Tag: Lets

The REF helps make research open, transparent, and credible- let’s not lose that

The pause to reflect on REF 2029 has reignited debate about what the exercise should encompass – and in particular whether and how research culture should be assessed.

Open research is a core component of a strong research culture. Now is the time to take stock of what has been achieved, and to consider how REF can promote the next stage of culture change around open research.

Open research can mean many things in different fields, as the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science makes clear. Wherever it is practiced, open research shifts focus away from outputs and onto processes, with the understanding that if we make the processes around research excellent, then excellent outcomes will follow

Trust

Being open allows quality assurance processes to work, and therefore research to be trustworthy. Although not all aspects of research can be open (sensitive personal data, for example), an approach to learning about the world that is as open as possible differentiates academic research from almost all other routes to knowledge. Open research is not just a set of practices – it’s part of the culture we build around integrity, collaboration and accountability.

But doing research openly takes time, expertise, support and resources. As a result, researchers can feel vulnerable. They can worry that taking the time to focus on high-quality research processes might delay publication and risk them being scooped, or that including costs for open research in funding bids might make them less likely to be funded; they worry about jeopardising their careers. Unless all actors in the research ecosystem engage, then some researchers and some institutions will feel that they put themselves at a disadvantage.

Open research is, therefore, a collective action problem, requiring not only policy levers but a culture shift in how research is conducted and disseminated, which is where the REF comes in.

REF 2021

Of all the things that influence how research is done and managed in the UK HE sector, the REF is the one that perhaps attracts most attention, despite far fewer funds being guided by its outcome than are distributed to HEIs in other ways.

One of the reasons for this attention is that REF is one of the few mechanisms to address collective action problems and drive cultural change in the sector. It does this in two ways, by setting minimum standards for a submission, and by setting some defined assessment criteria beyond those minimum standards. Both mechanisms provide incentives for submitting institutions to behave in particular ways. It is not enough for institutions to simply say that they behave in this way – by making submissions open, the REF makes institutions accountable for their claims, in the same way as researchers are made accountable when they share their data, code and materials.

So, then, how has this worked in practice?

A review of the main panel reports from REF 2021 shows that evidence of open research was visible across all four main panels, but unevenly distributed. Panel A highlighted internationally significant leadership in Public Health, Health Services and Primary Care (UoA 2) and Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience (UoA 4), while Panel B noted embedded practices in Chemistry (UoA 8) and urged Computer Science and Informatics (UoA 11) to make a wider shift towards open science through sharing data, software, and protocols. Panel C pointed to strong examples in Geography and Environment Studies (UoA 14), and in Archaeology (UoA 15), where collaboration, transparency, and reproducibility were particularly evident. By contrast, Panel D – and parts of Panel C – showed how definitions of open research can be more complex, because what constitutes ‘open research’ is perhaps much more nuanced and varied in these disciplines, and these disciplines did not always demonstrate how they were engaging with institutional priorities on open research and supporting a culture of research integrity. Overall, then, open research did not feature in the reports on most UoAs.

It is clear that in 2021 there was progress, in part guided by the inclusion in the REF guidance of a clear indicator. However, there is still a long way to go and it is clear open research was understood and evidenced in ways that could exclude some research fields, epistemologies and transparent research practices.

REF 2029

With REF 2029, the new People, Culture and Environment element has created a stronger incentive to drive culture change across the sector. Institutions are embracing the move beyond compliance, making openness and transparency a core part of everyday research practice. However, alignment between this sector move, REF policy and funder action remains essential to address this collective action problem and therefore ensure that this progress is maintained.

To step back now would not only risk slowing, or even undoing, progress, but would send confused signals that openness and transparency may be optional extras rather than essentials for a trusted research system. Embedding this move is not optional: a culture of openness is essential for the sustainability of UK research and development, for the quality of research processes, and for ensuring that outputs are not just excellent, but also trustworthy in a time of mass misinformation.

Openness, transparency and accountability are key attributes of research, and hallmarks of the culture that we want to see in the sector now and in the future. Critically, coordinated sector-wide, institutional and individual actions are all needed to embed more openness into everyday research practices. This is not just about compliance – it is about a genuine culture shift in how research is conducted, shared and preserved. It is about doing the right thing in the right way. If that is accepted, then we would challenge those advocating for reducing the importance of those practices in the REF: what is your alternative, and will it command public trust?

This article was supported by contributions from:

Michel Belyk (Edge Hill University), Nik Bessis (Edge Hill University), Cyclia Bolibaugh (University of York), Will Cawthorn (University of Edinburgh), Joe Corneli (Oxford Brookes University), Thomas Evans (University of Greenwich), Eleanora Gandolfi (University of Surrey), Jim Grange (Keele University), Corinne Jola (Abertay University), Hamid Khan (Imperial College, London), Gemma Learmonth (University of Stirling), Natasha Mauthner (Newcastle University), Charlotte Pennington (Aston University), Etienne Roesch (University of Reading), Daniela Schmidt (University of Bristol), Suzanne Stewart (University of Chester), Richard Thomas (University of Leicester), Steven Vidovic (University of Southampton), Eric White (Oxford Brookes University).

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October 17, 2025
Let’s Get Curious – Teaching in Higher Ed

I’ve been curious about curiosity for a long while now. That foundation made it that much more rewarding for me to see it as the current topic for Harold Jarche’s PKMastery workshop. There’s a vulnerability that comes from allowing ourselves to be curious. Yet what that yearning allows for is unparalleled and well worth the costs.

Lifelong Learning

When we are curious, our learning never ends. Getting to work at a university, being invited to speak at many other institutions for higher learning, and having kids who are both in middle school, affords me a never-ending buffet of learning. Sometimes, it can get overwhelming and I need to resort to bookmarking things that seem interesting, but that I may not have time to look to deeply at in the moment. Tagging those bookmarks allow me to uncover resources in the future, when they will be most relevant to something I’m curious about then.

