Tag: Part

  • Iowa Universities Would Be Liable for Part of Defaulted Student Loans Under House Bill – The 74

    Iowa Universities Would Be Liable for Part of Defaulted Student Loans Under House Bill – The 74


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    State universities would be responsible for portions of students’ defaulted loans under legislation advanced Wednesday by an Iowa House subcommittee.

    House Study Bill 540 would require state universities to offset 25% of a borrower’s liability if they default on an educational loan taken out to attend the institution. This means the university would be liable for 25% of what the student owes.

    More than 40% of Iowa public college graduates finish their education debt-free, Iowa Board of Regents State Relations Officer Jillian Carlson said, and those who do take out loans receive financial counseling early in their college career “to help them right-size their debt and advise them on not taking out more than they need.”

    “One question or concern that we do have is to clarify whether students who default on their loans are actually defaulting because they’re unable to make the payments, versus defaulting on their loans because they know that we would pick up 25% of the bill when they actually do have the resources to make the payments,” Carlson said.

    Rep. Heather Matson, D-Ankeny, said there are important, practical questions on the topic of universities potentially being liable for defaulted loans that are not answered in the bill, such as where the money to take on these debts would come from. She also asked whether it should be the responsibility of a university to “be on the hook for” part of a loan in certain situations, like if a graduate finds themself in medical debt and must decide how they’ll use their money to stay safe and healthy.

    “I think it’s important to recognize that the majority party talks a lot about personal responsibility, especially when it comes to student loans,” Matson said. “So I’m curious as to why you all are proposing to put a graduate’s financial decisions back onto a university if personal responsibility for student loans is so incredibly important.”

    Rep. Jeff Shipley, R-Fairfield, said during the subcommittee meeting he believes the idea presented in the bill has “some merit.” He and subcommittee chair Rep. Taylor Collins, R-Mediapolis, approved the legislation to move to the Iowa House Higher Education Committee.

    “My general thoughts are, we need to make sure we have some skin in the game when it comes to … the future employment of these individuals, once they graduate,” Collins said.

    Iowa Capital Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: [email protected].


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  • What’s not part of university requirements? Eating.

    What’s not part of university requirements? Eating.

    University systems have long been promoted as the most reliable path to upward mobility and economic security.

    Yet for a growing number of students, that promise is part of a troubling paradox: the act of seeking a degree requires a harrowing trade-off between paying for schooling and securing the eating. The result is a lack of physical and economic access to enough safe and nutritious food for a healthy and active life. It is a pervasive crisis of food insecurity,

    Today, nearly nine in 10 United States campuses operate food pantries or “basic need hubs,” serving thousands of students each semester.

    What began as a grassroots response to hunger is now becoming institutionalized — a subtle but significant shift in how universities define student success and well-being. According to a survey conducted by the Hope Center for Student Basic Needs, a national research center at Temple University focused on transforming higher education to improve student success and well-being, 59% of students of students at 91 institutions across 16 states experience at least one form of basic needs insecurity, while 41% of students experienced food insecurity.

    Many campus pantries have transformed into one-stop centers that connect students with food assistance programs, financial aid, child-care resources and mental-health support.

    Finding the funds for food

    The Lancer Care Center, which began as the Lancer Pantry in 2015 at the Pasedena City College, has now been integrated into a centralized, holistic support center. Today, it provides coordinated assistance and functions as a single hub for various types of basic needs, ranging from housing, food, emergency funding, peer mentoring and financial assistance.

    Yet, even as they expand, most remain under-funded and overstretched: 60% of campus food pantries lack adequate refrigeration and many rely on short-term grants and student volunteers to operate.

    A survey conducted in 2023 by Swipe Out Hunger, a national non-profit organization dedicated to eliminating student hunger, reported that food pantries face three key challenges: funding, inventory and staffing. More than one in five among the 355 college food pantries surveyed reported that securing stable funding, maintaining streams of funding and obtaining grants remain the most significant challenges.

    Beyond calories, these spaces also provide something harder to quantify: trust.

    “If you have somebody that trusts a systemic function of your campus, like a food pantry, it is likely that they will also trust other systems that are in place,” said Laura Egan of the Clery Center, an organization that focuses on campus safety and student rights. “If and when they or someone they know needs to make a report of a crime or needs to access a resource because they are a survivor of a crime, they will be more likely to look to and trust their campus, who has already established a system of providing them regular support in a non-judgmental [way].”

    When hunger is hidden

    For Egan, said accessibility matters just as much as supply.

    “What we really appreciate seeing with food pantries on college campuses is the community support that it provides, the ready access that provides a student, with no questions asked about why you might need to access that resource,” she said.

    Despite their growing presence, hunger on campus often remains hidden, masked by stigma and assumptions about who is considered food insecure. New York University Izzy Morgan is the administrative coordinator at the College Student Pantry  New York City and says that many students don’t even realize that they are food insecure.

    “I come from a family with money and, you know, I have all these privileges,” Morgan said. “I’m on a pretty big scholarship at school, and even if all of that is true, you could still be insecure.”

    The College Student Pantry, operated by New York City’s Trinity’s Services and Food for the Homeless, serves college and graduate students across the city.

    Affording healthy food

    For Morgan, that self-realization came upon discovering that the pantry provided access to fresh vegetables that would otherwise be unaffordable.

     “Part of why I got this job was because my boss, who is actually my pastor, came up to me and said, ‘Izzy, I think you’re food insecure’,” Morgan said.

    Daniela Bermudez, a volunteer and Outreach and Social Media coordinator at the pantry, said that For many students, hunger is normalized as part of the college experience. “A lot of college students have this (assumption) that they’re supposed to struggle,” Bermudez said. “It’s almost normal to not have a well-balanced meal daily.”

    Understanding food insecurity often comes gradually. “It’s kind of hard to almost wrap your head (around the meaning of food insecurity),” Bermudez said. “I’m noticing that (when) I’m not eating the right food groups and I don’t necessarily have the continuous ability to access these foods, that is a sign of food insecurity.”

