Tag: Legacy

Legacy and Purpose: Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett Calls Tougaloo Graduates to Action

–JACKSON, Mississippi

Texas Congresswoman Jasmine CrockettIn a powerful address that wove together civil rights history with present-day challenges, U.S. Representative Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) delivered an impassioned commencement speech at Tougaloo College’s graduation ceremony on Sunday, urging graduates to embrace their purpose in continuing the fight for progress.

Standing on the historic grounds of the private Mississippi HBCU—once a sanctuary and launch pad for the Civil Rights Movement—the Congresswoman reflected on the paradoxical nature of the moment: that in 2025, her very presence as a speaker remained controversial.

“As I stand here in this safe space, still only one of the few places that an institution can invite me to speak… to think about the fact that people have to be fearful of having a sitting member of Congress come and address their graduates tells us that we still got a lot of work to do,” she told the graduates.

Drawing parallels between past and present struggles, she reminded the audience that Tougaloo was one of a few places in Mississippi where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. could speak during the Civil Rights Movement. Now, decades later, she noted the irony of similar limitations placed on Black voices in positions of power.

“The president of the United States having a temper tantrum that strips funding because I’m Black and I’m proud should not be something that we are dealing with in 2025,” she stated, her voice rising with conviction.

The Congresswoman, who acknowledged working multiple jobs during her own college years, spoke candidly about personal struggles and the fatigue that comes with fighting systemic barriers. Invoking the refrain from the gospel song “I Don’t Feel No Ways Tired,” she encouraged graduates to persevere despite exhaustion.

“I just can’t give up now. I’ve come too far from where I started from,” she recited, asking graduates to reflect on their own journeys through college—the multiple jobs, the stepping away and stepping back in—all while excelling despite the challenges.

Her message anchored in both acknowledgment of weariness and the necessity of continued struggle, themes particularly relevant at an institution with Tougaloo’s civil rights legacy. The college was home to the “Tougaloo Nine,” students who organized sit-ins at segregated libraries, and alumni like Anne Moody and Memphis Norman, who participated in the historic Woolworth’s lunch counter sit-in in 1963.

“Sitting in these very classrooms is just as much of a protest as Anne and Memphis pulling up to Woolworths in 1963,” she said, emphasizing how education remains an act of resistance.

The Congresswoman warned graduates about attempts to erase this history, not just from textbooks but through policies targeting diversity initiatives and institutions serving Black communities. “Jim Crow never died,” she declared. “He just lied in wait.”

She shared personal experiences of being labeled “ghetto” and “unqualified” despite her impressive credentials—modern versions of racial epithets—connecting these attacks to historical patterns of undermining Black achievement and institutions.

Looking to the future, she issued a direct challenge to the graduates.

“If you are waiting on somebody to come and save you, they are not coming,” she warned. “You are the person that you’ve been waiting on.”

Reminding them that every significant social justice movement has been led by young people, she noted that she is now older than Medgar Evers, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X were when they were assassinated.

“Your moment is not in the future. Your moment is now,” she urged. “This country is relying on each and every one of you to walk into your purpose and to walk in greatness with your head held high.”

The Congresswoman’s speech resonated deeply with the graduates and assembled families at Tougaloo, an institution that has persisted in its educational mission despite historical and ongoing challenges.

“She was dynamic and passionate,” said Rose Lucas, whose niece was among the more than 120 undergraduates to receive their diploma. “At a time when so many of our politicians are afraid to speak out against the injustices in Washington, I am encouraged by the Congresswoman’s passion and commitment.”

As Crockett concluded with a call to action, she left the new alumni with a poignant message about belonging.

“There are people that are going to tell you that there is not a table in which there is a seat for you, but I am here to remind you of Montgomery and those folding chairs.”

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May 4, 2025
A Legacy That Will Not Be Erased

Dr. Mary Dana HintonMarch 12th would have been my mother’s 99th birthday. It surprises me every day that she’s not here to celebrate it. For her entire life, she was a vibrant testament to the value and the necessity of education for women.

My mother believed in the promise that with an education, you could not only help yourself but also have an obligation to help those around you. She believed that all that stood between a woman and anything she wanted to achieve in this world was an education.

As someone who was forbidden from getting an education, it became her life’s work to learn as much as she could on her own and to remind others – especially women – of the great privilege of an education.

When I think of those lessons from my mother, I invariably think of her knees. My mother worked as a domestic for much of her life. For my entire childhood, I remember she would come home with her knees swollen to the size of grapefruits. Throughout her life, for her work and for her family, she cleaned floors on her hands and knees because that’s how you did that job with excellence. To my mother, your value was not determined by what job you did, but by the quality with which you completed the job.

She expected the same level of excellence from me in school and would expect the same from me in my work today.

When I’m wearied by the work of being a college president, when I’m exhausted by the demands of this moment, when I’m tired of trying to think of another way to move our mission forward, I think of my mother’s knees. Those knees made sure I could get an education. Those knees that for 94 years held up a woman who had a complicated relationship with the United States given that as much of her life was spent in a segregated Jim Crow society as not. But those knees never dampened her belief in the promise of education, which was also a belief in the promise of democracy.

As such, my mother would be irate that, among those on a long list, the word “women” is one that federal agencies are now discouraged from using or being asked to eliminate from official language. That, with the reduction of support for education, would have felt like a violation to her. An erasure of our shared humanity. She might have said that these choices are beyond puzzling, and the irony would not have been lost on her that this request arrived during this annual month designated to celebrate women’s history.

As I celebrate my mother, I also want to take a moment and honor what is a result of her legacy. Her deep and abiding belief in education has now become my deep and abiding belief in education, and I am so very proud of what my institution is able to offer women, not only on behalf of my institution and myself but on behalf of the work and commitment of my mother.

While we mark this year’s celebration of Women’s History Month in America, I want to honor my mother, Susie Ann Hinton, and all the women who believe in and deserve an excellent education. They and their legacies will not be erased.

Dr. Mary Dana Hinton is president of Hollins University, chair of the Council of Independent Colleges of Virginia and chair of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.

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March 20, 2025
The Dark Legacy of Elite University Medical Centers

(Image: Mass General is Harvard University Medical School’s teaching hospital.)

