Tag: Losing

  • Are young college graduates losing an edge in the job market?

    Are young college graduates losing an edge in the job market?

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    Dive Brief:

    • Young college graduates are now spending more time unemployed than job hunters with only a high school diploma, according to an analysis published Monday.
    • Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland found that, from June 2024 to June 2025, 37.1% of unemployed workers between the ages of 22 and 27 with at least a bachelor’s degree either found work or stopped looking for work each month. That’s compared to 41.5% of their peers who only completed high school.
    • Their report comes amid other signs of a tough job market for recent graduates. The most recent unemployment data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, released Thursday, shows 9.7% of bachelor’s degree holders ages 20 to 24 were unemployed in September — up from 6.8% a year prior.

    Dive Insight:

    A college degree still provides young workers with economic and professional advantages, the Cleveland Fed analysis found. Once employed, college graduates earn more than their degreeless counterparts and experience increased job stability, it said.

    However, researchers pointed to signs that some of the job market advantages of a college degree are eroding. 

    For decades, workers with a high school degree typically saw unemployment rates about 5 percentage points higher than college graduates did, according to the analysis. 

    That gap temporarily widened during the 2008 financial crisis, when high school graduates had a particularly difficult time finding work. 

    But the Great Recession obscured that the gap in job-finding rates between high school graduates and those with four-year college degrees had been slowly closing since the turn of the century, according to the Cleveland Fed researchers.

    With brief exception during the pandemic, the unemployment rate gap between the two groups has slowly shrunk since 2008.

    In July, the 12-month average unemployment rate for young college graduates stood only 2.5 percentage points lower than that of their peers without a postsecondary degree. That’s the smallest gap since the record low of 2.4 percentage points in March 2024.

    That slim difference, combined with the delay in degree-holders getting hired, indicates “that a long period of relatively easier job-finding prospects for college grads has ended,” researchers said Monday.

    “The labor market advantages conferred by a college degree have historically justified individual investment in higher education and expanding support for college access,” they said. “If the job-finding rate of college graduates continues to decline relative to the rate for high school graduates, we may see a reversal of these trends.”

    The pandemic resulted in a tight labor market, but the Cleveland Fed researchers said their findings can’t solely be attributed to the long-lasting disruptions of COVID-19.

    “If historically tight labor markets drove narrowing, the high school job-finding rate should have risen to match college rates rather than a decline in the college job-finding rate,” they said. 

    The decades-long trend also predates the influence of artificial intelligence on the job market.

    Instead, the researchers noted that the timing correlates with a broader market shift from “college-biased to education-neutral growth in labor demand.”

    “Declining job prospects among young college graduates may reflect the continued growth in college attainment, adding ever larger cohorts of college graduates to the ranks of job seekers, even though technology no longer favors college-educated workers,” they said.

    However, older degree-holders are not seeing the same stark unemployment numbers.

    In September, 3.6% of bachelor’s degree-holders ages 25 to 34 were unemployed, according to BLS data. That’s well under the overall unemployment rate of 4.4%, which is the highest it’s been in four years.

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  • We are losing the basis of our civic discourse

    We are losing the basis of our civic discourse

    This essay was originally published in The Hill on Aug. 28, 2025.

    On the first day of every semester, I open each of my classes with a line that has never lost its punch: “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.”

    That’s Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a senator, academic, public servant and one of America’s last great public intellectuals.

    In that now-famous line, he wasn’t saying other people had to agree with him. He was making an appeal to civic rationalism, or the idea that debate should be governed by logic and reason. It’s a compass point for civil discourse. Respect viewpoints, but insist on a shared reality. This is a guide for my teaching and an expectation for how my classes are conducted.

    But every time I repeat that saying, almost no one in the room has heard it before. Even fewer can name Moynihan. That’s not just generational drift. It’s evidence of a broader civic erosion. We are losing the everyday language that sustains a free society.

    The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and NORC at the University of Chicago, previously the National Opinion Research Center, have just given us a rare and quantifiable glimpse of this shift. Their 2025 Free Speech Idioms Survey asked Americans about familiar expressions that once formed a shared civic lexicon.

