This week on the podcast we examine what the rise of Reform UK – and new insight into its prospective voters – might mean for universities, international education, and the wider public legitimacy of higher education.
Plus we discuss Skills England’s new guidance on local skills improvement plans – and the move to place higher education, up to postgraduate level, at the heart of local skills ecosystems – and a new study of student working lives that reveals how paid employment alongside full-time study is reshaping participation, wellbeing, and outcomes.
With Sam Roseveare, Director of Regional and National Policy at University of Warwick, Alex Favier, Director at Favier Ltd, Jen Summerton, Operations Director at Wonkhe and presented by Jim Dickinson, Associate Editor at Wonkhe.
The post-16 white paper promised to strengthen statutory guidance on local skills improvement plans (LSIPs), including “clearer expectations on higher education providers to engage” and a move to make the plans cover skills all the way up to level 8.
Now, the revised guidance has been published – and the push for higher education providers to play a more central role has indeed materialised.
This is a local shop
LSIPs were introduced in the Skills and Post-16 Education Act under the last government as employer-owned priorities and actions around skills needs and the provision of technical education in a designated local area of England. Some 38 different plans were approved by the Secretary of State in summer 2023, with annual progress reports following – you can find them all on this page if you don’t mind navigating through some confusingly designed websites.
That legislation also introduced mechanisms to assess how well education providers were contributing to the plans – for example, accountability agreements for further education colleges. For higher education institutions, the only mention of accountability in the old guidance was an enjoinder to make a note of activity related to LSIP priorities in strategic plans. The previous government framing around LSIPs was notably quiet on the role of higher education, as we’ve noted before – which is not to say that many HE institutions didn’t get involved, to greater or lesser extents (the progress reports linked above demonstrate this, though in a non-systematic way).
LSIPs cover a three-year period, so a new round in summer 2026 is Labour’s big chance to reshape them in its preferred fashion. Today’s guidance is to be used for an LSIP draft submitted by the end of March, and – pending government approval – the new plans will be published in or around June next year.
The areas covered by LSIPs, and the corresponding employer representative bodies (ERBs), have also been shifting – today we get the latest areas confirmed, now sensibly contiguous with local authority areas. An additional wrinkle that Labour announced in last year’s devolution white paper is for so-called strategic authorities (“mayoral and non-mayoral combined authorities, combined county authorities, and the Greater London Authority”) to take joint ownership of LSIPs, along with ERBs. Eventually everywhere will be in a strategic authority – one day – but today’s guidance is in many places split depending on whether the LSIP is or is not in a more devolved part of England.
Best laid plans
LSIPs are a complicated undertaking at the best of times – as the government puts it, they “unite employers, strategic authorities, higher education, further education and independent training providers and wider stakeholders in solving skills challenges together.” Their effectiveness in really driving change remains unproven but – in theory – they respond to calls for a skills system that is planned at a local rather than central government level (or one that is not planned at all).
The new guidance confirms just quite how complex an endeavour putting a plan together has become. New LSIPs will need to join up with the industrial strategy and its sector plans, “as far as they relate to industries within the local area.” This will also create synergies (or cross-purposes) with the new local growth plans for mayoral authorities announced at the spending review, which focus on economic development, and the Local Get Britain Working Plans (GBWPs) which are supposed to be looking at “broader causes of economic inactivity.”
The guidance references a need for a read-across to the clean energy jobs plan (the LSIPs legislation placed a requirement on the plans to consider the environment), but this presumably will equally apply all the other forthcoming workforce strategies – now renamed as jobs plans, keep up – that different sectors are being obliged to come up with for purposes of linking migration and skills.
And in perhaps the most notable shift of all, the new Labour version of the LSIP is instructed to pay heed to the post-16 white paper, and specifically the new prime ministerial targets for participation in higher-level learning. This is even presented as the first bullet point in the list of what the Secretary of State will take into account in the approval process. Reading between the lines, it looks like the government will be wanting plans which are relatively bullish on the growth of provision, including – but not only – at levels 4 and 5.
Skills England is tasked with monitoring and oversight, as well as providing copious data to inform the plans’ development.
Get HE in
As set out in the new guidance at least, each LSIP will function as a little microcosm of the more coherent and cooperative education and skills landscape that Labour is swinging for in its white paper vision. Whether the plans can really drive these reforms, or simply reflect their framing, is another question – but there’s similar language about asking both further and higher education providers to lean in and
work together in support of the ambitions set out in their respective LSIP, creating a more coherent post-16 education system with better pathways and opportunities to progress from entry up to higher level skills, enabled by the Lifelong Learning Entitlement.
As mentioned, LSIPs will now be required to run the full gamut of technical education from entry level up to level 8, having previously been limited to level 6 provision as a cut-off. Asking employers and local areas to think about postgraduate-level skills needs is a bit of a watershed moment, even if the government itself seems to have only limited appetite for much policy change, and it will be fascinating to see what comes of it.
Perhaps it’s the paucity of much proper government support for the higher education sector in recent years which leads me to celebrate this, but the language in the guidance around higher education’s fit within local systems feels spot on, in terms of how the sector would like itself to be understood:
Higher education providers (HEPs) are focal points for higher level technical skills, research and innovation. The differences in mission, specialisms and strategic objectives between different types of institutions mean that HEPs can add unique value to local skill systems in a variety of ways, including through industry partnerships, research-led innovation, and national and international development initiatives; as well as feeding in higher education specific intelligence, such as graduate outcomes or skills pipeline data, to complement and add to further education and employer data.
