It might not be news that the UK research sector is strikingly international, but the scale of our global collaboration is striking – and it’s growing.
Over 60 per cent of Russell Group academics’ publications involved an international co-author in 2023, 16 per cent higher than in 2019, and in 2022 this proportion was higher for UK academics than any of our global competitors. Pooling ideas and talent makes for better research and more innovation, so supporting them to do more matters deeply to researchers – as our universities are well aware, given their own longstanding global connections.
International collaboration matters for the UK at large too, helping us tackle shared challenges and forming a large part of our global contribution. In a more uncertain world, protecting and growing research collaborations is becoming more important – complementing the government’s efforts to deepen links with the EU, protect ties with the US, and build relationships in India.
These initiatives are bound up with both security and growth. This is no accident: a strong economy is the route to creating jobs and supporting public services. We have always argued that international university partnerships should be part of the wider offer to global investors and trade partners, but we need to find new ways to demonstrate their value.
To that end, Jisc has done new analysis for the Russell Group looking at the scale and value of international research partnerships. Jisc’s unique data-matching analysis of UK, US and EU patent data held by the European Patents Office covers over 30 years of international collaboration in patent applications. The data identifies partnerships that UK institutions hold with both international companies and universities.
It’s booming
So what did we learn? Jisc’s analysis shows the proportion of patents co-filed by UK universities and an international partner grew from 12 per cent in 2000 to 22 per cent in 2022. It also found a remarkably high share of collaborations with international businesses, not just fellow academics: 43 per cent of co-filings since 2018 were with an overseas company and 36 per cent with a university abroad.
Since 2018, the data shows UK universities filed over 100 EU, US and UK patents with international partners every year. The analysis also allows us to see individual patents, not just numbers, so we can understand how impactful this work is not just to academic excellence, but to society. For example:
the world’s first gene therapy for adults with severe haemophilia A, from pioneering research between University College London and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in the US
a new type of gene therapy from Newcastle University and the University of Heidelberg in Germany, which can help to protect and strengthen muscles in people with muscular dystrophy
improvements to machine-learning models by the University of Edinburgh and University of Manchester with Toyota in Japan – refining the ability to interpret images, a step on the way to driverless cars.
These projects, and many more of their kind, demonstrate the cutting-edge R&D that can underpin the government’s growth mission, industrial strategy and NHS ambitions. Jisc’s analysis therefore suggests that to make the most of universities’ strengths, and secure a global advantage for the UK, support for both home-grown innovation and high-value overseas collaborations will be crucial.
Potential for even more
This includes additional support for the work universities do with and for businesses, in sectors like clean energy and advanced manufacturing. Academics and innovators can do much of this themselves, but government can help by working with us to deliver a stable platform to build on including reliable funding streams, improved incentives for SME-university collaboration and a long-term strategy for industrial renewal.
We also need a strategic focus on higher education’s financial sustainability, so universities can maximise the impact of the £86bn government is committing to R&D over the next few years and support plans for economic growth and public service improvement.
It also means maintaining a supportive, stable and cost-effective visa system for staff and students – further expanding the commitments already made on building global talent pathways – so UK universities can attract and educate our future academics, innovators and collaborators, as well as securing important cross-subsidies for research and teaching. A strategic approach to skills and infrastructure across the UK would complement this, ensuring all nations and regions can benefit.
Finally, building the right platform for international collaboration means backing stable, flexible routes for academics and innovators to work together. UKRI’s work to develop lead agency agreements with counterparts in other countries has been a positive and warmly-welcomed example. Above all, however, our relationship with the world’s largest international collaborative programme for R&D – Horizon Europe, and its successor Framework Programme 10 – will be vital.
We’re currently awaiting the European Commission’s official “first draft” for FP10. We know it will be a standalone programme with a research and innovation focus, which is very reassuring. At the moment, Horizon Europe is providing more collaborative research opportunities than any one country can alone, as well as helping UK universities attract top researchers. Universities are working hard to boost Horizon participation, taking the lead in European Research Council Advanced Grant wins in 2024, and nurturing the encouraging green shoots in the collaborative Pillar II. Keeping this going is vital for global collaborations which contribute so much to our, and our partners’, economic and societal progress.
