Last week, Emily Suski, a law professor and associate dean at the University of South Carolina, was named the next dean of the University of Arkansas School of Law. But on Wednesday, her offer was rescinded after state legislators reportedly objected to her signing a “friend of the court” brief that made legal arguments in support of trans athletes.
The following statement can be attributed to FIRE Legal Director Will Creeley:
The University of Arkansas’ shameful capitulation to political pressure betrays its commitment to Professor Suski and threatens the rights of all who teach, study, and work there. The message to every dean, professor, and researcher is unmistakable: Your job hinges on whether politicians approve of your views.
Political interference in academic decisionmaking must be rejected. When universities make hiring decisions based on politics, left or right, academic freedom gets weaker and campuses grow quieter.
by Nirvi Shah, The Hechinger Report January 7, 2026
About six years ago, an apprentice training to be a machinist in Washington state told her supervisor she would probably have to drop out of the training program after having her baby: She couldn’t find child care that accommodated her shift.
It was one of the first challenges Shana Peschek was tasked with solving when she became executive director of the Machinists Institute, which trains workers for jobs in the aerospace, manufacturing and automotive industries all over the state.
Peschek knew it was essential to do something for workers with young children.
“That worst shift, the new hires are going to get it. The new hires are generally younger people. They have little kids or they are going to want a little kid,” Peschek said.
“It’s beyond the cost of child care,” she said. “If they can’t find anywhere, we’re going to lose them.”
As Peschek worked on a way to address the situation, she also wondered how she could include apprenticeship in the solution. The answer: incorporating early educator apprenticeships into a custom-built child care center tailored to the trade union’s needs. Last month, The Hechinger Report wrote about San Francisco’s child care apprenticeship program.
“Apprenticeship is my jam,” said Peschek, who emphasized that apprenticeship is a mode of education, not limited to any specific profession. While the word apprentice is often associated with roles like machinists, it is just the term for an educational path that includes paid, on-the-job training. Early educator apprenticeships do just that, providing classes and training alongside paid work experience to help hopeful teachers earn required credentials and get full-time jobs. “I want that pathway available for our teachers and assistant teachers,” she said.
With a combination of institute money, grants and donations, the Machinists Institute bought land and is constructing Little Wings Early Learning Academy in Everett, Washington. Its name is inspired by the local economy, which is powered in part by a nearby Boeing factory. The center will serve workers in the trade union, who will be able to send their young children for care starting as early as 4 a.m. through as late as midnight. Care will also be available on weekends, to accommodate a range of shifts. It is scheduled to open this spring.
Machinists, maritime industry workers and other local tradespeople and apprentices will pay a discounted rate for child care, which will also be available to area residents to enroll their kids.
Peschek’s hopes are high, for all of the apprentices the center will involve.
That’s in part because of the experience some early educator apprentices have had. Apprenticeships have been a part of the trades for centuries, but they are relatively novel in education.
The option changed the course of Carlota Hernández de Cruz’s life. For years, with only an elementary school education from when she grew up in Mexico, she was the primary caregiver for her three children while her husband was the breadwinner. When her youngest child was still in child care, at a California Head Start program run by an area YMCA, she began working a few hours a day as a parent intern at the center.
She eventually encountered Pamm Shaw, who created one of the first early educator apprenticeship programs in the country for the YMCA of the East Bay, in California’s Alameda County. Shaw encouraged Hernández de Cruz to take classes and work toward becoming an early childhood teacher.
“I’m originally from Mexico,” Hernández de Cruz said, remembering her apprehension. “I came with zero English.” But Shaw was convincing.
Hernández de Cruz took classes, one or two at a time, balancing them with motherhood and homekeeping duties. Then her husband got sick and could no longer work. It took years, but she completed the courses for her associate degree. Just a few months before graduation, her husband died.
Hernández de Cruz, now 53, knew that although what she had accomplished was monumental, it wasn’t enough. Thanks to her apprenticeship, however, her bachelor’s degree coursework was paid for, even though it was sometimes a struggle to keep up with the requirements of online courses and lectures in English, while solo parenting and working.