What getting stuck in looks like
Both HE and FE providers will be expected to play a role in LSIP governance. Core elements of the new plans will need to include details of how both types of providers have been engaged in shaping the priorities and actions, as well as identifying challenges, and set out how they will support implementation and review progress.
The potential actions included within LSIPs are varied, but it’s anticipated that they will speak to both improving the local skills “offer” – including changes that higher and further education providers can make to better align provision with the skills needs of the area and to simplify access – and to raise awareness of existing provision, helping both employers and learners to better understand what’s available.
On the latter, there’s a nice moment where the guidance makes a genuinely sensible suggestion:
Where engagement between higher education providers and LSIPs has not previously taken place, ERBs (and Strategic Authorities) may find engaging with the heads of careers and employability (who tend to work on skills development and measuring skills impact) a useful starting point.
Higher education institutions will be “expected” (more on that later) to help ERBs and local government structures help map higher technical skills needs, share information about what they currently offer, and reflect on how their provision can be more responsive. And help with evaluation, and use their subject expertise and industry links to help develop the technical skills of staff elsewhere. And employ their national and international reach to gather best practice. It’s almost as if universities are teeming hives of resource and capable people, rather than ivory towers intent on remaining aloof from their local areas.
Plus there’s an expectation for collaboration with further education and with other higher education providers to, “where appropriate”,
create a more strategically planned response to skills needs, leading to improved local and regional coverage and coordination.
It all sounds very nice if it works – and it all helps to flesh out the how of the white paper’s grand but largely un-operationalised ideas.
Who’s accountable then?
In its promises to give universities a “seat at the table” in LSIPs, it sounded like there was the possibility of Labour introducing a degree of accountability for higher education institutions, in the same way that applies to further education colleges (both through accountability agreements with DfE, and in a growing emphasis on local skills in Ofsted inspections). Research from the Association of Colleges has previously highlighted universities’ lack of formal accountability within the LSIP system as a mild bone of contention among stakeholders.
This hasn’t happened – as far as accountability applies to higher education institutions’ role in the plans, it will remain limited to an expectation that activity is recorded in strategic or business plans, as was previously the case. There is now also encouragement for HEIs to “publicly communicate their role in the LSIP in other ways.” What we do get much more of is an emphasis on those responsible for the plans to seek out and involve the higher education sector.
We therefore run up against the same issues that dog Labour’s HE agenda elsewhere – there might be an attractive vision of collaboration and coherence, which all things being equal the sector would be well-disposed towards, but at a time of maximum turmoil and with incentives pointing in other directions, can it really gel? Otherwise put: is dedicating enormous resource, goodwill and strategic direction to local needs a prudent choice for institutions battling to survive, or would they be better off focusing on recruiting every single last international student they can get their hands on for the rest of the Parliament? To which we might also add that the retrenchment in higher education civic work that seems to be taking place in some areas has likely already damaged some of the required structures and led to the loss of needed expertise.
It’s a similar story elsewhere in the system: local government structures have never been more stretched, devolution-related reforms are still in their infancy, and while employer groupings may be well-placed to say what skills they would like more of, are they really effective stewards of fiendishly complicated local projects involving multiple actors and spotty data?
A set of 39 well thought through and carefully monitored LSIPs at the heart of a responsive ecosystem of employers, HE and FE, and local government – each with one eye on the industrial strategy, and another on an area’s own specific character – would do wonders for Labour’s education and skills agenda. But the conditions need to be in place for it to emerge, and right now it feels like quite the reach.
There have been so many conversations and speculations and recommendations aired about the forthcoming post-16 skills and education white paper that you’d be forgiven for thinking it already had been published months ago.
But no, it’s expected this week some time – possibly as early as Monday – and so for everyone’s sanity it’s worth rehearsing some of the framing drivers and intentions behind it, clearing the deck before the thing finally arrives and we start digesting the policy detail.
The policy ambition is clear: a coherent and coordinated post-16 “tertiary” sector in England, that offers viable pathways to young people and adult learners through the various levels of education and into employment, contributing to economic growth through providing the skilled individuals the country needs.
The political challenge is also real: with Reform snapping at Labour’s heels, the belief that the UK can “grow its own” skills, and offer opportunity and the prospect of economic security to its young people across the country must become embedded in the national psyche if the government is to see off the threat.
The politics and policy combine in the Prime Minister’s announcement at Labour Party Conference of an eye-catching new target for two thirds of young people to participate in some form of higher-level learning. That positions next week’s white paper as a longer term systemic shift rather than, say, a strategy for tackling youth unemployment in this parliament – though it’s clear there is also an ambition for the two to go hand in hand, with skills policy now sitting across both DfE and DWP.
Insert tab a into slot b
The aspiration to achieve a more joined up and functioning system is laudable – in the best of all possible worlds steering a middle course between the worst excesses and predatory behaviours of the free market, and an overly controlling hand from Whitehall. But the more you try to unpick what’s happening right now, the more you see how fragmented the current “system” is, with incentives and accountabilities all over the place. That’s why you can have brilliant FE and HE institutions delivering life-changing education opportunities, at the same time as the system as a whole seems to be grinding its gears.
