Tag: national

Trump’s national school voucher program could mean a boom in Christian education

by Anya Kamenetz, The Hechinger Report
January 22, 2026

LACONIA, N.H. — Three dozen 4- and 5-year-olds trooped out onto the stage of the ornate, century-old Colonial Theatre of Laconia in this central New Hampshire town. Dressed in plaid, red, green and sparkles, some were grinning and waving, some looked a bit shell-shocked; a tiny blonde girl sobbed with stage fright in her teacher’s arms.

No sooner did the children open their mouths to sing, “Merry Christmas! … This is the day that the Lord was born!” than the house lights came up and a fire alarm went off.

It was an unusually eventful annual Christmas concert for Laconia Christian Academy. Then again, it’s been an unusually eventful year. In a small, aging state, where overall school enrollment has been dropping for more than two decades, Laconia reported a 130 percent increase in enrollment in its elementary school since 2020 — and began a three-quarter-million-dollar campus expansion on its 140 acres outside town.

“We are in a season of incredible growth,” the school’s website reads.

One reason for the season: Almost every student at the academy is enrolled in New Hampshire’s Education Freedom Account program, said Head of School Rick Duba. Regardless of their family income, they receive thousands of dollars each in taxpayer money to help pay their tuition.

In June, New Hampshire became the 18th state to pass a universal private school choice program. After signing the bill into law, Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte announced, “Giving parents the freedom to choose the education setting that best fits their child’s needs will help every student in our state reach their full potential.”

Yet, as these programs proliferate, with significant expansion since the pandemic, Democrats, teachers unions and other public school advocates are raising the alarm about accountability, transparency and funding. And with President Donald Trump passing a federal voucher program to start in 2027, some are concerned about the future of public education as a whole.

“I think these programs are the biggest change in K-12 education since Brown v. Board of Ed,” said Douglas Harris, a scholar at Tulane who recently published two papers on the impact of universal private school choice programs. He argues that vouchers were originally introduced in the 1950s in part to resist desegregation by funding white families to attend private schools.

According to his October 2025 paper, private school choice “allows schools to discriminate against certain students, entwines government with religion, involves a large fiscal cost, and has shown fairly poor, or at best inconclusive, academic results.” Harris said in an interview, “It changes fundamentally all the basic traditions of the education system.”

New Hampshire could be a harbinger of that fundamental change. Experts say the state has one of the broadest and least regulated universal school choice programs in the country. “Universal” refers to the fact that families, regardless of income, are eligible for an average $5,200 a year from the government to pay tuition at a private school or supplement the cost of homeschooling. The number of recipients reached 10,510 this year, and it’s likely to grow again next year.

Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education.

“Universal” also describes the fact that any type of school — or nonschools, such as an unaccredited storefront microschool, an online curriculum provider, a music camp or even a ski slope — can be eligible for these funds.

These schools and organizations don’t have to abide by state or federal laws, like those requiring accommodation for students with disabilities or other antidiscrimination laws. A 2022 Supreme Court decision, Carson v. Makin, affirmed the right of parents to use public money, in the form of voucher and education savings account funds, specifically for religious schools.

And indeed, it seems that in New Hampshire, as nationally, a disproportionate amount of the funding is going to small Christian schools, particularly to evangelical Protestant schools like Laconia. The Concord Monitor found that in the past four years, 90 percent of the revenue from the previous, income-capped EFA program went to Christian schools. This was true even though most of the state’s private schools are not religious. The Concord Monitor found in the first five years of the program, the top 10 recipients grew in enrollment by 32 percent. With the exception of Laconia, none of these schools responded to repeated requests for comment from The Hechinger Report.

But state officials have stopped releasing data on exactly where recipients of the Education Freedom Accounts are using those dollars. They told the Concord Monitor that the data is not subject to public record requests because it’s held by the nonprofit that administers the funds, the Children’s Scholarship Fund of New Hampshire. State officials did not respond to Hechinger queries. The Children’s Scholarship Fund directed The Hechinger Report to its website, which features a partial accounting of less than 10 percent of 2025-26 student. This accounting, which may or may not be representative, showed 671 of these students currently attend Christian schools, 64 attend non-Christian private schools and 50 are homeschooled.

A national analysis released in September by Tulane’s Harris of publicly available data showed that in New Hampshire and ten other states with similar policies, vouchers have boosted private school enrollment by up to 4 percent. The increases were concentrated at small Protestant religious schools like Laconia. The federal tax credit scholarship program will allow even more funds in additional states to be directed to these schools.

One reason that Christian schools are coming out on top, Harris said, is that this type of school tends to have lower tuition than independent private schools, meaning a $5,000 subsidy can make the difference for more families. The schools do this in part by paying teachers less.

“ Typically, Christian school teachers see their work as a ministry and are willing to work for significantly less than their public counterparts,” said Duba, Laconia’s leader. He added that he is working with his board to try to pay a “living wage” of $55,000.

Related: The new reality with universal school vouchers: Homeschoolers, marketing, pupil churn

At the Christmas concert in Laconia, after the fire department gave the all clear and the performance resumed, the little ones were tuckered out from the extra excitement. In the theater lobby, Nick Ballentine cradled his kindergartner, Perna, who wore two big red bows in her hair and a dress that read “Merry” on the front in cursive.

Ballentine said his family chose Laconia because “it was local and it wasn’t a public school.” He also liked that it was Christian and had small class sizes, but his opposition to public school is staunch: “I don’t like public schools, nor the policies that guide them, because they come from the government.”

Duba said that families come to Laconia for the small class sizes, the TimberNook outdoor program that has elementary school students spending five hours each week of class time in the woods, and “ for faith.”

“They don’t want their kids in public schools where their kids are being taught by people who don’t express faith in Christ,” he said. While the school doesn’t require students to have a “profession of faith” to attend, there are lessons about the life of Jesus in preschool, daily prayers and service mission trips for the high school students as far away as Rwanda.

Duba said the biggest “social issue” that drives families away from public schools and toward schools like his is “ sexuality and gender identity.” The Concord Monitor previously reported that many of the schools that are the top recipients of aid in New Hampshire won’t admit students who have anyone in their family who is openly LGBTQ+ or supports gay or trans rights. Laconia Christian Academy’s nondiscrimination policy says it does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin, but it doesn’t mention sexual orientation or gender identity. Asked about the policy, Duba declined to comment.

Like other private schools, these schools also aren’t required by law to serve students who have disabilities. The state says 8.47 percent of EFA recipients are in special education, compared to 20 percent in the state’s public schools.