I like tracking my reading in a service called StoryGraph. Setting a minimum goal for books read in a year helps overcome my natural tendency toward my attention going to RSS headline and short-form reading. Most years, I’m struggling to reach the goal, come December. However, my focus on listening to more audio books has allowed me to already have surpassed my 2025 goal.

Healthy Human Relationships

When we focus on being curious about what others thing and having empathy for them, the possibility for having healthy human relationships emerges. It’s easy to focus on “winning” as the sole pursuit of our interactions with others. However, when our focus is on being right, instead of initially on curiosity, we limit the potential for solutions that are geared toward the common good. Covey writes:

Next to physical survival, the greatest need of a human being is psychological survival—to be understood, to be affirmed, to be validated, to be appreciated. When you listen with empathy to another person, you give that person psychological air. And after that vital need is met, you can then focus on influencing or problem solving.

I smiled, as soon as I saw that Jarche had included this beloved clip from Ted Lasso in his writing about curiosity. At this point in the show, Rupert, is “winning” at humiliating his ex-wife (the blonde woman whose expression you can see throughout many of the camera angles during the clip). She doesn’t want to see Ted Lasso also be humiliated by Rupert and is concerned that is exactly what’s about to happen.

However, curiosity wins the day, as does kindness. Lasso says at one point:

Don’t mistake my kindness for weakness.

Curiosity is a powerful aim and one that is infectious. When we resolve to continually fuel our openness and getting better, together, we unleash a powerful problem-solving potential.

Cultivating Curiosity

Jarche writes about curiosity and resolve. He describes the need for a “constant dance between bigger groups of ideas and smaller groups of people working together,” and how necessary both cooperation and collaboration are to effective problem solving and creativity.

In this week’s reading, Jarche reminds us of how needed a human set of skills are today:

The skills required to live in a world dominated by complex and non-routine work requires — creativity, imagination, empathy, and curiosity.

He also stresses the unbounded potential for creativity that we posses, when we focus on curiosity:

While the industrial economy was based on finite resources, a creative economy is not. There is no limit to human creativity. We have to make a new social contract — not based on jobs — but rather enabling a learner’s mindset for life.

Until next time… And until then: Let’s all stay curious.

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October 8, 2025
Let’s Talk About Proxies and Admission (opinion)
The Trump administration has stepped up government scrutiny of college admission. Settlements reached with Brown and Columbia Universities each included a requirement that they pursue “merit-based” admission policies. On Aug. 7, President Trump issued a memorandum requiring colleges and universities to submit data to IPEDS (the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System) demonstrating that they are not considering race in admission decisions. The Department of Education has since published in the Federal Register details about the planned data collection, with the public having 60 days to comment. And Attorney General Pam Bondi has entered into the fray by publishing a memo outlining what constitutes unlawful discrimination.

I will leave it to others to rail against the unprecedented federal attack on higher education and the incursion into admission policies at individual institutions. I would prefer to examine some of the issues and underlying assumptions suggested by these documents.

The Aug. 7 Presidential Memorandum

Trump’s memorandum calls for increased transparency to expose practices that are “unlawful” and to rid society of “shameful, dangerous racial hierarchies.” For some reason, it doesn’t say that all racial hierarchies are shameful and dangerous. Is that an oversight or a meaningful omission? The memorandum also asserts without explanation that race-based admission policies threaten national security.

The call to get rid of “shameful, dangerous racial hierarchies” is ironic. It is easy to imagine previous administrations using the same phrase to defend the very race-based admission policies that the executive order now seeks to abolish. “Shameful” and “dangerous” are in the eye of the beholder, and may not be color-blind.

What is not clear is how the administration intends to collect and analyze the data, given its efforts to gut the Department of Education. As Inside Higher Ed has reported, the National Center for Education Statistics had been decimated, with a staff of more than 100 reduced to a skeleton crew of three employees.

The Bondi Memo

Attorney General Bondi’s July 29 memorandum offered guidance to federal agencies about practices that may constitute illegal discrimination at colleges and other entities receiving federal funds. A lot of it is rehashed, targeting popular straw men/persons like DEI programs and transgender athletes (and bathrooms).

What is interesting is Bondi’s take on what she calls “unlawful proxy discrimination,” defined as the use of “facially neutral criteria” that function as “proxies” for race or other protected characteristics. Per the memo, examples in higher education may include things like requiring diversity statements in hiring or essay questions asking applicants to reflect on their unique identity or to write about obstacles they have overcome.

On a surface level, Bondi is right that those can become back doors to identify an individual’s race. At the same time, knowing the obstacles an individual has overcome is essential to understanding his or her unique story, and race would seem to be one of the factors that can heavily influence that story.

Where Bondi goes off the rails is in maintaining that what she calls “geographic targeting” may constitute a potentially unlawful proxy. She is suggesting that recruitment or outreach in schools and communities with high levels of racial minorities may be illegal. That is preposterous. Trying to expand access to education through outreach is in no way comparable to reverse engineering an admission process to arrive at a desired class composition.

Taken to its logical extreme, Bondi’s guidance would prevent colleges from recruiting not only at inner-city schools with a large percentage of Black students, but also at suburban schools with a large percentage of affluent white students. Both could be examples of what she calls “geographic targeting.” For that matter, colleges might be in violation for asking for an applicant’s address, because ZIP code information can be used as a proxy for determining race and socioeconomic status.