Last week, a report from the Association of Colleges and Universities UK Delivering a joined-up post-16 skills system showcased some of the really great regional collaborations already in place between FE colleges and universities, and also set out some of the barriers to collaboration including financial pressures causing different providers to chase the same students in the same subjects rather than strategically differentiating their offer; and different regulatory and student finance systems for different kinds of learners and qualifications creating complexity in the system.
But it’s not only about the willingness and capability of different kinds of provider to coordinate with each other. It’s about the perennial urge of policymakers to tinker with qualifications and set up new kinds of provider creating additional complexity – and the complicating role of private training and HE provision operating “close to market” which can have a distorting effect on what “public” institutions are able to offer. It’s about the lack of join-up even within government departments, never mind across them. It’s also about the pervasiveness of the cultural dichotomy (and hierarchy) between perceptions of white-collar/professional and blue-collar/manual work, and the ill-informed class distinctions and capability-based assumptions underpinning them.
Some of this fragmentation can be addressed through system-wide harmonisation – such as the intent through the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) to implement one system of funding for all level 4–6 courses, and bringing all courses in that group under the regulatory purview of the Office for Students. AoC and UUK have also identified a number of areas where potential overlaps could be resolved through system-wide coordination: between OfS, Skills England, and mayoral strategic authorities; between the LLE and the Growth and Skills Levy; and between local skills improvement plans and the (national) industrial strategy. It would be odd indeed if the white paper did not make provision for this kind of coordination.
But even with efforts to coordinate and harmonise, in any system there is naturally occurring variation – in how employers in different industries are thinking about, reporting, and investing in skills, and at what levels, in the expectations and tolerance of different prospective students for study load, learning environment, scale of the costs of learning, and support needs, and in the relationship between a place, its economy and its people. The implications of those variations are best understood by the people who are closest to the problem.
The future is emergent
Complex systems have emergent properties, ie the stuff that happens because lots of actors responded to the world as they saw it but that could not necessarily have been predicted. Policy is always generating unforeseen outcomes. And it doesn’t matter how many data wonks and uber-brains you have in the Civil Service, they’ll still not be able to plot every possible outcome as any given policy intervention works its way through the system.
So for a system to work you need good quality feedback loops in which insight arrives in a timely way on the desks of responsible actors who have the capability, opportunity and motivation to adapt in light of them. In the post-16 system that’s about education and civic leaders being really good at listening to their students, their communities and to employers – and investing in quality in civic leadership (and identifying and ejecting bad apples) should be one of the ways that a post-16 skills system can be made to work.
But good leaders need to be afforded the opportunity to decide what their response will be to the specifics of the needs they have identified and be trusted, to some degree, to act in the public interest. So from a Whitehall perspective the question the white paper needs to answer is not only how the different bits of the system ought to join up, but whether the people who are instrumental in making it work themselves have the skills, information and flexibility to take action when it inevitably doesn’t.
University of Missouri president Mun Choi is pressing local officials about crime rates near the Columbia campus after a student from neighboring Stephens College died Sunday following a downtown shooting, KCUR and the Columbia Missourian reported.
The president’s demand to address the city’s “rampant crime rate” has gathered some support, but critics say that his characterization of the local climate is overexaggerated, pointing to data from the local police department.
The shooting, which also resulted in serious injuries to two others, took place early Saturday morning on the college town’s main street. One individual, not from the city, got into a verbal dispute and then opened fire toward the people he was confronting. The three individuals he hit, however, were bystanders.
In a letter sent the same day as the shooting, Choi called on city and county leaders to bolster the police presence and prosecute crimes to the fullest extent of the law. He also urged them to take down encampments of unhoused individuals, pass a loitering notice and repeal policies that “attract criminals to the region.”
But when asked during a press conference Monday what policies and practices he believes “attract criminals,” the MU president said he had none to cite. Neither the shooter in the Saturday incident nor any of the victims have been identified as unhoused, according to local reporting.
“That is why I am asking [local leaders] to evaluate the processes that we have and the practices,” he explained. “Are we giving the impression to potential criminals that this is a region that doesn’t take crime enforcement as well as the punishment that comes with it seriously?”
Choi later added that students and local business owners have been raising safety concerns about the city’s unhoused population. According to university data, the number of arrests and trespassing violations issued to the unhoused has “gone up dramatically” since 2019, he said.
That is different, however, from what some local police department data shows.
In a Facebook post Monday, the city’s mayor, Barbara Buffaloe, said there have been 58 gunshot incidents since the beginning of the year. That’s down from 105 in the first nine months of 2024.
Columbia Police Department chief Jill Schlude did note in a separate letter, however, that since 2019 more crimes have been concentrated downtown, occurring between midnight and 3 a.m.
“The connection between late-night social activity and violence is clear, and that is where we continue to focus our efforts,” Schlude said.
Regardless of any disputes over the data, multiple government officials—including Gov. Mike Kehoe, several members of the Columbia City Council and Mayor Buffaloe—have voiced support for Choi’s general call to improve safety. Buffaloe has also committed to forming a task force on the matter, and the CPD has outlined plans to increase the police presence downtown.
“Statistics cannot be used solely as a reason for us to move away from what needs to be done in the city of Columbia,” Choi said.
Over 60,000 students have benefited from the math program built on how the brain naturally learns
A new analysis shows that students using ST Math at Phillips 66-funded schools are achieving more than twice the annual growth in math performance compared to their peers. A recent analysis by MIND Research Institute, which included 3,240 students in grades 3-5 across 23 schools, found that this accelerated growth gave these schools a 12.4 percentile point advantage in spring 2024 state math rankings.
