Tag: Link

  • Higher education needs to better understand the link between neurodivergence and hormonal dysregulation

    Higher education needs to better understand the link between neurodivergence and hormonal dysregulation

    The purpose of this article is to highlight an issue that is likely to affect many women working in higher education – but it’s one that they, their colleagues, and their managers are probably unaware of.

    In general, there is now a much greater understanding of the issues for women, and their male colleagues and managers, around peri- and post-menopause. Obviously that is not specific to HE but something that many organisations, including universities, have been keen to provide information and support on.

    What is less well publicised is the link between hormonal dysregulation and an exacerbation of neurodivergent traits in neurodivergent people. You might be wondering why this would be a particular issue for the HE sector. But there is evidence to suggest that universities are likely to attract a higher percentage of neurodivergent staff in academic roles (albeit often undisclosed), due to the strengths that are associated with many neurodivergent behaviours.

    These strengths include the ability to hyperfocus on the details of a single topic for a long time, without noticing when one is tired or hungry, for example. This is often a skill or behaviour that is displayed by those with significant responsibility for research.

    Perfectionism is also a known neurodivergent behaviour, often displayed by academics involved in both teaching and research, as are high levels of intellectual curiosity, creativity and original thinking. Finally, many neurodivergent individuals have a strong empathy towards the disadvantaged, linked to a strong desire to improve social justice – without this, many academics would not have decided to work in higher education.

    Having any or all of these skills does not mean that one is neurodivergent, but rather that neurodivergent individuals often have strengths in these areas. There is also an understanding that those individuals who excel at mathematics, and other STEM related disciplines, are more likely to be neurodivergent. Again this will include many academics working in HE.

    Making the link

    It is only recently that psychologists and schools have started becoming more aware of how neurodivergent traits manifest in children, and so more children are being diagnosed with these behaviours – and thus able to get the help, support and reasonable adjustments they need to thrive.

    Not so with the current adult workforce. When I was at school there was some awareness of dyslexia, although it was rarely talked about, but nothing about autism or ADHD. Indeed I first learned I had dyslexia during a university interview aged 17 when I was told that my English teacher had “helpfully” declared this in her reference. There was no awareness that finding out this way might be a shock, or that I might have other challenges that might benefit from support.

    Even when my children were school age (some 20 or 30 years ago), very few children in their classes were diagnosed, and then it was limited to boys with disruptive behaviours.

    There is now a greater understanding of the different forms of neurodivergence and, in particular, ADHD and autistic spectrum disorder. People with these neurodevelopmental conditions can exhibit the strengths above as well as less welcome ones, such as overwhelm, difficulty coping with sudden changes, the need for routine and one’s own space, sensory issues including noise and lighting, and suicidal ideation and self-harm.

    Why is this a problem? I went undiagnosed for 59 years. I could have gone through life without needing a diagnosis – had it not been for the exacerbation of traits that I now recognise was a result of the hormonal dysregulation I have experienced during the past 15 years. Years of significant overwhelm leading to dark thoughts and a desire to self-harm, extreme reactions to certain lights, noise, a dislike of being touched and an increasing inability to cope with change – particularly last-minute changes (not uncommon in higher education at present).

    I experienced similar issues during puberty and pregnancy. As with menopause, I put this down to hormonal change but failed to appreciate that this was linked to my, then unknown, neurodivergence.

    From recent experience and observation, I began to suspect that autistic traits increased as we aged and for women were exacerbated when linked with the symptoms of menopause. However when I attended a course on neurodiversity in the workplace facilitated by Zara Sloane, I learned that there was indeed a known link between hormonal dysregulation and an exacerbation of neurodivergent traits.

    In that same course, I also learned that the positive traits of many neurodivergent conditions were the very behaviours that arguably made great researchers and academics. So there are also likely to be many undiagnosed neurodivergent women in HE, unaware that the extreme physical, emotional, and functional impairment that they experience during their monthly cycle could be due to a neurodivergent condition which when treated, or even just better understood by themselves and their managers, could make life much more manageable.

    Supporting neurodivergent women in academia

    We now have more women in the UK workplace in general and also in higher education. Many of these are entering peri- and post-menopausal stages. In every menopause café my workplace runs, I hear examples of extreme symptoms women have that are not being sufficiently helped by HRT and other therapies. Is there something more going on? I am not saying we need to diagnose every potentially neurodivergent academic but, if someone suspects they might have a neurodivergent condition, and wants a screening, should we not find the resource for this?