For decades, America’s elite university medical centers have been the epitome of healthcare research and innovation, providing world-class treatment, education, and cutting-edge medical advancements. Yet, beneath this polished surface lies a troubling legacy of medical exploitation, systemic inequality, and profound injustice—one that disproportionately impacts marginalized communities. While the focus has often been on racial disparities, this issue is not solely about race; it is also deeply entangled with class. In recent years, books like Medical Apartheid by Harriet Washington have illuminated the history of medical abuse, but they also serve as a reminder that inequality in healthcare goes far beyond race and touches upon the economic and social circumstances of individuals.

The term Medical Apartheid, as coined by Harriet Washington, refers to the systemic and institutionalized exploitation of Black Americans in medical research and healthcare. Washington’s work examines the history of Black Americans as both victims of medical experimentation and subjects of discriminatory practices that have left deep scars within the healthcare system. Yet, the complex interplay between race and class means that many poor or economically disadvantaged individuals, regardless of race, have also faced neglect and exploitation within these prestigious medical institutions. The legacy of inequality within elite university medical centers, therefore, is not limited to race but is also an issue of class disparity, where wealthier individuals are more likely to receive proper care and access to cutting-edge treatments while the poor are relegated to substandard care.

Historical examples of exploitation and abuse in medical centers are well-documented in Washington’s work, and contemporary lawsuits and investigations reveal that these systemic problems still persist. Poor patients, especially those from marginalized racial backgrounds, are often viewed as expendable research subjects. The lawsuit underscores the intersectionality of race and class, arguing that these patients’ socio-economic status exacerbates their vulnerability to medical exploitation, making it easier for institutions to treat them as less than human, especially when they lack the resources or power to contest medical practices.

One of the most critical components of this issue is the stark contrast in healthcare access between the wealthy and the poor. While elite university medical centers boast state-of-the-art facilities, cutting-edge treatments, and renowned researchers, these resources are often not equally accessible to all. Wealthier patients are more likely to have the financial means to receive the best care, not just because of their ability to pay but because they are more likely to be referred to these prestigious centers. Conversely, low-income patients, especially those without insurance or with inadequate insurance, are often forced into overcrowded public hospitals or community clinics that are underfunded, understaffed, and unable to provide the level of care available at elite institutions.

The issue of class inequality within medical care is evident in several key areas. For instance, studies have shown that low-income patients, regardless of race, are less likely to receive timely and appropriate medical care. A 2019 report from the National Academy of Medicine found that low-income patients are often dismissed by healthcare professionals who underestimate the severity of their symptoms or assume they are less knowledgeable about their own health. In addition, patients from lower socio-economic backgrounds are more likely to experience medical debt, which can lead to long-term financial struggles and prevent them from seeking care in the future.

Moreover, class plays a significant role in the underrepresentation of poor individuals in medical research, which is often conducted at elite university medical centers. Historically, clinical trials have excluded low-income participants, leaving them without access to potentially life-saving treatments or advancements. Wealthier individuals, on the other hand, are more likely to be invited to participate in research studies, ensuring they benefit from the very innovations and breakthroughs that these institutions claim to provide.

Class-based disparities are also reflected in the inequities in medical professions. The road to becoming a physician or researcher in these elite institutions is often paved with significant economic barriers. Medical students from low-income backgrounds face steep financial challenges, which can hinder their ability to gain acceptance into prestigious medical schools or pursue advanced research opportunities. Even when low-income students do manage to enter these programs, they often face biases and discrimination in clinical settings, where their abilities are unfairly questioned, and their economic status may prevent them from fully participating in research or other educational opportunities.

Yet, the inequities within these institutions don’t stop at the patients. Behind the scenes, workers at elite university medical centers, particularly those from working-class and marginalized backgrounds, face their own form of exploitation. These medical centers are not only spaces of high medical achievement but also sites of labor stratification, where workers in lower-paying roles are largely people of color and often immigrants. Support staff—such as janitors, food service workers, custodians, and administrative assistants—are often invisible but essential to the functioning of these hospitals and research institutions. These workers face long hours, poor working conditions, and low wages, all while contributing to the daily operations of elite medical centers. Many of these workers, employed through third-party contractors, lack benefits, job security, or protections, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation.

Custodial workers, who are often exposed to hazardous chemicals and physically demanding work, may struggle to make ends meet, despite playing a crucial role in maintaining the hospital environment. Similarly, food service workers—many of whom are Black, Latinx, or immigrant—also work in demanding conditions for low wages. These workers frequently face job insecurity and are not given the same recognition or compensation as the high-ranking physicians, researchers, or administrators in these centers.

At the same time, the stratification in these institutions extends beyond support staff. Medical researchers, residents, and postdoctoral fellows—often young, early-career individuals, many from working-class backgrounds or communities of color—are similarly subjected to precarious working conditions. These individuals perform much of the vital research that drives innovation at these centers, yet they often face exploitative working hours, low pay, and job insecurity. They are the backbone of the institution’s research output but frequently face barriers to advancement and recognition.

The higher ranks of these institutions—senior doctors, professors, and researchers—enjoy financial rewards, job security, and prestige, while those at the lower rungs continue to experience instability and exploitation. This division, which mirrors the economic and racial hierarchies of broader society, reinforces the very class-based inequalities these medical centers are meant to address.

In recent years, some progress has been made in addressing these inequalities. Many elite universities have implemented diversity and inclusion programs aimed at increasing access for underrepresented minority and low-income students in medical schools. Some institutions have also begun to emphasize the importance of cultural competence in training medical professionals, acknowledging the need to recognize and understand both racial and economic disparities in healthcare.

However, critics argue that these efforts, while important, are often superficial and fail to address the root causes of inequality. The institutional focus on “diversity” and “inclusion” often overlooks the more significant structural issues, such as the affordability of education, the class-based access to healthcare, and the economic barriers that continue to undermine the ability of disadvantaged individuals to receive quality care.

In addition to acknowledging racial inequality, it is crucial to tackle the broader issue of class within the healthcare system. The disproportionate number of Black and low-income individuals suffering from poor healthcare outcomes is a direct result of a system that privileges wealth and status over human dignity. To begin addressing these issues, we need to move beyond token diversity initiatives and work toward policy reforms that focus on economic access, insurance coverage, and the equitable distribution of medical resources.