In 2019, Hernández de Cruz earned that bachelor’s degree but turned down a job running a child care center. She wasn’t ready. When she was approached again in 2021 about a director role, at the center where she was working, she agreed. There have been ups and downs: That center closed and she was back to teaching for a while. But now she runs the Vera Casey Center, a Head Start site for infants and toddlers in Berkeley that is part of the YMCA of the East Bay.
“I feel I can say financially I’m stable,” Hernández de Cruz said, and she said she is proud of herself and her children. Her kids grew up watching their mother work and study hard and have had opportunities she didn’t when she was younger, even though she said they all faltered, and flunked a few classes, when their father died. Her younger daughter just graduated from a nursing program and her older daughter completed a bachelor’s degree in child development and is now pursuing a master’s degree. Both daughters live at home with her, as do her parents. (Her son, she said, is still taking classes and finding his way.) “I’m stable but he’s not here with us,” Hernández de Cruz said of her husband, but “being in the classroom with kids, it helped me to heal. That’s what I feel at work. I still feel happy every day.”
This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org/early-childhood-educator-apprenticeships-offer-an-answer-to-child-care-shortages/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org”>The Hechinger Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cropped-favicon.jpg?fit=150%2C150&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>
The number of unique credentials available in the U.S. has hit a whopping 1.8 million, with digital badges making up more than a million of those offerings, according to the latest report from Credential Engine.
The report, released Tuesday, is the fifth in a series tracking the ever-growing variety of credentials and providers cropping up across the country. Much has changed since the last “Counting Credentials” report came out in 2022. Credential Engine, a nonprofit dedicated to charting the credentialing landscape, improved its data collection and analysis strategies to remove duplicate programs from data samples and include more badge programs, allowing for more accurate counts and estimates, the new report noted.
Researchers found that 134,491 credential providers—including colleges and universities, online course providers, nonacademic organizations, industry associations, and state governments—are producing 1,850,034 credentials, up from the 1,076,358 they counted in 2022. The report also found that education institutions, federal and state governments, and employers spend $2.34 trillion annually on these programs.
Credential Engine identified 1,022,028 badges and 486,352 certificates among the total. Degrees, by comparison, made up a smaller fraction of the credentials tallied this year: 264,099 programs. The number of secondary school diplomas and occupational licenses followed behind at 52,948 and 14,331, respectively. Certifications, which require an exam and tend to expire, reached 6,892. And the organization found 3,384 microcredentials, defined by the report as any program offered by a massive open online course provider that embraces the label.
Scott Cheney, CEO of Credential Engine, said the standout finding to him is “there’s a lot of digital badging being done,” a trend he finds “really exciting.” He believes digital badges, which recognize specific skills and achievements for display online, allow workers to better showcase their learning at a more granular level. For example, badges, whether offered by academic or nonacademic providers, can recognize skill sets ranging from emotional intelligence to mastery of a coding language, or even completion of a class or work project.
Badges are “being used to recognize smaller and smaller learning activity and skill attainment,” Cheney said. “We’re really seeing a moment when we’re able to actually count all learning,” which helps job applicants “tell their story.”
He said the digital format not only makes it easier for learners to keep track of everything they’ve achieved but also simplifies sharing that information with employers.
A companion report, released with the credential count, suggests innovations like digital wallets and learning and employment records, which can house collections of digital credentials, are making badges more shareable and verifiable for employers.
“The technology is there,” Cheney said.
He also believes the ascent of skills-based hiring is driving the trend. More than half of states have adopted policies to encourage hiring according to skills, not degrees, and a slew of employers have embraced the approach. He’d like to see more employers with these goals use digital credentials to assess what candidates bring to the table.
Because of these recent developments, “all of a sudden, we need ways to actually unpack the skills that you have in a traditional degree or certificate or certification” and to offer ways to learn and prove mastery of “a single skill,” he said.
Though the report doesn’t delve into it, he noted that traditional higher education institutions are increasingly interested in offering nondegree credentials, which he believes is “healthy for them and their relationship with their students” as demand for such programs ramps up.