    If we stop using the language of freedom, will we still defend the practice of it?

    The results are striking. Most Americans still recognize the old idioms. Far fewer actually use them. The gap between recognition and use is the story. We as Americans still know these phrases. We’ve just stopped saying them. This is not just linguistic drift. These phrases are compact moral codes. They carry with them the habits of tolerance, humility and pluralism.

    “It’s a free country” signals that disagreement is permissible. “Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion” acknowledges dignity in dissent. “Sticks and stones” reminds us to meet speech with speech, not violence or censorship. Without such reminders, the civic muscle memory that protects a free society begins to atrophy. That last idiom in the table — “Address the argument, not the person” — may be the most telling of all. Only 30% of Americans even recognize it, and barely 1 in 10 say it often.

    This absence shows up everywhere: in the pile-ons of cancel culture, the readiness to attack a person’s character rather than engage their reasoning and in why viewpoint diversity is so hard to come by on many college campuses. If you never learn the habit of separating people from their ideas, disagreement becomes personal and dissenters become enemies to be silenced.

    And in their place? New slogans, often adversarial and absolutist. We hear “words are violence” or “speech is harm” far more than “defend to the death your right to say it.” The FIRE/NORC survey found that a quarter of Americans now say the “words are violence” framing describes their own view “mostly” or “completely.”

    Violence must never be a response to speech

    America must be an open society where we feel safe to share our ideas in the public square, not just from behind bulletproof glass and bulletproof vests.


    Read More

    Whatever the merits of critiquing certain speech, the wholesale abandonment of these older idioms suggests a deeper estrangement from the foundational norms they encode.

    If we stop using the language of freedom, will we still defend the practice of it? The decline of these expressions parallels other troubling trends: shrinking tolerance for opposing viewpoints on campus, partisan sorting in neighborhoods and workplaces, and the growing tendency to treat disagreement as an attack rather than a challenge.

    This is how a culture forgets how to live with difference. Not in one dramatic moment, but in the slow attrition of its everyday speech. The idioms are not simply disappearing, they’re being displaced by a different vocabulary of public life. In schools, workplaces, and activist spaces, the older language of tolerance and resilience is being crowded out by the vocabulary of fragility and offense.

    The shift is clear. Less emphasis on enduring disagreement, more appetite for narrowing the space in which it can occur.

    And this shift is reinforced by other cultural patterns.

    On campuses, surveys show declining tolerance for opposing viewpoints. In communities, Americans increasingly cluster among the politically like-minded. Online platforms reward outrage over persuasion. Disagreement increasingly feels like a personal attack rather than a normal feature of democratic life.

    The fix doesn’t require a federal program or sweeping reforms. It begins with restoration — small, intentional acts to keep this moral vocabulary alive. Educators can weave these idioms into their teaching, explaining their meaning and history so students understand that “address the argument, not the person” isn’t just a polite turn of phrase. It’s what makes genuine debate possible.

    Leaders in civic life, business and on campus can choose these expressions over more divisive catch-alls, knowing that the vocabulary we reward becomes the culture we inhabit. And at home, parents can keep the language in circulation at the dinner table, passing it naturally from one generation to the next.

    Repetition builds reflexes, and reflexes build habits — exactly what a free society needs to sustain itself. Moynihan understood that democracy is not self-executing. It depends on shared commitments, reinforced through culture and speech.

    That’s why I’ll keep starting my classes with his reminder about opinions and facts. It’s not nostalgia. It’s civic maintenance and I intend to always begin my teaching with such an idea. I am focused on this idea because when we stop saying what matters, we risk losing the ability to mean what we say. And if that happens, the loss won’t just be linguistic. It will be democratic and existential.

    If we want a sturdier civic future, we can start with something refreshingly small: speak like citizens again.

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  • Gen Z losing more money to scams than Boomers (ABC News)

    Gen Z losing more money to scams than Boomers (ABC News)

     

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  • Are Chinese students losing interest in the ‘big four’?