These significant outcomes are the result of a more than 10-year partnership between Phillips 66 and MIND Research Institute. This collaboration has brought ST Math, created by MIND Education, the only PreK–8 supplemental math program built on the science of how the brain learns, fully funded to 126 schools, 23 districts, and more than 60,000 students nationwide. ST Math empowers students to explore, make sense of, and build lasting confidence in math through visual problem-solving.
“Our elementary students love JiJi and ST Math! Students are building perseverance and a deep conceptual understanding of math while having fun,” said Kim Anthony, Executive Director of Elementary Education, Billings Public Schools. “By working through engaging puzzles, students are not only fostering a growth mindset and resilience in problem-solving, they’re learning critical math concepts.”
The initiative began in 2014 as Phillips 66 sought a STEM education partner that could deliver measurable outcomes at scale. Since then, the relationship has grown steadily, and now, Phillips 66 funds 100% of the ST Math program in communities near its facilities in California, Washington, Montana, Oklahoma, Texas, Illinois, and New Jersey. Once involved, schools rarely leave the program.
To complement the in-class use of ST Math, Phillips 66 and MIND introduced Family Math Nights. These events, hosted at local schools, bring students, families, and Phillips 66 employee volunteers together for engaging, hands-on activities. The goal is to build math confidence in a fun, interactive setting and to equip parents with a deeper understanding of the ST Math program and new tools to support their child’s learning at home.
“At Phillips 66, we believe in building lasting relationships with the communities we serve,” said Courtney Meadows, Manager of Social Impact at Phillips 66. “This partnership is more than a program. It’s a decade of consistent, community-rooted support to build the next generation of thinkers and improve lives through enriching educational experiences.”
ST Math has been used by millions of students across the country and has a proven track record of delivering a fundamentally different approach to learning math. Through visual and interactive puzzles, the program breaks down math’s abstract language barriers to benefit all learners, including English Learners, Special Education students, and Gifted and Talented students.
“ST Math offers a learning experience that’s natural, intuitive, and empowering—while driving measurable gains in math proficiency,” said Brett Woudenberg, CEO of MIND Education. “At MIND, we believe math is a gateway to brighter futures. We’re proud to partner with Phillips 66 in expanding access to high-quality math learning for thousands of students in their communities.”
About MIND Education MIND Education engages, motivates and challenges students towards mathematical success through its mission to mathematically equip all students to solve the world’s most challenging problems. MIND is the creator of ST Math, a pre-K–8 visual instructional program that leverages the brain’s innate spatial-temporal reasoning ability to solve mathematical problems; and InsightMath, a neuroscience-based K-6 curriculum that transforms student learning by teaching math the way every brain learns so all students are equipped to succeed. Since its inception in 1998, MIND Education and ST Math has served millions and millions of students across the country. Visit MINDEducation.org.
About Phillips 66 Phillips 66 (NYSE: PSX) is a leading integrated downstream energy provider that manufactures, transports and markets products that drive the global economy. The company’s portfolio includes Midstream, Chemicals, Refining, Marketing and Specialties, and Renewable Fuels businesses. Headquartered in Houston, Phillips 66 has employees around the globe who are committed to safely and reliably providing energy and improving lives while pursuing a lower-carbon future. For more information, visit phillips66.com or follow @Phillips66Co on LinkedIn.
eSchool Media staff cover education technology in all its aspects–from legislation and litigation, to best practices, to lessons learned and new products. First published in March of 1998 as a monthly print and digital newspaper, eSchool Media provides the news and information necessary to help K-20 decision-makers successfully use technology and innovation to transform schools and colleges and achieve their educational goals.
Over the past decade, local newsrooms have been disappearing from the U.S., leaving communities without a trusted information source for happenings in their region. But a recently established initiative from the State University of New York aims to deploy student reporters to bolster the state’s independent and public news organizations.
Last year SUNY launched the Institute for Local News, engaging a dozen student reporting programs at colleges across the state—including Stony Brook University, the University at Buffalo and the University at Albany—to produce local news content. Faculty direct and edit content produced by student journalists for local media partners.
This summer, the Institute sent its first cohort of journalism interns out into the field, offering 20 undergraduates paid roles in established newsrooms. After a successful first year, SUNY leaders plan to scale offerings to include even more student interns in 2026.
The background: The Institute for Local News has a few goals, SUNY chancellor John B. King told Inside Higher Ed: to mobilize students to engage in local news reporting in places that otherwise may not be covered, to instill students with a sense of civic service and to provide meaningful experiential learning opportunities.
News deserts, or areas that lack news sources, can impact community members’ ability to stay informed about their region. New York saw a 40 percent decrease in newspaper publications from 2004 to 2019, according to data from the University of North Carolina.
Research from the University of Vermont’s Center for Community News found that over 1,300 colleges and universities are located in or near counties defined as news deserts, but last year nearly 3,000 student journalists in university-led programs helped those communities by publishing tens of thousands of stories in local news outlets.
A 2024 study from the Business–Higher Education Forum found a lack of high-quality internships available for all college students, compared to the number of students who want to partake in these experiences. Research also shows students believe internships are a must-have to launch their careers, but not everyone can participate, often due to competing priorities or financial constraints.