Scholars like Harriet Washington, whose work documents the intersection of race, class, and healthcare inequality, continue to play a pivotal role in bringing attention to these systemic injustices. Washington’s book Medical Apartheid serves as a historical record but also as a call to action for creating a healthcare system that genuinely serves all people, regardless of race or socio-economic status. The fight for healthcare equity must, therefore, be a dual one—against both racial and class-based disparities that have long plagued our medical institutions.

The story of Henrietta Lacks, as told in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, exemplifies the longstanding exploitation of marginalized individuals in elite university medical centers. The case of Lacks, whose cells were taken without consent by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, brings to light both the historical abuse of Black bodies and the profit-driven nature of academic medical research. Johns Hopkins, one of the most prestigious medical centers in the world, has been complicit in the kind of exploitation and neglect that these institutions are often criticized for—issues that disproportionately affect not only Black Americans but also economically disadvantaged individuals.

The Black Panther Party’s healthcare activism, as chronicled by Alondra Nelson in Body and Soul, also directly challenges elite medical institutions’ failure to provide adequate care for Black and low-income communities. Nelson’s work reflects how, even today, these institutions are often slow to address the systemic issues of health disparities that activists like the Panthers fought against.

Recent lawsuits against elite medical centers further underscore the importance of holding these institutions accountable for their role in perpetuating medical exploitation and inequality. In An American Sickness by Elisabeth Rosenthal, the commercialization of healthcare is explored, highlighting how university hospitals and medical centers often prioritize profits over patient care, leaving low-income and marginalized groups with limited access to treatment. Rosenthal’s work highlights the role these institutions play in a larger system that disproportionately benefits wealthier patients while neglecting the most vulnerable.

A Global Comparison: Countries with Better Health Outcomes

While the United States struggles with systemic healthcare disparities, other nations have shown that equitable healthcare outcomes are possible when class and race are not barriers to care. Nations with universal healthcare systems, such as those in Canada, the United Kingdom, and many Scandinavian countries, consistently rank higher in overall health outcomes compared to the U.S.

For instance, Canada’s single-payer system ensures that all citizens have access to healthcare, regardless of their income. This system reduces the financial burdens that often lead to delays in care or avoidance of treatment due to costs. According to the World Health Organization, Canada has better health outcomes on a variety of metrics, including life expectancy and infant mortality, compared to the U.S., where medical costs often lead to unequal access to care.

Similarly, the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) provides healthcare free at the point of use for all citizens. Despite challenges such as funding constraints and wait times, the NHS has been successful in ensuring that healthcare is a right, not a privilege. The U.K. consistently ranks higher than the U.S. in terms of access to care, health outcomes, and overall public health.

Nordic countries, such as Norway and Sweden, also exemplify how universal healthcare can lead to better outcomes. These countries invest heavily in public health and preventative care, ensuring that even their most marginalized citizens receive the necessary medical services. The result is a population with some of the highest life expectancies and lowest rates of chronic diseases in the world.

These nations show that, while access to healthcare is a critical issue in the U.S., the challenge is not a lack of innovation or capability. Instead, it is the systemic barriers—both racial and economic—that persist in elite medical centers, undermining the potential for universal health equity. The U.S. could learn from these nations by adopting policies that reduce economic inequality in healthcare access and focusing on preventative care and public health strategies that serve all people equally.

Ultimately, the dark legacy of elite university medical centers is not something that can be erased, but it is something that must be acknowledged. Only by confronting this painful history, alongside addressing class-based disparities, can we begin to build a more just and equitable healthcare system—one that serves everyone, regardless of race, background, or socio-economic status. Until this happens, the distrust and skepticism that many marginalized communities feel toward these institutions will continue to shape the landscape of American healthcare. The path forward requires a concerted effort to address both racial and class-based inequities that have defined these institutions for far too long. The U.S. can, and must, strive for healthcare outcomes akin to those seen in nations that have built systems prioritizing equity and fairness—systems that put human dignity over profit.

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March 13, 2025
Georgetown University Honors Xavier University of Louisiana’s Centennial and Black Catholic Studies Legacy

Georgetown UniversityAs Xavier University of Louisiana enters its centennial year, the nation’s oldest Catholic institution—Georgetown University—celebrated the institution’s 100-year legacy and the 45th anniversary of its Institute for Black Catholic Studies (IBCS).

Last Thursday’s event, titled “Reflecting on the Significance of the Institute for Black Catholic Studies and the Journey Toward Reconciliation,” included a discussion among leaders from Xavier’s IBCS, the Descendants Truth & Reconciliation Foundation, and Georgetown University. It also showcased an exhibition co-created by the Georgetown University Library, highlighting the impact of the IBCS—a graduate program dedicated to fostering Black Catholic theology, ministry, and leadership.

Founded in 1925 by Saint Katharine Drexel and the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, Xavier University of Louisiana remains the only historically Black Catholic university in the United States. The Georgetown event not only honored Xavier’s continued contributions but also reflected on the role of Black Catholic scholarship in shaping faith and social justice initiatives.

Dr. Kathleen Dorsey Bellow, director of IBCS, acknowledged the deep collaboration between Xavier and Georgetown.

Reflecting on her journey, Bellow shared how she initially hesitated to attend the IBCS in 1989 but was transformed by the experience.

“I immediately appreciated that I was on holy ground,” said Bellow. “After my very first class, I knew I would complete the program and try to come back every summer after that. I needed to be refreshed, challenged, and affirmed in my mission as a Black Catholic woman in church and society,” she said. She said that the Institute was created to form strong Catholics who can express and explain their faith in ways that resonate with their communities.

IBCS offers two tracks: a graduate theology program for future church leaders and a continuing education track for lay people seeking deeper faith formation. The program takes a well-rounded approach by including challenging coursework, combined with cultural experiences, prayer, and opportunities to build strong communities.

“We study together, we pray together, we have African dance and drumming in the evenings,” Bellow said. “We are Black and Catholic Sunday through Saturday, and our mission is to share the gift of Blackness in the life of the Church.”

