UK universities face an increasingly constrained financial landscape. Across all four nations, domestic undergraduate tuition fees are regulated and have failed to keep pace with rising costs. In England, the cap is currently £9,535 and, following the UK Government’s recent announcement, will rise annually in line with inflation from 2026, with eligibility linked to standards. This modest change does little to reverse years of real-terms decline, leaving much of the UK’s undergraduate teaching provision structurally loss-making. In Wales, fees remain capped at £9,535; in Northern Ireland they are £4,855; and for Scottish-domiciled students studying in Scotland, there are no tuition fees at all.
In this environment, attention naturally turns to those parts of university income that are unregulated, most notably fees for international students and postgraduate programmes. Master’s fees for home students are unregulated in all four nations, and universities are free to set their own international tuition rates.
Much of the public debate has focused on the fee levels charged by some higher-ranked universities and the narrative that international students subsidise domestic education and research. While this is certainly true for many institutions, it is far from universal.
Once scholarships, discounts, agent commissions and other costs of acquisition are deducted, the margins on international student recruitment can be modest, and sometimes non-existent. For a growing number of institutions, particularly those struggling to fill domestic places, international recruitment at low net revenue levels has become a way of keeping the lights on. Better, in some cases, to have some income to cover fixed costs than none at all.
But this is not a sustainable strategy. If international recruitment is to continue underpinning the financial viability of UK universities, much greater attention needs to be paid to pricing strategy.
The price–profit relationship
CIL Management Consultants recently analysed how UK universities can use pricing more strategically to support growth and profitability. Their work highlights just how powerful pricing can be as a financial lever compared with more commonly pursued strategies such as chasing volume or cutting costs.
Their analysis included an illustrative calculation based on a scenario where a university charges tuition fees of £25,000 per international student, enrols 50 students on the course, and incurs a cost of acquisition of £4,000 per student (including scholarships, discounts and agent commissions).
Under this model, a 5% increase in tuition fees would generate around a 6% uplift in profit, outpacing the gains from a 5% rise in enrolments (around 5%) or a 5% reduction in acquisition costs (around 1%). In other words, price is the strongest profit lever available to universities.
Despite this, most institutions have historically set their international and postgraduate fees through incremental adjustments or by reference to competitors’ published fees, often without examining what those institutions actually charge in practice, and with little systematic consideration of how those fees influence volume, cost, and overall margin.
Understanding the margin challenge
CIL’s work also reinforces what many sector leaders already know: margins are being squeezed from all directions.
Capped domestic fees leave undergraduate teaching structurally loss-making for many institutions.
Rising operational costs, particularly staff, energy, and estates, continue to erode surpluses.
High fixed cost bases limit flexibility, with cuts risking reductions in quality or capacity.
In this context, the international market has become the pressure valve. But unless pricing is managed strategically, even international markets will fail to deliver the surpluses universities depend upon.
Three levers for strategic pricing
CIL identify three main levers universities can use to improve pricing power and strengthen their financial position:
Premium to domestic tuition fees: establishing deliberate price differentials that reflect a university’s strategic positioning, course value, and market dynamics. Currently, most universities operate with only a few broad fee bands, typically with humanities and much of the social sciences in the lowest band, lab-based subjects higher, and business or MBA programmes at the top.
A true pricing strategy would be far more nuanced. It would use evidence on student demand, graduate outcomes, and perceived market value to differentiate pricing across and within disciplines, rather than relying on legacy bands. Some programmes could justifiably command greater premiums; others might need lower pricing to maintain competitiveness or support diversity.
Cost of acquisition: developing clear internal pricing rules to manage scholarships, discounts, and agent commissions. For many institutions, these often-hidden costs now absorb a significant share of international tuition income. Transparent frameworks for managing these levers are essential to protect margins.
Responsive pricing: using dynamic adjustments during the application and enrolment cycle to optimise both numbers and yield. This approach, widely used in other sectors, allows universities to flex pricing and incentives in response to market performance, course capacity, and demand signals.
When applied together, these levers can transform a reactive pricing approach into a proactive, strategic tool for sustainability.
From volume to value
The sector’s dominant mindset has too often been volume-driven: more international students, more income. Yet volume without margin is a dangerous illusion of success. CIL’s analysis reminds us that an overreliance on high-volume, low-margin recruitment can rapidly undermine financial resilience, particularly when acquisition costs are rising.
Strategic pricing, by contrast, focuses on value, identifying where universities can sustain premiums, where scholarships genuinely drive conversion, and where cost reductions can be achieved without compromising quality or reputation.
This is not simply a commercial exercise. It’s about ensuring that the financial model underpinning UK higher education remains viable enough to support teaching, research, and public value in the long term.
Making pricing strategic
For universities, developing a coherent pricing strategy means integrating finance, recruitment, marketing, and academic planning functions around shared objectives. It also means looking across all offerings to ensure fee levels reflect the real value, demand, and cost to deliver each programme.
Above all, it requires cultural change. Pricing cannot be left to annual cycles of incremental uplifts or reactive discounts. It needs to become a core component of institutional strategy linked to brand, market position, and mission.
Pricing for purpose and sustainability
Price should not be treated as a purely commercial consideration or an uncomfortable topic best left to finance teams. It is a strategic tool that, when used intelligently, can help universities balance their academic mission with financial sustainability.
A well-designed pricing strategy can sustain access by ensuring that scholarships and discounts are targeted where they make the greatest difference; it can maintain quality by protecting the resources needed to deliver excellent teaching and research; and it can enable innovation by generating the headroom for new programmes, partnerships and investment.
Reframing price as part of a university’s purpose, rather than as an administrative exercise or a market reaction, allows institutions to align financial decisions with their educational and societal goals. It invites governing bodies and senior leaders to ask not just what can the market bear, but what price best reflects the value we deliver, the students we want to attract, and the impact we want to have?