    Are Chinese students losing interest in the ‘big four’?

    Once the world’s largest source of international students, China is no longer expected to fuel further student growth in the ‘big four’ destinations, according to predictions from Bonard Education shared in a recent webinar. 

    “China is no longer the easy goldmine it once was”, Bonard senior research consultant, Su Su, told attendees, highlighting the “visible trend” of Chinese students choosing alternative options closer to home.  

    The US has seen the most noticeable decline in Chinese enrolments, which broadly started across traditional destinations in 2020/21 and has continued in the US over the past five years, according to Bonard data.  

    Amid the downturn in Chinese mobility to the US, India surpassed China as America’s largest sending country in 2023 and new government data has shown this gap continue to widen.

    Source: BONARD

    The UK, however, is bucking the trend and has witnessed continued modest growth in Chinese students since 2020, though this cohort’s visa approval rate saw a 6% year-on-year decline in 2024. 

    Elsewhere, Canada experienced a 21% drop in Chinese visa approvals last year as the impact of the government’s study permit caps took hold, but university enrolment nevertheless remains stable, signalling the visa decline is concentrated in non-university level students.  

    Meanwhile, Australia and New Zealand saw a modest rebound in Chinese enrolment in 2023/24, with Su maintaining that China was still a “pivotal” source market despite fluctuations.  

    The waning dominance of China as a source market can partly be attributed to the state of the economy, with financial pressure becoming the most cited factor impacting study decisions, according to Bonard’s agent network.

    “Middle class families are experiencing slower financial growth, and, as a result, are more economically conscious,” explained Su, fuelling a rise in shorter term English language courses as well as impacting the post-secondary sector. 

    What’s more, China’s urban unemployment rate among 16-24-year-olds jumped to an all-time high of 19% last year, pushing career outcomes up the priority list for students and their families, said Su.  

    Given the financial context, “families are determined to make every RMB count”, said Su, with more affordable Asian destinations becoming increasingly attractive in China.  

    The PIE News has previously reported on the rise of intra-Asian mobility, with countries in the region increasingly seeing internationalisation as critical to sustaining economic growth, plugging workforce gaps and driving innovation.

    In particular, the National Universities of Singapore and Hong Kong were highlighted as hitting the sweet spot by offering highly regarded international degrees at a lower price than traditional destinations – catering to families who still value prestige and the merits of an international education, but who are shopping “smarter”.  

    Elsewhere, Japan, South Korea and Malaysia are on the rise, with the Japanese government pursuing an ambitious goal of attracting 400,000 international students by 2033 and Malaysia streamlining international admissions through a new centralised system.

    But it’s not just affordability that is changing the landscape: perceived policy volatility “can shape perspective just as much as the price”, said Su, highlighting the damaging impact of Donald Trump’s erratic policy announcements in the US.  

    “Recent headlines in the US are raising serious concerns among families, whether or not the policies are enacted,” Su warned. 

    By comparison, despite some restrictions in the UK: “It feels more stable… agencies are describing the UK as the safest bet due to its clear communication of policies,” attendees heard.  

    That being said, political environments tend to have a temporary impact on student decision-making, with agencies and institutions advised that now is the time to “adapt and rethink” rather than turning away from the Chinese market.  

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  • The AI balancing act: universities, innovation and the art of not losing the plot

    The AI balancing act: universities, innovation and the art of not losing the plot

    • By Professor Alejandro Armellini, Dean of Education and Digital Innovation at the University of Portsmouth.

    Universities want to be at the cutting edge of knowledge creation, but many are grappling with a paradox: how to harness the potential of AI while minimising its pitfalls. Done well, generative AI can help institutions run more efficiently, enhance teaching quality and support students in new and exciting ways. Done poorly, it can generate misinformation, introduce bias and make students (and staff) over-reliant on technology they do not fully understand. The challenge is not whether to use AI but how to make it work for human-driven, high-quality education.