    Just knowing that my monthly cycle, peri- and post-menopausal symptoms have been and are affected by my autism, in ways that other women don’t experience, is liberating. I now understand the overwhelm better, and can put in place periods of quiet work during the day to help regulate me. I can remove myself from situations that are particularly noisy and find a sympathetic ear without it leading to a crisis. But what about the thousands of other female academics who have not yet been diagnosed and are unaware of this relationship?

    If you have read this far, please bring this to the attention of your managers and leadership teams. Together, let’s publicise this link and get the support for the neurodivergent women in academia who think they just have extreme hormonal symptoms and don’t realise this is connected to neurodivergent conditions which need treating differently.

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  • The Link Between Greed and Efficiency

    The Link Between Greed and Efficiency

    In the mythology of American capitalism, “efficiency” is the magic word that justifies austerity for workers, rising tuition for students, and ever-expanding wealth for administrators, financiers, and institutional elites. It is framed as neutral, technocratic, and rational. In reality, efficiency in higher education has become inseparable from greed, functioning as a mask for extraction and consolidation.

    Universities and their sprawling medical centers have become some of the largest landowners and employers in the cities they inhabit. As Devarian Baldwin has shown, these institutions operate as urban empires, expanding aggressively into surrounding neighborhoods, raising housing costs, displacing long-time residents, and reshaping cities to suit institutional priorities. University medical centers, nominally nonprofit, consolidate smaller hospitals, close services deemed unprofitable, and charge some of the highest healthcare prices in the nation. These operations are justified as efficiency or economic development, yet they often destabilize the communities they claim to serve.

    Endowments, some exceeding fifty billion dollars at elite institutions, have become central to this dynamic. Managed like hedge funds, these pools of capital are heavily invested in private equity, venture capital, real estate, and derivatives. The financial logic of endowment management now shapes university priorities, shifting focus from public service and learning to capital accumulation, investor returns, and risk management. Efficiency is defined not by educational outcomes but by the growth of financial assets.

    This culture of extraction has been amplified by decades of government austerity. Public funding for higher education has steadily declined since the 1980s, forcing institutions to behave like corporations. At the same time, the aging Baby Boomer generation is creating unprecedented financial pressures on Social Security, Medicare, and healthcare systems, leaving public coffers stretched thin and reinforcing a winner-take-all national mentality. In this environment, universities compete fiercely for students, research dollars, donors, and prestige, producing conditions ripe for exploitation.

    Outsourcing has become a standard method to achieve “efficiency.” Universities frequently contract out food service, custodial work, IT, housing management, and security. Workers employed by these contractors often face lower wages, fewer benefits, and higher turnover, while administrators present these arrangements as cost-saving measures. Meanwhile, administrative layers within institutions continue to expand, creating a managerial class that oversees growth and strategy while teaching budgets shrink. As Marc Bousquet has argued, the corporate-style management model displaces faculty governance and treats students and staff as revenue streams rather than participants in a shared educational mission.

    The adjunctification of the faculty exemplifies efficiency as exploitation. Contingent instructors now teach the majority of classes in American higher education, earning poverty-level wages without benefits while juggling multiple teaching sites. Institutions call this “flexibility” and “cost containment,” but in reality it transfers value from instruction to administrative overhead, athletics, real estate, and financial operations, all while reducing the quality of education and undermining academic continuity.

    The rise of Online Program Managers, or OPMs, further illustrates the fusion of greed and efficiency. These companies design, manage, and market entire online degree programs, often taking forty to seventy percent of tuition revenue. While presented as efficiency partners, OPMs aggressively recruit students, inflate costs, and minimize academic oversight. Their business model mirrors the exploitative strategies of for-profit colleges, which pioneered high-cost, low-quality instruction combined with heavy marketing to capture federal loan dollars. The collapse of chains such as Corinthian, ITT, and EDMC left millions of borrowers with debt and no degree, yet the model persists inside nonprofit universities through OPMs and algorithm-driven online programs.

    “Robocolleges” represent the latest evolution of this trend. AI-driven instruction, predictive analytics, automated grading, and digital tutoring promise unprecedented efficiency, but they often replace human educators, reduce pedagogical oversight, exploit student data, and prioritize enrollment growth over educational quality. Efficiency here serves the financial bottom line rather than the learning or well-being of students.

    The result of these extractive practices is a national crisis of student debt, now exceeding one trillion dollars. Students borrow to cover skyrocketing tuition, outsourced services, underpaid instruction, and the costs of programs shaped by OPMs or automated platforms. Debt is not an accident of the system; it is the intended outcome, a mechanism for transferring public resources and student labor into private profit.