The legacy of resistance, persistence, and transcendence was also central to the event’s discussion, a theme introduced by Father Joseph Brown, S.J., a leading scholar and former head of IBCS.

Monique Trusclair Maddox, CEO of the Descendants Truth & Reconciliation Foundation discussed her family’s history of enslavement by the Jesuit order and the impact of learning about Georgetown University’s role in the sale of enslaved persons to save the institution.

In 1838, Georgetown University, facing financial hardship, approved the sale of 272 enslaved men, women, and children to plantations in Louisiana to secure its financial future. The sale brought in about $115,000, which would be worth millions today, and helped pay off the university’s debts. The decision not only tore apart families but also reinforced the systemic exploitation of Black people for institutional survival.

For years, the story remained buried until 2004, when Patricia Bayonne-Johnson uncovered it while tracing her family history. Since then, researchers along with the Jesuits, have worked to trace the lineage of those enslaved by the Society of Jesus and the Catholic Church. Their efforts have identified over 10,000 descendants, a number that continues to grow.

Trusclair Maddox detailed her spiritual journey, including prayers for peace and understanding, and the establishment of the Descendants Truth and Reconciliation Foundation. The foundation, supported by JP Morgan Chase, has issued over $166,000 in scholarships and launched programs for home modifications and racial healing. Maddox emphasized the need for systemic change and called for broader awareness and participation in restorative justice efforts.

“We knew that reconciliation required more than an acknowledgment, but demanded action,” Trusclair Maddox said. “Restorative justice isn’t just about the past, it’s about what we do today to shape a more just future,” she added, and called on institutions and individuals to engage in meaningful change toward racial healing.

As part of an effort to support the Descendants Truth & Reconciliation Foundation, Maddox highlighted a series of grassroots initiatives to raise awareness through media and marketing. He also announced the Jesuit order’s commitment of $100 million over the first five years to fund the foundation’s operations.

“Now that we have operational dollars and we’re starting to give our grants to not just descendants, but also into transformation programs and truth-telling, we’re going to continue to build our programs,” Trusclair Maddox said.

Dr. Joseph Ferrara, senior vice president and chief of staff at Georgetown University, said that he is excited about the school’s continued partnership with Xavier University.

“We’re grateful for this opportunity to celebrate alongside Xavier and to recognize their importance to Catholic higher education,” Ferrara said. “We have an opportunity to reflect on the legacy at Xavier and the process toward reconciliation. Georgetown is very happy to be a part of the process, and that’s a journey we’re still on.”

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February 28, 2025
We are living through the legacy of unrestrained borrowing

On 1 January 2018 the Office for Students took over the regulation of higher education in England from its predecessor (the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE)).

One little discussed impact of this change was an avalanche of university borrowing that has dramatically shifted the priorities and risk profile of English higher education.

Terms and conditions

As late as the 2017 memorandum of assurance and accountability between HEFCE and higher education providers, the regulator had the right of veto over university financial commitments over a certain level. If you wanted to borrow money, and you were talking “serious money” in relation to the size of your provider, the regulator needed to sign it off.

That year written approval was required where total financial commitments exceeded six times the average adjusted net operating cashflow (ANOC) from July – or where the provider was assessed as being “at higher risk”. The year before, it was required when borrowing crept above five times the (six year) average EBITDA. And back in 2006 it was required for borrowing over 4 per cent of income.

The levels may have shifted over the years but the principles remained the same – to ensure that providers in receipt of public funds offered value for money, and were fully responsible for the use of these funds. These broader requirements were set out in detail:

HEIs must apply the following principles when entering into any financial commitments:

a. The risks and affordability of any new on- and off-balance sheet financial commitments must be properly considered.

b. Financial commitments must be consistent with the HEI’s strategic plan, financial strategy and treasury management policy.

c. The source of any repayment of a financial commitment must be clearly identified and agreed by the governing body at the point of entering that commitment.

d. Planned financial commitments must represent value for money.

e. The risk of triggering immediate default through failure to meet a condition of a financial commitment should be monitored and actively managed

At some point during the transition from HEFCE to OfS, all this was scrapped.

The missing consultation

If “at some point” sounds uncharacteristically vague that’s because the decision was murky even by higher education policy standards. The requirement was in the 2017 memorandum – it wasn’t in the OfS 2018 “terms and conditions” of funding, or any of the registration or information requirements, or the regulatory framework. The shift was never consulted on, it wasn’t in the Green or White paper, it was never discussed in parliament. It just kind of happened.

In Wales, there are still requirements to get borrowing above a threshold signed off based on the 2017 Financial Management Code – however your (individual provider) threshold is built into the formulae of your financial forecast template. Thresholds are never published, but Medr may occasionally drop you a note to tell you what yours is. Which is nice.

In Scotland things are (slightly) more straightforward: there is a threshold over which SFC’s formal consent is required. It’s not a concrete figure but a calculation to determine whether the total annualised cost of the borrowing exceeds 4 per cent of total income (according to a university’s last audited statements) or would exceed by 4 percent the estimated total income for the year in which the borrowing begins – whichever one is the lower.

As things currently stand in England the explanatory sections on the D conditions of registration set up definitions of financial viability and sustainability. Viability is the interesting one here – for OfS purposes it means there is no reason to suppose the provider is at a “material risk of insolvency” (being unable to pay debts as they fall due) for the next three years. This clarifies that OfS does expect to know about borrowing (“have regard to” in fact) – and even suggests OfS would expect to be able to speak directly to lenders:

It will be for the provider to ensure that the OfS is fully informed as to its financial facilities, and it will be expected to consent to the OfS making direct enquiry of the finance provider if requested to do so. The OfS may draw inferences from a failure to provide such consent.

This approach to university borrowing can also be seen in the transition provisions that existed as OfS effectively carried on as HEFCE while it began to register existing providers – a commentary to the required audited data included the need for universities to include information on:

Whether the provider is planning to take any loans from a bank, shareholders, directors or anyone else and, if so, information about these plans (how much is it planning to borrow, when will this be taken out, when will it be paid back, what will it be used for) and whether it will affect the provider’s viability or sustainability.