Adam Laats, an education historian at Binghamton University, said these universal school choice programs are part of a long history of conservative evangelical Protestants seeking to make existing public schools more Christian in character on the one hand and divert public money to explicitly Christian schools on the other.

“For 100 years, public schools have been the sort of litmus test of whether the U.S. is a Christian nation,” he said, citing battles over teaching evolution, sex education, prayer in schools and more recently climate change, the treatment of race and American history, LGBTQIA rights and book banning.

Alongside the culture wars in public schools, said Laats, there have been successive waves of founding and expansion of Christian private schools: “There’s a burst in the 1920s, the next big bump comes in the ’50s and a huge spike in the 1970s, during the height of busing, when for a while there was one new school opening a day in the U.S. of these conservative evangelical schools.”

Laats agrees with Harris that the 1950s and 1970s booms were in part responses to desegregation efforts. But, he said, previous enrollment booms have eventually faded, because “it’s expensive” to educate students and offer amenities like sports and arts education. “That’s why the Christians have pushed hard for vouchers.”

Related: Arizona gave families public money for private school. Then private schools raised tuition

Funding fairness is a hot-button issue right now in New Hampshire.

In the summer of 2025, the State Supreme Court found that New Hampshire’s schools are officially inadequately funded. School funding in the low-tax, live-free-or-die state depends heavily on local property taxes, which vary radically area to area. The state spends an average of 4,182 per head; the court found it should spend at least $7,356.

So far, the overall percentage of New Hampshire students enrolled in public schools has remained steady at 90 percent. That implies most of the ESA money, so far, is subsidizing families who already were choosing private schools or homeschooling, rather than fueling a mass exodus from public schools.

Yet some districts are feeling the bite. According to recently released data from the state, in the small town of Rindge, 29 percent of students are EFA recipients — the highest of any community in the state.

“It is taking money away from public education,” said Megan Tuttle, president of New Hampshire’s state teacher union. “If you have a couple kids that are leaving the classroom to take the money, that doesn’t change the staffing that we have at the schools, heat, oil, electricity, all those types of things. And so, what’s happening is the money’s leaving, but the bills aren’t.”

Duba looks at the math differently, pointing out that the EFA doesn’t equal the full cost of educating a student. “Let’s say I took 30 kids from Laconia. I did not, but for the sake of argument,” he said. “ They don’t have to do anything with those 30 kids anymore. They’re gone.”

This year, the advocacy group Reaching Higher NH calculated that the education savings account program will siphon $50 million from the state’s $2.61 billion education trust fund, and it will grow from there. “We’re functionally trying to fund two systems,” said Alex Tilsley, the group’s policy director. “And we couldn’t even fund one system fully.”

As the program grows in New Hampshire, the opposition is growing too.

“There’s broad opposition to EFAs from the teacher unions, from public school groups and from voters,” sums up Tilsley.* “It’s not generally speaking a highly favored policy across the state.” But with a Republican trifecta in control of state government, school choice in New Hampshire is not going anywhere. And with a national education tax credit program in the offing, more states will soon face these debates. As in New Hampshire, the federal money will be able to be used for private schools, homeschooling costs or anything in between.

*Correction: This sentence has been updated to correct the spelling of Alex Tilsley’s last name.

Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at [email protected].

This story about Christian schools was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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January 22, 2026
Why Ind. Fans Are Excited About First Football National Champs

The Indiana Hoosiers defeated the Miami Hurricanes 27 to 21 to win the university’s first-ever NCAA Division I college football national championship this week. Any school would be thrilled to clinch this title and take home the trophy that accompanies it. But I will explain in this article why it hits different for IU students, alumni, employees and other supporters. Before doing so, I’ll first disclose how I know.

Five of the best years of my life were spent in Bloomington. I have a master’s degree and Ph.D. from the extraordinary university that is the heartbeat of that beloved community. IU subsequently bestowed upon me two distinguished alumni awards. The university presented its first Bicentennial Medal to Indiana governor Eric Holcomb in July 2019; that same month, I became the second recipient.

Since graduating with my doctorate 23 years ago, I have returned to campus to deliver several lectures and keynote speeches, including the 2024 Martin Luther King Jr. Day Address. My favorite trip back was in 2011 to celebrate my fraternity’s centennial. Ten visionary Black male students founded Kappa Alpha Psi there, a brotherhood that now has more than 150,000 members. I am proud to be one of them. These are just a few of countless reasons why I have long been one of IU’s proudest alums.

Here is what I remember about football games in the late ’90s and early 2000s: Whew, yikes! Tons of people showed up to tailgate outside our stadium on Saturday mornings before home games. I was often one of them. Those gatherings were probably just as fun there as they were at schools that had won Power 4 conference titles and national championships. But there was one embarrassing feature of our pregame tailgates: Few people actually went inside Memorial Stadium for games. When I say “few,” I mean at least two-thirds of stadium seats were empty. I thought it rude and unsupportive of student athletes to eat and drink in the parking lot for hours then skip the game—hence, I opted for the tailgate-only experience no more than four times each season. I was inside cheering all the other times.

Despite what had long been its shady tailgating culture, IU has amazing fans. I often screamed alongside them at basketball games. During one of my most recent visits to campus, President Pam Whitten generously hosted me for a Big Ten matchup in her fabulous suite inside the iconic Assembly Hall. I was instantly reminded that my beloved alma mater has an electrifying, inspiringly loyal fan base—for basketball. As it turns out, winning five men’s national basketball championships, clinching 22 Big Ten conference titles and making 41 NCAA tournament appearances (advancing to the Final Four eight times) excites people. Suffering so many defeats in football year after year, not so much.

Throughout the last two seasons, ESPN commentators and other sportscasters have annoyingly repeated that Indiana has long been the losingest major college football team of all time; I will leave it to someone else to fact-check that. Going from being so bad for so long to an 11–2 season and playoff berth last year, followed by a Big Ten Championship, a flawless 16–0 season and a national championship win this year, are just some reasons why IU alumni and others are so excited. Oh, and then there is Fernando Mendoza, our first-ever Heisman Trophy winner, and Curt Cignetti, the inspirational head coach who accelerated our football program to greatness in just two seasons.

Instantly improving from (reportedly) worst of all time to college football’s undisputed best is indeed exciting. Nevertheless, it is not the only reason why the Indiana faithful are so amped. Our university is beyond extraordinary in numerous domains. Academic programs there are exceptional; many, including the one from which I graduated, are always ranked in the top nationally. The university employs many of the world’s best professors and researchers. Its connection to the Hoosier State is deep, measurable and in many ways transformative. The Bloomington campus, framed by its gorgeous tulip-filled Sample Gates, is a vibrant, exciting place to be a student. It feels like a great university because it has long been, still is and forever will be. It is birthplace of the greatest collegiate fraternity, a fact that requires no verification.