    Universities often measure success through graduation rates and employment outcomes, but for a growing number of students, success must depend on something far more basic: the ability to eat regularly, without shame or uncertainty. As higher education continues to market itself as a pathway out of poverty, the persistence of campus hunger raises an urgent question: Can institutions truly promise opportunity while leaving students to choose between a meal and a degree?

    Questions to consider:

    1. Why do many university students struggle to pay for food?

    2. What are universities doing to make sure students can eat?

    3. Do you think food should be a basic right for everyone? Why?

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  • University lands: mapping risks and opportunities for the UK higher education sector (Part 3)

    University lands: mapping risks and opportunities for the UK higher education sector (Part 3)

    SUMS Consulting will host a webinar from 11:00 to 12:00 on Thursday 22 January 2026. The webinar will include a walkthrough of the report and online tool, and panel discussion featuring Nick Hillman OBE (Director of HEPI). Register here.

    This blog, kindly authored by Thomas Owen-Smith, Principal Consultant at SUMS Consulting, and William Phillips, Data Analyst at SUMS Consulting, is part of a three-part mini series on UK universities’ approaches to land use.

    Today’s final blog in the series focuses on opportunities and value. You can find part one of this series, which introduces the work, here. Part two of this series, focusing on risk, is here.

    The opportunity landscape

    2025 sees many higher education institutions looking for innovative approaches to rebalance their profile of income and costs.

    Universities’ estates might offer the potential to save hundreds of millions of pounds on energy costs through harnessing the sun and wind, as well as opportunities to play a role in the local and regional systems that will play an important role in the UK’s energy transition.

    Local and regional connectivity through infrastructure also brings opportunities around education, skills and jobs, as well as applied research, industry partnership and knowledge exchange. These offer means for institutions to nourish relationships with their local communities, with positive impacts on public opinion and consent around universities’ legitimacy and the public goods they bring to society.

    We have also explored opportunities around afforestation and the natural capital value of ecosystem services supplied by UK universities’ lands – which stands separate to the commercial land value. (And there are many additional opportunities which we did not have time to investigate in detail).

    Again, many institutions have already taken steps (in some cases over many years) around the opportunities outlined. Our mapping of sector land use cannot pick up these existing examples, but we have referred to some accessible cases in the report.

    We hope the insights of this work can help individual institutions which may not yet have engaged with these questions to understand their initial option space, opening the track to more detailed investigation; and support the higher education sector and policymakers to have more informed conversations about what these options may mean for decisions and guidance at the aggregate or whole-sector level.

    We also refer to sector resources around topics such as carbon credits, improving biodiversity and reducing impacts on nature (the greatest of which, for universities, are typically through their supply chains).

    Mapping opportunities and value

    Using our mapping tool, institutions can explore the potential of their estates for solar and wind energy generation, as well as suitability for broadleaf forest growth.

    These opportunities vary across the country according to latitude, topography, aspect and a range of local conditions and constraints. We used an assumptions-based approach, referring to sector-wide averages, to model the potential aggregate impacts of sector-wide uptake (noting that some institutions have already done this).

    If 10% of universities’ built land were equipped with solar energy installations, this could generate an estimated 208,826 megawatt-hours (mWh) per year. This would equate to around 2.9% of the sector’s total energy usage in 2022/23 (as reported by 135 institutions in the Estates Management Record). Based on current commercial unit rates for energy, this could achieve an annual saving of around £42 million on energy bills. It would also abate in the region of 47,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) annually, representing around 3.3% of the sector’s reported scope 1 and 2 emissions in 2022/23.

    If 10% of universities’ grassland was used for solar power generation, this could generate an estimated 189,360 mWh per year. This would achieve energy savings, financial savings and abatement of carbon emissions of a similar, slightly smaller magnitude than the estimates just above for built land.If the same percentage was used for wind generation, this could generate an estimated 19,920 mWh per year. This would achieve energy-saving, financial and carbon abatement benefits of roughly 10% the size of those set out for solar opportunities.

    Using carbon flux factors extrapolated from the UK Natural Capital Accounts, we also estimated the annual carbon sequestration of the university sector’s (core) estate as 3,162 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) per year. If 10% of universities’ grasslands were put to forests, this could sequester an estimated 571 tCO2e per year of greenhouse gases over a 40-year period, increasing carbon drawdown by around 18% annually.

    Although the potential carbon impacts would be smaller than those around renewable energy, afforestation would bring positive impacts for nature, biodiversity and the sector’s natural capital.

    Our natural capital calculations are based on a value transfer approach, which extrapolates generalised national-level data (also from the UK Natural Capital Accounts) to a local area based on the assumed ecosystem services supplied by one unit of land (typically hectares).

    We estimate the asset value of ecosystem services (including renewable electricity provisioning, water provisioning, air pollution regulating, greenhouse gas regulating, noise regulating, and recreation health benefits) provided by UK institutions’ lands at £248.5m. Of this, £147.4m (59.3%) is provided by built environment, £54.9m (22.1%) is provided by grass, £43.3m (17.5%) is provided by trees and £2.9m (1.2%) is provided by water. This is likely an underestimation.

    Why this matters for universities

    The way that we use land is a critical part of securing a sustainable future for the planet. In global terms, land use is a key driver of climate change and degradation of nature; but it can also be a solution to reversing these.

    There already exist both regulatory and market-based frameworks which reflect various dimensions of the value of natural capital and ecosystem services.

    Partially due to concerns around the credibility of commercial offsetting schemes, some universities have turned to approaches for carbon sequestration or “insetting” on their own lands, which allow for easier assurance and impact evaluation. We refer to some examples in the report.

    While still emergent, these developments represent attempts to account for the true value of nature and the cost of destroying it (which traditional accounting and financial systems fail to do effectively) and may bring new economic opportunities around the stewardship of nature and natural resources.

    Ultimately, everything depends on this.