    Across the sector, institutions are already putting AI to work in ways that go far beyond administrative efficiencies. At many universities, AI-driven analytics are helping identify students at risk of disengagement before they drop out. By analysing attendance, engagement and performance data, tutors can intervene earlier, offering personalised support before problems escalate. Others have deployed AI-powered feedback systems that provide students with instant formative feedback on their writing. The impact? Students who actually improve before their assignments are due, rather than after they’ve been graded.

    Concerns about the accuracy, transparency and provenance of AI tools have been well documented. Many of them operate as ‘black boxes’, making it difficult to verify outputs or attribute sources. These challenges run counter to academic norms of evidence, citation and rigour. AI tools continue to occupy a liminal space: they promise and deliver a lot, but are not yet fully trusted. AI can get things spectacularly wrong. AI-powered recruitment tools have been found to be biased against women and minority candidates, reinforcing rather than challenging existing inequalities. AI-driven assessment tools have been criticised for amplifying bias, grading students unfairly or making errors that, when left unchallenged, can have serious consequences for academic progression.

    With new applications emerging almost daily, it’s becoming harder to assess their quality, reliability and appropriateness for academic use. Some institutions rush headlong into AI adoption without considering long-term implications, while others hesitate, paralysed by the sheer number of options, risks and potential costs. Indeed, a major barrier to AI adoption at all levels in higher education is fear: fear of the unknown, fear of losing control, fear of job displacement, fear of fostering metacognitive laziness. AI challenges long-held beliefs about authorship, expertise and what constitutes meaningful engagement with learning. Its use can blur the boundaries between legitimate assistance and academic misconduct. Students express concerns about being evaluated by algorithms rather than humans. These fears are not unfounded, but they must be met with institutional transparency, clear communication, ethical guidelines and a commitment to keeping AI as an enabler, not a replacement, for human judgment and interaction. Universities are learning too.

    No discussion on AI in universities would be complete without addressing the notion of ‘future-proofing’. The very idea that we can somehow freeze a moving target is, at best, naive and, at worst, an exercise in expensive futility. Universities drafting AI policies today will likely find them obsolete before the ink has dried. Many have explicitly reversed earlier AI policies. That said, having an AI policy is not without merit: it signals an institutional commitment to ethical AI use, academic integrity and responsible governance. The trick is to focus on agile, principle-based approaches that can adapt as AI continues to develop. Over-regulation risks stifling innovation, while under-regulation may lead to confusion or misuse. A good AI policy should be less about prediction and more about preparation: equipping staff and students with the skills and capabilities to navigate an AI-rich world, while creating a culture that embraces change. Large-scale curriculum and pedagogic redesign is inevitable.

    Where does all this leave us? Universities must approach AI with a mix of enthusiasm and caution, ensuring that innovation does not come at the expense of academic integrity or quality. Investing in AI fluency (not just ‘literacy’) for staff and students is essential, as is institutional clarity on responsible AI use. Universities should focus on how AI can support (not replace) the fundamental principles of good teaching and learning. They must remain committed to the simple but powerful principle of teaching well, consistently well: every student, every session, every time.

    AI is a tool – powerful, perhaps partly flawed, but full of potential. It is the pocket calculator of the 1970s. How universities wield it will determine whether it leads to genuine transformation or a series of expensive (and reputationally risky) missteps. The challenge, then, is to stay in control, keep the focus on successful learning experiences in their multiple manifestations, and never let AI run the show alone. After all, no algorithm has yet mastered the art of handling a seminar full of students who haven’t done the reading.

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  • One year on from the election, Labour is losing the student vote

    One year on from the election, Labour is losing the student vote

    A year ago, Sir Keir Starmer secured the largest election victory in the UK since 1997.

    Labour won 411 seats and a 174-seat majority – and while Labour’s vote share across many constituencies dropped compared to national predictions, the UK was washed with red seats.

    Yet as we reflect on Labour’s time in government to date, it’s fair to say the journey has not been smooth.

    Starmer has already made several significant U-turns and has announced policy changes that haven’t landed well with voters – increases to national insurance contributions, reducing winter fuel payments and the “tractor tax”, to name a few.