Finally having a football program that matches all the other great things that IU is and does is why those of us who have experienced the place are so freakin’ excited about our first-ever college football national championship. Greatness deserves greatness. Thanks to Cignetti and his staff, Mendoza and every other student athlete on their team, Indiana University has finally achieved football greatness. They have given others and me one more reason to be incredibly proud of a great American university that excels in academics, public outreach, athletics and so many other domains. I conclude with this: Hoo-Hoo-Hoo-Hoosiers!

Shaun Harper is University Professor and Provost Professor of Education, Business and Public Policy at the University of Southern California, where he holds the Clifford and Betty Allen Chair in Urban Leadership. His most recent book is titled Let’s Talk About DEI: Productive Disagreements About America’s Most Polarizing Topics.

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January 21, 2026
Trump celebrates returning education to the states in national address

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In an address to the nation on Wednesday night, President Donald Trump celebrated increased state involvement and decreased federal oversight in education — a task he said his administration has accomplished in the last 11 months.

“We have broken the grip of sinister woke radicals in our schools,” he said, “and control over those schools is back now in the hands of our great and loving states, where education belongs.”

Trump, however, remained silent on his education plan for 2026.

Increased state control over education — partly by gutting the U.S. Department of Education — loomed large among U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon’s priorities when entering the office in March. McMahon has since announced at least two rounds of layoffs at the department, pauses in some federal funding, and reorganization and outsourcing of key parts of the department itself.

Trump’s comments come a month after the Education Department announced six interagency agreements, shifting management of major programs to other federal agencies. The agreements included sending the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education to the U.S. Department of Labor.

However, increasing state control over education and decreasing federal oversight has deeply divided the education community.

While Republican-led states have celebrated Trump’s education agenda as allowing them to tailor education to local needs, Democratic-leaning states and lawmakers have said decreased oversight will create more challenges.

Angelica Infante-Green, Rhode Island commissioner of elementary and secondary education, speaks during a spotlight forum on the Trump administration’s impact on education on Dec. 16, 2025, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

Courtesy of U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono

“After a year that included mass firings, canceling critical grant funds for our local schools, and cutting access to student loans, the Trump administration is trying to make good on their promise to shutter the Department of Education,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., according to a statement from a forum convened by Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, a day before the president’s address.

Van Hollen added, “While there are many ways to improve our education system, dismantling the department piece by piece only threatens our longstanding goal of ensuring that every child has access to a quality education.”

Angelica Infante-Green, Rhode Island commissioner of elementary and secondary education, told Van Hollen and other lawmakers at the Dec. 16 forum that by stepping back from federal support of education, the Trump administration has created “chaos and concern.”

Red states, meanwhile, have already begun submitting waiver requests to the Every Student Succeeds Act, a bipartisan measure passed under President Barack Obama that gave increased flexibility to states compared to its predecessor, the No Child Left Behind Act.

Indiana, Kansas and Iowa are among those that have so far sought waivers, and the Education Department’s response to them could pave the path for future waivers in other states.

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December 18, 2025
The civic university movement at an inflection point: reflecting on the National Civic Impact Accelerator’s legacy

This blog was kindly authored by Adam Leach, Programme Director and John Fell, Policy and Partnerships Manager, at the National Civic Impact Accelerator at Sheffield Hallam University.

As the National Civic Impact Accelerator (NCIA) programme concludes this month, we find ourselves at a critical juncture for the civic university movement. After three years of intensive work gathering evidence, developing tools, and supporting universities to deepen their civic engagement, we have learnt a profound lesson: no single formula produces civic university success, but there are proven waypoints that can guide institutions through challenging terrain.

The timing could not be more important

The conclusion of the NCIA arrives at a moment of acute tension. On one hand, the Secretary of State for Education has made civic engagement one of her five top priorities for higher education reform. Bridget Phillipson’s November 2024 letter to university leaders was unequivocal: institutions must:

play a full part in both civic engagement, ensuring local communities and businesses benefit fully from your work; and in regional development, working in partnership with local government and employers.

On the other hand, many higher education institutions are facing deficit, and NCIA research has revealed the fragility of civic infrastructure within universities. Civic teams are being disbanded, staff on short-term contracts are not being renewed, and years of carefully built community partnerships are at risk. As one participant in our research observed:

If you are sitting in rooms with leaders of councils and hospitals, for that to be a junior role is a big ask, especially if it is a junior role on a temporary contract.

This paradox – increased civic responsibility amid deepening financial pressures – represents perhaps the most significant challenge facing the civic university movement.

What the NCIA has delivered

The NCIA programme, led by Sheffield Hallam University in partnership with the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE), the Institute for Community Studies, City-REDI at the University of Birmingham, and Queen Mary University of London, set out to answer a fundamental question: what works in civic engagement, for whom, and in what contexts?

Our flagship output is the Civic Field Guide, which distils three years of evidence gathering into 14 practical waypoints organised across seven terrains: People, Place, Partnership, Policy, Practice, Purpose and Process. These waypoints emerged not from theory alone but from the generous sharing of universities across England, who were honest about both their successes and setbacks. Think of our waypoints as signs on a coastal path – they help you understand where you are and what direction you are heading, but they do not walk the path for you.

Each waypoint addresses critical challenges. One focuses on embedding civic engagement as a core university mission, rather than leaving it to a few passionate individuals – what we call the ‘passion trap’. Another waypoint explores measuring civic impact through both quantitative metrics and qualitative narratives, recognising that numbers alone cannot capture how civic initiatives transform real lives. A third encourages universities to position communities as equal partners through co-design and lived experience, rather than as passive recipients of university expertise.

Beyond the Field Guide, we have created a wealth of freely accessible evidence, tools and resources. Our Action Learning Programme brought together civic practitioners from across the UK. We have funded innovative civic projects testing new approaches, and we have produced a comprehensive Civic Impact Framework identifying seven domains where universities can make a difference.

The honest answer

After three years and significant investment, have we finally cracked civic university success? No. The legacy of the NCIA will not be our outputs and guidance, but what people do with them, and how they use them to make changes in their places and communities. Civic work is highly place-responsive and context-specific. What succeeds in Sheffield may not work in Southampton. The power to change lies with practitioners and academics applying these insights to their unique contexts.