If the UK sector is to thrive amid constrained funding and rising costs, it must learn to price with both principle and precision. Getting price right is not about maximising income; it is about ensuring that universities remain able to deliver their mission sustainably for the long term.
When I ask apprentices to reflect on their learning in professional discussions, I often hear a similar story:
It wasn’t just about what I knew – it was how I connected it all. That’s when it clicked.
That’s the value of dialogic assessment. It surfaces hidden knowledge, creates space for reflection, and validates professional judgement in ways that traditional essays often cannot.
Dialogic assessment shifts the emphasis from static products – the essay, the exam – to dynamic, real-time engagement. These assessments include structured discussions, viva-style conversations, or portfolio presentations. What unites them is their reliance on interaction, reflection, and responsiveness in the moment.
Unlike “oral exams” of old, these conversations require learners to explain reasoning, apply knowledge, and reflect on lived experience. They capture the complex but authentic process of thinking – not just the polished outcome.
In Australia, “interactive orals” have been adopted at scale to promote integrity and authentic learning, with positive feedback from staff and students. Several UK universities have piloted viva-style alternatives to traditional coursework with similar results. What apprenticeships have long taken for granted is now being recognised more widely: dialogue is a powerful form of assessment.
Lessons from apprenticeships
In apprenticeships and work-based learning, dialogic assessment is not an add-on – it’s essential. Apprentices regularly take part in professional discussions (PDs) and portfolio presentations as part of both formative and end-point assessment.
What makes them so powerful? They are inclusive, as they allow different strengths to emerge. Written tasks may favour those fluent in academic conventions, while discussions reveal applied judgement and reflective thinking. They are authentic, in that they mirror real workplace activities such as interviews, stakeholder reviews, and project pitches. And they can be transformative – apprentices often describe PDs as moments when fragmented knowledge comes together through dialogue.
One apprentice told me:
It wasn’t until I talked it through that I realised I knew more than I thought – I just couldn’t get it down on paper.
For international students, dialogic assessment can also level the playing field by valuing applied reasoning over written fluency, reducing the barriers posed by rigid academic writing norms.
My doctoral research has shown that PDs not only assess knowledge but also co-create it. They push learners to prepare more deeply, reflect more critically, and engage more authentically. Tutors report richer opportunities for feedback in the process itself, while employers highlight their relevance to workplace practice.
And AI fits into this picture too. When ChatGPT and similar tools emerged in late 2022, many feared the end of traditional written assessment. Universities scrambled for answers – detection software, bans, or a return to the three-hour exam. The risk has been a slide towards high-surveillance, low-trust assessment cultures.
But dialogic assessment offers another path. Its strength is precisely that it asks students to do what AI cannot:
authentic reflection, as learners connect insights to their own lived experience.
real-time reasoning – learners respond to questions, defend ideas, and adapt on the spot.
professional identity, where the kind of reflective judgement expected in real workplaces is practised.
Assessment futures
Scaling dialogic assessment isn’t without hurdles. Large cohorts and workload pressures can make universities hesitant. Online viva formats also raise equity issues for students without stable internet or quiet environments.
But these challenges can be mitigated: clear rubrics, tutor training, and reliable digital platforms make it possible to mainstream dialogic formats without compromising rigour or inclusivity. Apprenticeships show it can be done at scale – thousands of students sit PDs every year.
Crucially, dialogic assessment also aligns neatly with regulatory frameworks. The Office for Students requires that assessments be valid, reliable, and representative of authentic learning. The QAA Quality Code emphasises inclusivity and support for learning. Dialogic formats tick all these boxes.
The AI panic has created a rare opportunity. Universities can either double down on outdated methods – or embrace formats that are more authentic, equitable, and future-oriented.
This doesn’t mean abandoning essays or projects altogether. But it could mean ensuring every programme includes at least one dialogic assessment – whether a viva, professional discussion, or reflective dialogue.
Apprenticeships have demonstrated that dialogic assessments are effective. They are rigorous, scalable, and trusted. Now is the time for the wider higher education sector to recognise their value – not as a niche alternative, but as a core element of assessment in the AI era.
Mentorship is a learning-centered, leadership-driven experience that nurtures the next generation of researchers and clinicians in academia (Rabeeah et al 2022). Faculty mentors in allied health science programs play a crucial role in shaping their mentees’ professional growth and long-term career fulfillment. Mentor-mentee relationships may be faculty and student, or seasoned faculty and junior faculty.
When reflecting on your prior experiences as a mentor or a mentee, ask yourself these questions:
1. Was it a positive experience?
2. Did you experience disparities based on your gender or race as a mentor or mentee?
3. Did you feel you had adequate training to be a mentor, or did your mentor demonstrate they had the skills to support you as a mentee? and
4. How were the mentors and mentees matched?
Many more questions need to be asked to ensure the mentor-mentee relationship and interactions are sufficient for exponential career growth. However, cultivating a positive experience for the mentee, ensuring there are no barriers (i.e., gender or race) for a unique experience, mentor training, and appropriate pairing of mentors and mentees are overarching considerations supported by evidence. (Rabeeah Z, 2022, Stenfors-Hayes T 2011, Mascarenhas F 2019, Bartle et al. 2020, Hill et al 2022, Frei et al 2010)
Problem
Concurrently, established formal mentorship programs are lacking in allied health science education programs for both students and junior faculty. Having formal mentorship programs for faculty to obtain training for mentorship roles and guidelines to support both junior faculty and students is essential for foundational success in academia. (Reibel & Arnett 2025, Mascarenhas F 2019) As a result of the lack of faculty mentors, students may not be getting exposure to avenues beyond clinical practice. This has been identified in dental hygiene education. (Reibel & Arnett 2025) It is suspected that allied health science programs, in general, have similar barriers to developing, implementing, and evaluating research mentorship programs. The goal of this article is to provide a blueprint for allied health programs to establish a framework for initiating a formal mentorship program.