New Data Collection Requirements

As for data collection for IPEDS, the administration has proposed a new “Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement,” or ACTS. ACTS will require targeted colleges and universities to report data in the following categories, disaggregated by race and sex:
- Admissions test score quintile
- GPA quintile
- Family income range
- Pell Grant eligibility
- Parental education
It will also ask for information to be broken down for early decision, early action and regular admission as well as institutional need-based and merit aid. What’s missing? Legacy status and athletic recruits, both categories that benefit white applicants. At some of the Ivies, between 10-20 percent of the undergraduates are athletes, many in “country club” sports where most of the competitors are wealthy and white, and the proportion of athletes is even higher at the highly selective liberal arts colleges that make up the New England Small College Athletic Conference. Discovery in SFFA v. Harvard revealed that recruited athletes had an 86 percent admit rate. You don’t have to have had an uncle who taught at MIT to know that is substantially higher than the overall admit rate.

ACTS will apparently apply only to “all four-year institutions who utilize selective college admissions,” which the administration maintains “have an elevated risk of noncompliance with the civil rights laws.” That may at first glance seem to be singling out elite, “name” colleges, and that’s probably the intent, but it also reflects a recognition that the vast majority of institutions couldn’t practice race-based admission even if they wanted to because they are too busy filling the class to worry about crafting the class.

The focus on selective institutions will both make it easy to score political points and hard to derive meaning from the data. Selectivity, especially at the 5-10 percent level, makes it impossible to know why any individual is or isn’t admitted. Admission deans at the highly-selective (or rejective) universities report that they could fill several additional freshman classes from among those applicants who have been waitlisted or denied.

Merit-Based Admission

The real target of the push for “merit-based” admission may be holistic review. A holistic admission process allows colleges to take into consideration nuances in an individual’s background and life experiences. It can also be frustrating for applicants, since different individuals are admitted for different reasons. The government may be pushing consciously or unconsciously for a more formulaic selection process.

But would that be any better? Even if you focus only on grades and test scores, should you put more weight on a three-hour test or on four years of high school? How do you compare applicants from schools with different grading scales and levels of academic rigor? Should a test score obtained after thousands of dollars in test prep count the same as an identical score without coaching?

How do we distinguish between merit and privilege? Those who have strong test scores may be more likely to believe that test scores are a measure of merit, and yet test scores are strongly correlated with family income. Those who are born into wealth and privilege may come to believe that their good fortune is a proxy for merit, buying into a perverse and self-serving interpretation of John Calvin’s doctrine of the elect. They may see themselves as deserving rather than lucky.

Proxies in Admission

We need a larger discussion about proxies in college admission. Advanced Placement courses are a proxy for a rigorous curriculum. GPA is a proxy for academic accomplishment, and yet means little without understanding context. Similarly, SAT scores are often seen as a proxy for ability, despite the fact that the College Board long ago abandoned the pretense that the SAT measures “aptitude.” The U.S. News & World Report college rankings have always relied on proxies, such as alumni giving as a proxy for alumni satisfaction when it may be more a measure of the effectiveness of the development office. Selectivity is a proxy for academic quality—feeding into the belief that the harder a place is to get in, the better it must be. Are proxies for race any more problematic than these other proxies?

The larger question here is what should the selective college admission process be a proxy for. Should we seek to reward students for past performance? Predict who will earn the best grades in college? Identify those students who will benefit the most from the college experience? Or predict who will make the greatest contribution to society after college?

I’m waiting for an executive order or memo or even a discussion among college admission professionals about what the selective admission process should represent and what proxies will support those goals.

Jim Jump recently retired after 33 years as the academic dean and director of college counseling at St. Christopher’s School in Richmond, Va. He previously served as an admissions officer, philosophy instructor and women’s basketball coach at the college level and is a past president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. He is the 2024 recipient of NACAC’s John B. Muir Excellence in Media Award.
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September 2, 2025
Decoder Replay: Let’s celebrate Mandela Day

February 11, 1990 was truly a turning point in the history of South Africa.

For decades the nation at the southern tip of the continent had been pilloried by much of the rest of the world. This was because of its apartheid racial segregation laws that hugely favoured the white population over the far larger and mostly black majority.

Apartheid means “separateness” in Afrikaans, the language rooted in Dutch that evolved when the country was a colony.

By 1989 — itself a remarkable year for the wave of revolutions in communist East Europe — South Africa had made significant steps in its effort to end its pariah status. International sanctions were costing it dearly economically, culturally and in sporting terms.

As a taste of events to come, the government freed senior figures in the African National Congress (ANC), the exiled organisation waging a low-level guerrilla campaign against apartheid.

The fight against apartheid

A favourite weapon of the ANC was small mines. One of them exploded in a shopping mall in the commercial capital Johannesburg just as I had finished shopping there and was safely in the mall’s car park.

But there was no word when ANC leader Nelson Mandela — who ultimately spent 27 years incarcerated, much of it in an island prison — would be freed.

Lawyer Mandela entered the world stage with a famous speech at his 1963 trial for sabotage acts against the state in which he stated that freedom and equality were “an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

Releasing Mandela from prison was a key card that South Africa could play to regain respectability, and the government would play it “soon,” Anton Lubowski, an anti-apartheid activist and human rights advocate, told me.

Lubowski did not live to see his forecast fulfilled. In September 1989, gunmen pumped AK-47 rifle rounds into him, with the coup de grace a pistol bullet. He was the latest in a long list of opposition figures in southern Africa to fall victim to unnamed assassins.

Freedom as news

Knowing that Mandela was expected to be released — his freedom would be a huge news story — but not knowing how or when it would happen was particularly frustrating for a news agency reporter like me.

Reuters and its rivals compete tooth and nail to get stories first, and to get them right. Being just one minute behind another news agency on a major story rates as a failure.

What I dreaded most was that Mandela would be released from prison unannounced, just as his ANC colleagues had been. This possibility made it necessary for me and my colleagues to be constantly alert, straining to catch the first authentic information.

The problem was that, then as now, the pressure to get hard information was compounded by a fog of fake news and hoaxes, saying that the release of Mandela was imminent or indeed had actually happened.

These claims were typically relayed on pagers, the messaging devices of the pre-smartphone age. Such messages, no matter how bogus-sounding, had to be checked. This took time and energy and shredded nerves.