Looking ahead: policy proposals for sustainability

As the NCIA concludes, new structures are emerging to sustain the momentum. Following six years of leadership from Sheffield Hallam University, the NCCPE will steward the Civic University Network into its next phase, ensuring that NCIA resources remain accessible. The Civic 2.0 initiative establishes a consortium of UK universities with the University of Birmingham hosting a national policy hub.

Yet sustainability requires concrete policy action at institutional, regional and national levels:

For universities: Civic engagement must move from the margins to the core of institutional strategy. This means long-term budgets for civic teams, senior leadership accountability for delivering civic commitments, and treating community relationships as strategic assets, not expendable add-ons.

For Government: The devolution agenda and creation of combined authorities create opportunities to embed universities as anchor institutions in regional policy frameworks. Universities should be crucial partners in regional development strategies, with dedicated funding streams for civic infrastructure.

For funders: Research England and UK Research and Innovation should maintain dedicated civic capacity funding beyond individual programme cycles. The civic infrastructure requires sustained investment, not stop-start project funding.

The Government’s explicit political support for universities’ civic role creates opportunities that were unimaginable a decade ago. But opportunity must translate into sustainable structures. Universities that demonstrate clear local value will have stronger voices in regional and national policy discussions and stronger support during crises.

Keeping civic central

The NCIA has provided navigation tools. Universities now possess comprehensive evidence about what works, practical frameworks for action, and a growing community of civic practitioners willing to share their learning. The question facing the sector is whether institutions will commit to using them despite financial pressures.

The future of civic engagement depends on universities recognising that their purpose is about contributing meaningfully to the places they call home and the communities they serve. The civic university movement has moved from the margins to the mainstream. Now comes the hard work of keeping it there.

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December 18, 2025
Amid a national shortage of nurses, nursing apprenticeships are beginning to offer a solution to the problem

This story was produced in partnership with Work Shift and reprinted with permission.

MOBILE, Ala. — Three or four times a week, LaTyra Malone starts her day at Mobile Infirmary hospital at 6:30 a.m. For the next 12 hours, she makes her rounds and visits with patients — asking if they’re in pain, checking vitals, administering fluids. To an outside observer, she appears to be a nurse.

But Malone, 37, is a registered nurse apprentice. Everything she has learned how to do in her nursing classes at Coastal Alabama Community College, she can do at the hospital under the supervision of registered nurse Ondrea Berry, her journeyworker — a term typically used in the skilled trades. Unlike most nursing students who complete their required clinical hours in groups for no pay, Malone gets paid as an employee with benefits. She also gets much more personalized, hands-on learning time.

“It’s like having a little kid attached to your leg all day,” Berry joked.

For Malone, the partnership is invaluable.

“I learn so much more one-on-one,” Malone said. “I might know the basics of disease processes or why we’re giving a certain medicine, but hearing her break it down to me helps a lot.”

The pair work largely as a team, alternating duties to allow Malone a chance to observe and practice. By now, Malone knows the ropes pretty well: In addition to her apprenticeship training and classes, she has 16 years of experience as a certified nursing assistant and a medical assistant. And Berry, who is 25, says she benefits from the working relationship too. “There are teaching moments for both of us,” she said.

Degreed nursing apprenticeships, like the one in Alabama, have emerged nationally as a potential solution to a thorny problem. The national nursing shortage is creeping toward crisis levels, with the demand for RNs like Berry and licensed practical nurses, or LPNs, projected to outstrip the supply for at least the next decade. At the same time, tens of thousands of people like Malone are already working in patient care in hospitals. Many aspire to be nurses — in fact, many certified nursing assistant programs sell the idea that you can start there, quickly land a job and then continue on to become a nurse.

But in reality, that’s a huge leap that requires an entirely different admissions process and English, math and science prerequisites that many nursing assistants don’t have. It also assumes that someone working an eight- or 12-hour shift for $18 an hour can find the time and the money for more education.

“The sort of ‘we are excellent’ ethos in nursing might be self-defeating in that it is weeding out a lot of people who would be amazing nurses,” said Iris Palmer, director for community colleges with the education policy program at New America.

Ondrea Berry, left, dispenses medication at Mobile Infirmary hospital while LaTyra Malone looks on. As an apprentice, Malone must be supervised by Berry at all times. Credit: Mike Kittrell for Work Shift

Related: Interested in more news about colleges and universities? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter.

Several states, including Texas, North Carolina and Wisconsin, have begun growing registered apprenticeships in nursing — which have approval from the U.S. Department of Labor — to help address this problem. But no state has done quite as much as Alabama in scaling the model.

In 2021, the Alabama Board of Nursing worked with the state legislature to create a nursing apprenticeship license. Normally, nursing students are not licensed until after they graduate and pass a national licensure exam, and therefore they can’t be paid for their supervised clinical hours. The new apprenticeship license allows them to earn while they learn, making nursing school much more accessible for students like Malone and helping to fill critical staffing needs in hospitals.

Since the law passed, 80 employers and 28 colleges and universities in Alabama have jointly created LPN and RN apprenticeship programs for those who are still working toward a degree. Nearly 450 apprentices — the great majority RNs — have completed the program and passed their exam, with more than 500 currently apprenticing. It’s too soon to say whether apprenticeships will solve the nursing shortage in the state, but early data shows benefits for employers and aspiring nurses alike.

Mobile Infirmary has had over 90 nursing apprentices since the hospital’s program began in 2022, first with the LPN apprenticeship and soon after with the RN one. Graduates are required to stay at the hospital for one year after the apprenticeship ends, but most are staying beyond that. Only five have left so far, according to Stefanie Willis-Turner, the director of nursing school partnership and programs at Mobile Infirmary.

The hospital, like many others, already offered tuition reimbursement for employees who wanted to go back to college and move into nursing or another higher-level position. But such programs have notoriously low uptake, in part because most low-income employees can’t front the cost of tuition and also because many don’t know what steps to take.

“It amazed me the number of people that wanted to go back to school but didn’t really know where to get started,” Willis-Turner said. “Having a person to help guide them has really been our trigger, and that’s how we run this program.”

LaTyra Malone is a two-time apprentice at Mobile Infirmary hospital. Last year, she worked with Ondrea Berry as a licensed practical nurse apprentice while she earned the certification. This year, she is a registered nurse apprentice. Credit: Mike Kittrell for Work Shift

Willis-Turner played a crucial role in recruiting Malone for the apprenticeship. Malone has wanted to be a nurse since she was a teenager when she was president of her high school’s chapter of HOSA-Future Health Professionals, a global student-led organization that promotes careers in health care. But her plans to become a registered nurse were delayed when she became a mother. The financial burden plus the rigid schedules of nursing school made it difficult to make room for parenting, working and studying.