A very good year

This shift did not go unnoticed by universities, so 2017-2018 became a bumper year for university borrowing – with banks, private funds, and the bond markets all displaying an appetite for access to (then) underleveraged, secure, and low risk UK higher education.

The 2017 HEFCE financial health publication noted that:

At the end of July 2017, the sector reported borrowing of £9.9 billion (equivalent to 33.1 per cent of income). This is £980 million higher than the level reported at the end of 2015-16, which was £8.9 billion (30.7 per cent of income).

By 2018 OfS as reporting that borrowing would reach £12bn by “year 2” (2017-18).

At the end of Year 2, the sector reported aggregate borrowing of £12.0 billion (equivalent to 36.8 per cent of income), a 21 per cent rise of £2.1 billion compared to Year 1. Forecasts show that borrowing is projected to continue to rise in absolute terms over the four forecast years, reaching £13.3 billion by the end of Year 6.

In the last quote, “year 6” is 2021-22 – the projection of aggregate borrowing was (as usual) on the low side. That year’s financial health report pegged it as just over £14bn.

OfS, of course, could have decided to apply specific conditions of registration if it was concerned about borrowing at a particular provider. It still gets information on what universities are borrowing, and on what they plan to borrow in future, via the annual financial return (and there have already been rumblings about an increase in the amount and frequency of provided data). It could have stepped in to moderate the boom in borrowing since it took regulatory control of the sector – it did not.

The morning after

But the time of plenty has clearly passed – affordable finance is simply harder to come by, and the terms of existing borrowing (set during a more confident era) have often been renegotiated. The 2024-25 aggregate external borrowing is projected to be £13.3bn, and this for a much larger sector. And even the sector’s own (generally optimistic) forecasts suggest that it will drop further in years to come.

This is very much the hangover after the party. The easy money simply isn’t there for the sector to borrow – all that remains is the improvements it paid for (hopefully in useful, tangible, things like estates and infrastructure), the repayments, and the interest.

You can see that in the data (Based on what I know about what has happened so far I don’t think this includes stuff like bonds, so the figures are illustrative rather than precise) – the big peak in unsecured loans was in 2017-18, the academic year that restrictions came off (the smaller peak in 2020-21 represents the government backed Covid loans).

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You can also see a peak in repayments in 2018-19: clearly many providers decided that with the brakes off, the easiest way to proceed was with short-term revolving credit. More worryingly for sector finances, interest repayments remain at 2018-19 levels even though borrowing has declined sharply – an impact of a rise in interest rates following a long period of near zero inflation.

A legacy of loans

In essence some of the blame for the current financial crisis faced by the sector can be attributed to this little-scrutinised decision to remove borrowing safeguards. Though estates (especially) benefited from this gold rush, the entry of UK universities into the world of private placements and bonds has left a legacy that will take decades (and hundreds of millions of pounds cut off the top of sector finances, and increasingly arduous restrictions on university activity within covenants) to reckon with.

And these controls on university activity hit in numerous ways. As Philip Augar’s review noted, way back in 2019:

Universities’ expansion has been partly funded through debt and financial arrangements known as ‘sale and leaseback’. The former includes bond issues and bank borrowing; the latter involves universities selling student accommodation for cash upfront, sometimes committing to provide specified numbers of rent-paying students to the new owner.

A failure to meet challenging recruitment targets has a multiplier effect if you factor lender requirements into the equation.

Was the removal of controls over borrowing the single most important regulatory act of the modern era? For those able to raise money in this way, it supported huge improvements in university estates and infrastructure. It provided the capacity that has underpinned recent growth – though not as much growth as we saw in the 90s and 00s, when a far greater proportion of capital came from the state.

It’s at least arguable that for many larger and better known providers the amount of indirect control over their actions that has been ceded to investors via covenants linked to borrowing. has driven the dash for growth at all costs. If you’ve worked in a university during this period and feel like things have changed, this could be why.

And it gets worse if you think about the aggregated risk across the whole sector – not least because the arms race of expansion forced the majority of the sector to seek private finance at roughly the same time. The numbers in the chart above are indicative – but even so show a sizable liability that could have a huge impact on the way providers behave. It’s the roots of the sector-wide dash for growth that the regulators have expressed concern about – but thus far the impression has been given that it is just empire building. It is survival.

The next few years

There is no easy fix. Though I think most of us believe that the government would step in in the event of provider failure – to protect the student interest certainly, and possibly to protect the local interest – what would happen to outstanding debts across multiple providers in these circumstances is less clear. It is entirely likely that a loan becoming due for full payment due to a breach in covenant conditions would itself be the cause of provider failure.

In the bad old days, when the government was a significant source of both capital and recurrent funding for most universities in England, there was a thing called exchequer interest – a complicated and little-discussed aspect of public funding that means that assets purchased with public funds should revert at least in part back to the public. Exchequer interest as a consideration for capital investment has largely been replaced by lender interest – in the event of a provider collapsing large parts of abandoned campuses (which, of course, have been paid for by public funds in the sense that it is income from fees that has funded repayments) would revert to lenders.

These buildings and this equipment would immediately lose a lot of value, which is one reason why lenders like to renegotiate rather than repossess. If you think about it, a large teaching block in the middle of a thriving campus is a clear asset – without the campus it is a liability that needs to be repurposed and maintained.

So if you ever see the government stepping in to save an anchor institution, recall that private finance has an interest in seeing campuses continuing to throng with students. It’s a funny way to preserve the future of the sector, but we live in peculiar times.

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February 17, 2025
Elite Universities With Legacy Admissions (edreformnow.org)

Here is a short list of US universities with legacy admissions. These elite and highly selective schools give preferential treatment to applicants who are related to alumni, which rewards parents, grandparents, and relatives of students rather than rewarding deserving students for their skills and efforts.

For a more exhaustive list, visit edreformnow.org. The spreadsheet is here.

California banned legacy admissions for private colleges in 2024. The practice is also under increased scrutiny in the wake of the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling against college admissions policies that consider race.

While it may not be just or fair, the process is not illegal in the
United States, nor is there much public outcry about this elitist tradition.
Without insider information, it’s also difficult to know how individual schools use legacy admissions and
how the murky process operates.

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February 14, 2025
What legacy does Yale-NUS College leave in Singapore?