    The broader social context intensifies the problem. Higher education exists in a winner-take-all, financialized society, where resources flow upward and the majority of people are told to compete harder, work longer, and borrow more. Universities have internalized this ideology, acting as both symbols and engines of extraction. Efficiency, under this paradigm, is defined not by the effectiveness of teaching or research but by the expansion of institutional power, wealth, and influence.

    True efficiency would look very different. It would invest in educators rather than contractors, stabilize academic labor rather than exploit it, serve surrounding communities rather than displace them, expand learning opportunities rather than debt, and prioritize democratic governance over corporate-style hierarchy. Efficiency should measure how well institutions serve the public good, not how well they protect endowment returns, OPM profits, or administrative salaries.

    Until such a redefinition occurs, efficiency will remain one of the most powerful tools of extraction in American higher education, a rhetorical justification for greed disguised as rational management.

    Sources

    Devarian Baldwin, In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower

    Marc Bousquet, How the University Works

    Tressie McMillan Cottom, Lower Ed

    Christopher Newfield, The Great Mistake

    Sara Goldrick-Rab, Paying the Price

    Government reports on for-profit colleges, student debt, and OPMs

    Research on higher education financialization, outsourcing, and austerity policies

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  • Am I the Weakest Link?

    Am I the Weakest Link?

    by Paul Temple

    Call me a sad old geezer, but I’m finding the never-ending positivity that characterises LinkedIn’s sunshine world rather wearing. To take one example, the “comment” options you’re offered after each post might run from “awesome“, through “love this,” to merely “impressive”: where is “misleading”, “time-wasting”, or “plain wrong”? Anyway, turning this negativity (my “inner snark” as a kindly colleague once put it) into a business proposition, in a way that LinkedIn’s owners (Microsoft paid $26 billion for it back in 2016) would surely understand, I’m about to pitch a rival version,  provisionally titled PissedOff – though the investors might want to focus-group that first. (Warning: if this title offends you, please stop reading at this point.) It will instead tap into the deep wells of pessimism that characterise so much of British life (though the French surely are just as good at it). The sociologists refer to this kind of thinking as “narratives of decline”, supported by Britain’s unofficial national motto, “Could be worse”.

    So a typical post on my new site might be: “Dave has just been fired from the University of Hounslow – ‘I always hated the place anyway, and the VC was a complete ****er,’ he said.” “Dave, absolutely with you, mate, the place is beyond awful, surprised you stuck it as long as you did”. “Dave, you speak for all of us who have suffered at Hounslow – I got out as soon as I could. Nobody who values their integrity should think of working there”. I’m confident that the latest from PissedOff will be the first email that everyone working in higher education will open in the morning, to see who/where is getting the flak. An absolute rule of the site will be that references to “seeking new challenges” or similar euphemisms are banned: if you’ve been fired, let’s hear about it, it’s (usually) nothing to be ashamed of – be loud and proud. What you’re now going to do is make them very, very sorry…

    What will then happen is that everyone with a grudge about Hounslow (and which university doesn’t have an army of grudge-bearers?) will pile in, Four Yorkshiremen-style: “You think you had a bad time, let me tell you about what happened to me…”, and pretty soon the place will be a national laughing-stock. After the VC has had a torrid meeting with the governing body, and the HR Director has been fired as a pointless gesture, there might possibly be some improvements. I’d be surprised to learn of any institutional changes as a result of another glowing LinkedIn endorsement.

    LinkedIn’s Californian roots are its problem. Up to a point, and having seen it working first-hand, I am actually in favour of American-style positivity in organisations: there is a sense that if the people around you are saying “Yes, we can do this!”, then maybe the difficulties can, actually, be overcome – what the Navy calls the “Nelson Touch”. But equally, some of those difficulties may be intractable, and pretending they don’t exist won’t make them go away. If you want some actual American examples of difficulties being overcome, or not, look at George Keller’s still-excellent Academic Strategy (1983), or my own more recent reflections on it (Temple, 2018). Or my review of some honest American case studies of university leadership and – the book’s best bits – of its failures (Temple, 2020).