With the apprenticeship, Malone doesn’t have to worry about paying for college, and she can provide for her family while improving her nursing skills. Her path stands in stark contrast to that of Berry, who worked at Dairy Queen throughout nursing school to pay for tuition and health insurance. Berry didn’t have kids to take care of, but she also didn’t have financial support from anyone else in her family. Her only on-the-job training in nursing school was the clinical hours, where she joined a group of students who took turns practicing new skills with just one nurse. Berry says she only attempted two IVs in that time. Malone has done so many she can’t count.

About 75 percent of the apprentices at Mobile Infirmary over the last three years were already working at the hospital. The rest came from surrounding medical facilities. Some even quit their jobs to transfer to Mobile Infirmary for a better chance at getting into the apprenticeship program. In addition to paying students for their work, Mobile Infirmary pays for any tuition that isn’t covered by scholarships or grants. The hospital also provides two uniforms free of charge. And students know they have a guaranteed job after they graduate and pass the nursing exam.

Related: Nurses are in high demand. Why can’t nursing schools keep up?

This kind of targeted support is what makes the best apprenticeships successful in boosting individual economic mobility, its advocates say. Another key factor is the type of job an apprenticeship prepares people for. Most health care apprenticeships are for entry-level roles like CNAs, patient care technicians and medical assistants — jobs that, on average, pay $18-$20 an hour.

About half of states offer apprenticeships for LPNs, who make about 50 percent more than that, and half do so for RNs, whose median salaries are close to six figures, according to data from the U.S. Department of Labor. But far fewer apprentices are in those LPN and RN programs — and the majority of RN apprenticeships are for nurses who already have degrees, not for those who are still learning. That means aspiring nurses must still get all the way through the financial and logistical obstacles of nursing school before they can start to work.

Josh Laney helped set up the different model in Alabama when he was director of the state’s Office of Apprenticeship. For a long time, he said, he bought into the “urban legend” that training more people to be certified nursing assistants, especially when they’re young, would get people onto the path to becoming nurses.

“The pitch was, ‘We get you the certificate and then you’re going to work at a hospital because it’s a very high-demand occupation. From there you can go on and move into nursing or whatever else you want to do,’” Laney said. “But there was no specified plan for how to do that — just a low-wage, very stressful and strenuous job.”

The data backs that up. A 2018 study of federal Health Profession Opportunity Grants for CNA training showed that only 3 percent of those who completed the training went on to pursue further education to become an LPN or RN. Only 1 percent obtained an associate degree or above. A study in California showed slightly better odds: 22 percent of people who completed certificate programs at community colleges to become CNAs went on to get a higher-level credential in health care, but only 13 percent became registered nurses within six years.

Because of these outcomes, Laney refused to pursue apprenticeships for CNAs in Alabama. One reason apprenticeships for CNAs and medical assistants are common, however, is that they are jobs that don’t require degrees and have fewer regulations when it comes to training. Setting up a registered apprenticeship for nurses who don’t already have a bachelor’s degree is complex and requires the work of many entities — the nursing board, colleges and employers.

When he went to the state board of nursing to propose LPN and RN apprenticeships, Laney was initially shut down.

“To their credit, they said, ‘Go away, bureaucrat! You’re not industry, you’re not the employer. You don’t really have anything to do with this,’” he recalled. “What I learned there, and what I’ve recommended to every other state who’s tried this, is let the employers carry your water. If they want it, they’ll get it done.”

Related: How one college is tackling the rural nursing shortage

Laney then talked to the Alabama Hospital Association and Alabama Nursing Home Association, to reach employers. Given the shortages they had been experiencing, they bought into the idea and approached the nursing board themselves. Next, Laney’s team got community colleges on board, then universities. With the assurance that apprenticeships wouldn’t cut down on any of the required classes and clinical hours, the nursing board agreed to create the new license, following legislative approval.

Other states embarking on nursing apprenticeships have faced similar challenges.

Apprenticeships aren’t a panacea. They hold promise for creating upward mobility, diversifying the profession and improving the odds a student makes it through to graduation, but they can’t solve all the knotty challenges of the nursing shortage. A lack of instructors in nursing schools — and therefore a lack of available seats for qualified students — is still one of the biggest factors. And in the apprenticeship model, every student needs one-on-one mentorship, meaning hospitals must have enough staff available and willing to work in a mentoring role for up to a year.

Jay Prosser, executive director of the Massachusetts Nursing Council on Workforce Sustainability, knows all that. But he thinks apprenticeships will bring in more “practice-ready” nurses who are more likely to stay in the field long-term, especially those who were already working in patient care in the United States or other countries. Massachusetts is on the cusp of starting a licensed practical nurse apprenticeship with one employer and one academic partner, after working with the state nursing board and colleges for the past year. Unlike in Alabama, the nursing board didn’t need to create a new license, but rather the board judges whether educational programs meet regulations or not.

The Massachusetts Nursing Council on Workforce Sustainability is also creating a nursing apprenticeship network in the state, to make it easier for different institutions and programs to exchange ideas.

Prosser said one of the biggest barriers was making sure that the scope of practice for apprentices was clearly defined. He worked with local colleges to make sure of this. Prosser had previously worked as an assistant chief nursing officer in Birmingham, Alabama, and moved to Massachusetts in 2021 with the idea of apprenticeships already in mind.

Several other states have also created nursing apprenticeships for students who don’t already have a degree, but they’re limited to single institutions. In 2023, Texas began offering nursing apprenticeships for students who hadn’t already earned a degree in a collaboration between South Texas College and the Texas Workforce Commission.

The University of Wisconsin Health system has created a portfolio of nine registered apprenticeship programs, including an RN program launched in 2023 and a handful of other apprenticeship-style programs. Bridgett Willey, director of allied health education and career pathways, said the hospital started with entry-level apprenticeships, like medical assistants, before proposing degreed programs.

“There’s still kind of a myth that the colleges are going to do all this on their own,” Willey said. “Well, that’s not true. Employers have to sponsor, because we’re the ones hiring the apprentices and often supporting tuition costs, as well.”

Related: No college degree, no problem? Not so fast

The outcomes from the entry-level apprentice programs helped convince the health system that it was worth investing more. A three-year study showed that staff retention rates for those who participated in the hospital’s apprenticeships were 22% higher than for those who didn’t. In the two-year-old RN program, attrition is less than 10% so far — significantly lower than the attrition rate the hospital has seen with traditional students who participate in clinicals at the hospital.