    As public trust in the government continues to decline and disapproval rates rise, we are continuing to see a swing of support over to Reform UK – including in constituencies with large student populations.

    PLMR recently commissioned Electoral Calculus to conduct a new multi-level regression and post-stratification (MRP) poll to understand voting intentions and the current political attitudes of the public.

    Conducted in June 2025 with a sample size of 5,400 individuals, the results show a significant change in student voting patterns and beg the question – is Labour losing the student vote?

    Voting intentions

    If a General Election was called tomorrow, our data currently places Reform UK with 31 per cent of the vote share ahead of Labour with 22 per cent and the Conservatives trailing with 19 per cent. Reform UK is predicted to win an outright majority, securing 377 seats and a majority of 104.

    If a General Election was therefore called tomorrow, Nigel Farage would become the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

    The data also shows changes in constituency MPs, including for ministers with responsibility for higher education like the Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson MP, according to the projections.

    While the sector is not unaccustomed to experiencing regular and quick changes in political governance – with six university ministers being in post in the last five years alone – the data does point to wider challenges for HE and the student vote.

    Reform the system

    Last year, the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) published a piece about whether students made a difference at the 2024 General Election – identifying the top twenty student constituencies and Labour’s vote share in these seats.

    We have analysed our polling to understand how these constituencies would fare in an election if it were called tomorrow – the results from which show the changing state of voting intentions in these areas.

    Of the twenty constituencies, over one-third (35 per cent) are predicted to move away from being Labour-held to either Reform or Green. This aligns with the national picture – voters are showing an ever-growing frustration with the current government and are therefore evolving their political affiliation.

    When we look specifically at the data for 18-24-year-olds – acknowledging the experiences of those beyond this age group who are currently studying in UK higher education – we continue to see this pattern of voting behaviour.

    For example, when asked who they would vote for if a General Election was called tomorrow, 24 per cent of 18-24-year-olds who indicated a likelihood to vote noted their intention to vote for Labour – with 23 per cent claiming they would vote for Reform UK and 21 per cent for the Green Party.

    The Conservatives followed with 13 per cent, the Liberal Democrats with 10 per cent and Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru with 1 per cent each.

    Interestingly, when we then consider the likelihood of voting among 18-24-year-olds we see further frustration with the current political system.

    For example, under half (41 per cent) of 18-24-year-olds responded that they would “definitely” vote in a General Election if it were called tomorrow, followed by 11 per cent who would be “very likely” to vote.

    Yet 21 per cent responded that they would “definitely not” or are “unlikely” to vote, and 16 per cent were unsure. That reveals an almost even split in the likelihood of voting among 18-24-year-olds. For a traditionally politically mobile population, this raises concerns about young people’s faith and willingness to engage with an election.

    Participants were then asked about the most important issues that will influence how they vote at the next General Election, with the top three issues for 18-24-year-olds being the cost of living and the economy (57 per cent), the National Health Service (NHS) waiting times, staffing and funding (45 per cent), and immigration and border control (25 per cent).

    While these generally align with trends in all other age groups,

    18-24-year-olds express greater concern for wider issues than other age cohorts. For example, 23 per cent of individuals in this age group reported being concerned about housing affordability and home ownership, 22 per cent about trust in politicians and government integrity, and 19 per cent about climate change and the environment.

    While some in other age cohorts reported concerns in these areas, the proportion is highest among 18-24-year-olds.

     

    So what does all of this tell us?

    It’s clear that Labour isn’t sustaining the support it built up during the General Election campaign last year, despite securing such an historic electoral victory, and this is true especially in student-heavy constituencies – with many already indicating their interest in seeing an electoral change.

    As economic challenges continue to create barriers within HE, with many institutions closing courses, implementing redundancy programmes and depending on international fees due to limited increases to domestic fees in line with inflation, government must be proactive in its engagement with the sector to recognise how challenges to the student experience can impact voter intention.