Recognizing a hero

It was one such scare that prompted reporters to flock to an exclusive clinic outside Cape Town where Mandela was known to be undergoing treatment.

It was then that another problem surfaced: Nobody among us knew what Mandela looked like after his marathon spell in prison. There had been no pictures of him. Would we even recognise him if he walked out of the clinic?

The hilarious result was that every black man leaving the clinic — whether porter, delivery man, cleaner or whatever — came under intense scrutiny from the ranks of the world’s press assembled outside.

But on the timing of the release, I had a lucky break. A local journalist friend introduced me to a senior member of a secretive police unit who was willing to share with me whatever information he had on when Mandela would be a free man.

The police official’s name was Vic — I did not then know his full name. But he was no fake policeman. He introduced me to his staff in his offices, which were in a shopping arcade concealed behind what looked like a plain mirror but was in fact also a door.

Verifying fake claims.

All cloak-and-dagger stuff. With enormous lack of originality, my Reuters colleagues and I referred to Vic as our “Deep Throat,” the pseudonym of the informant who provided Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein with information about the 1972 Watergate scandal.

Some time in the latter half of 1989, Vic told me in the less than cloak-and-dagger setting of a Holiday Inn coffee shop that Mandela was likely to be released in January or February of 1990.

This was not precise information, but at least it was better than anything that I had, or apparently anybody else in the news business.

In later meetings, Vic refined the information without disclosing the exact day of the release, which apparently was known to just four people in the South African government.

One of the ways Vic was valuable to us was that whenever a fake claim about Mandela’s whereabouts surfaced, I could call him, day or night, to check. And it was Vic who told me on February 10 that “it looked like” Mandela would be a free man the next day.

And so it proved.

Mandela instantly became universally recognisable, South Africa disbanded apartheid, elections were held in which all races voted, the ANC won, and Mandela became South Africa’s first fully democratically elected president.

February 11, 1990 is indeed a day to remember.

Three Questions to Consider

1. Why did apartheid last so long?

2. What was the reaction of South African whites to Mandela’s release?

3. Can you think of someone today who is trying to fight against an system of oppression?

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July 16, 2025
Let’s remove the roadblocks to four-year STEM degrees for community college transfer students

In the nearly two years since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down race-conscious admissions, there have been repeated calls for universities to address the resulting decline in diversity by recruiting from community colleges.

On the surface, encouraging students to transfer from two-year colleges sounds like a terrific idea. Community colleges enroll large numbers of students who are low-income or whose parents did not attend college. Black and Latino students disproportionately start college at these institutions, whose mission for more than 50 years has been to expand access to higher education.

But while community colleges should be an avenue into high-value STEM degrees for students from low-income backgrounds and minoritized students, the reality is sobering: Just 2 percent of students who begin at a community college earn a STEM bachelor’s degree within six years, our recent study of transfer experiences in California found.

There are too many roadblocks in their way, leaving the path to STEM degrees for community college students incredibly narrow. A key barrier is the complexity of the process of transferring from a community college to a four-year institution.

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Many community college students who want to transfer and major in a STEM field must contend with three major obstacles in the transfer process:

1. A maze of inconsistent and often opaque math requirements. We found that a student considering three or four prospective university campuses might have to take three or four different math classes just to meet a single math requirement in a given major. One campus might expect a transfer student majoring in business to take calculus, while another might ask for business calculus. Still another might strongly recommend a “calculus for life sciences” course. And sometimes an institution’s website might list different requirements than a statewide transfer site. Such inconsistencies can lengthen students’ times to degrees — especially in STEM majors, which may require five- or six-course math sequences before transfer.

2. Underlying math anxiety. Many students interviewed for the study told us that they had internalized negative comments from teachers, advisers and peers about their academic ability, particularly in math. This uncertainty contributed to feelings of anxiety about completing their math courses. Their predicament is especially troubling given concerns that required courses may not contribute to success in specific fields.

3. Course scheduling conflicts that slow students’ progress. Two required courses may meet on the same day and time, for example, or a required course could be scheduled at a time that conflicts with a student’s work schedule. In interviews, we also heard that course enrollment caps and sequential pathways in which certain courses are offered only once a year too often lengthen the time to degree for students.

Related: ‘Waste of time’: Community college transfers derail students

To help, rather than hinder, STEM students’ progress toward their college and professional goals, the transfer process needs to change significantly. First and foremost, universities need to send clear and consistent signals about what hoops community college students should be jumping through in order to transfer.

A student applying to three prospective campuses, for example, should not have to meet separate sets of requirements for each.

Community colleges and universities should also prioritize active learning strategies and proven supports to combat math anxiety. These may include providing professional learning for instructors to help them make math courses more engaging and to foster a sense of belonging. Training for counselors to advise students on requirements for STEM pathways is also important.

Community colleges must make their course schedules more student-centered, by offering evening and weekend courses and ensuring that courses required for specific degrees are not scheduled at overlapping times. They should also help students with unavoidable scheduling conflicts take comparable required courses at other colleges.

At the state level, it’s critical to adopt goals for transfer participation and completion (including STEM-specific goals) as well as comprehensive and transparent statewide agreements for math requirements by major.

States should also provide transfer planning tools that provide accurate and up-to-date information. For example, the AI Transfer and Articulation Infrastructure Network, led by University of California, Berkeley researchers, is using artificial intelligence technology to help institutions more efficiently identify which community college courses meet university requirements. More effective tools will increase transparency without requiring students and counselors to navigate complex and varied transfer requirements on their own. As it stands, complex, confusing and opaque math requirements limit transfer opportunities for community college students seeking STEM degrees, instead of expanding them.

We must untangle the transfer process, smooth pathways to high-value degrees and ensure that every student has a clear, unobstructed opportunity to pursue an education that will set them up for success.