To combat these challenges, SUNY, aided by $14.5 million in support from the New York State budget, is working to expand internship offerings—including in journalism—by providing pay and funds for transportation and housing as needed.
“We think having those hands-on learning opportunities enriches students’ academic experience and better prepares them for postgraduation success,” King said.
The Institute for Local News is backed by funding from the Lumina Foundation and is part of the Press Forward movement.
On the ground: Grace Tran, a rising senior at SUNY Oneonta majoring in media studies, was one of the first 20 students selected to participate in an internship with a local news organization this summer.
Tran and her cohort spent three days at Governor’s Island learning about journalism, climate issues and water quality in New York City before starting their assignments for the summer. Tran worked at Capital Region Independent Media in Clifton Park as a video editor and producer, cutting interviews, filming on-site and interviewing news sources.
“I wasn’t a journalism buff but more [focused on] video production,” Tran said. “But having this internship got me into that outlet, and it taught me so much and now I feel like a journalism buff.”
In addition to exploring new parts of the region and digging deeper into news principles, Tran built a professional network and learned how to work alongside career professionals.
“It’s my first-ever media job and there were no other interns there; it was just me with everyone else who’s been in this industry for such a long time,” Tran said. “It built a lot of [my] communication skills—how you should act, professionalism, you know, you can’t go to a site in jeans or with a bad attitude.”
Meeting the other SUNY journalism interns before starting full-time was important, Tran said, because it gave her peers for feedback and support.
What’s next: SUNY hopes to replicate this year’s numbers of 160 students publishing work and 20 summer interns through the Institute for Local News and expand internships in the near future, King said.
The Institute for Local News is just one avenue for students to get hands-on work experience, King said. SUNY is building out partnerships with the Brooklyn and New York Public Library systems for internships, as well as opportunities to place interns with the Department of Environmental Conservation to focus on climate action.
“We have a ways to go to get to our goal for every SUNY undergraduate to have that meaningful internship experience,” King said. “But we really want to make sure every student has that opportunity.”
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BELOIT, Wis. — As Chris Hooker eyed a newly built piece of ductwork inside Beloit Memorial High School, a wry smile crept over his face. “If you worked for me,” he told a student, considering the obviously crooked vent, “I might ask if your level was broken.”
Hooker, the HVAC manager of Lloyd’s Plumbing and Heating Corp. in nearby Janesville, was standing inside a hangar-sized classroom in the school’s advanced manufacturing academy, where students construct full-size rooms, hang drywall and learn the basics of masonry. His company sends him to the school twice a week for about two months a year to help teach general heating, venting and air conditioning concepts to students.
“I cover the mountaintop stuff,” he said, noting that at a minimum students will understand HVAC when they become homeowners.
But the bigger potential payoff is that these students could wind up working alongside Hooker after they graduate. If his firm has an opening, any student recommended by teacher Mike Wagner would be a “done deal,” Hooker said. “Plus, if they come through this class, I know them.”
Manufacturing and construction dominate the business needs inside Beloit, a small city of 36,000 just minutes from the Illinois border. Sitting at the nexus of two major highways, and within 100 miles of Chicago, Milwaukee and Madison, Beloit is home to a range of businesses that include a Frito-Lay production plant, an Amazon distribution center and a Navy subcontractor. In the next two years, a $500 million casino and hotel complex is scheduled to open.
But staffing these companies into the future is a major concern. Across the country, the average age of manufacturing workers is increasing, and one in four of these workers is age 55 or older, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2021 figures, the most recent available. In many other jobs the workforce is aging, too. Wisconsin is one of several states looking to boost career and technical education, or CTE, as a possible solution to the aging and shrinking workforce.
Having industry standard machines is a key part of Beloit Memorial High School’s manufacturing program; here a student uses a JET metalworking machine to create precise cuts for his project. Credit: Wayne D’Orio for The Hechinger Report
While the unemployment rate of Rock County, which includes Beloit, is 3.6 percent, only slightly higher than the state’s 3.2 percent, there’s a worker mismatch in the city, according to Drew Pennington, its economic development director.
Every day, 14,000 city residents travel outside of Beloit to work, while the same number commute into the city to fill mostly higher-paying jobs, said Pennington.
So when Beloit decided to revamp its public high school in 2018, CTE and work-based learning were at the forefront of the transformation.
The 1,225-student school now has three academies that cover 13 different career paths. After ninth grade, students choose to concentrate in an area, which means taking several courses in a specific field. Students also have the option to do work-based learning, which can mean internships, a youth apprenticeship or working at high-end simulated job sites inside the school.
“This creates not just a pipeline to jobs but also to career choices,” said Jeff Stenroos, the district’s director of CTE and alternative education.
“There are a lot of really good-paying jobs in this area. Students don’t need to leave, or go earn a four-year degree,” Stenroos said. An auto mechanic can “earn six figures by the age of 26 and that’s more than an educator with a master’s degree,” he said.
Beloit’s effort is a shift in high school emphasis similar to the extensive CTE programs being run in other places, notably Indiana, Kentucky and Alabama. In 2024, 40 states enacted 152 CTE-related policies, the biggest push in five years, according to Advance CTE, a nonprofit group that represents state CTE officials. Nationwide, about 20 percent of high school students take a concentration of CTE courses, it says, adding that the high school graduation rate for students who concentrate in CTE is 90 percent, 15 percentage points higher than the national average.