    With a growing national swing towards Reform UK, Labour must become aware of the challenges facing student voters if it wants to change the projected course of action and secure a second term in office.

    With lots of work to do ahead of 2029 – and only a year into this Parliament – student interests need to rise up the political agenda.

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  • Why Global Talent is Turning Away from U.S. Higher Education—and What We’re Losing – Edu Alliance Journal

    Why Global Talent is Turning Away from U.S. Higher Education—and What We’re Losing – Edu Alliance Journal

    In 2025, much of my professional focus has been on small colleges in the United States. But as many of you know, my colleague and Edu Alliance co-founder, Dr. Senthil Nathan, and I also consult extensively in the international higher education space. Senthil, based in Abu Dhabi, UAE—where Edu Alliance was founded was asked by a close friend of ours, Chet Haskell, about how the Middle East and its students are reacting to the recent moves by the Trump Administration. Dr. Nathan shared a troubling May 29th article from The National, a UAE English language paper titled, “It’s not worth the risk”: Middle East students put US dreams on hold amid Trump visa crackdown.

    The article begins with this chilling line:

    “Young people in the Middle East have spoken of their fears after the US government decided to freeze overseas student interviews and plan to begin vetting their social media accounts. The directive signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and sent to diplomatic and consular posts halts interview appointments at US universities.”

    The UAE, home to nearly 10 million people—90% of whom are expatriates—is a global crossroads. Many of their children attend top-tier international high schools and are academically prepared to study anywhere in the world. Historically, the United States has been a top choice for both undergraduate and graduate education.

    But that is changing.

    This new wave of student hesitation, and in many cases fear, represents a broader global shift. Today, even the most qualified international students are asking whether the United States is still a safe, welcoming, or stable destination for higher education. And their concerns are justified.

    At a time when U.S. institutions are grappling with enrollment challenges—including a shrinking pool of domestic high school graduates—we are simultaneously sending signals that dissuade international students from coming. That’s not just bad policy. It’s bad economics.

    According to NAFSA: Association of International Educators, international students contributed $43.8 billion to the U.S. economy during the 2023–2024 academic year and supported 378,175 jobs across the country. These students fill key seats in STEM programs, support local economies, and enrich our campuses in ways that go far beyond tuition payments.

    And the stakes go beyond higher education.

    A 2024 study found that 101 companies in the S&P 500 are led by foreign-born CEOs. Many of these executives earned their degrees at U.S. universities, underscoring how American higher education is not just a national asset but a global talent incubator that fuels our economy and leadership.

    Here are just a few examples:

    • Jensen Huang: Born in Taiwan (NVIDIA) – B.S. from Oregon State, M.S. from Stanford
    • Elon Musk: Born in South Africa (Tesla, SpaceX) – B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania
    • Sundar Pichai: Born in India (Alphabet/Google) – M.S. from Stanford, MBA from Wharton
    • Mike Krieger: Born in Brazil (Co-founder of Instagram) B.S. and M.S. Symbolic Systems and Human-Computer Interaction, Stanford University
    • Satya Nadella: Born in India (Microsoft) – M.S. from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, MBA from the University of Chicago
    • Max Levchin: Born in Ukraine (Co-founder of PayPal, Affirm), Bachelor’s in Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
    • Arvind Krishna: Born in India (IBM) – Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
    • Safra Catz: Born in Israel (Oracle) – Undergraduate & J.D. from University of Pennsylvania
    • Jane Fraser: Born in the United Kingdom (Citigroup) – MBA from Harvard Business School
    • Nikesh Arora: Born in India  (Palo Alto Networks) – MBA from Northeastern
    • Jan Koum: Born in Ukraine (Co-founder of WhatsApp), Studied Computer Science (did not complete degree) at San Jose State University

    These leaders represent just a fraction of the talent pipeline shaped by U.S. universities.

    According to a 2023 American Immigration Council report, 44.8% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children, including iconic firms like Apple, Google, and Tesla. Together, these companies generate $8.1 trillion in annual revenue and employ over 14.8 million people globally.