UW Health supports efforts to scale their apprenticeship model across the state, but so far they haven’t panned out. Willey said employers are interested, but conversations often stall when questions arise about how to create more clinical capacity and find funding sources to support apprentices.

Even so, Eric Dunker, founding executive director of the National Center for the Apprenticeship Degree, which is affiliated with Reach University, predicts that nursing apprenticeships are about to see major growth, as teaching apprenticeships did five years ago. Earlier this year, Reach University received a $1 million grant to expand apprenticeships in behavioral health, and is planning for nursing ones. The strict licensing regulations for nursing make it more complicated than scaling up teaching apprenticeships, but Dunker sees the possibility of expanding them if nursing boards, colleges and employers all come to the table, as they did in Alabama.

“There’s a lot of entry-level health care apprenticeships,” Dunker said. “But the key is upward mobility, which is nursing and nurse practitioners. There’s typically been a bottleneck in stacking these pathways, but that’s where you’re starting to see more states and systems become a little more creative.”

Tyler Sturdivant, Coastal Alabama Community College’s associate dean of nursing, knows what that looks like. Figuring out the logistics of setting up an apprenticeship program was a challenge, he said, and required hiring an additional staff member to liaise between the college and hospital partners. But three years into the apprenticeship program for LPNs and RNs, the school is seeing higher completion rates than for traditional students.

This means they’re producing more licensed nurses to fill positions and someday mentor, or even teach, other apprentices.

On a typical Friday morning in September at Mobile Infirmary, Malone and Berry visited a 70-year-old man who came in for a urinary tract infection that then weakened him. That day, the apprentice and journeyworker switched out his bed for one lower to the ground to reduce the fall risk, taught him how to raise the bed so he could sit upright, updated him on a plan for physical therapy and adjusted his socks for him.

Malone appeared comfortable and confident, taking the lead in the patient’s care while Berry assisted her. Malone says the many hours of practice she’s had through the apprenticeship has made her feel prepared for the job and ready to continue to follow her dreams. One day, she wants to become a nurse practitioner specializing in mental health.

“I won’t feel complete until I actually become a nurse,” Malone says. “I thought I was going to be one sooner, but bumps in the road happened and I ended up having a child. If it wasn’t for the apprenticeship, I probably wouldn’t be here now.”

Contact editor Lawrie Mifflin at 212-678-4078 or on email at [email protected].

This story was produced in partnership with Work Shift and reprinted with permission.

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December 10, 2025
Modernizing the special education workforce is a national imperative
Key points:

America’s special education system is facing a slow-motion collapse. Nearly 8 million students now receive services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), but the number of qualified teachers and related service providers continues to shrink. Districts from California to Maine report the same story: unfilled positions, overworked staff, and students missing the services they’re legally entitled to receive.

“The promise of IDEA means little if there’s no one left to deliver it.”

The data tell a clear story. Since 2013, the number of children ages 3–21 served under IDEA has grown from 6.4 million to roughly 7.5 million. Yet the teacher pipeline has moved in the opposite direction. According to Title II reports, teacher-preparation enrollments dropped 6 percent over the last decade and program completions plunged 27 percent. At the same time, nearly half of special educators leave the field within their first five years.

By 2023, 45 percent of public schools were operating without a full teaching staff. Vacancies were most acute in special education. Attrition, burnout, and early retirements outpace new entrants by a wide margin.

Why the traditional model no longer works

For decades, schools and staffing firms have fought over the same dwindling pool of licensed providers. Recruiting cycles stretch for months, while students wait for evaluations, therapies, or IEP services.

Traditional staffing firms focus on long-term contracts lasting six months or more, which makes sense for stability, but ignores an enormous, untapped workforce: thousands of credentialed professionals who could contribute a few extra hours each week if the system made it easy.

Meanwhile, the process of credentialing, vetting, and matching candidates remains slow and manual, reliant on spreadsheets, email, and recruiters juggling dozens of openings. The result is predictable: delayed assessments, compliance risk, and burned-out staff covering for unfilled roles.

“Districts and recruiters compete for the same people, when they could be expanding the pool instead.”

The hidden workforce hiding in plain sight

Across the country, tens of thousands of licensed professionals–speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, school psychologists, special educators–are under-employed. Many have stepped back from full-time work to care for families or pursue private practice. Others left the classroom but still want to contribute.

Imagine if districts could tap those “extra hours” through a vetted, AI-powered marketplace. A system that matched real-time school requests with qualified providers in their state. A model like this wouldn’t replace full-time roles; it would expand capacity, reduce burnout, and bring talent back into the system.

This isn’t theoretical. The same “on-demand” concept has already modernized industries from medicine to media. Education is long overdue for the same reinvention.

What modernization looks like
1. AI-driven matching: Districts post specific service needs (evaluations, IEP meetings, therapy hours). Licensed providers choose opportunities that fit their schedule.
2. Verified credentials and provider profiles: Platforms integrate state licensure databases and background checks to ensure compliance and provide profiles with all candidate information including on-demand, video interviews so schools can make informed hiring decisions immediately.
3. Smart staffing metrics: Schools track fill-rates, provider utilization, and service delays in real time.
4. Integrated workflows: The system plugs into existing special education management tools. No new learning curve for administrators.
A moment of urgency

The shortage isn’t just inconvenient; it’s systemic. Each unfilled position represents students who lose therapy hours, districts risking due-process complaints, and educators pushed closer to burnout.

With IDEA students now representing nearly 15 percent of all public school enrollment, the nation can’t afford to let a twentieth-century staffing model dictate twenty-first-century outcomes.

We have the technology. We have the workforce. What we need is the will to connect them.

“Modernizing special education staffing isn’t innovation for innovation’s sake, it’s survival.”

Kevin Eberly, FillerB

Kevin Eberly is the co-founder of FillerB, a platform modernizing special education staffing by connecting schools with licensed providers. He has over two decades of experience in education and technology leadership.

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December 9, 2025
Trump’s new housing policies could push another 170,000 people into homelessness (National Low Income Housing Coalition)
Why NLIHC is taking action:

The Continuum of Care Program exists to house people experiencing homelessness using proven, evidence-based solutions and strong local leadership. Yet, this NOFO introduces structural restrictions that contradict its stated purpose — capping permanent housing resources, weakening local decision-making, and threatening the stability of community response systems nationwide.

As many as 170,000 more people could be pushed into homelessness if these changes stand — not as an abstract number, but as real individuals, families, veterans, seniors, youth, and neighbors in every state who depend on CoC-funded housing and services to remain stably housed.