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  • University lands: mapping risks and opportunities for the UK higher education sector (Part 2)

    University lands: mapping risks and opportunities for the UK higher education sector (Part 2)

    Join HEPI tomorrow (Thursday 11 December 2025) from 10am to 11am for a webinar on how universities can strengthen the student voice in governance to mark the launch of our upcoming report, Rethinking the Student Voice. Sign up now to hear our speakers explore the key questions.

    This blog, kindly authored by Thomas Owen-Smith, Principal Consultant, William Phillips, Data Analyst, and Pippa Wisbey, Consultant, all of at SUMS Consulting, is part of a three-part mini series on UK universities’ approaches to land use.

    Today’s blog focuses on risks. You can find part one of this series, which introduces the work, here.

    The risk landscape

    Most readers will be familiar with the current conditions for the UK’s universities. Proximate financial risks – potentially existential for some institutions – understandably focus minds on the here and now.

    Whatever system emerges from the current turmoil will need to be more resilient than what it replaces.

    While the gathering risks in the economic and geopolitical theatre are familiar, on longer horizons – and let’s remember that many universities like to emphasise their longevity of foundation and core mission – the greatest risks are those stemming from the disruption to world’s climate and natural systems.

    These risks are generally slow onset. Until they become acute, causing loss, damage and danger to human health and safety.

    Solely the “physical” risks that we have modelled may cause hundreds of millions of pounds of loss and damage to universities each year (estimated at a potential £166.8m annually, based on moderate estimates), as extreme weather becomes more frequent.

    These do not account for “transition risks” and “systemic risks”, which have less direct linkages to physical location and would manifest in disruption to their supply chains, national infrastructure and so on.

    While impacts of extreme weather would likely be spread across multiple institutions, financial impacts of this order are material – particularly for those institutions which are most exposed.

    Climate impacts might manifest not only in damage to buildings and other infrastructure, but also loss of valuable equipment and disruption to critical business – carrying further costs for institutions – and impacts on the health, wellbeing and safety of their staff and students. Insurance costs are also expected to rise, and in the most exposed cases, some assets may become uninsurable.

    Securing future resilience is therefore very much a long-term game.

    Mapping risks

    Physical risksrelate most closely to the location (“exposure”) of assets. As hazards (storms, heatwaves and the like) become more frequent and more severe, loss, damage and costs increase – further exacerbated by institutions’ vulnerabilities.

    Using our mapping tool, institutions can explore both observed patterns of temperature and rainfall at their location, and modelled patterns for 2C and 4C of global temperature rise – both plausible scenarios for the second half of this century.

    They can also explore datasets containing granular local-level data around flood risk and heat islands. While these have not yet been modelled for future climate conditions, it is safe to assume that flooding and extreme heat events will become more frequent and more extreme, as winters become wetter and summers hotter and drier across most of the country.

    Under current conditions, 197.5 hectares (ha), constituting 3.2% of mapped lands are at high or medium risk from flooding, while 4,102.1 ha (or 64.2%) are at high or medium risk of extreme heat stress.

    The instances where floods or extreme heat risk incurring the greatest costs for institutions, is where their built estate is in high-risk areas. By our mapping, 92.1 ha (or 1.4%) of university estates are areas where high or medium flood risk coincides with built environment; and 2,898.6 ha (or 45.4%) are built environment with high or medium heat risk.

    Of course, flood risk and heat islands are not totally independent variables from land cover. Built areas can exacerbate both flood risk by reducing the scope for water absorption, and heat islands due to their high retention of heat compared to non-built surfaces.

    Responding and adapting to risks

    Many institutions have already begun to respond to climate and environmental risks, and sector organisations have developed guidance on adaptation and resilience.

    Those institutions that haven’t yet done so can use our mapping tool as an initial pointer to frame detailed site-specific risk and vulnerability assessments. Following UK Government guidance, we recommend using scenarios of 2C and 4C global temperature rise.

    Better understanding of this picture for the specifics of university sites will also allow for options assessment around adaptation measures (including land-based approaches such as increased areas of non-built space or green infrastructure) to mitigate heat island effects; or if it is unavoidable, manage conditions of high heat through more cooling (which brings increased energy use).

    The same stands for institutions that have a large built area in flood-prone zones. Understanding the current risk (which is likely to be on the radar already for many of these institutions) and how it might develop with the changing climate opens into exploring options for response. Nature-based solutions such as extending wetlands or porous ground surfaces can potentially mitigate flood risks in some areas. That said, institutions may wish to consider relocating valuable equipment, high-use areas or strategic activities if situated at the most risky sites.

    While adaptation will carry upfront costs for institutions, national-level modelling indicates that the projected costs of loss and damage without adaptation will be substantially greater, and most adaptation measures have a high benefit to cost ratio if they are undertaken in good time.

    In other words, spending sooner will save later.

    The bigger picture

    In the big picture, reducing the risks around increased exposure to physical hazards also underlines the necessity for every organisation to reduce its own impacts on climate change and nature loss – the ultimate drivers of the deteriorating risk environment.

    In part 3 of this mini-series, we will explore opportunities that universities’ estates may offer to do that, some of which also offer other benefits to institutions’ financial position and core mission.

    SUMS Consulting will host a webinar from 11:00 to 12:00 on Thursday 22 January 2026. The webinar will include a walkthrough of the report and online tool, and panel discussion featuring Nick Hillman OBE (Director of HEPI). Register here.

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  • University lands: mapping risks and opportunities for the UK higher education sector (Part 1)

    University lands: mapping risks and opportunities for the UK higher education sector (Part 1)

    This blog, kindly authored by Thomas Owen-Smith, Principal Consultant at SUMS Consulting, and William Phillips, Data Analyst at SUMS Consulting, is part of a three-part mini series on UK universities’ approaches to land use.

    Today’s blog introduces the work.

    Where we are

    With the economic and policy developments of the last 18 months, the UK’s higher education institutions now face a heady mix of acute challenges and an emergent agenda around the contributions they are expected to make towards the country, its economy and society.