Pamela Burdman is executive director of Just Equations, a California-based policy institute focused on reconceptualizing the role of math in education equity. Alexis Robin Hale is a research fellow at Just Equations and a graduate student at UCLA in Social Sciences and Comparative Education.

Contact the opinion editor at [email protected].

This story about community college transfers was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.

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July 14, 2025
How worried are we about the future? Let’s quantify it.

Fear. Uncertainty. Those are human emotions that many people are feeling these days. It turns out you can quantify fear and uncertainty by looking at the stock market.

Stocks are shares of a business that people can buy on a public market, betting that the business will grow and profit and the shares will be more valuable over time. But share prices also rise and fall based on how people feel about the economic future.

So individual stocks, as well as whole sectors of an industry or the overall market in general, can rise or fall on economic or company reports, politics, geopolitical events, unexpected news and whether investors are optimistic or pessimistic about the future.

When these kinds of changes or reports cause stocks to suddenly and frequently rise and fall, we say the market is “volatile.”

Throughout 2025, the U.S. stock market, which is the biggest in the world, has been pretty volatile. One way to measure it is through the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index, which is a snapshot of 500 major company stocks.

Politics and plunging markets

From mid-February to early April, the S&P 500 index plummeted 19% as U.S. President Donald Trump launched a trade war that raised fears of inflation, a recession, job losses and a swelling national debt.

The U.S. market has largely recovered those losses in response to Trump pausing his tariff wars and lowering tariffs from scary levels. As of 30 June 2025, the stock market was dancing in record high territory.

Robert Whaley, a finance professor at Vanderbilt University and director of its Financial Markets Research Center, developed a way to measure a stock market’s volatility by keeping track of stock options — contracts that gives investors the right, but not an obligation, to buy or sell a stock at a predetermined price at a set future date.

It is popularly known as the “fear index” and goes by the symbol VIX.

The fear index is a measure of how much volatility is expected in the next month. Historically, its long-term average has been 17. During April, it was 40-50. In comparison, the index was at 85 in the COVID-19 market crash of March 2020 and at 89.5 during the global financial crisis of 2008-2009.

Buying and selling on fear

What happens during market volatility? High volatility usually implies higher risk because price movements are less predictable. While some short-term stock traders can make money during market volatility, longer-term buy-and-hold investors might get jittery.

Mutual fund cash holdings were at a 15-year high in March. That means that professional money managers held onto cash and stayed on the sidelines. What do global investors crave? Stability and predictability.

“The VIX as of now (intraday June 30) is at 17 so things are calmer which is surprising given what is happening in Ukraine and Iran,” Whaley said. “It seems the markets have become quite comfortable about it.”

He underscored that the fear index is intended to help institutional investors — such as those who manage pension funds or retirement accounts that many people invest in — predict market volatility over the next 30 days. For people who might not be actively involved in the stock market, all of this still matters.

“It reflects how institutions are feeling about the marketplace,” Whaley said. “An analogy would be if you own a house on the beach and learn a hurricane is coming. How much might insurance cost if you could actually buy it that late?”

Reading the market

Whaley said that young people should develop an intuitive feel of stock market volatility, since it is an expression of nervousness.

“In essence, it’s a fear gauge,” he said. “If people are getting nervous buying put options [that gives investors a right to buy] that drives up put prices. If VIX was at 30-40% institutions are scared to death. Right now at 17%, there’s no concern in the short run.”

Whaley said the index is normally around 15-20%, but a reading below 15% would reflect that investors are complacent.

As for the limitations of the fear index, Whaley said some people read too much into it and some institutions might overpay for VIX options and futures to try to insure their investments against losses.

While the fear index was born on a real-time basis in 1993, Whaley calculated that it would have reached an intraday high of 172 and closed at 156 on October 19, 1987, the date of the global stock market crash known as Black Monday. Whaley said other market earthquakes that caused big percentage drops included the 2008 financial crisis and Trump’s tariffs.

Whaley said viewed in a historical context, the fear index is like any other index — like the Dow Jones Industrial Average — that has a market value. “Indices are useful in terms of their history,” he said. “A barometer of fear. If VIX is higher, figure out what is going on.”

Questions to consider:

1. What type of news might cause fear in a stock market?

2. If there is a lot of uncertainty in a stock market, what do many professional investors do?

3. Can you think of another way to measure how fearful people are about the future?

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July 7, 2025
To combat obesity, let’s change how we measure ourselves

When Mary Garrett was a child, kids walked to school and played outside after school. But today is a different world. Now Garrett worries about the lifestyles of the children she sees at the Tatnall School, in the U.S. state of Delaware, where she is a nurse.

“I don’t think kids have that kind of opportunity anymore,” she said. “I think the lifestyle changes, even having fewer sidewalks, like the neighborhood we live in now doesn’t have sidewalks.”

Kids, she said, don’t have that flexibility and freedom anymore. And that could be a big reason that so many young people are overweight.

According to the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), 1 in 6 children ages 2-19 in the United States are classified as overweight, while 1 in 5 children are diagnosed with obesity. Severe obesity has also increased from 7.7% of the population to 9.7% in two years. On the global scale, obesity has similarly skyrocketed.

The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that obesity has more than doubled in adults since 1990 and more than quadrupled in adolescents.

According to the WHO, in 2022, 2.5 billion adults were overweight. 37 million children under the age of 5 are classified as overweight.

Changing the way we measure weight

Many factors contribute to obesity, such as genetics, types and amount of food and drink consumed, physical activity, sleep habits and access to necessities like areas to exercise and food. Nurse Garrett concludes that two key factors are physical activity and the rising convenience and prevalence of processed snacks. As the rise of a more sedentary lifestyle, for instance, not walking to school, becomes more popular, the need to spend time outdoors engaging in activity becomes even more critical.