When Wee Yang Soh was considering his degree options, he felt his choices were limited. The Singaporean had been offered a place to study chemistry at the National University of Singapore (NUS), but he was wary of accepting.

In his experience, school had felt like he was simply being “trained” to pass exams. “I didn’t want my university education to be like that,” he said. Soh liked the idea of liberal arts education but couldn’t afford the hefty tuition fees charged by the U.S. colleges offering those programs.

So when, in 2011, NUS announced it would be opening a liberal arts college—the first of its kind in Singapore—in partnership with Yale University, Soh jumped at the chance to apply. He was part of the inaugural cohort of students enrolled at the college, graduating in 2017.

Four years later, NUS suddenly declared that it would no longer be continuing the partnership, with plans to close the college once all existing students had graduated.

While Yale-NUS College is not the only international partnership in Singapore that has come to an abrupt halt—having helped develop Singapore University of Technology and Design’s curriculum, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was shown the door in 2017—it is among the most talked about. This unexpected announcement drew just as much attention, if not more, as the opening of the college had, with rumors swirling about the reasons for the decision.

Today, as the college enters its final semester before shutting its doors for good, can liberal arts live on in Singapore? And are international partnerships off the table in a country increasingly embroiled in debates about national identity?

Singapore’s government first began discussing the prospect of a liberal arts college in 2008. Policymakers saw the establishment of one as having multiple benefits—reducing the number of local students going abroad, diversifying pathways within the country’s higher education system and contributing to Singapore’s ambition to become an international education hub.

So when Yale-NUS College opened in 2013, it seemed like the perfect fit. Unfortunately, this synergy didn’t last.

“The context changed,” said Jason Tan, associate professor at Nanyang Technological University’s National Institute of Education. “For one thing, there’s no longer any official talk about establishing Singapore as an international education hub.”

Although Singapore launched the Global Schoolhouse Project in 2002, an initiative that aimed to recruit 150,000 international students by 2015, by the mid-2010s, the numbers remained far below targets and talk of the scheme quieted as public debates around immigration heated up.

Writing in the academic journal Daedalus in 2024, Pericles Lewis, the founding president of the college, suggested that things had gone a step further: “Singapore has not been immune to the forces of populism and nationalism that have affected most parts of the world,” he wrote.

For a college in which international students represented about 40 percent of the student population, this was a problem.

Throughout the college’s life, the governing party “showed itself to be highly sensitive to complaints about benefits reaped by foreigners, and to concerns of middle-class Singaporeans about the accessibility of higher education,” Lewis wrote.

The institution also became central to debates about academic freedom in Singapore, with the last-minute cancellation of a course focused on protest generating backlash. To some, the college was a site of rare political activism and freedom in Singapore, which was both welcomed and feared, depending on your point of view.

However, Linda Lim, professor emerita at the University of Michigan, argued that the college had little impact on the state of academic freedom in Singapore more widely.

“From the beginning it was understood and even explicitly acknowledged that Yale-NUS College would practice and experience academic freedom only within the college walls and premises,” she said.

“Yale may have flattered itself, or argued to mollify dubious faculty in New Haven, that Yale-NUS College would help advance academic freedom in Singapore—a naïve and neo-colonialist attitude.”

Moreover, Soh believed claims of heightened student activism at the college were exaggerated, with intense media attention fueling public ire towards the institution.

“From the first year, the Singaporean public and the government were already pretty afraid that politically motivated actions on campus would pose a problem for Singapore,” he said. “And they kept a very close eye on the college activities, to the point where it felt like a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

At times, small incidents on campus, such as disagreements over new course curricula, made national news, he said. This “reinforced the idea that the students were political or dangerous and all of that stuff, when, really, everything that happened in college felt, at least to me, incredibly mundane and incredibly small and silly.”

NUS College, a U.S.-style undergraduate honors college for NUS students, was established in 2022 in place of Yale-NUS College. While this new institution offers a residential experience, small class sizes and some shared curricula, it is a far cry from a traditional liberal arts college.

Today in Singapore, “there’s more focus on interdisciplinary learning,” said Tan. “Across all of our universities, in one form or another, there’s this concern about future economic needs.

“The future problems will require all those buzzwords—critical thinkers and flexible, adaptable people and people who possess this interdisciplinary pool of knowledge and so on.

“That trend has pretty much superseded the excitement over having a liberal arts education for our undergrads.”

For Lim, the closure of Yale-NUS College was a “cautionary tale” for international higher education institutions “who think they can be a beacon of light in authoritarian countries by collaborating with autocratic governments.”

The college’s chief legacy, she continued, “is the quality of the students it educated and graduated.”

Soh is currently undertaking a Ph.D. in the U.S. and credited the college and his professors for inspiring him to do so.

“I hope to teach in the future as a professor,” he said. “I want my students to be able to treat education as not a stepping-stone to grades or to credentials, but as a way to reformulate how we think about and relate to this crazy world that we live in today.

“I think the legacy lives on in me, but I can’t say that it lives on in Singapore or in NUS for sure. But I hope it does.”

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February 14, 2025
Legacy Admissions Hit Historic Low as More States Ban Practice at U.S. Colleges

Legacy preferences in college admissions have plummeted to their lowest recorded level, with just 24% of four-year colleges still considering family alumni status in admissions decisions, according to a comprehensive new report from Education Reform Now. The dramatic decline signals a potential end to a controversial practice that critics have long condemned as perpetuating inequality in higher education.

The report, authored by James Murphy, director of Career Pathways and Postsecondary Policy, found that 420 institutions continue to provide admissions advantages to children of alumni, marking a sharp decline from previous years. The practice has seen particularly steep drops since 2015, when nearly half of all four-year colleges considered legacy status. Between 2022 and 2023 alone, 92 colleges abandoned legacy preferences, representing an 18% decrease that coincided with the Supreme Court’s landmark decision to ban race-conscious admissions.

This decline stems from both voluntary institutional decisions and new state legislation. In 2024, California, Illinois, Maryland and Virginia joined Colorado in restricting legacy admissions through state laws. The report indicates that 86% of colleges that ended legacy consideration did so voluntarily, while 14% were required by state legislation. Several more states are expected to introduce similar legislation in 2025.