What this lawsuit means for our field and partners:

We are fighting to:
- Prevent hundreds of thousands of people from losing their homes
- Protect proven permanent housing interventions within CoC funding
- Defend the ability of local communities to lead response strategies using data and evidence
- Stand with municipalities and providers working to keep people housed, stabilized, and supported
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December 1, 2025
Leonard Peltier: National Day of Mourning Address, 2025

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November 27, 2025
U.S. Universities Are National Security Assets (opinion)

For too long, Americans have underestimated the strategic value of our universities. The popular belief is that higher education’s chief contribution to national security is soft power—the goodwill generated by cultural exchange, academic diplomacy and global networking. That’s accurate, but it’s only a small part of the security story.

The vast majority of our 4,000-odd colleges and universities (including the elite ones) are hardly the ivory towers so associated with so-called woke movements and high-profile culture wars. Many, in fact, are the R&D labs of our national security infrastructure. They are the training grounds for the nation’s cyber warriors, military leaders, intelligence officers and diplomats. To be sure, they are one of America’s most potent weapons in an era of fierce geopolitical competition.

The Reserve Officers’ Training Corps is the military’s largest commissioning source, with a footprint that spans the nation. Army ROTC alone operates at about 1,000 college campuses and provides merit-based benefits to roughly 15,000 students each year. It produces approximately 70 percent of the officers entering the Army annually, commissioning around 5,000 second lieutenants in a typical year.

The scale is cross-service: Air Force ROTC maintains 145 host detachments with more than 1,100 partner universities and commissioned 2,109 Air Force and 141 Space Force officers in 2022. Navy/Marine Corps ROTC fields 63 units hosted at 77 colleges and extends to 160-plus colleges via cross-town agreements. Between 2011 and 2021, about 1,441 U.S. colleges and universities had at least one ROTC host, cross-town or extension unit—and every state has at least one host. Over its first century, ROTC has produced more than one million officers.

The Department of Defense, as key partner with higher education, invests billions annually in university research. In fiscal year 2022 alone, the DOD’s research, development, test and evaluation budget authority reached $118.7 billion. For example, the Defense University Research Instrumentation Program awarded $43 million in equipment grants to 112 university researchers for the 2025 fiscal year. Entities like DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the Army Research Laboratory, and the Office of Naval Research fund breakthroughs in AI, quantum computing, hypersonics and cyber resilience. Universities partner with the Defense Department and other government agencies to conduct research in areas like drone technology, stealth aircraft and, historically, the development of the Internet and GPS.

Cybersecurity is another front where U.S. universities lead with global distinction. The National Security Agency has designated nearly 500 campuses as national Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity. Universities like Carnegie Mellon, Purdue and the University of Texas at San Antonio run advanced programs focused on cryptography, digital forensics and cyber policy, partnering with both government and industry to build systems that repel state-sponsored hackers.

Biosecurity is equally critical. The COVID-19 pandemic proved that viruses can fundamentally destabilize economies and national morale as quickly as warfare can. Johns Hopkins, Emory, Harvard and Vanderbilt Universities all were at the forefront of research on the coronavirus and vaccines. Land-grant universities like Texas A&M and Iowa State have long been securing our food supply against agroterrorism and climate threats. As just one example of this partnership, in 2024, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture announced $7.6 million in grants to 12 different universities focused on agricultural biosecurity.

Then there’s the talent pipeline. American universities train the linguists, engineers, analysts and scientists who feed the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Homeland Security and the armed forces. Through partnerships with universities, the National Security Education Program, the Critical Language Scholarship and the National Security Language Initiative for Youth help produce graduates fluent in Arabic, Mandarin and Farsi—utterly essential skills for both diplomacy and national intelligence.

Boren Scholars and Fellows are dedicated to harnessing their advanced linguistic and cultural skills within the federal government by securing a minimum of one year of employment in national security, actively strengthening the federal workforce and significantly elevating U.S. capabilities, deterrence and readiness.

Meanwhile, China has built a centralized academic–military complex under its Military–Civil Fusion strategy. Top universities like Tsinghua and Beihang Universities are deeply integrated with the People’s Liberation Army, producing dual-use research in AI, quantum and hypersonics—technologies intended to challenge U.S. dominance. The National University of Defense Technology is a flagship institution in this network, known for dual-use supercomputing and aerospace research. This model is potent but currently lacks the kind of innovative potential of U.S. institutions.

The U.S. system, by contrast, is decentralized, competitive and open. We often refer to this as “loose coupling”; the accompanying organizational dynamic is what enables so much of the innovative, interdisciplinary and cross-institutional work that U.S. higher education produces. But adequately funding this system is quickly becoming unsustainable and unpopular. The Trump administration is cutting funding for politically inconvenient fields—such as climate science, public health and international cooperation—and subjecting grant applications to political review. Many of these cuts target areas of academic inquiry that may appear obscure to the public but are fundamental to the foundational domains of national security. It is also worth noting that recent research suggests that the already high public and private returns to federally funded research are likely much higher than those reflected in current estimates.

Focusing solely on weapons labs while neglecting other strategic fields is short-sighted and dangerous. Security is not merely about firepower—it’s about the stability of the knowledge-based society. Public health, basic sciences, environmental resilience, diplomacy and social cohesion are just as critical to preventing conflict as advanced missiles and cyber weapons. To be sure, our colleges and universities contribute, almost beyond measure, to the stability of U.S. civil society through each of these domains.

Universities are not optional in the defense of this republic—they are indispensable. Undermine them and we hand our international competitors the high ground in both technology and ideas. In the contest for global leadership, the fight won’t just be won on battlefields. It will be won in classrooms, labs and libraries.

Brian Heuser is an associate professor of the practice of international education policy at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. For much of his career, he has worked on numerous projects related to national security education, including with the Boren Scholars Program, the former Edmund S. Muskie Graduate Fellowship Program and as a U.S. Embassy policy specialist to the Republic of Georgia.

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November 10, 2025
Higher education should back a national digital skills wallet

Across the UK, millions of people struggle to prove what they’re capable of. From students juggling part-time work, to graduates volunteering in their communities, much of their learning sits outside formal qualifications and is effectively invisible to employers and institutions.

That invisibility costs everyone. It holds back individuals who can’t evidence their abilities and employers who struggle to identify the right talent, and it also drags on national productivity.

Last month the RSA and Ufi VocTech Trust published the final report of the Digital Badging Commission, From Skills to Growth: A Plan for Digital Badging in the UK. The conclusion is clear: the UK urgently needs a national digital skills wallet, linked to emerging plans for a national digital ID and built on open, interoperable standards. It would allow people to collect, store and share digital badges and credentials for their skills and capabilities that sit alongside their formal qualifications for a more holistic approach to education.