But Cheney also understands colleges’ trepidation about entering a nondegree credential landscape that’s crowded, “very chaotic” and “difficult to navigate.” He acknowledged that some academics have healthy concerns about the quality of proliferating nondegree credentials as nonacademic credential providers grow their offerings at fast clip. The trend “does cry out for … a greater need to have reliable outcome data and impact data,” he said. Members of the committee engaged in the negotiated rule-making process for Workforce Pell, a new federal financial aid option for short-term job training programs, are wrestling with such questions about how to ensure credentials’ quality this week.
Nondegree credentials aren’t “going to be right for every institution, and that’s OK, too,” Cheney said. “We need some that are still going to be very traditional … because the economy needs that as well.” At the same time, higher ed institutions “need to recognize where the marketplace is, where the zeitgeist is in the country and what employers need and what students are calling out for.”
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
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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.
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.”
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.”
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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The “intergenerational retirement living community” about to sprout on an Australian university’s suburban campus will generate clinical training opportunities for students while it “strengthens the social fabric” of the city, its advocates claim.
The University of Canberra plans to convert unused land—currently occupied by gum trees, grassland, dilapidated fencing and the odd hungry kangaroo—into a mini village complete with 230 “independent living units,” a 180-bed care facility, a retail center and health services on tap.
The project is designed to ease housing shortages and help older Australians in “downsizing” while promoting intergenerational mingling.
It will also provide practical educational opportunities across multiple disciplines. “Our students here, from allied health through to the built environment … nursing and many other vocations, will be able to get on-the-job training whilst they are at the university,” said Vice Chancellor Bill Shorten.
“University education makes a lot more sense when … you’re practicing what you’re learning. Nothing beats that real-world experience.”
Under a deal signed with property developers Pariter and residential aged care provider Opal, the university will lease the 2.2-hectare site—nestled between UC’s hospital and health hub—for 100 years. The two companies will bankroll the project’s capital costs, estimated at about 150 million Australian dollars ($99.2 million).
The university will pocket “lease receipts and revenue share,” although it declined to say how much. The deal will facilitate collaborative employment and “co-designed” learning programs, along with joint research projects and student placements on campus and elsewhere.
The older residents will be encouraged to engage with each other and their younger neighbors, including the more than 2,000 students who live on campus. Pedestrian links will connect them to cafés, the library, medical services and nearby bushland.
Shorten said the construction still requires final approval, but he expects it to begin within about two years and finish within four. He insisted that the project, which had been the subject of long-standing negotiations with various partners, would have gone ahead irrespective of the university’s financial position.
“It just makes sense,” he told reporters. “This is an idea [whose] time has come. I think this is what modern universities should be doing. At the end of the day, trying to suppress a good idea is like trying to keep a ball below the surface of the water.”
UC is among a throng of Australian universities that are converting parts of their considerable landholdings into revenue-earning opportunities matched to their educational and community support missions. The University of Wollongong is seeking final development approval for an “intergenerational university community” that features health services, integrated research and education spaces, an early-learning center and accommodation for more than 400 older residents on its seaside campus.
La Trobe and Flinders Universities have also flagged the possible establishment of aged care facilities as part of multibillion-dollar developments of their campuses in suburban Melbourne and Adelaide.
Opal’s director of communications and sustainability, Rosanne Cartwright, said similar precincts were springing up in countries with aging demographics including Germany, Japan and the Netherlands. “The aging population is a global issue that needs to be solved locally,” Cartwright said.
“Australians across every generation are dealing with loneliness as a real issue,” she added. “Younger people need to look after older people and older people need to look after younger people.”
Commercial redevelopments on campus have sparked criticism that vice chancellors are diverging from their educational mission into property speculation—grievances that run strong if universities invest in capital projects while reducing staff to save costs.
The National Tertiary Education Union said it was comfortable with the UC project “so long as it contributes to rather than detracts from” teaching and research.