In a report published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal, a group of 58 experts are recommending that obesity should no longer be defined by a BMI, or body mass index that is calculated according to height and weight, but by a combination of measurements, including waist circumference and evidence of health issues.

The new classification for BMI makes it easier to determine obesity, which begins to tackle the issue of where obesity stems from and how to prevent it in children as young as age two.

The NIH defines being obese as “a person whose weight is higher than what is considered to be a normal weight for a given height is described as being overweight or having obesity.”

However, Garrett said that that definition is not that simple. “BMI was actually based on a white man’s profile. So it doesn’t take into account females versus males, Latino versus white,” Garrett said.

Yet, obesity is not restricted to one demographic. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the prevalence of severe obesity is 9.4% higher in women than in men in the United States, while it is significantly lower in adults with at least a bachelor’s degree.

Keeping kids healthy

Access to nutritional food, outdoor spaces in which to exercise, and unhealthy sleep habits are a global concern, particularly in developing countries. Wilmington, Delaware, is no exception. Doctors calculate a person’s weight status from a young age, beginning with a child’s pediatrician.

The weight of a child is calculated based on comparison with other same-age and same-sex children using charts from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. The subject of obesity and living a healthy lifestyle is a critical conversation for parents to have as they raise the next generation.

There are an endless number of factors that can lead to a person being overweight or being diagnosed with obesity.

The NIH says that genetics and medical conditions, two variables outside of anyone’s control, can make it difficult to maintain a healthy weight. Obesity can also increase the risk of health problems like type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease. Yet, there are modern societal factors besides just potato chips and soda that have emerged that play a large role in the rising rate of obesity in the United States.

Garrett sees kids eating processed foods a lot. “I think there’s also changes in our food and eating habits that could have an impact,” she said. “I think a lot of our food choices have been impacted by marketing.”

Pushing junk food

A rise in advertising for processed foods on television, which the overwhelming majority of children have access to in the United States, contributes to this.

Researchers at the University of Ottawa in 2021 found that on average, children see approximately 1,000 food-related advertisements on television each year. Yet, can you remember the last time you saw an ad for a salad, or maybe grilled salmon with vegetables? Probably not. But it’s likely you saw a Burger King ad in the past day, maybe even twice or more a day.

Most advertised products boast organic ingredients or appeal to certain dietary plans. Garrett, on the other hand, questions whether a vegan and gluten-free protein bar is healthier than simply making a peanut butter sandwich on homemade or whole bread.

This poses the question: What role are parents playing in a child’s view of what is healthy and what isn’t?

Kids can’t be expected to be well-versed in healthy choices from the moment they are born. It is up to the parents or guardians to educate and provide an example for children as they learn to make their own choices.

Tackling family obesity

Globally, there is a clear relationship between parent and child obesity. In a study published in 2021, researchers from Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine in South Korea found that children with overweight or obese parents are 1.97 times more likely to be overweight or obese than peers with healthy-weight parents.

Garrett is a parent and believes that a lack of education could be one of the reasons why so many parents struggle to properly educate their children on healthy choices.

“I don’t think we learn enough about nutrition and guidance for families to best raise their children as healthy eaters and healthy people,” Garrett said. She pointed to the ‘MyPlate’ symbol created by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to showcase the five food groups and how much of each should be consumed at each meal. “I’m not really sure that the [U.S. Department of Agriculture] is always giving us the most comprehensive healthy information,” she said.

What we need, she said, is to teach more about nutrition. When giving students guidance on what healthy eating looks like, as well as educating parents on nutritional components, a healthy diet is sure to be an easy skill to master.

Another flaw with how we define obesity is its lack of incorporation of athletes. Researchers in Australia in 2018 found that athletes, or those who train daily for a specific sport, have a significantly lower BMI than the average person.

Weight differs from person to person

Garrett said that the absence of a clearly specified description of BMI for athletes can pose many types of problems.

“You could put an athlete who weighs, I’m just making this up, but say 5’10” weighs 160 next to another person who’s 5’10” and weighs 140 and their BMI could be the same, but the athlete is more muscle and the other person is perhaps more fat,” Garrett said.

This explains what many athletes struggle with: knowing what is healthy when performing and exercising at a high level. Two teens may have a similar height and weight, but one may be a top-notch athlete who practices their sport for up to three hours a day. This difference completely changes what the USDA or other medical resources may say about appropriate nutrition.

This factor, which includes many school-age children who participate in school or club sports, adds another layer to the question of whether the body mass index is a good way to measure obesity and being overweight or not.

As a distance runner since the sixth grade, proper fueling has long been a topic of both interest and necessity for me. However, with the rise of ads for different processed foods and fitness influencers online, I began to question my own relationship with food. Was what I was eating healthy enough? Would eating less make me faster?

Food and health

Food not only provides for your body physically, but also mentally. A positive relationship with nutrition has long been something I have worked on achieving, particularly as I became more competitive in my sport. I learned that not only does food give me strength, but it also gives me the power to perform to my best ability.

Underfueling can be the source of injury and a negative and self-deprecating mindset, and is not talked about enough when discussing an athlete’s mental and physical health.

I can’t compare my body to another that doesn’t run 40-mile weeks or who doesn’t race competitively. Learning about the right choices to keep my body healthy and ready to perform at a high level has been one of the most critical aspects of my athletic career.

As obesity rates continue to rise, it is critical to continue educating the next generations on the right steps to take in making healthier choices. It can be as simple as promoting fruits and vegetables over a bag of chips at school or planning a family bike ride instead of playing video games.

With new definitions for BMI adding a new complex layer to the quest to reduce obesity, nothing is as important as staying on top of suggestions and guidelines from medical experts. Becoming well-educated on healthy habits can affect not only an individual but also the people around them.

As Garrett concludes: “I think we could change a lot by teaching our kids and families.”

Questions to consider:

• How is obesity measured?

• What are some factors that contribute to weight problems?