Legacy preferences remain most entrenched at selective private institutions, particularly in the Northeast. More than half of colleges that admit 25% or fewer applicants still provide advantages to alumni children. The practice is now rare at public institutions, with just 11% still considering legacy status. In 24 states, no public colleges provide legacy preferences at all. New York stands out as having the highest concentration of colleges maintaining legacy admissions, with one in seven U.S. institutions still using the practice located in the Empire State.

The report challenges several common defenses of legacy admissions, including arguments that they help build campus community or are necessary for fundraising. It cites evidence that 76% of colleges successfully foster campus communities without legacy preferences, and questions whether wealthy institutions with multi-billion dollar endowments truly need to “trade admissions advantages for money.”

The analysis also addresses claims that ending legacy admissions could hurt diversity, particularly following the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling. The report argues that legacy preferences disproportionately benefit white and wealthy applicants, citing research showing that Asian American applicants face significantly lower odds of admission compared to white applicants with similar qualifications at selective institutions. According to one study, Asian American applicants had 28% lower odds of attending elite schools than white applicants with similar academic and extracurricular qualifications.

The report suggests that Congress could potentially impose additional endowment taxes on universities that maintain legacy preferences while offering reduced penalties to institutions that increase enrollment of Pell Grant recipients, community college transfers, and veterans. This approach would create financial incentives for institutions to abandon the practice.

“The shame of belonging to this group of colleges that think children of alumni have somehow earned an extra advantage in admissions is likely to push more colleges to drop the practice,” Murphy writes. “This is not a club that most colleges belong to or will want to belong to.”

The report also criticizes the Common Application for potentially enabling legacy admissions by requiring all applicants to identify where their parents earned bachelor’s degrees, even though this information is irrelevant for more than three-quarters of colleges. The report suggests that removing this question would be a significant step toward making college admissions more equitable.

“Ultimately, the reason to eliminate legacy preferences is not to achieve some other goal,” the report concludes. “The reason to get rid of them is that they are profoundly unfair and make a mockery of merit. Legacy preferences award some of the most advantaged students an additional advantage in the college admissions process on the basis of ancestry alone.”

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February 10, 2025
Legacy admissions tumbled dramatically over past decade
Dive Brief:
- The share of four-year colleges that use legacy admissions practices has fallen by roughly half since 2015, from 49% then to 24% by 2025, according to a study from the center-left nonprofit Education Reform Now.
- The group counted 420 institutions that give preferential treatment to applicants related to an alum. Meanwhile, 452 have stopped considering legacy ties since 2015. The number and share of institutions are both at their lowest since collection of the information began.
- The recent declines are due in part to revamped diversity commitments following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 ban on race-conscious admissions, as well as a handful of new state laws prohibiting legacy admissions, the group said.
Dive Insight:

The decline in legacy admissions has been swift, the study found. Just between 2022 and 2023, 92 colleges stopped considering legacy status — an 18% decline in one year. And even more have dropped legacy admissions since then.

Of the colleges that nixed the practice, 86% did so via voluntary institutional decision, while 14% were complying with legislation, according to the study.

The report pulled from the Common Data Set and federal data, which began including legacy admissions policies in 2022. Historically, a clear data picture of an institution’s use of legacy status in admissions has been hard to come by. Colleges have at times also made ambiguous or erroneous entries in the Common Data Set.

Education Reform Now identified 12 states that have introduced proposals to ban on legacy admissions, and found that most focused on both public and private institutions.

Of the dozen states, five have passed bans, all in recent years: California, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland and Virginia. Only Maryland and California addressed private institutions. In several states, bills passed one legislative house but never made it to a vote in both.

Legacy admissions policies are concentrated in selective colleges. Among four-year institutions that accepted 25.5% or fewer of their applicants, 56.1% considered legacy status in admissions in the 2023-24 academic year. Nearly a third of colleges with acceptance rates between 25.6% and 50.4% also offered legacy preference, according to the group’s analysis of federal data.

Past research has found that legacy status can boost by more than threefold an applicant’s odds of acceptance to highly selective colleges. The practice originated, in part, from an effort in the early 20th century by elite, wealthy universities to keep Jewish applicants out.

One scholar in 2019 described legacy admissions as an “affirmative-action policy for rich white students,” which helps “the rich and powerful exploit their position and ensure class domination for the next generation.”

The practice has come under regulatory scrutiny as well. In 2023, the U.S. Department of Education opened a civil rights investigation into Harvard University’s legacy admissions policy after a group filed a complaint alleging the practice offered de facto preferential treatment to White applicants.

Defenders of the practice have pointed to the boost legacy admissions give to fundraising, which in turn can support need-based financial aid that serves to diversify student bodies.

Some elite universities, including Yale and Harvard universities, said they were reviewing their legacy policies in the months after the Supreme Court decision. For now, both continue the practice. Some 11% of Yale’s class of 2027 has legacy ties, according to the university’s figures. A survey by The Harvard Crimson found that its share is roughly 32%.
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February 10, 2025
The Trudeau Legacy | HESA

I don’t know about you, but I find all the writing about the Trudeau legacy pretty goddamn annoying. Weeks and weeks of columnists yelling “resign!” followed by weeks and weeks of the same columnists yelling “he didn’t do it fast enough!” All true; all deeply boring. But since this is basically the blog of record for the sector, it would be weird to let the man leave without an assessment of his effect.

So here goes:

The early years

A lot of people were probably more excited about Trudeau’s win in 2015 than they should have been. The Chretien/Martin regime of the late 1990s and early 2000s was the most pro-science /education in Canadian history. In comparison, the Conservative government of Harper government seemed pretty bad, even though its record on funding postsecondary education was much better than it usually got credit for (its attitude towards government scientists was a different matter entirely). A lot of people assumed that a new Liberal government was just going to reset to the status quo ante, even if that was never really very likely.

It is worth recalling that , in the 2015 election, the Liberals were the party that promised the least, financially in terms of postsecondary education. Sure, in opposition, Trudeau mused about higher education a fair bit, which made him seem progressive without actually requiring him to do anything (remember his idea of targeting a rise in postsecondary attainment rates from 50% to 70%? Me neither until I started going through my files—it was never going to happen). But basically, he was coasting on the reputation of the previous Liberal administration.