Solution
To develop and implement a formal mentoring program, you need institutional ‘buy-in,’ strategic planning, faculty and students for piloting the program, an assessment metric(s), and a review of the outcomes process to make recommendations to modify the mentorship program. All these aspects depend on institutional support. The first step would be to identify the need for a mentorship program supported by evidence. The next step would be to align a mentorship program with the institution’s strategic plan.
Strategic Planning
Strategic planning is essential for building coalitions among deans, department chairs, program directors, and mentors. It is the deliberate process of setting goals, identifying resources, and establishing priorities. Beginning with a vision and mission statement may serve as the foundation to set goals to execute and then position a mentor program to identify resources, priorities and specific groups or individuals in a coalition of champions.
To build a diverse wide network of champions to support a variety of perspectives, it is important to identify individuals and groups who can contribute a range of resources, are versatile, and have the ability to pivot when changes need to occur. However, it is equally important that the determined coalition of champions are in alignment with the vision and the mission of the mentorship program. A mentorship program coalition of champions may support inclusive and sustainable programing and increase the reach of available resources. Further a mentorship coalition is especially relevant to match appropriate mentors and mentees and provide a unique mentor experience for the mentee for lifelong learning and professional development.
The next aspect of strategic planning is the development and implementation of a pilot program. A mentorship pilot program is needed on a small scale to determine feasibility. Mentorship pilot programs are required to collect outcomes to evaluate for expansion and improvements. Additionally, if funding is required to sustain or build the mentorship program for expansion, these primary outcomes are needed to secure internal or external grant funding.
Allied health science programs may find available resources for a mentorship program through their human resource department, professional organizations, or government agencies. One example of a successful student research mentorship program was published in the Journal of Dental Hygiene in 2025. (Reibel & Arnett 2025) This student research mentorship program partnered with the Writing Enrichment Curriculum to develop assignments and rubrics to improve student writing. (Reibel & Arnett 2025) This student research mentorship program not only implemented standardized assignments and grading rubrics across the curriculum but also resulted in eight student-led peer-reviewed publications between the years 2019-2023. (Reibel & Arnett 2025) Although the strategic plan and resources provided in this publication are specific to an allied oral health science program, (Reibel & Arnett 2025) the information is transferable to any allied health science program for students and can be modified for a faculty mentorship focus.
Conclusion
This blueprint is applicable to formal mentorship for faculty and students. The main framework is transferable and can be modified to match your institution’s strategic plan and goals. It is important to be aware of key components to ensure a humanistic mentor and mentee experience is cultivated. Strategic planning is necessary for developing, implementing, and evaluating a mentorship program. A coalition of champions who share the values of the vision and mission of a formal mentorship program contributes to the overall mentorship program and evaluation of metrics for future modifications and longevity.
Michelle Arnett currently serves as a Tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Primary Dental Care, Division of Dental Hygiene (DH) at the University of Minnesota (UMN) School of Dentistry (SOD). Arnett has 10 years of experience in academics and research at the University of Michigan SOD and the UMN SOD, in addition to 21 years of clinical practice experience. Her areas of research focus are motivational interviewing and periodontology. Arnett has published over 50 peer-review articles and two textbook chapters. Of those 50, 29 are specific her research niche in motivational interviewing and periodontology. The remaining 21 peer-reviewed publications focus on her teaching, student mentee research projects, and faculty and students’ wellness. Arnett has given over 60 presentations; 20 were invited national and international events. In 2023, Arnett received the American Dental Education Association (ADEA) President Centennial Awards for Oral Health Education. This was a one-time award at ADEA’s centennial celebration for an allied dental faculty who has made and continues to make a significant and positive impact on oral health education. Arnett has taught Communications, Periodontology, Leadership, and the Dental Hygiene Care Process: Clinical Application III and IV in the UMN undergraduate DH program and Instructional Strategies, Thesis I and II, and Capstone I-IV in the UMN graduate DH program. Her professional memberships include Sigma Phi Alpha-Nu Chapter, American Dental Hygienists’ Association (ADHA), and the ADEA.
References
Bartle, Emma K., Brandon J. Crivello, Jeri L. Bullock, and Ezinne I. Ogbureke. “Mentorship availability and needs for junior faculty members at the United States and Australian dental schools.” European Journal of Dental Education 24, no. 4 (2020): 790-798.
Frei, Esther, Martina Stamm, and Barbara Buddeberg-Fischer. “Mentoring programs for medical students-a review of the PubMed literature 2000-2008.” BMC medical education 10 (2010): 1-14.
Hill, Sarah EM, Wendy L. Ward, A. Seay, and J. Buzenski. “The nature and evolution of the mentoring relationship in academic health centers.” Journal of clinical psychology in medical settings 29, no. 3
Mascarenhas, Faye, Janice Townsend, Paul Caballero, Qingzhao Yu, and Paul L. Fidel Jr. “Student and faculty perspectives of a faculty‐student mentoring programme in a dental school.” European Journal of Dental Education 23, no. 2 (2019): 184-189.
Rabeeah, Zainulabdeen, Jocelid G. Carreno, Janet S. Kinney, and Marita R. Inglehart. “Career motivation and satisfaction of dental hygiene students in associate versus bachelor degree programs: A national survey.” Journal of Dental Education 86, no. 6 (2022): 649-660.
Reibel, Y.G., Jiang, Z., Arnett, M.C. “Mentor Like Minnesota: Outcomes of an undergraduate research mentorship program.” Journal of Dental Hygiene (Online) 99, no. 2 (2025): 48-54.
Stenfors‐Hayes, T., L. E. Lindgren, and S. Tranaeus. “Perspectives on being a mentor for undergraduate dental students.” European Journal of Dental Education 15, no. 3 (2011): 153-158.