    The sector is already seeing mergers, amongst a range of potential measures to reduce costs. That a prominent recently merged institution is keeping its constituent campuses is not really surprising: for most universities, their mission and even shifting identities are still broadly bound up with their location.

    Over recent years, this has spoken to agendas such as the Johnson government’s “levelling up” or institutions’ own civic commitments. And place remains prominent in the current government’s Modern Industrial Strategy, in which Mayoral Combined Authorities will be central actors in integrated regional planning for many areas, and of course in the Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper.

    We know that universities are critical economic players nationally and regionally, due to their scale and the value created by their education, research and convening power.

    We also know that universities cover a lot of space. A sense of this is reported in quant data terms each year in the (now voluntary) HESA Estates Management Record which, although it does not cover all providers, can be deployed for powerful analysis at the aggregate level.

    How we use our land is a national question that cuts across a range of issues including economic development, food security and a healthy environment for people and nature, amongst many others.

    These questions are about “where” as well as “how much”.

    For university estates we have the numbers, but until now we have not had much of a sense of where certain things are, happen or could potentially happen.

    We have sought to change that.

    In our new report published today, we have used public and open-source datasets and methods to map the UK higher education sector for the first time.

    Overlaying the boundaries for 174 institutions (those with data on Open Street Map) onto geospatial datasets (that is, datasets which contain a geographic or spatial component which brings the “where”) has allowed us to explore perspectives about universities’ estates and how they use them – which would not be possible without geospatial data.

    The list of institutions, representing a mix of more traditional institutions reporting to HESA as well as some alternative providers, does not constitute the whole sector (or all of its known lands). But we believe the coverage is sufficient to allow for grounded discussion of sector patterns.

    We explore the data over four strategic themes for institutions and at aggregate (sector) level:

    1. State of the sector’s land
    2. Risks
    3. Opportunities
    4. Value.

    The report is accompanied by a mapping tool which allows user to explore these questions for themselves.

    Purely in the direct financial terms we have modelled, “risks” and “opportunities” are to the tune of tens or hundreds of millions of pounds annually for the sector. And the wider dimensions of opportunities speak not only to universities’ contributions to environmental sustainability, but also to their role as critical players in regional economies and systems.

    As such, this work has implications for a range of points in institutions’ thinking. These, of course, include approaches to risk, estates management, capital and strategic planning; but also core mission questions such as regional development, skills, innovation and industry partnership.

    Over this series of blogs we will explore the strategic themes mentioned, starting today with the state of the sector’s land.

    Due to the complexity of the topics involved, we have not been able to treat every risk and opportunity area in all the detail they deserve. But we do hope to inspire new ways of thinking about universities’ lands and locations and how these fit into their wider strategic context, including trade-offs and opportunity costs.

    We also point to examples of institutions which are already engaging with these questions, to resources from sector organisations such as AUDE, EAUC and Nature Positive Universities, and to our own work supporting institutions across a range of topics relevant to this work.

    State of the sector’s land

    Our mapping of UK universities’ core estates covers a total area of 6,390.1 hectares (ha).

    This does not cover the full extent of the HE estate due to limitations of the data available. (The 2023 HESA Estates Management Record reports a total of 7,293 ha “total grounds area” for 135 reporting institutions and a larger “total site area” – roughly the same size again – outside the core estate). But it does achieve more than 80% coverage of core estates.

    While our mapped area constitutes just 0.026% of the UK’s land surface, it equates to a town the size of Guildford, Chesterfield or Stirling.

    Of this area, 3,796.8 ha (nearly 60%) is built environment (buildings or artificial other surfaces), 1,893.6 ha (around 30%) is grass, 646.4 ha (around 10%) is covered by trees and 52.8 ha (a little less than 1%) is water and waterlogged land.

    We also used machine learning to develop a typology of institutions based on their land use profiles. This identified three clusters of institutions, each of which stands out for possessing a higher proportion of one of the three core land use types (built, grass, trees) than the other two clusters.

    • Cluster 1 (95 institutions, covering 1,205 ha) is highly urban, containing universities that are at least 80% and typically around 90% built land cover.
    • Cluster 2 (60 institutions, covering 3,679 ha) is made up of universities with a relatively high grass cover (typically around 35%), still with a high built cover (around 58%).
    • Cluster 3 (19 institutions, covering 1,506 ha) is comprised of universities that have a high proportion of non-built land (around 61%) and notably high tree cover (around 25%).

    The various profiles of land use and institutions present different types of risks and opportunities, which we will explore over the coming days.

    SUMS Consulting will host a webinar from 11:00 to 12:00 on Thursday 22 January 2026. The webinar will include a walkthrough of the report and online tool, and panel discussion featuring Nick Hillman OBE (Director of HEPI). Register here.

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  • How the manufactured narrative of ‘failure’ is distracting us from resolving the systemic problems holding back the study of Modern Languages – Part 2. 

    How the manufactured narrative of ‘failure’ is distracting us from resolving the systemic problems holding back the study of Modern Languages – Part 2. 

    This post was kindly written by Vincent Everett, who is head of languages in a comprehensive school and sixth form in Norfolk. He blogs as The Nice Man Who Teaches Languages. 

    In Part 1, I looked at how the low grades given at GCSE languages – up to a grade lower than in pupils’ other subjects – is a manufactured situation, easily solved at the stroke of a pen. The narrative around languages being harder is nothing to do with the content of the course or the difficulty of the exam. It is simply a historical anomaly of how the grades are allocated. There is also a false narrative that this unfair grading is due to pupils’ individual ability, the nation’s ability, or the quality of teaching. And I made a subtle plea for commentators to avoid reinforcing this narrative to push their own diagnosis or solutions. 

    In Part 2, I will consider what happens in post-16 language learning. This has also been the subject of reporting in the wake of A-Level results and the recent HEPI report. I am not going to deny that A-Level languages are in crisis. But the crisis in A-Level and the crisis of language learning post-16 are not one and the same. 