    The Bottom Line

    The American higher education brand still carries immense prestige. But prestige alone won’t carry us forward. If we continue to restrict and politicize student visas, we will lose not only potential students but also future scientists, entrepreneurs, job creators, and community leaders.

    We must ask: Are our current policies serving national interests, or undermining them?

    Our classrooms, campuses, corporations, and communities are stronger when they include the world’s brightest minds. Let’s not close the door on a future we have long helped build.

    Dean Hoke is Managing Partner of Edu Alliance Group, a higher education consultancy. He formerly served as President/CEO of the American Association of University Administrators (AAUA). With decades of experience in higher education leadership, consulting, and institutional strategy, he brings a wealth of knowledge on international partnerships and market evaluations.

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  • Scholars’ Stories of Losing Federal Funding

    Scholars’ Stories of Losing Federal Funding

    Fifteen researchers across a range disciplines from the biomedical sciences and STEM to education and political science share their experiences of losing research grants and what impact the loss of billions of dollars in federal funding will have on science, public health and education in Inside Higher Ed today.

    The Trump administration told researchers Rebecca Fielding-Miller, Nicholas Metheny and Sarah Peitzmeier that trainings connected to their National Institutes of Health grant focused on the prevention of intimate partner violence against pregnant and perinatal women were “antithetical to the scientific inquiry, do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment, and ultimately do not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness.”

    “We could not disagree more,” Fielding-Miller, Metheny and Peitzmeier write. “Anyone who has cared for a child or for the person who gave birth to them knows that preventing maternal and infant death and abuse should be a nonpartisan issue. The current administration is intent on making even this issue into ‘us’ versus ‘them.’ When it comes to public health, there is no such thing.”

    Meanwhile, Judith Scott-Clayton writes that the decision to cancel a Department of Education grant funding a first-of-its-kind randomized evaluation of the Federal Work-Study program—four and a half years into a six-year project—will leave policymakers “flying blind.”

    “Since 1964, the FWS program has disbursed more than $95 billion in awards,” Scott-Clayton wrote. “In comparison, our grant was less than three-thousandths of 1 percent of that amount, and the amount remaining to finish our work and share our findings with the public was just a fraction of that.”

    Read all of the scholars’ stories here.

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  • Scholars’ Stories of Losing Federal Funding

    Scholars’ Stories of Losing Federal Funding

    Sixteen researchers across a range disciplines from the biomedical sciences and STEM to education and political science share their experiences of losing research grants and what impact the loss of billions of dollars in federal funding will have on science, public health and education in Inside Higher Ed today.

    The Trump administration told researchers Rebecca Fielding-Miller, Nicholas Metheny, Abigail Hatcher and Sarah Peitzmeier that trainings connected to their National Institutes of Health grant focused on the prevention of intimate partner violence against pregnant and perinatal women were “antithetical to the scientific inquiry, do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment, and ultimately do not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness.”

    “We could not disagree more,” Fielding-Miller, Metheny, Hatcher and Peitzmeier write. “Anyone who has cared for a child or for the person who gave birth to them knows that preventing maternal and infant death and abuse should be a nonpartisan issue. The current administration is intent on making even this issue into ‘us’ versus ‘them.’ When it comes to public health, there is no such thing.”

    Meanwhile, Judith Scott-Clayton writes that the decision to cancel a Department of Education grant funding a first-of-its-kind randomized evaluation of the Federal Work-Study program—four and a half years into a six-year project—will leave policymakers “flying blind.”

    “Since 1964, the FWS program has disbursed more than $95 billion in awards,” Scott-Clayton wrote. “In comparison, our grant was less than three-thousandths of 1 percent of that amount, and the amount remaining to finish our work and share our findings with the public was just a fraction of that.”

    Read all of the scholars’ stories here.

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  • Losing homeschool data Losing homeschool statistics

    Losing homeschool data Losing homeschool statistics

    The Trump administration says one of its primary goals in education is to expand school choice and put power back in the hands of parents. Yet it has killed the main way to track one of the most rapidly growing options — learning at home. 