Mentorship is a learning-centered, leadership-driven experience that nurtures the next generation of researchers and clinicians in academia (Rabeeah et al 2022). Faculty mentors in allied health science programs play a crucial role in shaping their mentees’ professional growth and long-term career fulfillment. Mentor-mentee relationships may be faculty and student, or seasoned faculty and junior faculty.
When reflecting on your prior experiences as a mentor or a mentee, ask yourself these questions:
1. Was it a positive experience?
2. Did you experience disparities based on your gender or race as a mentor or mentee?
3. Did you feel you had adequate training to be a mentor, or did your mentor demonstrate they had the skills to support you as a mentee? and
4. How were the mentors and mentees matched?
Many more questions need to be asked to ensure the mentor-mentee relationship and interactions are sufficient for exponential career growth. However, cultivating a positive experience for the mentee, ensuring there are no barriers (i.e., gender or race) for a unique experience, mentor training, and appropriate pairing of mentors and mentees are overarching considerations supported by evidence. (Rabeeah Z, 2022, Stenfors-Hayes T 2011, Mascarenhas F 2019, Bartle et al. 2020, Hill et al 2022, Frei et al 2010)
Problem
Concurrently, established formal mentorship programs are lacking in allied health science education programs for both students and junior faculty. Having formal mentorship programs for faculty to obtain training for mentorship roles and guidelines to support both junior faculty and students is essential for foundational success in academia. (Reibel & Arnett 2025, Mascarenhas F 2019) As a result of the lack of faculty mentors, students may not be getting exposure to avenues beyond clinical practice. This has been identified in dental hygiene education. (Reibel & Arnett 2025) It is suspected that allied health science programs, in general, have similar barriers to developing, implementing, and evaluating research mentorship programs. The goal of this article is to provide a blueprint for allied health programs to establish a framework for initiating a formal mentorship program.
Solution
To develop and implement a formal mentoring program, you need institutional ‘buy-in,’ strategic planning, faculty and students for piloting the program, an assessment metric(s), and a review of the outcomes process to make recommendations to modify the mentorship program. All these aspects depend on institutional support. The first step would be to identify the need for a mentorship program supported by evidence. The next step would be to align a mentorship program with the institution’s strategic plan.
Strategic Planning
Strategic planning is essential for building coalitions among deans, department chairs, program directors, and mentors. It is the deliberate process of setting goals, identifying resources, and establishing priorities. Beginning with a vision and mission statement may serve as the foundation to set goals to execute and then position a mentor program to identify resources, priorities and specific groups or individuals in a coalition of champions.
To build a diverse wide network of champions to support a variety of perspectives, it is important to identify individuals and groups who can contribute a range of resources, are versatile, and have the ability to pivot when changes need to occur. However, it is equally important that the determined coalition of champions are in alignment with the vision and the mission of the mentorship program. A mentorship program coalition of champions may support inclusive and sustainable programing and increase the reach of available resources. Further a mentorship coalition is especially relevant to match appropriate mentors and mentees and provide a unique mentor experience for the mentee for lifelong learning and professional development.
The next aspect of strategic planning is the development and implementation of a pilot program. A mentorship pilot program is needed on a small scale to determine feasibility. Mentorship pilot programs are required to collect outcomes to evaluate for expansion and improvements. Additionally, if funding is required to sustain or build the mentorship program for expansion, these primary outcomes are needed to secure internal or external grant funding.
Allied health science programs may find available resources for a mentorship program through their human resource department, professional organizations, or government agencies. One example of a successful student research mentorship program was published in the Journal of Dental Hygiene in 2025. (Reibel & Arnett 2025) This student research mentorship program partnered with the Writing Enrichment Curriculum to develop assignments and rubrics to improve student writing. (Reibel & Arnett 2025) This student research mentorship program not only implemented standardized assignments and grading rubrics across the curriculum but also resulted in eight student-led peer-reviewed publications between the years 2019-2023. (Reibel & Arnett 2025) Although the strategic plan and resources provided in this publication are specific to an allied oral health science program, (Reibel & Arnett 2025) the information is transferable to any allied health science program for students and can be modified for a faculty mentorship focus.
Conclusion
This blueprint is applicable to formal mentorship for faculty and students. The main framework is transferable and can be modified to match your institution’s strategic plan and goals. It is important to be aware of key components to ensure a humanistic mentor and mentee experience is cultivated. Strategic planning is necessary for developing, implementing, and evaluating a mentorship program. A coalition of champions who share the values of the vision and mission of a formal mentorship program contributes to the overall mentorship program and evaluation of metrics for future modifications and longevity.
Michelle Arnett currently serves as a Tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Primary Dental Care, Division of Dental Hygiene (DH) at the University of Minnesota (UMN) School of Dentistry (SOD). Arnett has 10 years of experience in academics and research at the University of Michigan SOD and the UMN SOD, in addition to 21 years of clinical practice experience. Her areas of research focus are motivational interviewing and periodontology. Arnett has published over 50 peer-review articles and two textbook chapters. Of those 50, 29 are specific her research niche in motivational interviewing and periodontology. The remaining 21 peer-reviewed publications focus on her teaching, student mentee research projects, and faculty and students’ wellness. Arnett has given over 60 presentations; 20 were invited national and international events. In 2023, Arnett received the American Dental Education Association (ADEA) President Centennial Awards for Oral Health Education. This was a one-time award at ADEA’s centennial celebration for an allied dental faculty who has made and continues to make a significant and positive impact on oral health education. Arnett has taught Communications, Periodontology, Leadership, and the Dental Hygiene Care Process: Clinical Application III and IV in the UMN undergraduate DH program and Instructional Strategies, Thesis I and II, and Capstone I-IV in the UMN graduate DH program. Her professional memberships include Sigma Phi Alpha-Nu Chapter, American Dental Hygienists’ Association (ADHA), and the ADEA.
References
Bartle, Emma K., Brandon J. Crivello, Jeri L. Bullock, and Ezinne I. Ogbureke. “Mentorship availability and needs for junior faculty members at the United States and Australian dental schools.” European Journal of Dental Education 24, no. 4 (2020): 790-798.