Three years ago, Wisconsin called for 7 percent of its high school students to be in workplace learning programs by 2026. Beloit’s progress puts it far ahead of that target. In Beloit Memorial, nearly 1 in 3 students meet this designation today, Stenroos said.
The high school features a cavernous construction area where students build full-scale rooms, learn masonry and complete plumbing and electrical wiring projects. The metal shop offers 16 welding stations and a die-cutter machine that allows students to create customized pieces to fit projects. Down the street, the school runs an eight-bay car repair center, a space it took over when a Sears autobody shop left town.
These spaces are “better than a lot of technical colleges,” Stenroos said.
In addition to their high school courses, Beloit Memorial students pile up industry-recognized certifications, Stenroos said. More than 40 percent of its students graduate with at least one certification, and 1 in 4 of them has multiple certifications.
While some simple certifications, such as OSHA Workplace Safety, can be accomplished in just 10 hours, others, such as those for the American Welding Society, require up to 500 hours of student work, he added. The state has called for 9 percent of graduating high school students to have earned at least one certification by next year. To incentivize schools to offer these opportunities, the state’s Department of Workforce Development pays schools for each student who earns a certification; in 2024, Beloit received $85,000 through this program, Stenroos said.
One of the school’s best automotive students, Geiry Lopez, graduated this year with five Automotive Service Excellence certifications. Standing less than 5 feet tall, Lopez said she is not bothered that she might not look like a typical mechanic. “I know I can do this,” she said, adding that she hopes to work on heavy machinery such as tractor trailers after she graduates.
She’s worked on her own car, with some fellow students, replacing the brakes, a front axle, rotors and wheel bearings at the school’s garage, she said, although she still hasn’t been able to drive it.
“My dad is taking forever to teach me how to drive,” she said.
The garage operates like an actual business, but the only customers are teachers and other Beloit staffers and students. Students estimate work costs, order parts and communicate with customers before any repairs take place. While oil changes and brake replacements are common, some students are totally rebuilding an engine in one car.
Over in the welding room, rising senior Cole Mellom was putting the finishing touches on a smoker he built in less than a month’s time. He said he loved the creativity of finding a plan, cutting the metal and building something that he could sell, all while in school. Plus, he knows that welding is a key skill needed for his dream job, race-car fabrication.
Officials revamped the Beloit Memorial High School in 2018 to funnel students into academies that are connected to jobs in the area and the state. Credit: Wayne D’Orio for The Hechinger Report
In the past, students created a custom-made protective plate that the city’s police use on a bomb squad vehicle.
The welding program has 125 students this year and had to turn away 65 more because of space limitations, Stenroos said; last year, 17 of the school’s welding academy graduates enlisted in the armed forces to specialize in welding.
These programs are designed to help meet the future needs of the state’s workforce. More than one-third of Wisconsin jobs will require education beyond high school but less than a bachelor’s degree by 2031, according to the Association for Career and Technical Education. For the last four years, the state has had more job openings than people on unemployment.
“There’s more jobs than there are people to fill them right now,” said Deb Prowse, a former career academy coach at Beloit Memorial who now works at Craftsman with Character, an area nonprofit that helps train students for careers in skilled trades.
Hooker, the Lloyd’s Plumbing HVAC manager, agreed. “Every project we work on has a delay, from a multimillion-dollar mansion to a three-bedroom spec,” he said. “There aren’t enough workers.”
The main reason Beloit Memorial has been able to zoom past state and national goals for both CTE and work-based learning is the school’s single-minded focus since 2018 on helping to ensure that its graduates will understand what businesses need and giving them a head start toward gaining those skills.
High school officials actually pared back the program from 44 pathways to 13, Stenroos said, part of an effort to tie each pathway to specific jobs. About 75 percent of pathways target area jobs, with the remaining quarter highlighting prominent professions within the state, he added.
Even though three straight budget referendum defeats have left the district with a $6.2 million funding gap, Stenroos said he’s been able to keep the CTE equipment modernized through donations and strategic allocation of the school’s federal Perkins grant and the state reimbursement for student certifications. In one instance, the school recently bought a $20,000 scanner for its automotive program; the machine can not only help diagnose a car problem, but also connect students to garages throughout the country that have successfully fixed the specified problem.
“It’s an expensive piece of equipment,” Stenroos said, “but it’s industry-certified and will give students real-life experience.”
Each of the three academies has an advisory board of teachers and industry professionals who work out how to embed practical lessons in classroom curriculum. “We ask business people, ‘What do you need, and how can we help our kids get there?’” said Stenroos.
“It’s really cool how receptive the school is to feedback,” said Heather Dobson, the business development manager at Corporate Contractors, Inc., a 200-person general contracting firm.
She explained that the district has incorporated small changes over the years, such as having students work in Microsoft programs instead of Google Classroom apps and teaching them how to write a professional email.
“Rarely is there an idea presented that they don’t embrace,” said Celestino Ruffini, the CEO of Visit Beloit, a nonprofit that promotes tourism of the city. The school is expanding its hospitality program because of the expected influx of jobs connected to the new casino and hotel, he said.
All the changes aren’t at the high school, however. In order to employ Beloit Memorial students, Frito-Lay had to alter its corporate policy of not allowing anyone under 18 to work in its plants, according to Angela Slagle, a supply chain manager there. The company now hires Beloit Memorial students for its career exploration youth apprenticeship program, she added.