“From time to time there are some objections to using university land in that way, but it’s not really in short supply at the University of Canberra,” said the union’s divisional secretary, Lachlan Clohesy. “If there’s revenue … supplementing the university and therefore able to contribute to the core mission, that’s a good thing.”
About one in four college students is both first-generation and from low-income backgrounds, making the path to a college degree especially challenging. At Boston College’s Messina College, a new, two-year, fully residential associates degree program, a wide range of support is helping change that. John Yang visited the campus to learn more as part of our ongoing series, Rethinking College.
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Every 4-year-old in California can now go to school for free in their local districts. The new grade is called transitional kindergarten — or TK — and it’s part of the state’s effort to expand universal preschool.
In 2021, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state legislature moved to expand transitional kindergarten in a $2.7 billion plan so that all 4-year-olds could attend by the 2025-26 school year. (Prior to this, TK was only available for kids who missed the kindergarten age cutoff by a few months). While it’s not mandatory for students to attend, districts must offer them as an alternative to private preschool.
As a free option, it can save parents a lot of money. Parents also must weigh how sending their kids into a school-based environment compares to a preschool they might already know and like, as well as other needs like all-day care, and how much play their child does.
One big question we’ve heard: What do kids actually do and learn in a TK classroom? Educators say it’s intended to emphasize play, but what does that mean?
A social skill students can learn in transitional kindergarten is how to take turns on the playground. (Mariana Dale/LAist)
To help parents get a better sense of this new grade as they make their decisions, LAist reporters spent the day in three different classrooms across the Southland. Here are five things we saw children do.
Get used to the structure and routines of school
For many students, transitional kindergarten is their first introduction to a formal school preschool setting. Crystal Ramirez sent her 4-year-old to TK at Marguerita Elementary School in Alhambra, so he could get used to the rhythm and rigors of school.
“I didn’t wanna put him straight into kindergarten when he was five, six, so he at least knows a routine, already,” she said. “Now, as soon as he sees that we’re in school, he loves it.”
TK students, like other elementary school students, follow a schedule: morning bell, recess, lunch, second recess and dismissal. They’re also learning how to listen to instructions or stand in a line. Some are learning to go to the cafeteria for lunch.
“ I wanna make sure that their first experience in a public school setting is one that is joyful, where they feel loved, where they feel welcomed, where they get to really transition nicely into like the rigor of the school,” said Lauren Bush, a TK teacher at Lucille Smith Elementary in Lawndale.
Claudia Ralston, a TK teacher at Marguerita Elementary, said it can be hard for young kids to get up early and leave their moms and dads. But seven weeks in, many of her students have learned their routines already. She helps with the morning transitions by turning on soft instrumental music in the classroom, and allowing them free play until they regroup on the mat to discuss the day.
“They’re four years old. I want them to feel safe at school, know that this is a special place for learning and that they play,” she said.
Learn how to socialize and communicate
In TK, social-emotional learning is a big part of the curriculum. That’s a fancy word, but it just means they’re learning how to be in touch with their emotions
At Price Elementary in Downey, the teacher has her kids give an affirmation: “I am safe. I am kind. I matter. I make good choices. I can do hard things. All of my problems have solutions!” (They also have these sentences on classroom wall signs.)
The children also learn how to interact with their peers. In some schools, there are no assigned desks so the kids can learn how to share the space.
“ They’re able to problem solve. They’re able to use communication to get their needs, regulating their emotions. They do better than students who come in without this experience,” said Cristal Moore, principal at Lucille Smith Elementary.
On the playground, a student named Ava told teacher assistant Lizbeth Orozco that another student pushed her.
“How did that make you feel?” Orozco asked.
“Mad!”
Orozco encouraged Ava to express her feelings to her classmate.
“ We give them options of how to solve a problem and then they go in and solve it themselves,” Orozco said. “If they need extra help, they always come back and we can help them.”
Arguing over toys can be a common occurrence in a TK classroom. At Price Elementary in Downey, educators help kids work through a solution. On a recent morning, one 4-year-old used two tongs to pick up paper shapes in a sensory bin, leaving another kid upset.