    What these studies show is how real problems are identified and how they then might be overcome. One of the weaknesses found in too many university strategy documents is the inability to face up to problems and creating instead a make-believe world (call it LinkedIn World) where everything always goes well and everyone is enjoying themselves. The danger, of course, is that strategy documents like that will make everyone pissed off even if they hadn’t been before. I once got into trouble with the VC of a post-92 university by asking, quite innocently (no, really), about the basis of a claim in a staff recruitment ad that they were a top-ten research university (something like that, anyway: as my then-colleague David Watson drily remarked, “Another fine mess you’ve got us into”.). This was a perfectly good university, doing a fine job in supporting regional development goals, doing next-to-no research (as measured by research income), but feeling it necessary to buy into the apex research university model. They were assuming that they had to live in LinkedIn World, rather than the world they were actually in. (I’m glad to say that the VC and I eventually parted on good terms – he even bought me a beer.)

    Anyway, once the IPO for PissedOff goes through, do join me for a cocktail on the deck of my yacht in Monte Carlo. But leave any whingeing about your job back in the office – I don’t want the real world intruding on my Riviera idyll, thank you very much.

    Dr Paul Temple is Honorary Associate Professor in the Centre for Higher Education Studies, UCL Institute of Education.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

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

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  • 5 powerful ways to link STEM lessons to real-world applications

    5 powerful ways to link STEM lessons to real-world applications

    Key points:

    “Why are we learning this?”

    This is a question every educator has faced before. To be fair, it’s a valid question. Students are naturally curious, and it’s normal for them to wonder about the knowledge that they’re acquiring. The real issue is how we, as educators, choose to respond to them.

    In my experience, teachers have two standard replies to this question:

    1. They’ll try to explain the subject in detail, which results in a long-winded answer that confuses their students and doesn’t satisfy them.
    2. They’ll argue that the information is important because it’s on an upcoming test, which typically leaves students feeling frustrated and disengaged.

    Either way, the result is the same: Students lose all legitimacy in the lesson and they’re unable to connect with the content.

    If we want our students to engage with the material in a way that’s memorable, meaningful, and fun, then we need to help them discover why it is important. Teachers can accomplish this by introducing real-world connections into the lesson, which reveal how the information that students acquire can be practically applied to real-world problems.

    Without building these connections between the concepts our students learn and real-world applications, students lose interest in what they are learning. Using the strategies below, you can start to build student investment into your classroom content.

    The everyday enigma

    Use everyday items that operate with mystery and frame your lesson around them. Your students’ curiosity will drive them to learn more about the object and how it functions. This allows students to see that the small concepts they are learning are leading to the understanding of an object that they interact with daily. When choosing an item, pick one that is familiar and one that has multiple STEM elements. For example, you could use a copper wire to discuss electrical currents, a piece of an automobile to explore chemistry and combustion, or shark teeth when teaching about animal adaptations and food chains.  

    Interest intersect

    Connect your students’ personal hobbies to the subject matter. For instance, if you have a student who is really passionate about soccer, try having them create a mini poster that connects the sport to the concepts learned in class. This gets them to think creatively about the purpose of content. This strategy has the additional benefit of helping teachers learn more about their students, creating opportunities to build communication and rapport.

    Get an expert

    Invite professionals (scientists, engineers, etc.) to talk with your class. This gives students a first-hand account of how the concepts they are learning can be applied to different careers. If you’re teaching chemistry, consider inviting a nurse or doctor to share how this subject applies to human health. If you’re teaching math, a local architect can expound on how angles and equations literally shape the homes in which students live. Not only does this provide a real-world example of students, but it helps schools connect with their community, creating vital relationships in the process.           

    Problem to progress

    Create an engineering investigation based on a local, real-world problem. For instance, I once knew a music teacher who was frustrated because pencils would regularly fall off his music stands. I challenged my 5th grade students to create a solution using the engineering design process. Not only did they succeed, but the experience allowed my students to see the real-world results of the inventions they created. When students understand that their work can make a tangible difference, it completely changes their relationship with the material.  

    Project-based learning

    Project-based learning is driven by inquiry and student ownership. This allows students to make contributions to the real world through hands-on investigations. What makes these inquiry-focused lessons so useful is that students are the driving force behind them. They choose how to approach the information, what questions to pursue, and what solutions they want to test. This makes the learning intensely personal while taking advantage of students’ natural curiosity, creativity, and critical-thinking skills. If you need a little help getting started, consider using one of these Blue Apple projects from Inquiry Outpost.

    By linking our STEM lessons to real-world experiences, teachers can provide a meaningful answer to the age-old question of, “Why are we learning this?” We can equip our students with the skills to not only navigate everyday challenges but also create positive change within their own communities. So, let’s empower young learners to see the relevance of STEM in their lives, and lay a strong learning foundation that will support them well beyond the classroom.

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