This recommendation now aligns directly with the UK government’s post-16 education and skills white paper which commits to a digital-first, lifelong learning system and the development of a national digital identity infrastructure. The commission’s proposals are therefore timely, practical and well placed to support the government’s agenda.

The missing infrastructure

While individual institutions issue transcripts in pdf format, and some pioneer digital badges alongside them, there’s no shared infrastructure to make those records connected nor visible across different sectors. As education and work become increasingly digital, paper certificates should be giving way to verifiable, portable digital records, alongside digital badges and credentials.

These are not just icons of achievement, but verified records embedded with information about who issued them, what they recognise and when they were awarded. Built on open standards, they can be issued by any organisation that follows the same open technical framework, ensuring compatibility across sectors.

Globally, digital badges and credentials are part of richer digital profile infrastructures, including Comprehensive Learner Records (CLRs) and Learning and Employment Records (LERs). CLRs capture academic, professional and co-curricular achievements, while LERs extend this to employment history, creating a portfolio of verified experience. Both can be stored in digital wallets, secure platforms that give individuals control over how and when they share their data with employers or education providers.

Together, these systems represent a shift towards lifelong, learner-owned digital records, combining qualifications, skills and experience into one trusted framework. This is precisely the direction outlined in the government’s white paper, which calls for a more joined-up and data-driven post-16 education landscape.

The Digital Badging Commission’s modelling shows that a trusted digital credentialing ecosystem could unlock billions in productivity across the wider economy through faster hiring and retention. But the gains go deeper than economics: visibility of skills drives inclusion. It means every learner, whatever their route, can have their capabilities recognised.

Keeping up with global trends

The use of digital skills wallets and LERs is accelerating worldwide. In the UK, the idea of a skills passport is not new – in 2022, the Council of Skills Advisers, chaired by David Blunkett, proposed a Learning and Skills Passport, a modular, assessment-based record built over a lifetime, linked to Individual Learning Accounts. More recently, under the industrial strategy, government confirmed that Skills England will work with industry to develop such passports.

Across Europe, the EU’s Digital Identity Wallet is being piloted in several member states ahead of full rollout in 2026. It will let citizens store and share verified digital credentials, from qualifications to identity documents, through a secure mobile app integrated with Europass. The system aims to make skills and qualifications transferable across borders, supporting the EU’s vision for a flexible, skills-based digital economy.

The Digital Badging Commission is calling for interoperable skills wallets that begins as an evolution of the Department for Education’s digital Education Record (which will be rolled out to all school pupils from August 2026). It will initially hold GCSEs for school-leavers but could expand to become a lifelong, portable record – potentially linking to whatever comes out of emerging plans for a national digital ID.

Here the white paper is welcome but incomplete. It describes an “education record app” focused on qualifications and support information, yet it does not set out how essential, non-accredited learning (workplace skills, volunteering, micro-credentials) will be imported. To avoid a two-tier system, the government should seize the chance to ensure one integrated wallet – rather than a separate “skills app” – so a person’s full skillset is represented, not just formal assessments. Not only that, but individuals should be able to choose what they share, and with whom.

This directly complements the white paper’s ambition for a unified skills and qualifications framework, ensuring that learning follows the individual, not the institution, across life and work.

Crucially, it must adopt open standards so that every education provider can issue records that align with it, and can be exported into a shared national wallet or interoperable proprietary ones. Degree transcripts from universities would no longer be in pdf format, but living records exported to the same technical rules as other credentials. A learner could move a verified transcript directly into a skills and qualifications wallet, combine it with badges from professional training or volunteering, and share it securely with employers anywhere in the UK.

That interoperability matters. Without it, the Education Record risks excluding lifelong learning altogether. With it, we can create a single, trusted architecture connecting higher education, workplace learning and civic participation. For universities, it means the qualifications they issue remain visible and valuable in a joined-up system.

What higher education stands to gain

There’s a strategic choice here. Universities can either wait until government or private platforms dictate the standards or help design them now.

By engaging early, HEIs can enhance their reputation and competitiveness by being seen as innovators in trusted digital credentials. This will strengthen their global profile and appeal to learners and employers seeking transparent, skills-focused education. They can provide better learner outcomes by meaningfully capturing students’ broader skills, placements and co-curricular learning, improving employability and lifelong learning pathways – taking the former Higher Education Achievement Record to its natural digital conclusion, and making lifelong learning tangible, rather than rhetorical, to students. Moreover, early involvement will mean a smoother integration with existing systems (VLEs and student records), reducing future compliance costs and avoiding disruptive retrofitting when standards are mandated.

The post-16 white paper’s call for a coherent digital skills framework reinforces this opportunity for universities to lead, not follow, in shaping the standards and technology that will define post-16 learning.

The obvious concerns are trust, quality and cost. Without consistent quality assurance, digital credentials risk being untrusted markers of skill. That’s why the Commission also calls for a national registry for digital credential quality assurance – a registry that defines standards, metadata requirements and approved issuers.

Quality is not the enemy of flexibility in this case; it is the enabler of trust. If universities lead in shaping these standards, they can ensure rigour and learner protection are built in from the start.

Adopting open standards in education and digital skills systems will not necessarily be straightforward, particularly in environments where legacy systems have been modified incrementally over years. For many institutions, both large and small, modifying student information systems and integrating open standards to bring them into line will require significant overhaul of systems, as well as underpinning investment in staff training.

However, the implementation of the LLE is requiring all institutions to explore the extent to which their student record systems are fit for purpose, and this represents a real opportunity to think broadly about what systems will be required in the future.

A call to lead, not follow

The RSA once helped invent the modern exam system. Today we need the same leap of imagination for the digital age. If we want an inclusive, high-trust and high-skill economy, recognition must catch up with reality.

Universities are uniquely placed to lead this transition, rooted in evidence, trusted by learners and central to the national conversation about growth. The question is not whether digital credentials will become part of our landscape, but who will set the standards and values that shape them.

By engaging with open standards for degree transcripts and flexing VLEs to deliver digital badges, higher education can ensure that the national digital skills wallet reflects academic quality, learner autonomy and social purpose. In the wake of the government’s post-16 white paper – and with clarity now needed on integrating non-accredited learning – the timing could not be better. It’s an opportunity to turn invisible learning into visible value.

You can download the Digital Badging Commission’s final report, From Skills to Growth: A Plan for Digital Badging in the UK here.

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November 4, 2025