“What’s the rule about sharing?” asked Alexandria Pellegrino, a teacher who gives extra support for one TK classroom.
The boy handed over a tong to his peer. “Thank you so much for being a good friend,” Pellegrino said.
“[It’s] about being kind friends and making friends and using our manners. So we do build that foundation at the beginning of the year,” said Samantha Elliot, the classroom’s lead instructor.
At the end of the day in Alvarez’s Lawndale TK class, she counts up the stars next to each student’s name earned throughout the day — earned for positive behavior like being kind, solving problems, trying something challenging, or showing effort in other ways. Ten stars earns a small prize from the treasure chest.
“If we don’t get something today are we going to get mad?” Alvarez asked the class.
“No!” they responded.
“I’m not going to cry!” one boy piped up, followed by his classmate and a “Me too!” from another student.
“That’s [a] positive attitude,” Alvarez said. “Because tomorrow you can get more stars!”
Get exposed to numbers, shapes, letters
In Elliot’s TK class, students use their own little lightsabers to trace letters in the air.
“They’re learning the letter, the sound, and then a little action to go with it. They’re wiggling and moving and they’re also learning those letter sounds and they don’t really realize, so it’s incorporating instruction,” she said.
There’s no mandated curriculum in TK, but instruction is supposed to align with the state’s Preschool/Transitional Kindergarten Learning Foundations. “Kindergarten is basically where the state standards go and kick in. There are standards in TK, but it’s a little bit different,” said Tom Kohout, principal at Marguerita Elementary.
Students might put playdough into letter molds, or the teacher might pull out toys from a bag that all start with a letter “E.” Kids will play with little plastic toys that connect — or “manipulatives” — that can help them recognize numbers and patterns.
“It’s play with a purpose,” Ralston said. “They’re just being introduced to the numbers, the colors, writing. But again, we’re not doing worksheets.”
Build fine motor skills
Molding pretend cakes with kinetic sand. Connecting small LEGO bricks. Cutting playdough. It might not seem like much, but children this age are still learning how to use their bodies.
“Tearing paper is really hard and it’s a really amazing fine motor skill for them because the same muscles you use to tear paper are the same muscles that you use to hold a pen or a pencil,” said Lauren Bush, a TK teacher at Lucille Smith Elementary in Lawndale.
“You see kids playing with dinosaurs. I see kids sorting by color, doing visual, you know, eye hand coordination and visual discrimination. I see them using their fine motor skills,” she said.
At lunch, kids learn how to open up a milk carton or open a packaged muffin. At PE, they learn to balance on a block or walk in a straight line — learning spatial awareness.
“They’re learning how to run, stop, things like that and playing because their bodies are so young,” said Principal Kohout.
Learn independence
For some kids, it might be the first time where mom and dad aren’t there to help carry their backpacks or help them go to the bathroom. TK is meant to help focus on their independence, though aides can help.
TK classrooms are also usually set up with play centers, so kids can have the choice to explore on their own.
“ I want them to be independent, to be able to solve their problems, you know, with assistance,” Ralston said.
Samantha Elliot, the TK teacher in Downey, says she encourages kids to talk to their teammates first to figure out an activity before going to a teacher.
“It’s just gaining the confidence and building that independence from basically the start of the school year,” she said.
Parent Crystal Ramirez has already noticed a change in her 4-year-old this year since starting school. “ [He’s] socializing a little bit more, talking a little bit more, trying to express himself as well.”
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MIT president Saly Kornbluth said the agreement went against freedom of expression and the university’s independence, and that it was “fundamentally” inconsistent with MIT’s “core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone”.
Last week, the Trump administration sent a compact to nine US colleges laying out sweeping demands including capping international enrolments, banning the use of race or sex in hiring and freezing tuition for five years. In return, schools that signed on would receive competitive advantages from the government.
In a letter to US education secretary Linda McMahon, Kornbluth said: “We must hear facts and opinions we don’t like – and engage respectfully with those whom we disagree.”
Under the terms of the compact, signatories must abolish university units that “punish” or “belittle” conservative ideas, and all college employees “must abstain in their official capacity from actions or speech related to politics”.