    The Education Department began counting the number of homeschooled children in 1999, when fewer than 2 percent of students were educated this way. Homeschooling rose by 50 percent in the first decade of the 2000s and then leveled off at around 3 percent. 

    The most recent survey of families took place in 2023, and it would have been the first indication of the growth of homeschooling since the pandemic. The data collection was nearly finished and ready to be released to the public, but in February, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) terminated the contract for this data collection, which is part of the National Household Education Survey, along with 88 other education contracts. Then in March, the federal statisticians who oversee the data collection and could review the final figures were fired along with almost everyone else at the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). As things stand now, this federal homeschool data is unlikely to ever be released. 

    Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.

    “Work on these data files has stopped and there are no current plans for that work to continue,” said a spokesman for the American Institutes for Research, a nonprofit research organization that had held the contract to collect and analyze the data before DOGE canceled it. 

    The loss of this data upset both avid supporters and watchdogs of school choice, particularly now that some states are expanding their Education Savings Account (ESA) programs to transfer public funds directly to families who homeschool their children. Angela Watson, a prominent Johns Hopkins University researcher who runs the Homeschool Research Lab, called it a “massive loss.” Robert Maranto, a professor in the department of education reform at the University of Arkansas, said that in the past, the federal statistics have helped “dispel some of the myths” that homeschooling is “overwhelmingly white,” when, in fact, a more diverse population is learning this way. Maranto also serves as the editor of the Journal of School Choice. The most recent issue was devoted to homeschooling and about half the articles in it cited NCES reports, he said. 

    “There is a certain irony that a pro-school choice administration would cut objective data that might help increase acceptance of homeschooling,” said Maranto. 

    Related: Chaos and confusion as the statistics arm of the Education Department is reduced to a skeletal staff of 3

    It is unclear what will happen to the unreleased 2023 homeschooling data or if the Education Department will ever collect homeschool statistics in the future. 

    In response to questions about the fate of the homeschooling data, Education Department spokeswoman Madison Biedermann said that its research arm, the Institute of Education Sciences, is in possession of the data and that it is “reviewing how all its contractual activities can best be used to meet its statutory obligations.”

    Last September, the Education Department released some preliminary statistics from the 2023 survey. It noted a small increase in traditional homeschooling since 2019 but a large increase in the number of students who were enrolled in an online virtual school and learning from home full time. Together, more than 5 percent of U.S. students were learning at home in one of these two ways. Fewer than 4 percent were learning at home in 2019. 

    Source: National Center for Education Statistics, September 2024 media briefing slide.

    Researchers were keen to dig into the data to understand the different flavors of homeschooling, from online courses to microschools, which are tiny schools that often operate in private homes or places of worship. Researchers also want to understand why more parents are opting for homeschooling and which subjects they are directly teaching their children, all questions that are included in the parent survey conducted by the Education Department. 

    Related: Tracking Trump: His actions on education

    Tracking homeschooling is notoriously difficult. Families who choose this option can be distrustful of government, but this was one of the few surveys that homeschool advocates cited to document the growth in their numbers and they advised the writers of the federal survey on how to phrase questions. 

    Beginning in 2020, the U.S. Census Bureau also began collecting some data on homeschooling, but those statistics cannot be directly compared with the Education Department data and without a historical record, the census data is less useful, researchers said. It is also unclear if this census data will continue. Some states collect data on homeschooling, but researchers said they do it in different ways, making it impossible to compare homeschooling across states.

    Patrick Wolf, a professor of education policy who studies school choice at the University of Arkansas, was also dismayed by the loss of the Education Department’s statistics. 

    “A federal government agency has been collecting national statistics on education since 1867,” he said. “State and local policy makers and practitioners will be severely challenged in doing their work if they don’t have good data from the feds regarding public schooling, private schooling, and homeschooling. Sending education authority to the states only will work well if the federal government continues to collect and publish comprehensive data on schooling. Otherwise, state and local officials are being asked to fly blind.”

    Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or [email protected].

    This story about homeschool statistics was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

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