The connection to area businesses goes beyond the school’s leaders. Each year, about 10 teachers complete an externship in which they spend one week of their summer at a local business. Teachers are paid $1,000 for the 20 hours, and they not only learn about what jobs a company may have but also find ways to incorporate real-world problems into their classroom lessons.
A few summers back, math teacher Michelle Kelly spent a week at Corporate Contractors. She was searching for different ways to use construction-based math problems with her students. In addition to using math to estimate a bid for a project or calculate the surface area of a job, she realized that complex math is needed to build a truss, the framework used to support a roof or bridge.
Because the triangular truss is supported by different lengths of wood inside its structure, Kelly said, building one requires the calculation of angles, total area, how much wood is needed and more. Since all her algebra students were in the school’s construction academy, she partnered with those teachers to go beyond blueprints and have the 10th graders build trusses, a collection of which sit in the back of her classroom.
A student’s detailed outline for creating a truss in Michelle Kelly’s 10th grade algebra class at Beloit Memorial High School, which is embracing career and technical education. Credit: Wayne D’Orio for The Hechinger Report
She sees this work as one way to help counter the chronic absenteeism that has existed since Covid. Teaching with this kind of hands-on work makes students see the relevance of algebra, she said. “Would it be easier to just have them take a test? Yes.”
Beloit Memorial Principal Emily Pelz said the school’s work is paying off. In the last four years, the school’s four-year graduation rate has ticked up slightly, from 83.4 percent in 2021-22 to 85.2 percent in 2024-25, while its attendance went from 78.5 percent to 84.8 percent in the same period, Pelz said.
Rik Thomas, a rising senior who already has his own business repairing and modifying cars, said this work has definitely made him more interested in school. While he thought the academy would merely explain what a construction career might include, “It’s nice to find out how to do the work.” His father works in construction and, Thomas added, “He loves that I take this program.”
Thomas and his classmates built a wooden shed earlier this year and were able to sell it for $2,500, with the money going to pay for more materials. Likewise, the first smoker created in the welding class was bought by Stenroos; the students are looking forward to posting the second one for sale after they determine how much they should charge.
While the school’s construction and other trade-related fields have drawn the most attention, its three academies also offer career paths in healthcare, education, business, the arts, hospitality and more.
For example, rising senior Tayvon Cates said he hopes to study pre-med at a historically Black college or university on his way to becoming a cardiology radiologist. Cates, who is in the school’s health and education academy, said, “If you want to do something, the school can help you do it.”
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The Government wants English universities to play a greater civic role in their localities. But new research shows universities are failing to invest in the people who perform this work, putting local relationships at risk.
A new report from the National Civic Impact Accelerator (NCIA) programme, funded by Research England to support civic universities and hosted by Sheffield Hallam University, finds that universities’ work with their communities and local partners is particularly vulnerable to the financial crisis now engulfing higher education. This is despite a strong message from education secretary Bridget Phillipson that the civic role should be one of five top priorities.
In her letter to university leaders on 4 November last year, Phillipson highlighted that universities should ‘play a full part in both civic engagement, ensuring local communities and businesses benefit fully from your work; and in regional development, working in partnership with local government and employers…’
Yet there is increasing evidence that those tasked with this work are facing a loss of resources, redundancies, and downgrading as universities focus on balancing the books. Some institutions, such as the University of Staffordshire, have disbanded their civic teams entirely; others have failed to renew employees’ short-term contracts or demanded that staff part-fund their civic roles by generating income.
Faced with this situation, we at the NCIA decided to explore further the impacts of this trend. We did so initially through an online survey and then through three focus groups in which we explored the situation in detail with 25 participants from 20 universities in England and one in Wales. The participants were all in ‘civic’ roles with responsibility for local partnerships. While some held academic posts, most were in management or professional services positions. The discussions were held under the Chatham House Rule to encourage participants to speak freely.
“There has been constant restructuring… it is expensive to lose all that valued knowledge.”
We identified four key risks to universities’ civic activities and relationships. Taken together, these pose a serious threat to universities’ status as ‘anchor institutions’ in their localities.
The first risk is that universities lose focus as they concentrate on their financial survival, generating uncertainty among local stakeholders about their reliability as partners. The second is a loss of institutional memory: as staff leave or are moved to other roles, relationships are abandoned and need to be rebuilt.
This risk was summed up by one participant in the discussions: ‘…because of the constant restructuring which seems to be repetitive over so many years … there’s not that continuation of learning, and all the knowledge and those relationships and that richness of what we do feels like it’s been lost… It’s expensive to lose all that valued knowledge.’
The third risk is a loss of credibility: partners in local government, healthcare or business see a growing gap between universities’ rhetoric about their civic role and their reduction of investment in relationships, or the junior status of the staff assigned to civic activities. This leads to a fourth risk, which is a loss of relevance, reinforcing the populist notion that higher education has little to contribute to issues that matter to local people.
As one participant commented: ‘If you’re sitting in rooms with leaders of councils and hospitals, for that to be a junior role is a big ask, especially if it’s a junior role on a temporary contract.’
From the discussions we identified five ‘civic capitals’ that now need to be rebuilt. These are economic (direct investment in local communities); social (relationships and networks); cultural (institutional support and resources); symbolic (leadership and ‘buy-in’ by senior staff); and emotional (the personal commitment and passion of those who do the work).