    There are specific problems with the current A-Level specification for languages. The amount of content to be studied, comprising recondite details of every aspect of the Spanish / French / German speaking world, is unmanageable. Worse, as this post explains, the content is out of kilter with the exam. All the encyclopaedic knowledge of politics, history, popular culture and high culture which takes up the bulk of the course, is ultimately only required for one question in just one part of the Speaking Exam. The difficulty of the course is compounded by the extremely high standards required, especially for students who have learned their language in the school context. I personally know of language teachers and college leaders who have discouraged their own children from taking A-Level languages in order not to jeopardise their grades for university application. It is getting to the point where I can no longer, in good conscience, let ambitious students embark on the course without warning them of the overwhelming workload and doubtful outcomes. 

    So A-Level could be improved. But as an academic course, it will always remain the domain of a tiny few. Similarly, specialist Philology degrees at university – the academic study of the language through the intersection of literary and textual criticism, linguistics and the history of the language – only attract a very small minority. Neither university language degrees, nor A-Level, are a mainstream language learning pathway. 

    It is a particularly British mentality to only value language learning if its intellectual heft is boosted by the inclusion of essays, abstruse grammar, linguistics, literature, politics, history, and a study of culture. In other words, philology. Philology is not the same as language learning.  

    Universities do offer language learning opportunities for students of other disciplines. However, in sixth form, because of the funding requirement to offer Level 3 courses, there are no mainstream language learning options available to the vast majority of students who do not study A-Level languages. We have a gap in 16-19 provision where colleges do not offer a mainstream language learning pathway. 

    This gap is fatal to language study. It means GCSE is seen as a dead-end. It means that universities have a tiny pool of students ready and able to take up language degrees or degrees with languages as a component. 

    The crisis is not one of how to channel more people into studying A-Level languages. It is a question of finding radical new ways of offering mainstream language learning post-16, and how to make this the norm. We know from the HEPI report that young people in the UK are among the most avid users of the online language learning app Duolingo. Young people are choosing to engage with language learning, but in terms of formal education, we are leaving a two-year gap between GCSE and the opportunities offered by universities. 

    If this hiatus in language learning is the problem, is there a solution? I have two suggestions. One of which is relatively easy, if we agree that action is needed. If universities genuinely believe that a language is an asset, then they could send a powerful message to potential applicants. 

    Going to university means joining an international organisation, including the possibility of studying abroad, using languages for research, engaging with other students from across the globe, and quite possibly taking a language course while at university. The British Academy reports that universities are calling for language skills across research disciplines, so I hope that they would be able to send a strong message to students in schools and colleges. 

    The message around applications and admissions could be that evidence of studying a language or languages post-16 is something that universities look for. At the very least, they could signal that an interest in self-directed language learning is something they would value. 

    I understand that most universities would stop short of making a qualification in a language a formal entry requirement, because they fear it could exclude many applicants, especially those from disadvantaged groups. But a strong message could help reverse the situation where language learning opportunities are currently denied to many under-privileged school pupils, who aren’t getting the message around the value of pursuing a language. 

    And my second, more difficult suggestion? Would it be possible to plug the two-year gap with a provision at sixth form or college? An app such as Duolingo has attractions. There is the flexibility and independence of study, as well as the focus on motivation by level of learning, hours of study or points scored. It is very difficult to imagine how a sixth form or college could provide language classes for their varied intake from schools, with different language learning experiences in different languages. 

    Is there scope here for a new Oak Academy to step in and create resources? Or for the government to commission resources from an educational technology provider? Is there a role for universities here? The inspiring Languages for All project shows what can happen when a university engages with local schools to identify and tackle obstacles to language learning. The pilot saw Royal Holloway University working with schools across Hounslow, to increase participation at A-Level in a mutually beneficial partnership. Many of the strategies could equally apply to more mainstream (non A-Level) language learning partnerships. These included strong messaging, co-ordinated collaboration between colleges, face-to-face sessions and events at the university, and deployment of university students as mentors. 

    The aim would be to transform the landscape. Currently we have a dead-end GCSE where unfair grading serves as a deterrent, and where there is no mainstream option to make continuing with language learning the norm. A strong message from universities, along with an end to unfair grading, could make a big difference to uptake at GCSE. A realisation that A-Level and specialist philology degrees are not sufficient for the language learning needs of the country could lead to alternative, imaginative and joined-up options post-16. It could also boost the provision or recognition of self-study of a language and may even lead to the reinvigoration of adult education or university outreach language classes. And it could even see a larger pool of candidates for philology degrees at university. 

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  • Education at a Glance 2025, Part 2

    Education at a Glance 2025, Part 2

    Three weeks ago, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released its annual stat fest, Education at a Glance (see last week’s blog for more on this year’s higher education and financing data). The most interesting thing about this edition is that the OECD chose to release some new data from the recent Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) relating to literacy and numeracy levels that were included in the PIAAC 2013 release (see also here), but not in the December 2024 release.   

    (If you need a refresher: PIAAC is kind of like the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) but for adults and is carried out once a decade so countries can see for themselves how skilled their workforces are in terms of literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving).

    The specific details of interest that were missing in the earlier data release were on skill level by level of education (or more specifically, highest level of education achieved). OECD for some reason cuts the data into three – below upper secondary, upper secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary, and tertiary. Canada has a lot of post-secondary non-tertiary programming (a good chunk of community colleges are described this way) but for a variety of reasons lumps all college diplomas in with university degrees in with university degrees as “tertiary”, which makes analysis and comparison a bit difficult. But we can only work with the data the OECD gives us, so…

    Figures 1, 2 and 3 show PIAAC results for a number of OECD countries, comparing averages for just the Upper Secondary/Post-Secondary Non-Tertiary (which I am inelegantly going to label “US/PSNT”) and Tertiary educational attainment. They largely tell similar stories. Japan and Finland tend to be ranked towards the top of the table on all measures, while Korea, Poland and Chile tend to be ranked towards the bottom. Canada tends to be ahead of the OECD average at both levels of education, but not by much. The gap between US/PSNT and Tertiary results are significantly smaller on the “problem-solving” measure than on the others (which is interesting and arguably does not say very nice things about the state of tertiary education, but that’s maybe for another day). Maybe the most spectacular single result is that Finns with only US/PSNT education have literacy scores higher than university graduates in all but four other countries, including Canada.