If adopted by the institutions, it would set a 15% cap on international undergraduate students including a 5% limit for any given country. It also stipulates that universities must hand over international student information, including discipline records, upon the request of the government.
MIT is the first of the nine institutions to officially respond to the administration before the October 20 deadline. Stakeholders said the White House is likely aiming to expand the compact if institutions engage.
The day after it was sent, the University of Texas swiftly announced it was “honoured” to be a part of Trump’s proposal, though the remaining institutions were notably quiet on the agreement, which has received strong pushback from faculty leadership and administrators.
Faculty senates at the University of Virginia and the University of Arizona voted to oppose the compact with overwhelming majorities, while Dartmouth College president said in a statement she was “deeply committed” to the university’s values and would always defend its “fierce independence”.
In Tennessee, academic and workers unions have called on Vanderbilt University to reject what they called “Trump’s Fascist Compact”, with a petition from Graduate Workers United garnering almost 1,000 signatures as of October 8.
Elsewhere, California governor Gavin Newsom quickly responded saying: “California universities that bend to the will of Donald Trump and sign this insane ‘compact’ will lose billions in state funding – IMMEDIATELY.”
“California will not bankroll schools that sign away academic freedom,” he wrote on October 2, sending a clear sign to the University of Southern California (USC), the only Californian college to receive the proposal so far.
Alongside MIT, the compact demands were thrust upon: Vanderbilt University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas, the University of Arizona, Brown University and the University of Virginia.
California universities that bend to the will of Donald Trump and sign this insane ‘compact’ will lose billions in state funding – IMMEDIATELY
Gavin Newsom, Governor of California
While it remains unclear how the recipients were chosen, stakeholders have noted that the list includes high prestige universities as well as public flagships, likely to generate maximum sectoral and media impact.
“The compact forces all nine institutions to reveal their positions; it sets the narrative for media reporting and public discussion of the points in the compact; and starts a public sorting of university responses to these policy priorities,” Boston College professor Chris Glass told The PIE News.
Whether MIT’s response emboldens the universities to reject the proposal remains to be seen, but even without the signatures, “the compact creates lasting ripples, as universities, accreditors, and state officials recalibrate for future policy fights,” said Glass.
The compact’s international student cap is yet another clear sign of Trump’s anti-immigration stance, though experts have noted that none of the nine universities have undergraduate international student populations that exceed the 15% limit.
While U Penn and USC are both close to the threshold with international undergraduate populations around the 14% mark, the universities of Virginia, Arizona and Texas at Austin all enrol less than 6% international undergraduates, according to analysis by Soka University of America professor Ryan Allen.
As such, Glass speculated the cap was intended to signal to universities beyond the nine, especially those above the 15% threshold, that they may face future scrutiny.
“Just by introducing the cap, the administration sets the terms of debate and sends a strong message – to its base, to all universities in the US, and to prospective international students,” he said.
As per Allen’s analysis, just 14 of the top 114 US universities have undergraduate international populations that exceed the proposed limit.
If it is implemented, the impact of the cap by itself might not be significant, “but this is part of an overall message that the US does not want international students … It’s tough to grapple with in the classroom because our students are feeling that message,” said Allen.
Typically, international students make up a larger proportion of postgraduate than undergraduate enrolments, though universities rarely disaggregate the two in overall student counts.
And yet: “Undergrad admissions are much more contentious and political than grad school. So, the idea that international students are somehow taking seats from Americans is much more salient in that space,” said Allen.
Since President Trump rolled out executive orders to eliminate DEI programmes and began to unpick the funding infrastructure of American research, a number of countries have offered safe haven to academics currently working in the USA.
As rector of Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Jan Danckaert, noted:
American universities and their researchers are the biggest victims of this political and ideological interference. They’re seeing millions in research funding disappear for ideological reasons.
From Singapore and Australia to Norway and Belgium, governments and individual universities around the globe are seizing the opportunity to attract the top American minds. For scholars fearful of their government’s policy direction on academic freedom, such as those working in gender studies, on vaccine research or climate change, the situation is urgent.