• Can you think of ways schools can help children and teens live a healthier lifestyle?

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April 29, 2025
UConn Med now lets students opt out of DEI pledge of allegiance

Great news: UConn School of Medicine administrators are going scalpels down on the school’s attempt to forcibly transplant politics and ideology into its incoming student body.

In 2022, UConn finalized its own version of the Hippocratic Oath, which includes a promise to “actively support policies that promote social justice and specifically work to dismantle policies that perpetuate inequities, exclusion, discrimination and racism.” Most recently, UConn required the incoming class of 2028 to pledge allegiance not simply to patient care, but to support diversity, equity, and inclusion.

In January, an admissions staff member at the medical school told FIRE that the oath is mandatory for students. That’s a problem because, as a public university, UConn is strictly bound by the First Amendment and cannot compel students to voice beliefs they do not hold.

Concerned about this and similar cases, FIRE wrote the UConn School of Medicine on Jan. 31, calling on the school to make clear that students have every right to refuse to pledge allegiance to DEI.

We got back radio silence.

After following up via email, we finally got some good news from UConn. The school’s communications director clarified, “UConn’s medical school does not mandate nor monitor a student’s reciting of all or part of our Hippocratic Oath, nor do we discipline any student for choosing to not recite the oath or any part of it.”

Public institutions have every right to try to address any bias that might impact medical education. But forcing med students to pledge themselves to DEI — or any other political ideology — is First Amendment malpractice. They have no more right to do so than they do to force students to pledge allegiance to a political figure, or to the American flag.

In the landmark 1943 case West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, the Supreme Court held that students could not be forced to salute the American flag, saying, “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

In the medical context it gets even worse, as these nebulous commitments could become de facto professionalism standards, with students facing punishment for failing to uphold them. (After all, they took an oath!) What, exactly, must a medical student do to “support policies that promote social justice?” Presumably, that would be for UConn to determine. And if a student disagrees with UConn’s definition of “social justice” or chooses not to promote it in the prescribed way, could she be dismissed for violating her oath?

FIRE has repeatedly seen administrators of professional programs — including medicine, dentistry, law, and mortuary science — deploy ambiguous and arbitrarily defined “professionalism” standards to punish students for otherwise protected speech. It’s no stretch to imagine it happening here as well.

UConn isn’t alone in making changes to its version of the Hippocratic Oath. Other prestigious medical schools, including those at Harvard, Columbia, Washington University, Pitt Med, and the Icahn School of Medicine have adopted similarly updated oaths in recent years. However, not all schools compel students to recite such oaths.

When we raised concerns in 2022 about the University of Minnesota Medical School’s oath, which includes an affirmation that the school is on indigenous land and a vow to fight “white supremacy,” the university confirmed that students are not obligated to recite it.

We’re glad that UConn has now done the same. FIRE celebrates this surgical success, and we won’t stand by while schools try to graft ideology onto student minds.

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April 7, 2025
Free speech advocates converge to support FIRE’s ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ federal court appeal

FIRE, supported by a wave of prominent organizations and scholars as “friends of the court,” has appealed a district court’s ruling that limited the rights of students to attend middle and high school wearing clothes bearing the “Let’s Go Brandon” political slogan. FIRE is asking a federal appeals court to strike down the decision below and uphold freedom of expression for public school students, and a broad spectrum of free speech advocates and language experts are backing us up.

So what happened? In April 2023, FIRE sued a west Michigan school district and two administrators for preventing two students from wearing “Let’s Go Brandon” sweatshirts. The “Let’s Go Brandon” slogan originated during an October 2021 NASCAR race. After the race, won by Brandon Brown, members of the crowd chanted “Fuck Joe Biden” during Brown’s post-race interview. A commentator remarked that the fans were shouting “Let’s Go Brandon!”

WATCH VIDEO: NASCAR fans chant “Fuck Joe Biden” after the race.

Since then, the presidential campaign of Donald Trump and Republican members of Congress have used the phrase widely, including during Congressional floor speeches, to show their displeasure with the Biden administration. The “Let’s Go Brandon” slogan airs uncensored on broadcast television, national cable news, and broadcast radio for all to hear. In the case on appeal, FIRE’s clients wore their “Let’s Go Brandon” sweatshirts to school to express their disapproval of Biden and his administration.

During the lawsuit, the school acknowledged the students did not cause any disruption with their apparel. Yet this past August, the District Court for the Western District of Michigan upheld the school district’s censorship of “Let’s Go Brandon” apparel, holding “Let’s Go Brandon” is legally indistinguishable from “Fuck Joe Biden” and therefore constitutes “profanity.”

As FIRE’s appeal argues, that’s not how speech works. “Heck” is not the same as “hell,” “darn” is not the same as “damn,” and “Let’s Go Brandon” is not the same as “Fuck Joe Biden.” The government may not censor public school students’ political expression absent substantial disruption. Nor may school districts bypass this First Amendment protection by dubbing disfavored political speech “profane.”

This case will play a critical role in protecting the rights of other minor students to engage in non-disruptive political expression as guaranteed under the First Amendment.

Last week, 18 individuals and organizations, including some of the world’s foremost linguistic experts, joined together to file eight amicus curiae, or “friend of the court” briefs in support of minors’ free speech rights. These briefs urge the Sixth Circuit to recognize what has long been understood outside the courtroom — sanitized expression is, by design, distinguishable from the profane language it replaces:

Linguistic Scholars: Dr. Melissa Mohr, Dr. Rebecca Roache, Professor Timothy Jay, Professor John H. McWhorter, and Professor Steven Pinker are internationally recognized linguistic scholars whose works focus on the history, psychology, and sociology of swearing. Each has written extensively on how language works and the role it continues to play in society. Together, they submitted a brief through Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP, helpfully delineating the different types of “sanitized expression,” including euphemisms like “Let’s Go Brandon,” and describing their ubiquity and importance in political discourse. As they state at the beginning of their brief: “This case is not about swearing; it is about not swearing.”