    Figure 1: PIAAC Average Literacy Scores by Highest Level of Education Attained, Population Aged 25-64, Selected OECD Countries

    Figure 2: PIAAC Average Numeracy Scores by Highest Level of Education Attained, Population Aged 25-64, Selected OECD Countries

    Figure 3: PIAAC Average Problem Scores by Highest Level of Education Attained, Population Aged 25-64, Selected OECD Countries

    Another thing that is consistent across all of these graphs is that the gap between US/PSNT and tertiary graduates is not at all the same. In some countries the gap is quite low (e.g. Sweden) and in other countries the gap is quite high (e.g. Chile, France, Germany). What’s going on here, and does it suggest something about the effectiveness of tertiary education systems in different countries (i.e. most effective where the gaps are high, least effective where they are low)?

    Well, not necessarily. First, remember that the sample population is aged 25-64, and education systems undergo a lot of change in 40 years (for one thing, Poland, Chile and Korea were all dictatorships 40 years ago). Also, since we know scoring on these kinds of tests decline with age, demographic patterns matter too. Second, the relative size of systems matters. Imagine two secondary and tertiary systems had the same “quality”, but one tertiary system took in half of all high school graduates and the other only took in 10%. Chances are the latter would have better “results” at the tertiary level, but it would be entirely due to selection effects rather than to treatment effects.

    Can we control for these things? A bit. We can certainly control for the wide age-range because OECD breaks down the data by age. Re-doing Figures 1-3, but restricting the age range to 25-34, would at least get rid of the “legacy” part of the problem. This I do below in Figures 4-6. Surprisingly little changes as a result. The absolute scores are all higher, but you’d expect that given what we know about skill loss over time.  Across the board, Canada remains just slightly ahead of the OECD average. Korea does a bit better in general and Italy does a little bit worse, but other than the rank-order of results is pretty similar to what we saw for the general population (which I think is a pretty interesting finding when you think of how much effort countries put in to messing around with their education systems…does any of it matter?)

    Figure 4: PIAAC Average Literacy Scores by Highest Level of Education Attained, Population Aged 25-34, Selected OECD Countries

    Figure 5: PIAAC Average Numeracy Scores by Highest Level of Education Attained, Population Aged 25-34, Selected OECD Countries

    Figure 6: PIAAC Average Problem Scores by Highest Level of Education Attained, Population Aged 25-34, Selected OECD Countries

    Now, let’s turn to the question of whether or not we can control for selectivity. Back in 2013, I tried doing something like that, but it was only possible because OECD released PIAAC scores not just as averages but also in terms of quartile thresholds, and that isn’t the case this time. But what we can do is look a bit at the relationship between i) the size of the tertiary system relative to the size of the US/PSNT system (a measure of selectivity, basically) and ii) the degree to which results for tertiary students are higher than those for US/PSNT. 

    Which is what I do in Figure 7. The X-axis here is selectivity [tertiary attainment rate ÷ US/PSNT attainment rate rate] for 25-34 year olds on (the further right on the graph, the more open-access the system), and the Y-axis is PIAAC gaps Σ [tertiary score – US/PSNT score] across the literacy, numeracy and problem-solving measures (the higher the score, the bigger the gap between tertiary and US/PSNT scores). It shows that countries like Germany, Chile and Italy are both more highly selective and have greater score gaps than countries like Canada and Korea, which are the reverse. It therefore provides what I would call light support for the theory that the less open/more selective a system of tertiary education is, the bigger the gap tertiary between Tertiary and US/PSNT scores on literacy, numeracy and problem-solving scores.  Meaning, basically, beware of interpreting these gaps as evidence of relative system quality: they may well be effects of selection rather than treatment.

    Figure 7: Tertiary Attainment vs. PIAAC Score Gap, 25-34 year-olds

    That’s enough PIAAC fun for one Monday.  See you tomorrow.

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  • Education at a Glance 2025, Part 1

    Education at a Glance 2025, Part 1

    The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released its annual stat fest, Education at a Glance (EAG), two weeks ago and I completely forgot about it. But since not a single Canadian news outlet wrote anything about it (neither it nor the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada saw fit to put together a “Canada” briefing, apparently), this blog – two weeks later than usual – is still technically a scoop.

    Next week, I will review some new data from the Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) that was released in EAG and perhaps – if I have time – some data from EAG’s newly re-designed section on tertiary-secondary. Today, I am going to talk a bit about some of the data on higher education and financing, and specifically, how Canada has underperformed the rest of the developed world – by a lot – over the past few years.

    Now, before I get too deep into the data, a caveat. I am going to be providing you with data on higher education financing as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product. And this is one of those places where OECD really doesn’t like it when people compare data across various issues of EAG. The reason, basically, is that OECD is reliant on member governments to provide data, and what they give is not consistent. On this specific indicator, for instance, the UK data on public financing of higher education are total gibberish, because the government keeps changing its mind on what constitutes “public funding” (this is what happens when you run all your funding through tuition fees and student loans and then can’t decide how to describe loan forgiveness in public statistics). South Korea also seems to have had a re-think about a decade ago with respect to how to count private higher education expenditure as I recounted back here. 

    There’s another reason to be at least a little bit skeptical about the OECD’s numbers, too: it’s not always clear what is and is not included in the numbers. For instance, if I compare what Statistics Canada sends to OECD every year with the data it publishes domestically based on university and college income and on its own GDP figures, I never come up with exactly the same number (specifically, the public spending numbers it provides to OECD are usually higher than what I can derive from what is presumably the same data). I suspect other countries may have some similar issues. So, what I would remind everyone is simply: take these numbers as being broadly indicative of the truth, but don’t take any single number as gospel.