Researchers need certainty so they can rely on a shared long-term framework when building collaborations. The more open FP10 is to like-minded countries, and the more positive the UK is about association early on, the more confidence academics can be in continuing – and indeed expanding – invaluable international partnerships.
There have been several points during this era of AI availability in education where I’ve been genuinely shocked that something that seems to me to be clearly out of bounds or incredibly rash is viewed by others as quite workable, or even desirable.
One of these is so-called AI peer review. Granted, academic research is not actually my thing, but I was under the impression that the goal of research and peer review is to deploy the reasoned judgment of subject matter experts in adjudicating whether or not a proposed new contribution is worthy of being heard and disseminated.
The key words there are “reasoned judgment,” something a large language model may be able to simulate but cannot actually do. I am aware the system of academic peer review has become strained to breaking for all kinds of reasons, but I cannot fathom how taking a system that’s predicated on reasoned judgment and outsourcing it to a simulation is acceptable, and yet I am aware some people believe this is a solution to the peer-review bottleneck.
Another no-go in my book that is being pursued with some measure of enthusiasm by others is outsourcing grading and response to student writing to generative AI. I do not know how to ask students to write something that is not going to be read, because I think even the most enthusiastic AI folks will admit that large language models do not read or communicate with intention the way humans do. It’s simply a betrayal of the student-instructor compact.
I had another moment of pause while reading a recent New York Times feature on OpenAI’s push onto college campuses, featuring the California State University system’s partnership, which will make ChatGPT available to its 460,000 students in pursuit of “the nation’s first and largest A.I.-empowered university system.”
I’ll tell you what gave me pause. For the last, what … 18 months … we’ve been receiving testimonies from many faculty across many disciplines declaring that ChatGPT (and its cousins) are essentially injecting poison into the classroom dynamics around learning, and here is one of the largest university systems in the country saying, “Let’s make sure every student gets a nice healthy dose of the stuff.”
I can testify firsthand from the talks and faculty development workshops I’ve been giving around preserving the experience of writing to communicate and learn that this worry is very real. While the people I’ve been interacting with are engaged and adaptable, and many of them are actively exploring how generative AI could aid their students in their learning, I have yet to meet the person who thinks they have it all figured out.
While I try not to be judgmental about these things, I can’t help but read what’s being described in that Times story and think, “That’s nuts.” This is why I’m thankful for reporting like what appears in the Times, because it gives me a chance to better understand the mindset of people who see the world so differently from me.
While there are several examples of faculty who make use of generative AI tools in their courses and one example of a student who uses ChatGPT as a study aid, the primary voice in the article is Leah Belsky, OpenAI’s vice president of education.
Formerly at Coursera, an early company that promised and failed to revolutionize education, Belsky has as her charge to create “AI native universities.” How you feel about these initiatives may depend on how you reflexively respond to that phrase. My response is some mix of “ugh” and “yikes.”
One of the drier paragraphs in the entire article struck me as the most important thing we should be considering about these initiatives:
“OpenAI’s push to A.I.-ify college education amounts to a national experiment on millions of students. The use of these chatbots in schools is so new that their potential long-term educational benefits, and possible side effects, are not yet established.”
A national experiment on millions of students. I don’t know—to me, that sounds risky or reckless or heedless. I can’t quite decide which is the best descriptor.
Belsky says OpenAI is starting to look into these issues. At a conference late last year she remarked, “The challenge is, how do you actually identify what are the use cases for A.I. in the university that are most impactful? And then how do you replicate those best practices across the ecosystem?”
Good questions. Thank goodness we’re simultaneously experimenting on millions of students. This is a very good way to generate reliable data.
A large language model would have a hard time detecting the sarcasm in that previous sentence, but I hope it’s clear to my human readers.
