “who has two thumbs and can set up RSS aggregators and tools? ME.” Except that in my case, it actually only takes one thumb, using my preferred RSS reader.
Those who read on iPads would be hard pressed to find a better RSS reader than Unread, especially if you want to be able to skim and scroll through headlines (you can set up Unread to automatically mark the items as read, as you scroll through them, making the navigation even easier).
Inoreader does the work behind the scenes of keeping track of all my subscriptions and what is read/unread. The Unread app then presents me with a “window” into all that “stuff” Inoreader is keeping track of in the background. Unread “syncs” with Inoreader. I don’t have much use of an RSS reader on my Mac, preferring to do most of my RSS consumption via my iPad, but I wanted to mention that even if you had a different app/service you preferred to use on your computer, Inoreader (and other RSS aggregators) are able to keep track across different RSS readers what you’ve read/unread.
Harold Jarche suggested that those of us who already have an aggregator / RSS workflow to share tips. I’ve kind of done that, already, above. But I will say that through his materials, I was delighted to discover that I can set up feeds for Mastodon #hashtags.
From Harold:
You can also subscribe to any Mastodon feed by adding .rss to the address, e.g. mastodon.social/@harold.rss
You can subscribe to #hashtags by appending .rss — e.g. https://mastodon.social/tags/pkmastery.rss
The PKMastery workshop is the gift that just keeps on giving. I’m looking forward to giving that a try this weekend. So cool.
Your website is one of your institution’s most valuable assets, and also one of its more expensive and labor-intensive. It serves as the front door for prospective students, a resource hub for current ones, and a critical platform for driving enrollment.
But when performance drops — conversions are low, traffic is declining, or user experience feels outdated — many institutions assume a full redesign is the only solution.
Before you make that call, take a step back. A complete rebuild isn’t always the smartest or most cost-effective path. Sometimes, targeted improvements to your existing site can deliver significant results without the high price tag.
So how do you decide if it’s time to rebuild or if your current site simply needs smarter strategy and support?
Let’s walk through what to look for.
When a site isn’t performing, you need to pinpoint why. These common red flags often indicate underlying issues that should prompt a deeper evaluation:
To be clear, none of these should be considered death sentences for your website. But they’re strong signals that further evaluation should take place.
A clear-eyed look at your site’s current state can help determine whether optimization or a rebuild makes more sense. Start here:
If your site’s foundation is sound, targeted improvements may deliver high ROI at a lower cost. But if technical debt, poor UX, or fragmented infrastructure are holding you back, a rebuild could be the better investment.
Keep these ballpark figures in mind:
Also consider the hidden costs of delay — missed inquiries, lower conversions, and outdated experiences that don’t meet student expectations.
A side-by-side cost-benefit analysis, grounded in performance data and institutional goals, is the best way to determine your path forward.
Deciding between a website refresh or a rebuild is a big decision, and it shouldn’t be made in isolation. A strategic partner with deep higher ed expertise can help you evaluate your current digital ecosystem, identify gaps, and recommend the most cost-effective solution.
At Collegis, we work with colleges and universities to optimize digital experiences that convert. Whether you’re refining an existing platform or building from the ground up, our web strategy team can help you create a future-ready site aligned with student needs and institutional goals.
Let’s talk about how to get your website working smarter.
Higher ed is evolving — don’t get left behind. Explore how Collegis can help your institution thrive.
In the past 20 years in the U.S., mindfulness transitioned from being a new-age curiosity to becoming a more mainstream part of American culture, as people learned more about how mindfulness can reduce their stress and improve their well-being.
Researchers estimate that over 1 million children in the U.S. have been exposed to mindfulness in their schools, mostly at the elementary level, often taught by classroom teachers or school counselors.
I have been researching mindfulness in K-12 American schools for 15 years. I have investigated the impact of mindfulness on students, explored the experiences of teachers who teach mindfulness in K-12 schools, and examined the challenges and benefits of implementing mindfulness in these settings.
I have noticed that mindfulness programs vary in what particular mindfulness skills are taught and what lesson objectives are. This makes it difficult to compare across studies and draw conclusions about how mindfulness helps students in schools.
Different definitions of mindfulness exist.
Some people might think mindfulness means simply practicing breathing, for example.
A common definition from Jon Kabat-Zinn, a mindfulness expert who helped popularize mindfulness in Western countries, says mindfulness is about “paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, nonjudgmentally, in the present moment.”
Essentially, mindfulness is a way of being. It is a person’s approach to each moment and their orientation to both inner and outer experience, the pleasant and the unpleasant. Fundamental to mindfulness is how a person chooses to direct their attention.
In practice, mindfulness can involve different practices, including guided meditations, mindful movement and breathing. Mindfulness programs can also help people develop a variety of skills, including openness to experiences and more focused attention.
A few years ago, I decided to investigate school mindfulness programs themselves and consider what it means for children to learn mindfulness at schools. What do the programs actually teach?
I believe that understanding this information can help educators, parents and policymakers make more informed decisions about whether mindfulness belongs in their schools.
In 2023, my colleagues and I conducted a deep dive into 12 readily available mindfulness curricula for K-12 students to investigate what the programs contained. Across programs, we found no consistency of content, teaching practices or time commitment.
For example, some mindfulness programs in K-12 schools incorporate a lot of movement, with some specifically teaching yoga poses. Others emphasize interpersonal skills such as practicing acts of kindness, while others focus mostly on self-oriented skills such as focused attention, which may occur by focusing on one’s breath.
We also found that some programs have students do a lot of mindfulness practices, such as mindful movement or mindful listening, while others teach about mindfulness, such as learning how the brain functions.
Finally, the number of lessons in a curriculum ranged from five to 44, meaning some programs occurred over just a few weeks and some required an entire school year.
Despite indications that mindfulness has some positive impacts for school-age children, the evidence is also not consistent, as shown by other research.
One of the largest recent studies of mindfulness in schools found in 2022 no change in students who received mindfulness instruction.
Some experts believe, though, that the lack of results in this 2022 study on mindfulness was partially due to a curriculum that might have been too advanced for middle school-age children.
Since attention is critical for students’ success in school, it is not surprising that mindfulness appeals to many educators.
Research on student engagement and executive functioning supports the claim that any student’s ability to filter out distractions and prioritize the objects of their thoughts improves their academic success.
Mindfulness programs have been shown to improve students’ mental health and decrease students’ and teachers’ stress levels.
Mindfulness has also been shown to help children emotionally regulate.
Even before social media, teachers perennially struggled to get students to pay attention. Reviews of multiple studies have shown some positive effects of mindfulness on outcomes, including improvements in academic achievement and school adjustment.
A 2023 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cites mindfulness as one of six evidence-based strategies K-12 schools should use to promote students’ mental health and well-being.
Knowing what is in the mindfulness curriculum, how it is taught and how long the student spends on mindfulness matters. Students may be learning very different skills with significantly different amounts of time to reinforce those skills.
Researchers suggest, for example, that mindfulness programs most likely to improve academic or mental health outcomes of children offer activities geared toward their developmental level, such as shorter mindfulness practices and more repetition.
In other words, mindfulness programs for children cannot just be watered down versions of adult programs.
Mindfulness research in school settings is still relatively new, though there is encouraging data that mindfulness can sharpen skills necessary for students’ academic success and promote their mental health.
In addition to the need for more research on the outcomes of mindfulness, it is important for educators, parents, policymakers and researchers to look closely at the curriculum to understand what the students are actually doing.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