    Got that? OK, let’s look at the numbers. 

    Figure 1: Public and Private Expenditure on Tertiary Institutions as a Percentage of GDP, Select OECD Countries, 2022

    Canada on this measure looks…OK. Public expenditure is a little bit below the OECD average, but thanks to high private expenditure, it’s still significantly above the average. (Note, this data is from before we lost billions of dollars to a loss of international student fees, so presumably the private number is down somewhat since then). We’re not Chile, we’re not the US or the UK, but we’re still better than the median.

    Which is true, if all you’re looking at is the present. Let’s go look at the past. Figure 2, below, shows you two things. First, the amount of money a country spends on its post-secondary education system usually doesn’t change that much. In most countries, in most years, moving up or down one-tenth of a percentage point is a big deal, and odds are even over the course of a decade or so, your spending levels just don’t change that much.

    Figure 2: Total Expenditure on Tertiary Institutions as a Percentage of GDP, Select OECD Countries, 2005-2022

    Second, it shows you that in both Canada and the United States, spending on higher education, as a percentage of the economy, is plummeting. Now, to be fair, this seems like more of a denominator issue than a numerator issue. Actual expenditures aren’t decreasing (much) but the economy is growing, in part due to population growth, which isn’t really happening in the same way in Europe.

    There is a difference between the US and Canada, though. And that is where the decline is coming from. In the US, it is coming (mostly) from lower private-sector contributions, the result of a decade or more of tuition restraint. In Canada, it is coming from much lower public spending. Figure 3 shows change in public spending as a percentage of GDP since 2005.

    Figure 3: Change in Public Expenditure on Tertiary Institutions as a Percentage of GDP since 2005, Select OECD Countries, 2006-2022

    As you can see here, few countries are very far from where they started in terms of spending as a percentage of GDP per capita. Australia and Sweden are both down a couple of tenths of a percentage point. Lucky Netherlands is up a couple of tenths of a percentage point (although note this is before the very large cutbacks imposed by the coalition government last year). But Canada?  Canada is in a class all of its own, down 0.6% of GDP since just 2011. (Again, don’t take these numbers as gospel: on my own calculations I make the cut in public funding a little bit less than that – but still at least twice as big a fall as the next-worst country).

    In sum: Canada’s levels of investment in higher education are going the wrong way, because governments of all stripes at both the federal and provincial level have thought that higher education is easily ignorable or not worth investing in. As a result, even though our population and economy are growing, universities and colleges are being told to keep operating like it’s 2011. The good news is that we have a cushion: we were starting from a pretty high base, and for many years we had international student dollars to keep us afloat. As a result, even after fifteen years of this nonsense, Canada’s levels of higher education investment still look pretty good in comparison to most countries. The bad news: now that the flow of international student dollars has been reduced, the ground is rising up awfully fast.

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  • Selecting and Supporting New Vice Chancellors: Reflections on Process & Practice – PART 2 

    Selecting and Supporting New Vice Chancellors: Reflections on Process & Practice – PART 2 

    Author:
    Dr Tom Kennie

    Published:

    This HEPI blog was kindly authored by Dr Tom Kennie, Director of Ranmore 

    Introduction 

    In the first blog post, I focused on the process of appointing new Vice Chancellors. with some thoughts and challenges to current practice. In this second contribution, I focus more on support and how to ensure that the leadership transition receives as much attention as candidate selection.  

    Increasingly, the process of leadership transitions often starts way before the incoming successful candidate has been appointed. Depending on the circumstances which led to the need for a new leader, the process may involve a short or extended period with an Interim Leader. This can be an internal senior leader or someone externally who is appointed for a short, fixed-term period. This in itself is a topic for another day. It does, however, require careful consideration as part of the successful transition of a new leader (assuming the interim is not appointed to the permanent role). 

    Reflections to consider when on-boarding Vice Chancellors 

    Rules of engagement with the Interim or Existing post-holder  

    Clear rules of engagement must be agreed with the appointed Interim. Among those rules are those relating to the engagement with the Board. Often these can feel quite implicit and unspoken. I’d encourage both parties to be much more explicit and document their mutual expectations to share with each other.     

    Incoming Vice Chancellor transition plan (individual and team-based) 

    Moving onto the post-appointment, pre-arrival period is an important phase in the process of ensuring a successful outcome. How can the incoming leader prepare (whilst often doing another big job)? How might the team prepare the way for the incoming leader? And, how might the existing or interim leader hold things together during this period? This is often a period of heightened anxiety within the senior leadership team (although rarely surfaced and discussed). Working with the team during this phase can help to reduce the danger of siloed working and help prepare the team for the arrival of the new leader.  

    Outgoing Vice Chancellor transition plan  

    Frequently overlooked is the importance of ensuring a successful transition for the current post-holder (assuming it has not been a forced exit). Beware of placing too much focus on the new person. Often, as indicated earlier, the current post holder may have many months to go before the new person can start. They also require support and encouragement. And, of course, recognition for their period in office.  

    Day 1 and week 1 

    The lead-up to day 1 requires significant consideration by the new Vice Chancellor. Meeting the new ‘inner office’ and considering how and in what ways the new Vice Chancellor is different in style and expectations compared to the outgoing leader is an important factor. Induction processes will, no doubt, feature heavily in the first few weeks, but a new Vice Chancellor should ensure that they control the transition process. This requires careful coordinated communication and choreography.   

    First x days (what’s the right number?) 

    Every new Vice Chancellor should be wary of being persuaded to work towards delivering a plan by some (often arbitrary) date, typically 90-100 days after their arrival. Understanding the context of the institution, and working with this, is more important. 

    Potential surprises & dilemmas  

    A new Vice Chancellor should expect a few surprises when they start. Context and culture are different and these will have an impact on the interpretation of events. To ensure success, these should be soaked up and immediate responses should be avoided. In time, it will be much easier to work out how to respond and what needs to change. 