There was one great move early on, with respect to phasing out (untargeted) education tax credits and investing the proceeds in income-targeted student grants, a measure which allowed some provinces (like Ontario and New Brunswick) to at least temporarily (until vindictive Conservative governments came to power) re-arrange their aid programs to deliver targeted free-tuition programs for lower-income students. This saved the government money over the course of the Liberals’ first term (it was meant to be revenue-neutral, but that depended on an increase in spending in the 2019 budget which didn’t happen until the COVID emergency—see below).

The Liberals did a lot of other stuff in that first Trudeau term; just not much that was either coherent or lasting. On research funding, the government asked former U of T President David Naylor to advise them on how to run research councils, and when he did they proceeded to take about two-thirds of his advice on the actual amount of funding and well under a quarter of what he recommended in terms of how to manage that funding (it totally ignored the bit about giving up its boutique funding programs, for instance). On its prime innovation strategy—the so-called “superclusters,” which still exist, now devoid of any regional dimension—which the deeply problematic techbro-loving Minister of the era, Navdeep Bains, would create a set of “made-in-Canada silicon valleys”, well…you can read about them here, but they are so embarrassing it’s probably better to pass over them in silence.

There was a lot of money thrown at Skills Training in Budget 2017 and most of it seemed reasonably sensible, but it’s hard to work out how much good any of it did. This government—unlike the Martin/Chretien Liberals—really doesn’t like evaluating its own spending. And certainly the government never really followed this up or turned it into something coherent. An attempt to create a national training benefit in Budget 2019 which seemed like a promising idea at the time but has basically dissolved into thin air because there has been little attempt to promote the program(s). Steps were taken towards better funding for indigenous postsecondary education, but that effort subsequently got bogged in the details.

And this is pretty much the story of Liberal policymaking in general in postsecondary education (and arguably a lot of other policy fields, too): lots of good ideas, not very good at sustaining the attention necessary to execute them properly and make them work. This is what happens when you govern according to the 24-hour news cycle and not the long-term success of the nation.

The COVID Years (Second term)

Less than six months after being narrowly re-elected in 2019, COVID arrived. Broadly speaking, the government’s initial instincts were pretty good: do anything to keep the economy going while we figured out how to live with the virus and waited for the vaccines to arrive. In higher education, that meant pouring a ton of money into an emergency student aid benefit (the Canada Emergency Student Benefit) than turned out to be actually necessary (see my take on what really happened during covid and emergency benefits). I’m not particularly inclined to see this as a failure: hindsight is easy, but given how crazy everything was in spring 2020 I’m inclined to give them a pass on one-time cash handouts. Same with the backstopping of university research expenditures in this period.

What was less forgivable was the tendency to view the brief shift of the Overton Window towards government intervention either as something semi-permanent or as an invitation to extreme hubris. The decision to double the Canada Education Student Grant from $3000 per year to $6000 per year for 2020-21 was probably justifiable: extending it for another two years and then abruptly cancelling it in the 2023 budget was probably not. And then of course there was the WE Charity/Canada Student Summer Grant fiasco. Hubris combined with a lack of execution will kill you every time.

Post-COVID (Third term)

The Liberals narrowly won the 2021 election and then basically went to sleep until the summer of 2023 when it suddenly dawned on them that they were hated by pretty much the entire country, mainly because of inflation but especially housing inflation which was blamed (with some justification) on a rapid influx of international students, particularly (but not exclusively) to Ontario Community Colleges. The influx was not the Liberals’ fault in the least—for this you can blame some combination of a decade or more of provincial underfunding and some truly wild-ass empire-building by a handful of college Presidents—but they were somewhat slow to react. Somehow, they got tagged with responsibility for the problem, and so their Immigration Minister, Marc Miller, set out to solve it.

And so in January 2024, with all of the wit and wisdom that comes from occupying the strategic intersection between arrogance and ignorance in which official Ottawa perpetually resides, by gum, the Trudeau introduced a solution (actually two: there was a second policy package in September which was designed specifically to screw with the college sector). It was a national solution to an essentially regional (southern Ontario) problem, and it hammered postsecondary finances across the country. Some of it was necessary; much of it was not. My estimate of the changes are in the range of $3-4 billion range, with job losses in the tens of thousands. And to a considerable extent, it was the violent, sudden change in international policy combined, deliberately adopted in a manner which was contemptuous of the sector, which is how this Government will be remembered by the sector.

Meanwhile, the feds went on an epic bout of fumbling the research and innovation files. In election 2021, Trudeau promised a Canadian version of DARPA. Budget 2022 turned that into a new Canada Innovation Corporation, which was then basically punted into the long grass because, well, Trudeau couldn’t focus long enough to figure out how to make it work. Then, Inflation ate away the entire value of the big Naylor-induced research package of 2018. That led to a new research package in Budget 2024 worth $1.8 billion (88% of which does not come online until after the next election, it’s so anyone’s guess how much of it ever materializes), accompanied by a raft of new ideas from a panel chaired by Frédéric Bouchard about how to manage curiosity-driven research. The money has now been allocated (in theory), but the feds are not close to working out changes to management. All was supposed to be revealed in the 100% unlamented Fall Economic Statement, but again the Liberals punted. Couldn’t make a decision.

(Simultaneously, the government utterly botched the roll out of the Strategic Science Fund. No one has ever written about this and I’m not going to tell tales out of school—at least not today—but trust me, this was a time-wasting fiasco of enormous proportions.)

The Verdict

At the end of the first term, I compared the Trudeau record with that of the Harper government, and noted that the difference wasn’t as big as you’d think—probably more about vibes than about money (I got some snotty “how dare you” comments from Liberal partisans on that one). And I think that’s still my verdict. The Trudeau government wanted to be known as “pro-Science” and “pro-education.” It just didn’t want to put in the money or the sustained policy attention required to actually be effective. Sometimes the casual inattention to policy details just made spending ineffective; sometimes (as in the case of international student visas) it hurt institutions.

Either way, the cavalier attitude to substance began to wear thin a long time ago. I don’t think many in the post-secondary sector will view the Trudeau era with much fondness.

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January 14, 2025