For the privilege of making its 460,000 students available to OpenAI, the Cal State system is paying $17 million over 18 months. In the grand scheme of university budgets this does not sound like much, but for a perpetually strapped system like Cal State, every dollar counts. Martha Lincoln, an anthropology professor at San Francisco State reacting to the announcement, told a SiliconValley.com reporter, “This is so deeply distressing. It’s absolutely shocking. For a while we didn’t even have regular paper in our copier: It was all three-hole punch. We don’t have enough counselors on our campus. When students have mental health concerns, they’re waitlisted for weeks if not months.”
All this is happening against a backdrop of AI companies that have overtly declared their goal is to subsume the vast majority of economic activity to their technology. Economic activity means jobs, labor, and here is a system that is supposed to empower people heading into the workforce hastening their own obviation by partnering with the company that aims to subsume those jobs to their technology.
Personally, I think Altman is well over his skis with AI hype, but he isn’t shy about his intentions
Ohio State apparently looked at Cal State and said, “Hold my beer,” declaring that starting in the fall, using AI in class will be a requirement. Ravi V. Bellamkonda, executive vice president and provost, announced, “Through AI Fluency, Ohio State students will be ‘bilingual’—fluent in both their major field of study and the application of AI in that area.”
There are two important questions that go betting in this statement:
Is working with AI in a field of study equivalent to learning a new language? And,
If it is like a new language, what does fluency look like?
We don’t have answers to either of these questions. We don’t even know if they’re the right questions to ask because we don’t know if treating AI competency through the lens of fluency even makes sense!
Normally, I find the relatively slow pace of change in how higher ed institutions shift orientations frustrating, but in this case, it is the sudden lurch by some schools toward an AI-inevitable future that is baffling. It appears to be a by-product of swallowing AI hype whole. This is Ohio State president Ted Carter: “Artificial intelligence is transforming the way we live, work, teach and learn. In the not-so-distant future, every job, in every industry, is going to be impacted in some way by AI.”
Where is the evidence of this? For sure, we’ve seen signs of some impacts, particularly around entry-level jobs, but we also may be looking at a scenario where AI is, in the words of Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor (co-authors of AI Snake Oil) “normal technology,” where the diffusion of AI through industry and society is going to follow a similar timeline to other powerful general purpose technologies like electricity and the internet.
I am a strong believer that we must be AI-aware while carefully and purposefully experimenting with this technology, keeping student learning at the center of the equation. The overwhelming preponderance of evidence rooted in both present and past experience suggests that if (or when) generative AI has a demonstrative positive effect on student learning, this positive effect will be apparent and unambiguous. If (or when) this happens, access to the benefit will not be scarce and institutions can adjust accordingly.
This leap into a future that does not yet exist and that we have only a limited idea of what it might be like is beyond shortsighted and has the potential to unnecessarily harm students while also delaying the ultimate adjustments that will be necessary for higher ed institutions to survive.
Partnering with or funneling customers to companies that aim to obviate your existence and exploit your work to develop their applications while paying them for the privilege—I know I said I was trying to not be too judgmental—but, honestly, that’s nuts.
Our schools and universities are experiencing difficult circumstances. One particularly worrying challenge – which is happening at the intersection of both – is the decline in widening participation.
Recent research from the Education Policy Institute shows that widening participation in higher education in England has stalled.
Despite a constant focus from the sector on the issue, young people eligible for free school meals remain half as likely to participate in higher education as their wider peer group.
While various approaches exist nationwide, partnerships that directly connect university students with potential future applicants create unique opportunities for building social capital across communities.
Models like this don’t just address academic attainment gaps – they forge meaningful relationships between people who might otherwise never interact, enriching both sides through expanded social networks and shared experiences.
Our new agreement between the Tutor Trust and the University of Salford is a good example. The partnership enables Salford students to provide tutoring to local Year 6 pupils as they make the critical transition from primary to secondary school.
The University of Salford has a strong track record of working with young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to improve access to higher education. Our latest figures show that out of our nearly 27,000 current students, 50 per cent are first in family to attend university, and 49 per cent of students identify as minoritised ethnic.
Our new partnership represents one of several approaches universities are implementing to create authentic connections between their current students and young people in their communities.