Frei, Esther, Martina Stamm, and Barbara Buddeberg-Fischer. “Mentoring programs for medical students-a review of the PubMed literature 2000-2008.” BMC medical education 10 (2010): 1-14.
Hill, Sarah EM, Wendy L. Ward, A. Seay, and J. Buzenski. “The nature and evolution of the mentoring relationship in academic health centers.” Journal of clinical psychology in medical settings 29, no. 3
Mascarenhas, Faye, Janice Townsend, Paul Caballero, Qingzhao Yu, and Paul L. Fidel Jr. “Student and faculty perspectives of a faculty‐student mentoring programme in a dental school.” European Journal of Dental Education 23, no. 2 (2019): 184-189.
Rabeeah, Zainulabdeen, Jocelid G. Carreno, Janet S. Kinney, and Marita R. Inglehart. “Career motivation and satisfaction of dental hygiene students in associate versus bachelor degree programs: A national survey.” Journal of Dental Education 86, no. 6 (2022): 649-660.
Reibel, Y.G., Jiang, Z., Arnett, M.C. “Mentor Like Minnesota: Outcomes of an undergraduate research mentorship program.” Journal of Dental Hygiene (Online) 99, no. 2 (2025): 48-54.
Stenfors‐Hayes, T., L. E. Lindgren, and S. Tranaeus. “Perspectives on being a mentor for undergraduate dental students.” European Journal of Dental Education 15, no. 3 (2011): 153-158.
IHEC‘s report,Towards a Future UK International Higher Education Strategy: Resilience, Purpose and Precision, released in April 2025, describes accurate data and timely insights as “the lifeblood” of an effective international education strategy.
The Commission is calling on the government develop a digital data portal for international student information, accessible to universities and relevant public bodies.
Its vision is a significant leap from the fragmented systems the sector currently relies on – where data is outdated and siloed across agencies.
Stakeholders frequently point out that UK policy often trails real-world data by nearly two years.
The Commission envisions a secure portal compiling data from various sources – Home Office visa issuance, HESA enrolments, accommodation, and health service usage – tracking, almost in real time, where international students are coming from and enrolling.
Imagine a world where universities can instantly access up-to-date visa grant statistics by country, and local councils can anticipate the number of international students arriving in their area.
With real-time insights at their fingertips, IHEC suggests that institutions, policymakers, and stakeholders could plan proactively – enhancing housing, support services, and infrastructure.
“A system like this is entirely within our competence to establish,” according to IHEC.
This isn’t the only tool the Commission has in its sights. As part of its ambitions, it also advocates for a market intelligence platform that would equip the UK with the insights needed to stay ahead of global competitors.
“Via a public-private partnership (perhaps a tender to specialist data firms), we could build a system that aggregates data on international education demand worldwide – including demographics, economic indicators, competitor country trends, search engine, and agent application data – to predict future demand patterns,” outlined the report.
Via a public-private partnership (perhaps a tender to specialist data firms), we could build a system that aggregates data on international education demand worldwide IHEC
The platform would answer key questions like: “Which emerging markets are gaining interest?” or “What’s the projected demand for STEM Masters over the next five years?”
“The sector must have access to better and more timely data about what is happening in international recruitment markets, as well as how this is playing out at institutional and sector levels, to more effectively address challenges and opportunities,” asserted Chris Skidmore, IHEC chair and former UK universities minister.
With this intelligence, the Commission hopes the UK can spot opportunities early and respond to risks before they grow. It should also include an open-source competitor tracker – comparing performance across countries on things like visa wait times, tuition fees, and scholarship availability – so the UK can see how it stacks up and stay competitive.
To steer these efforts, the Commission recommends establishing a public-private sector International Education Data and Insight Taskforce, made up of statisticians and analysts from various government departments, as well as industry experts and leaders from the growing number of private sector companies that provide sophisticated data about current and potential future trends.
The Commission names Enroly, Studyportals, IDP and QS as key players doing valuable work in this area.
IHEC’s full report ‘Towards a Future UK International Higher Education Strategy: Resilience, Purpose and Precision’ is available here.
Something has been happening on college campuses that’s as surprising as it is dramatic: The number of women enrolled has overtaken the number of men.
Women now outnumber men by about 60 percent to 40 percent, and that gaps keep getting wider. And men who do enroll are also more likely to drop out.
There are a lot of reasons for this. Boys get lower grades than girls, on average, in elementary and middle schools. They’re more likely to be held back or face disciplinary actions. They’re less likely to graduate from high school. And more men than women go into the skilled trades, instead of getting college degrees.
Among the results: Universities and colleges now tip the scales for men in admission to try to keep the genders even.
But as things keep falling out of balance, there are impacts on the financial success for men and on economic growth for everybody.
We’ll hear from men and women students about what that’s like right now, and from colleges about what they’re trying to do about it.
[Kirk] This is College Uncovered. I’m Kirk Carapezza …
[Jon] …and I’m Jon Marcus.
[sound of referee] Climbers ready? Contestants ready? One, two, go!
[Jon] This is the sound of one of the most unusual extracurricular activities at the University of Montana: running up a fallen tree with careful footwork, and neatly sawing off the end of it.
[sound of club member] So really what we’re trying to do is keep the tradition of antique logger sports alive by bringing in new generations to doing activities that they did hundreds of years ago. I mean, we’re using cross-cut saws that they used to cut down giant redwoods.
[Jon] That might seem like a throwback, but the University of Montana Woodsmen team has an important new purpose. Promoting programs such as forestry has become part of the university’s new strategy to attract an increasingly important type of student.
[Kelly Nolin] There are definitely some efforts that are happening at the institution to help men find their community and to find a space.
[Jon] That’s Kelly Nolin. She’s director of admissions at the University of Montana.