First Amendment Scholars: Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, Professor Clay Calvert, Professor Roy Gutterman, Professor Mary-Rose Papandrea, and Professor Joseph A. Tomain submitted an amicus brief through Cornell Law School’s First Amendment Clinic and attorney Michael Grygiel. Drawing on decades of study, the scholars methodically apply seminal First Amendment decisions to this particular case. Their brief argues: “the lower court failed to apply Tinker’s ‘substantial disruption’ test, as required when schools seek to prohibit student expression within the school environment that communicates a political message,” and thus “departed from longstanding public student constitutional free speech principles.”

Liberty Justice Center: The Liberty Justice Center’s amicus brief asserts the district court’s decision represents an unprecedented expansion of “profanity” and is part of a nationwide increase in political censorship. The brief describes how “censorship of entirely mainstream political discourse has become all too common around the country” and school authorities increasingly seek to restrict free expression. The LJC argues that the district court’s opinion exacerbates this growing problem, by authorizing schools to treat “every euphemism . . . as the equivalent of its reference.”

Dhillon Law Group, Young America’s Foundation, and Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute: These organizations submitted an amicus brief asserting the lower court’s failed to properly apply Tinker and its progeny to the students’ “Let’s Go Brandon” sweatshirts, which likewise represented political, non-profane student speech. Through careful analysis of First Amendment doctrine, their brief explains that the “district court erred in disregarding the political nature of appellants’ ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ apparel” and undervaluing the importance of First Amendment protections in K-12 public schools.

National Coalition Against Censorship: The National Coalition Against Censorship submitted an amicus brief through Covington & Burling LLP to challenge the district court’s categorization of “Let’s Go Brandon” as unprotected “profane” expression. The brief argues that the “district court’s analysis would create a new, ill-defined category of ‘euphemistic’ profanity,” and “give school officials wide latitude to silence viewpoints they find objectionable, a result at odds with existing First Amendment doctrine.” The brief asserts that the lower court’s decision “represents a serious departure from our nation’s historical commitment to protecting political speech” and urges the Sixth Circuit to reverse.

Manhattan Institute: The Manhattan Institute’s amicus brief emphasizes the critical importance of preserving free speech rights in K-12 public schools, where students develop the skills necessary to productively engage in democratic society. The brief describes case law reflecting the importance of these freedoms in primary and secondary schools — and argues the district court’s opinion fails to “accurately reflect this understanding.”

Parents Defending Education: Parents Defending Education submitted an amicus brief through Consovoy McCarthy PLLC arguing that the district court’s decision cannot be reconciled with First Amendment principles. The brief emphasizes how the school codes at issue in this case are part of a growing and concerning “trend of schools adopting speech codes prohibiting controversial speech.” And the brief asserts each of the cases relied on by the lower court are distinguishable.

Buckeye Institute: The Buckeye Institute’s amicus brief contends that under established First Amendment doctrine, “[r]egulation of speech under the First Amendment should constitute a rare exception.” Yet, they argue, the Michigan school district, motivated by desire to censor what it deems undesirable speech, disregarded that doctrine in order to censor non-disruptive political speech “that does not fall within one of the Supreme Court’s approved exceptions” to the First Amendment’s protection.

Our clients and their counsel are grateful for the support of this impressive and diverse amicus coalition. This case will play a critical role in protecting the rights of other minor students to engage in non-disruptive political expression as guaranteed under the First Amendment.

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December 17, 2024
Let’s Learn About Telehealth (Sessions from the National Telehealth Conference)

In May, I was pleased to see the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) offer a virtual Telehealth Conference. I am always on the lookout for good professional development opportunities, so I signed up.

My schedule had a conflict on that day and I was unable to attend, BUT they posted videos of the sessions online. I was so excited and I could not wait to block time on my schedule, grab some lunch, and listen to the sessions.

You can listen to the sessions as well!

Here is a list of the sessions and the video links:

Leaders from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will discuss priorities and highlight key efforts across the Department to expand access to telehealth services.

Providers and experts will discuss telehealth’s key role in access to behavioral health services as well as the integration of behavioral and physical health services, especially for those in underserved communities.

This session will discuss ongoing efforts to facilitate access to inter-state telehealth services through HRSA’s Licensure Portability Grant Program. Through this program, HRSA provides support to the Federation of State Medical Boards and the Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards. Participants will learn about current options to address licensure portability reform and have an opportunity to provide feedback.

This session will discuss key policy and infrastructure issues at the state and federal level needed to ensure continued access to telehealth beyond the COVID-19 public health emergency.

This session will discuss key considerations for integrating telehealth in various medical settings. Participants will learn of current models and provide input on ways to address challenges and barriers.

This session will provide an overview of Federal efforts and resources to improve access to broadband, which is a key component to the delivery of telehealth services as well as other social determinants of health.

This session will discuss current efforts to assist providers in using telehealth and considerations for training the workforce for tomorrow. Issues to be discussed will include provider-to-provider mentoring, developing telehealth curriculum for providers and addressing burnout.

This session will provide participants with an opportunity to learn more about the HRSA supported Telehealth Resource Centers including their work and expertise in assisting providers with implementing telehealth services.

This session will discuss leveraging telehealth technology in addressing and treating COVID-19.

Experts will discuss the key telehealth issues and priorities identified by their stakeholders and how those telehealth issues may evolve beyond the pandemic.

Check out the sessions. Which session was your favorite?

***

Check out my book – Retaining College Students Using Technology: A Guidebook for Student Affairs and Academic Affairs Professionals.

Remember to order copies for your team as well!

Thanks for visiting!

Sincerely,

Dr. Jennifer T. Edwards
Professor of Communication

Executive Director of the Texas Social Media Research Institute & Rural Communication Institute

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August 1, 2022