At risk academics
Yet this is nothing new. The Council for At-Risk Academics (CARA) has helped researchers escape persecution and conflict for almost a century, bringing the likes of Nikolaus Pevsner, Max Born and Albie Sachs to safety in Britain. Conceived in response to the Nazi assault on universities, CARA drove Britain’s scholarly rescue mission in the 1930s. At the same time, a parallel movement began in the USA. The Institute for Advanced Study was created at Princeton, with Albert Einstein appointed as the first Fellow in 1932. Other European academics such as Paul Dirac and Emmy Noether soon followed.
Just as German scientists sought academic freedom in the USA and UK in the 1930s, now American scholars are beginning to cross the Atlantic in the other direction. In France, Aix-Marseille University received around 300 applications for its Safe Place for Science initiative, which aims to offer 15 million Euro to support research across the next three years. The first eight researchers arrived in France in June, with up to 20 expected by the beginning of the new academic year.
The UK’s universities meanwhile seem mired in a funding crisis due to financial models all too dependent on precarious markets of international students, leading to shrinking budgets, staff layoffs and even the looming possibility of full-blown bankruptcy. Offering cash and “academic asylum” to any foreign academics in these straitened circumstances is unlikely to be seen as a priority. And yet Institutes for Advanced Study, or IASs, already provide the necessary infrastructure and perhaps the fastest means of response.
What is an Institute for Advanced Study?
Princeton’s Institute remains remarkable: since its inception, visitors have been selected solely on the basis of academic ability, regardless of gender, race or religion; its mission of Advanced Study centres the “curiosity-driven pursuit of knowledge” as a good in itself, with no view to practical application or the expectation of meeting predetermined goals. This approach, and the inherent interdisciplinarity of bringing together researchers across the sciences, arts and humanities, inspired counterparts around the world, including the UK’s first IAS at the University of Edinburgh in 1969. Other UK universities with an IAS now include Warwick, Loughborough, Durham, Stirling, UCL and Birmingham.
These Institutes vary in size and scope but all share Princeton’s founding mission of untrammelled academic freedom for blue-sky thinking. Interdisciplinarity is the scholarly keystone of Advanced Study. Researchers from diverse disciplines and career stages form a community of practice, which may also encompass artists, journalists, community activists and others who likewise benefit from a reflective, supportive, non-hierarchical environment in which to work. Conversations and serendipitous encounters in such an environment can be the “source from which undreamed-of utility is derived” in the words of Abraham Flexner, founder of Princeton’s IAS.
What can these institutes offer?
Amid difficult economic times, approaches to knowledge production have become ever more instrumental, with research increasingly valorised for its capacity to be commercialised or to have some form of impact beyond the academy. However, an overemphasis on applied research risks circumscribing the conceptual imagination that underscores so many scientific advances. The curiosity-driven IAS approach can be a necessary corrective to instrumentalism, bolstering a healthy research culture.
From their inception in the 1930s, IASs have also always had a moral mission to support colleagues around the world when threatened by conflict, displacement or, in the case of the new wave of populist governments, by illiberalism. For those escaping war and trauma, such institutes form quiet places of refuge, rehabilitation and recovery. A small institute can be agile enough to respond to urgent need when research is threatened, where a whole department is less able to pivot. It is worth noting that recent programmes for Ukrainian scholars and their families have tended to emerge from IASs, along with bespoke schemes for researchers from Palestine, Syria, Hungary or Türkiye – and now perhaps America.
Lastly, opportunities for career advancement have reduced across the whole university sector, nationally and internationally. Early-career scholars in particular face an impossibly precarious work environment, and staff development programmes are often the first casualty of cuts to expenditure. Whilst contracted research – as PDRA on a senior scholar’s project – can be an important stepping stone in the early stages of an academic career, there is a need for more funded opportunities to support independent research at postdoctoral level. IASs are one of very few means by which such research can flourish. Each year, hundreds of global scholars are appointed to IAS Fellowships at postdoctoral and more senior levels.