[Kelly Nolin] Our gender split is about 42 percent male, 56 percent female. So it’s definitely widening, and it’s clearly a concern for a variety of reasons. And so that’s why we decided to look into opportunities to recruit more male students.
[Jon] What Nolan says she’s trying to solve is a really big problem that most people don’t know is even happening: The proportion of men who are going to college is falling way behind the proportion of women who are going.
Nationwide, women now outnumber men by about 60 percent to 40 percent, and that gap keeps getting wider. Far more young women than young men who graduate from high school are going to college, and men who do enroll are also more likely to drop out.
We’ll tell you how this might actually be creating an advantage for men in the admissions process, and even how it affects even the dating scene on campuses — which, let’s face it, is a big part of college to a lot of students.
Take it from Amber Turner. She’s a freshman at Nova Southeastern University in South Florida, which is now more than 70 percent women.
[Amber Turner] It’s a lot more women than men and the men usually have a lot more options, whereas the women have disgusting options because there aren’t many of them. I have a boyfriend, personally, but I saw with my friends that it’s kind of like nobody here for them.
[Jon] But fewer men in college has really serious implications for not only colleges that need to fill seats — or, for that matter, students frustrated by the dating pool. It affects the prospects of financial success for men, and of economic growth for everybody.
This is College Uncovered, from GBH News and The Hechinger Report — a podcast pulling back the ivy to reveal how colleges really work. I’m Jon Marcus of The Hechinger Report …
[Kirk] … and I’m Kirk Carapezza with GBH. Colleges don’t want you to know how they operate, so GBH …
[Jon] … in collaboration with The Hechinger Report, is here to show you.
Today on the podcast: ‘The Missing Men.’
[Kirk] This season, we’ve been talking about the demographic cliff. That’s the decline that’s starting in the number of 18-year-olds, and how it will affect colleges and the economy.
Now here’s a related milestone you might not have heard about. The number of college-educated women in the workforce has for the first time overtaken the number college-educated men. That’s because more women than men have been going to college.
There are a lot of reasons for this. Boys in elementary and middle school get lower grades than girls. They’re more likely to be held back or face disciplinary action. And they’re less likely to graduate from high school. Jon, you and I have talked to high school senior boys about all of this.
[Jon] Right, Kirk, and a lot of them were worried that they don’t have the confidence to tackle college.
[Abdukadir Abdullahi] I feel like there’s more distractions for guys to get, like, the best grades because every school, like, the guy is always the class clown, and stuff like that.
[Jon] That’s Abdukadir Abdullahi. He’s the son of a single father and just didn’t see himself in college. Neither did Pedro Hidalgo, even though he actually wanted to go.
[Pedro Hidalgo] College was something I always wanted to reach and I always wanted to be accepted to, but I never had that belief within myself that I could do it.
[Jon] Men are more likely than women to go into the skilled trades, which is faster and cheaper than paying for what seems to them to be an endless and expensive stretch of time in college. That’s what Abdullahi was planning to do.
[Kirk] Back when you thought college wasn’t for you, what was the alternative? You were planning to just go straight to work or join the military or did you have an alternative plan?
[Abdukadir Abdullahi] I was going to, like, be a plumber or something like that, like where you could have to go to school, but you could make a decent amount of money.
[Kirk] In the end, he and the rest of these guys did end up going to college. But a lot of other high school boys feel like they need to get jobs right away, especially if they come from families that need help with their finances.
Here’s Hidalgo’s classmate, Debrin Adon. His parents immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic.
[Debrin Adon] I’m not going to speak for every man, but at least for young men like my classmates and I, we’re more focused on like money, you know? Like, getting money — getting that paycheck.
[Kirk] That’s right. So a lot of them get jobs right out of high school and then they buy a car and maybe get married and by that point, it’s almost certain that they’ll never go to college.
This is Kellie Becker. She’s the college counselor at the school where Abdullahi went.
[Kellie Becker] A lot of young men are working. They’re working for their families. Like, they’re the man of the house. They are providing their entire family with one paycheck and they get a little taste of that where they, some of them, have to do it or some of them want to do it because they’re getting that money.
[Kirk] These are just a few of the reasons we’ve ended up here. Fifty years ago, the gender divide was exactly the reverse, and there were far more men than women in college. Since then, there’s been a lot of work to encourage women to get degrees. But much less of that kind of thing is targeted at men. Women also disproportionately work in fields that require degrees, such as social work and teaching. And we’ve already heard how boys don’t do as well as girls in lower grades, how young men feel responsible for helping their families right out of high school and how many of them go into the trades. The decline is even steeper for Black men. Their numbers went way down during the pandemic. Even at historically Black colleges, Black men now make up only about a quarter of the students.
[Michael Sinclair] Money is one of the main factors. A lot of our young men are looking for opportunities to earn a living, but they need the money now.
[Kirk] That’s Michael Sinclair. He’s an associate professor at Morgan State University, and he points out that this becomes a vicious cycle.
[Michael Sinclair] There’s a statement that my father once told me: You can’t be what you can’t see. And if you’re not seeing Black men on college campuses, a lot of young people don’t think that that’s for them.
[Kirk] This mismatch between men and women is starting to create an odd divide on many college campuses.
[Jon] Exactly, Kirk. I visited another big university, the University of Vermont. It’s already 64 percent female. I went to the student union, where Melinda Wetzel told me what it was like to be a woman student there.
[Melinda Wetzel] Oh, yeah, I do have one small class that there is only one guy. I do undergraduate research and when I’m in the medical building, I feel like I hardly ever see men. I feel I’m walking around and it’s just, like, a bunch of ladies.
[Jon] This extends to areas on campus you might not expect.
[Melinda Wetzel] I was at the gym the other day and, like, if you think about going to a gym, you think of, like, oh, no, like, there’s going to be a lot of scary guys there. I looked around and I actually pointed out to my friend, like, ‘Whoa, look at all the girls here. This is great.’