    Match and ideally exceed expectations  

    Whilst clearly important and easy to say, it is vital to ensure the Vice Chancellor priorities are clarified with the Chair. Having done this, the senior team should be invited to similarly clarify their priorities. Lastly, these should be shared across the team. This, by itself, is likely to signal a new way of working. 

    A final proposal  

    The process of appointing Vice Chancellors is clearly an important matter for Chairs of Governing Boards. Whilst guidance is provided by the Committee of University Chairs (CUC), the latest edition of the document Recruiting a Vice Chancellor was published in 2017. Much has changed in the past eight years and it feels timely for a fresh look given the very different context and shifts in practice. 

    To close, it is worth remembering that nobody comes fully ready for any senior leadership role. Gaps exist and context and culture are different from the new perspective even if the candidate has had a prior role in a different place. You might wish to consider offering some independent support for your new Vice Chancellor. This could be through being a member of a peer-group and/or individual transition coaching. Being in charge is a lonely place and it can be constructive to be able to talk through dilemmas, issues and opportunities in a safe space. Sometimes this can’t be with one’s Chair or Senior Team.  

    Lastly, don’t be too judgemental and try and give any new Vice Chancellor the benefit of the doubt – well at least for a short while! 

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  • Selecting and Supporting New Vice Chancellors: Reflections on Process & Practice – PART 1 

    Selecting and Supporting New Vice Chancellors: Reflections on Process & Practice – PART 1 

    • This HEPI blog was kindly authored by Dr Tom Kennie, Director of Ranmore.
    • Over the weekend, HEPI director Nick Hillman blogged about the forthcoming party conferences and the start of the new academic year. Read more here.

    Introduction 

    Over the last few months, a number of well-informed commentators have focused on understanding the past, present and to some extent, future context associated with the appointment of Vice Chancellors in the UK. See Tessa Harrison and Josh Freeman of Gatensby Sanderson Jamie Cumming-Wesley of WittKieffer and Paul Greatrix. 

    In this and a subsequent blog post, I want to complement these works with some practice-informed reflections from my work with many senior higher education leaders. I also aim to open a debate about optimising the selection and support for new Vice Chancellors by challenging some current practices. 

    Reflections to consider when recruiting Vice Chancellors 

    Adopt a different team-based approach 

    Clearly, all appointment processes are team-based – undertaken by a selection committee. For this type of appointment, however, we need a different approach which takes collective responsibility as a ‘Selection and Transition Team’. What’s the difference? In this second approach, the team take a wider remit with responsibility for the full life cycle of the process from search to selection to handover and transition into role. The team also oversee any interim arrangements if a gap in time exists between the existing leader leaving and the successor arriving. This is often overlooked.  

    The Six Keys to a Successful Presidential Transition is an interesting overview of this approach in Canada. 

    Pre-search diagnosis  

    Pre-search diagnosis (whether involving a search and selection firm or not) is often underestimated in its importance or is under-resourced. Before you start to search for a candidate to lead a university, you need to ensure those involved are all ‘on the same page’. Sometimes they are, but in other cases they fail to recognise that they are on the same, but wrong, page. Classically, this may be to find someone to lead the organisation of today, and a failure to consider the place they seek to be in 10 years. Before appointing a search firm, part of the solution is to ensure you have a shared understanding of the type of university you are seeking someone to lead.   

    • Role balance and capabilities 

    A further diagnostic issue, linked to the former point, is to be very clear about the balance of capabilities required in your selected candidate. One way of framing this is to assess the candidate balance across a number of dimensions, including:  

    • The Chief Academic Officer (CAO) capabilities; more operational and internally focussed. 
    • The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) capabilities; more strategic and initially internally focussed. 
    • The Chief Civic Officer (CCO) capabilities: more strategic and externally focussed; and 
    • The Chief Stakeholder Relationship Officer (CSRO): more operational and externally focussed. 

    All four matter. One astute Vice Chancellor suggested to me a fifth; Chief Storytelling Officer (CSO). 

    Search firm or not?   

    The decision as to whether to use a search firm is rarely considered today – it is assumed you will use one. It is, however, worth pausing to reflect on this issue, if only to be very clear about what you are seeking from a search firm. What criteria should you use to select one? Are you going with one who you already use, or have used, or are you open to new players (both to you and to the higher education market)? The latter might be relevant if you are seeking to extend your search to candidates who have a career trajectory beyond higher education.  

    ‘Listing’ – how and by whom?   

    Searching should lead to many potential candidates Selecting who to consider is typically undertaken through a long-listing process and from this a short-list is created. Make sure you understand how this will be undertaken and who will be doing it. When was the last time you asked to review the larger list from which the long list was taken?  

    Psychometrics – why, which and how? 

    A related matter involves the use of any psychometric instruments proposed to form part of the selection process. They are often included –yet the rationale for this is often unclear. As is the question of how the data will be used. Equally importantly, if the judgment is that it should be included, who should undertake the process? Whichever route you take, you would be wise to read Andrew Munro’s recent book on the topic, Personality Testing In Employee Selection: Challenges, Controversies and Future Directions 

    Balance questions with scenarios and dilemmas 

    Given the complexity of the role of the Vice Chancellor, it is clearly important to assess candidates across a wide range of criteria. Whilst a question-and-answer process can elicit some evidence, we should all be aware of the limitations of such a process. Complementing the former with a well-considered scenario-based processes involving a series of dilemmas, which candidates are invited to consider, is less common than it should be. 

    Rehearse final decision scenarios  

    If you are fortunate as a selection panel, after having considered many different sources of evidence, you will reach a collective, unanimous decision about the candidate you wish to offer the position. Job almost done. More likely, however, you will have more than one preferred candidate – each providing evidence to be appointable albeit with evidence of gaps in some areas. Occasionally, you may also have reached an impasse where strong cases are made to appoint two equally appointable candidates. Preparing for these situations by considering them in advance. In some cases, the first time such situations are considered are during the final stage of the selection exercise. 

    In part 2 I’ll focus more on support and how to ensure the leadership transition is given as much attention as candidate selection. 

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