Given the polycrises facing the sector, turning us inward, perhaps it is necessary to reconsider higher education as a global commons. In doing so, universities must embrace their particular responsibilities as places of sanctuary, of fundamental knowledge production and as incubators for the next generation of scholarship. The concept of Advanced Study was created to foster innovation across all these areas in a time of persecution.
Now more than ever, Institutes devoted to that transformative potential could be the vehicle for promoting the highest standards of international collaboration, extending a hand to academics at risk in the global south and north, including our American counterparts.
UK universities are under financial strain. As institutions look to restructure, reduce costs and rethink delivery, there’s a clear need to make better use of the talent that already exists within them.
Technical professionals – highly skilled, deeply embedded and often misunderstood – are key to this. While often grouped under ‘professional services’, technicians occupy a distinct space in the university workforce. Their work spans research, teaching and operations, often in highly specialised or safety-critical environments. Recognising this distinction isn’t about drawing divisions, it’s about making sure roles are properly understood, supported and used to their full potential.
At a time when universities must become more agile, efficient and sustainable, the contribution of technical professionals has never been more important.
Technicians as problem-solvers in a time of reform
Too often, technical teams are brought into conversations late, after decisions have been made, spaces reallocated, or budgets set. But these are the people who manage the infrastructure, operate the systems, and know what’s really happening on the ground.
At the University of Nottingham, we’ve taken a different approach, bringing technical leaders into strategic planning early. This is already helping us avoid duplication and develop smarter, more joined-up technical support across the institution. By involving technical leaders from the outset, we’re able to align services more effectively and make better-informed decisions about how we support research and teaching activity.
These aren’t just operational wins. They’re strategic enablers, unlocking resource savings, reducing risk and supporting more sustainable delivery of core activity.
Smarter sharing, greater efficiency
One of the clearest opportunities lies in how we share and manage resources, whether research labs, creative studios or teaching equipment. Technical professionals are central to this.
We understand how facilities work, how to optimise them, and how to adapt usage models across disciplines. In some institutions, this has led to the creation of “research hotel” models – shared lab spaces managed by technical teams, improving access and utilisation while reducing the need for new investment.
Nationally, the UK Institute for Technical Skills & Strategy is supporting this through initiatives like the ITSS Capability Showcase, which maps institutional technical facilities and strengths and promotes collaboration across the sector. It’s a model that supports smarter decisions – both within and between institutions.
A distinct role in shaping what comes next
Technical professionals sit at the intersection of research, teaching, innovation and operations. They lead facilities, deliver teaching, train students, and increasingly contribute directly to research outputs – from papers and software to exhibitions and datasets.
In the face of restructuring, universities have a chance to rethink how these roles are supported. Fragmented structures and inconsistent career pathways don’t just affect individuals – they weaken our ability to plan for the future.
A more strategic approach brings clarity, fairness and future-readiness. It supports succession planning, skills development, and the protection of specialist knowledge. It also helps retain exceptional people – many of whom could thrive in industry, but choose to stay in universities because of their commitment to education and discovery.
The opportunity now
Technical professionals aren’t simply support staff. They’re a distinct group within the wider university workforce – working at the intersection of research, education, innovation and operations. Their roles are different from those in professional services but not separate. Both are essential, and both must be recognised for their unique contributions.
At a recent Technician Commitment event held at Queen’s University Belfast, representatives from institutions across the UK shared practical and strategic actions they believe could help universities weather the current financial crisis. Ideas ranged from income generation through technician-led consultancy and external training, to resource efficiency via equipment sharing and pooled maintenance contracts. Delegates highlighted the importance of breaking down institutional silos, promoting cross-disciplinary technical training and enabling technicians to access internal funding schemes.
There was also a strong call for structural advocacy – recognising technicians as research enablers and challenging default organisational models that position technical teams within professional services by default. The message was clear: technicians are not a cost centre. They are a strategic asset in how universities respond to financial and operational challenges.
In a sector facing difficult choices, the opportunity is to harness the full breadth of talent available. Technical professionals are ready – not just to support change, but to help lead it.