We make five policy recommendations for university leaders based on our findings, and three for national government.
University leaders should:
Set clear local priorities in strategic documents such as Civic University Agreements
Make room for ideas and organic development by fostering a civic culture
Resource civic teams with long-term budgets
Ensure the sustainability of civic activities through long-term commitments
Be accountable both internally and externally for delivering these commitments, with regular reporting supported by locally agreed metrics
Government policymakers should:
Articulate a clear narrative about the value of civic engagement and expectations of local impact
Incentivise civic activity by ensuring resources are consistently available through the core funding mechanisms for higher education
Foster conditions to make civic activity sustainable by coordinating place-based policies between government departments
We recognise that universities and government both face challenging times and multiple financial and political pressures. Yet if universities are to play a long-term civic role in their communities, and if government wants higher education to support its ambitions to tackle local inequalities, then sustained investment in civic work is a prerequisite.
After the latest marathon with the city, which ended without a deal, Philadelphia’s largest blue-collar union, AFSCME Local 33, is moving toward going on strike at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday.
Universities once again find themselves in the crosshairs of a political argument around migration.
I suspect no one on these pages needs convincing of the benefits international students bring to the UK: the diversity and vibrancy they add to our campuses, the fees that help our finances add up so we can carry out research and teach home students, the wider economic impact they bring through their fees and their spending in the UK economy, and the long term soft power of goodwill and friendship that our international alumni generate.
And there is plenty of public opinion research – for example from Public First and UUK in 2023, from King’s College London in 2024, and from British Future in 2025 – that shows that the British public supports international student migration, thinks it brings economic benefits, and doesn’t see cutting numbers as a priority.
But we have to be clear that we are losing the political argument on the value of international students – as have our HE colleagues in Canada, Australia and the US in recent months.
A local industry
This is the case despite the hard facts we have about the positive impacts of international students, including the £42 billion aggregate (2021–22 numbers) annual economic benefit estimated by London Economics. But those facts may not be enough as the political climate changes; we need to be agile in responding to where the political debate is moving.
For example, we understand that the aggregate economic impact of international students is not disputed within the government. But they are not convinced that positive impacts are felt at the local level. So what do these big, aggregate numbers mean for citizens at the local level? To address that question, the University of York commissioned some rapid work from Public First – building on the London Economics modelling – to show the benefits of international students at constituency level, both as an export industry, and in their impact on domestic living standards.
The first part of this work was published a few weeks ago at the heart of the debate around the final stages of the immigration white paper. This showed that international higher education is one of our most important export industries. This was counterintuitive for many politicians – who generally think of exports as goods or services which we trade overseas. But in fact, every international student coming and living in the UK is an “export” – bringing in foreign currency and supporting our economy.
Politicians rightly champion our other UK exports – our cars, our pharmaceuticals, our creative industries. But across the country, higher education is just as, if not more important. We showed that in 26 parliamentary constituencies around the country, higher education is the single largest export industry – and it is in the top three in a total of 102 constituencies, spread around the country. To put it another way, in many towns and cities, higher education is the car plant, or the steel mill, or the pharmaceuticals factory that drives local economies.
We hear that this evidence of real local impact was significant within Whitehall, and contributed to seeing off some of the wider proposals for restricting student flows that could have been in the immigration white paper.
Pounds in pockets
The second half of this research, published today, takes on some of the critique we know has been advanced in government in recent months: that while students may bring economic value in some abstract, aggregate way at national level, there are costs that are felt locally in our towns and cities that reduce living standards.
Our analysis comprehensively debunks that. Instead, we show that international students are net contributors to the taxpayer, and that at the local level they raise wages and living standards for domestic residents. We calculate that every worker in the UK has higher wages to the value of almost £500 a year purely as a result of international students’ economic contribution. And in more than 100 constituencies, the benefit is much larger, equating to more than two and a half weeks’ wages for the average worker.
These local-level impacts are often well-recognised by MPs and councillors. They are not yet in national-level debate. So we will continue to make the case for the wider benefits of international students for our towns and cities as well as abstract national GDP figures.
In addition, we need to push back against the misguided assumptions in the white paper that the proposed new international students levy would have only a minor impact on recruitment, and show in detail why the reduction in numbers would be large, and carry with it an economic loss that would go way beyond universities’ gates and into their local communities. We are pleased to be working alongside colleagues in the sector to do just that.
In all this we need to recognise the politics of the moment. All governments are political. That is how they got there, and to be so isn’t wrong! We have a government focused at the moment on its electoral prospects, and many of its actions can be explained by a drive to keep its voting coalition together, especially with the insurgent threat of Reform, and especially on the highly politicised issue of migration.
Universities are well advised to steer clear of party politics. As a vice chancellor, I work without fear or favour to support the needs of staff and students, but also the city and communities around York. But my academic background is as a political scientist so I’m a keen observer of how universities, migration, and their intersection have electoral significance. So, looking at the 100 constituencies we identify in our research which benefit the most from international students either as an export, or in rising domestic wages, it is noteworthy that over 80 per cent of those constituencies are currently held by Labour MPs, often by very narrow margins.
In those and the many other constituencies where international students bring real, tangible economic benefits, it is important that local citizens and political representatives understand what is at stake when widely held public concerns about migration lead to the targeting a group – international students – who the public both think highly of, and who make a big contribution to local economies.