[Jon] Now, some men on campus also think it’s great that there are more women.
[Pete Azan] So in our class we have, like, 83 girls and like 30 guys. They told us that like the first day of school. So we were all shocked.
[Jon] Pete Azan is studying dental medicine down at Nova Southeastern. More women than men are going into dentistry these days, too — not only there, but nationwide. He’s okay with that, though.
[Pete Azan] I love it. I go to class every day the happiest man, because I get to be around beautiful women all day.
[Jon] And however you might feel about that, there’s another potential advantage for men to this little-noticed trend:
[Kirk] To keep the gender mix more evenly balanced, a lot of universities are making it easier for men to get in. That’s become especially important as they start to topple over that demographic cliff that’s coming, in the number of students of any gender.
Sourav Guha used to work in university admissions. He saw how men got an edge so colleges could keep the genders balanced. Now Guha is executive director of the Consortium on Higher Achievement and Success. It supports students who are already enrolled in college.
[Sourav Guha] I’d put it this way: There were a lot of high school girls who, in terms of credentials, looked as good as or better than some of the boys we admitted, but the girls ended up either wait-listed or rejected. It’s not that the students we were taking were not qualified or capable of being there, but certainly they had credentials, like, maybe a lower GPA, sort of different classes, different levels of high school achievement.
[Kirk] So listen to what he’s saying there, Jon. At some schools, the odds that men will get in are now better than the odds that women will.
[Jon] Right, Kirk. And it’s absolutely true. We looked it up. A lot of prestigious universities are accepting more of their male applicants than their female applicants. Boston University, Brown, Vanderbilt, the University of Chicago, the University of Miami, the University of Southern California — all of them took at least slightly more male than female applicants.
[Kirk] Now, that might keep the genders balanced for a while at those selective colleges and universities, even if it is at the expense of women who apply to them. But the problem isn’t going away, and some experts are warning that the repercussions are significant.
[Jon] Right, Kirk. Richard Reeves researched this phenomenon of men not going to college and became so alarmed about it that he founded an organization to study and address it, the American Institute for Boys and Men.
[Richard Reeves] Now, there are lots of good organizations ringing the alarm bells when there are gaps facing women and girls, and that is great, and they do a great job of it. But it hasn’t really been anyone’s job to wake up every day and ring the alarm bell around declining male enrollment in colleges.
[Jon] Reeves says this should matter to everyone.
[Richard Reeves] We’re leaving too much male talent on the table as a result of the failure of our education system to serve men as well as women. And as a result, those men are not doing as well in the economy as they could. That’s bad for the economy. It’s also bad for the women that they will end up with. And so this is, in the end, bad for everybody.
[Jon] Colleges are trying lots of things to appeal to men. The University of Vermont has started running an entrepreneurship competition for high school students. It’s open to anyone, but more boys than girls have entered. That’s what the university expected, based on focus groups that showed that men liked entrepreneurship programs. The grand prize is a full-tuition scholarship.
Like a lot of schools, Vermont is also using its athletic programs to attract men.
Now, you’d think more women getting college degrees would be translating into higher pay and more promotions. But while there may be more of them in college, the degrees they tend to get are often in lower-paying fields. Men still outnumber women in disciplines such as engineering and business, which have a bigger payoff.
Sourav Guha explains.
[Sourav Guha] If you look at the top two fields for women, it’s still nursing and teaching. You know, for men, it’s software development. So women are going to college and the economic returns they’re getting from college are not the same that men are getting.
[Kirk] But Richard Reeves says men who don’t get degrees at all will generally be worse off.
[Richard Reeves] One of the myths that is really important to nail here is the idea that, well, men don’t need college degrees because there are lots of jobs — well-paid, good jobs that men can go and do even if they don’t have higher educations. That is not true anymore.
[Kirk] However they’re approaching it, and for whatever reasons, colleges are laser-focused on this issue. As we’ve been saying all this season, they need all the students they can get right now.
[Jon] Yeah, Kirk, and Reeves is worried about a new reason men are finding to not go to college: politics.
[Kirk] Right. As colleges continue to be targets in the culture wars, Reeves says some men consider them not only woke, but anti-male.
[Richard Reeves] I’m worried that not only does higher education seem like it’s more female and coded a bit more female, but also coded left, progressive and maybe even somewhat intolerant toward men, and particularly perhaps conservative men from, say, rural areas, right? I think if you want to find someone who’s pretty skeptical about higher education, it may well be a conservative white guy living in a rural area. And turns out that is one of the groups that we’re really seeing a big decline in enrollment.
[Jon] This concern isn’t lost on colleges. We already heard from University of Montana admissions director Kelly Nolin. Among the ways her university has tried to win back men is by inviting conservative speakers such as Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.
[Charlie Kirk] And I’m going to make a case, and I don’t know if it’ll be persuasive to do, why I think DEI is unbiblical. …
[Kelly Nolin] And regardless of how you feel about his political views, it was an important moment for people in our state to see that as a liberal arts college, we were willing and able to bring a conservative person to campus, but also somebody who appeals to a lot of men. And so just sharing those different perspectives, trying to break some of the stereotypes of how people in our state or maybe outside of our state view us, that’s some of work that we’re doing right now.
[Jon] That’s on top of pushing its forestry school and that Woodsmen Club and other things, based on what it learned from focus groups of male students.
[Kelly Nolin] They really felt, in their experience, that we needed to focus more on the attractive nature of our location. So some of the activities that are available to students very easily — things like fly-fishing, hiking, skiing, hunting — those were important to these students. And they weren’t things that we were really highlighting in our brochures.
[Jon] Kirk, you and I got to go to the University of Montana on assignment, and it is a really beautiful natural setting, although, as I recall, I beat you to the top of Mount Sentinel when we hiked it.
[Kirk] I was taking in the scenery, Jon. But, yes, those are the kinds of things the university is now using to market itself to men.
[Kelly Nolin] We sent an email with a link to our wild sustenance class, which is a class about hunting that really focuses on not just the mechanics of hunting, but the conservation purpose behind hunting that could appeal to a wide range of people from a wide variety of political affiliations.
[Kirk] Yeah, Jon, and just as an aside, that email had an unexpected effect.
[Kelly Nolin] I will tell you that somebody saw that ad and they came to visit. And when they were asked why they were looking at the University of Montana for college — they were from Virginia — they said they wanted to come someplace where they had rugged men.
[Kirk] She’s laughing because that person was a woman.
[Jon] Right. But colleges are taking this deadly seriously. As we’ll continue to discuss this season, they are facing down that demographic cliff and every student counts.
This is College Uncovered. I’m Jon Marcus from The Hechinger Report.
[Kirk] And I’m Kirk Carapezza from GBH. This episode was produced and written by Jon Marcus …
[Jon] … and Kirk Carapezza.
If you want to see whether a college accepts more male than female applicants, we’ve linked in the show notes to the federal government website where you can find that.
[Kirk] We had help on this episode from Liam Elder-Connors of Vermont Public and reporter Yvonne Zum Tobel in South Florida. Our sound of the Woodsmen Club came from the University of Montana student newspaper.
This episode was edited by Jonathan A. Davis. Our executive editor is Jennifer McKim. Our fact-checker is Ryan Alderman.
[Jon] Mixing and sound design by David Goodman and Gary Mott. All of our music is by college bands. Our theme song and original music is by Left Roman out of MIT.
Mei He is our project manager and head of GBH podcasts is Devin Maverick Robbins.
[Kirk] College Uncovered is made possible by Lumina Foundation. It’s produced by GBH News and The Hechinger Report and distributed by PRX.
Thanks so much for listening.
More information about the topics covered in this episode:
To see the acceptance rates of men vs. women applicants at any college or university, go here, enter the name of the institution, and click on ADMISSIONS.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
This article was originally published in December 2024 in the opinion page of The Los Angeles Times and is republished here with permission.
The Constitution shouldn’t be rewritten for every new communications technology. The Supreme Court reaffirmed this long-standing principle during its most recent term in applying the 1st Amendment to social media. The late Justice Antonin Scalia articulated it persuasively in 2011, noting that “whatever the challenges of applying the Constitution to ever-advancing technology, the basic principles of freedom of speech and the press … do not vary.”
These principles should be front of mind for congressional Republicans and David Sacks, Trump’s recently chosen artificial intelligence czar, as they make policy on that emerging technology. The 1st Amendment standards that apply to older communications technologies must also apply to artificial intelligence, particularly as it stands to play an increasingly significant role in human expression and learning.
But revolutionary technological change breeds uncertainty and fear. And where there is uncertainty and fear, unconstitutional regulation inevitably follows. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, lawmakers in at least 45 states have introduced bills to regulate AI this year, and 31 states adopted laws or resolutions on the technology. Congress is also considering AI legislation.
Many of these proposals respond to concerns that AI will supercharge the spread of misinformation. While the worry is understandable, misinformation is not subject to any categorical exemption from 1st Amendment protections. And with good reason: As Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson observed in 1945, the Constitution’s framers “did not trust any government to separate the true from the false for us,” and therefore “every person must be his own watchman for truth.”
California nevertheless enacted a law in September targeting “deceptive,” digitally modified content about political candidates. The law was motivated partly by an AI-altered video parodying Vice President Kamala Harris’ candidacy that went viral earlier in the summer.
Two weeks after the law went into effect, a judge blocked it, writing that the “principles safeguarding the people’s right to criticize government … apply even in the new technological age” and that penalties for such criticism “have no place in our system of governance.”
Ultimately, we don’t need new laws regulating most uses of AI; existing laws will do just fine. Defamation, fraud, false light and forgery laws already address the potential of deceptive expression to cause real harm. And they apply regardless of whether the deception is enabled by a radio broadcast or artificial intelligence technology. The Constitution should protect novel communications technology not just so we can share AI-enhanced political memes. We should also be able to freely harness AI in pursuit of another core 1st Amendment concern: knowledge production.
When we think of free expression guarantees, we often think of the right to speak. But the 1st Amendment goes beyond that. As the Supreme Court held in 1969, “The Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas.”
Information is the foundation of progress. The more we have, the more we can propose and test hypotheses and produce knowledge.
The internet, like the printing press, was a knowledge-accelerating innovation. But Congress almost hobbled development of the internet in the 1990s because of concerns that it would enable minors to access “indecent” content. Fortunately, the Supreme Court stood in its way by striking down much of the Communications Decency Act.
Indeed, the Supreme Court’s application of the 1st Amendment to that new technology was so complete that it left Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Mike Godwin wondering “whether I ought to retire from civil liberties work, my job being mostly done.” Godwin would go on to serve as general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit behind Wikipedia — which, he wrote, “couldn’t exist without the work that cyberlibertarians had done in the 1990s to guarantee freedom of expression and broader access to the internet.”
Today humanity is developing a technology with even more knowledge-generating potential than the internet. No longer is knowledge production limited by the number of humans available to propose and test hypotheses. We can now enlist machines to augment our efforts.
We are already starting to see the results: A researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently reported that AI enabled a lab studying new materials to discover 44% more compounds. Dario Amodei, the chief executive of the AI company Anthropic, predicts that “AI-enabled biology and medicine will allow us to compress the progress that human biologists would have achieved over the next 50-100 years into 5-10 years.”
This promise can be realized only if America continues to view the tools of knowledge production as legally inseparable from the knowledge itself. Yes, the printing press led to a surge of “misinformation.” But it also enabled the Enlightenment.
The 1st Amendment is America’s great facilitator: Because of it, the government can no more regulate the printing press than it can the words printed on a page. We must extend that standard to artificial intelligence, the arena where the next great fight for free speech will be fought.