Similar initiatives can be found across the higher education landscape. The University of Bristol’s Bristol Scholars programme connects current students as mentors with local schools, while Kings College London’s K+ programme creates long-term engagement between undergraduates and sixth form students from underrepresented backgrounds. What unites these initiatives is their focus on genuine, sustained human connection rather than simply institutional outreach.
We have identified five ways in which these student-centered partnerships can increase widening participation in higher education:
Closing the attainment gap
At the core of successful widening participation is improved academic attainment for young people from low-income households.
Currently at the end of Key Stage 2, the attainment gap in Salford between disadvantaged young people and their more privileged peers is 12 months, and this gap increases to 21.8 months by the end of Key Stage 4. In comparison, the attainment gap at the end of secondary school in London is 10.5 months.
There is extensive evidence that tutoring is one of the most effective interventions to accelerate academic progress. When delivered by university students, this intervention simultaneously addresses the immediate attainment gap while building aspirations through organic relationships.
Alleviating financial pressures
Effective student-led programs must be delivered at no cost to pupils and minimal cost to schools, ensuring no family has to choose between their child’s education and essential living costs.
These models also typically provide fair compensation to student tutors, with rates well above minimum wage. This dual benefit addresses financial barriers on both sides – removing cost as a barrier to access for school pupils while providing meaningful income for university students who may themselves come from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Providing authentic role models
When tutoring is delivered by university students, they naturally become relatable role models who help inspire their tutees to consider higher education as a realistic pathway.
Research shows that pupils with tutors from similar backgrounds demonstrate higher engagement and increased academic progress. This highlights how representation matters – for young people from low-income backgrounds to see university as a realistic option, they benefit tremendously from interacting with people from similar lived experiences who are already succeeding in higher education.
Integrating workplace skills into the student experience
To ensure universities attract and retain students from all backgrounds, higher education must demonstrably prepare students for future careers. Recent surveys found that 72 percent of students feel universities could do more to integrate workplace skills into the curriculum.
Student tutors develop invaluable real-world skills through their experiences in classroom settings, including communication, leadership, and adaptability. These experiences enhance their employability while allowing them to make meaningful contributions to their local communities.
Building cross-community social networks
Perhaps most important is how these partnerships build social capital across traditional divides. University students expand their understanding of diverse communities and challenges, while school pupils gain connections to networks they might otherwise never access.
This exchange creates ripple effects beyond individual participants. Family members, friends, and wider community connections all benefit from these expanded networks, gradually breaking down the invisible barriers that often separate university and non-university communities.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson recently wrote to all universities asking them to expand access and outcomes for disadvantaged students, aiming to remove structural barriers and improve inclusivity. Student partnership models of this sort directly respond to this call by addressing both immediate academic needs and deeper systemic barriers.
Developing strong, community-led partnerships that connect real students with real potential applicants has never been more important. These models don’t just increase university participation statistics – they weave new social fabrics across communities, building mutual understanding and respect. When university students work directly with younger students from their surrounding communities, both groups gain perspective, connection, and belonging.
The most powerful widening participation initiatives recognise that sustainable change requires more than institutional programs – it requires human relationships. When we invest in models that prioritise these connections, we create pathways to higher education that are supported not just by academic readiness, but by expanded social networks and authentic community bonds too.
It improves the life chances of young people, benefits our universities, strengthens local communities, and ultimately creates a more cohesive society.
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From 16-18 February 2025, a high-level delegation from the UK visited Egyptian universities: Ain Shams University, and European Universities in Egypt (EUE); with a planned visit to New Cairo Technological University, to explore possible collaborations between the two countries.
“Over the course of three enriching days, the education team in Egypt led a higher education mission that was launched in the New Administrative Capital, under the patronage of the Minister of Higher Education through the Supreme Council of Universities and the Egyptian Bureau for Cultural and Educational Affairs in London in collaboration with the British Council in Egypt, and the support of the British Embassy,” Heba ElZein, director of education at the British Council in Egypt told The PIE.
The delegation comprised representatives from prestigious UK universities, including Sheffield Hallam University, Loughborough University, the University of Essex, the University of East Anglia, the University of Exeter, and the University of Chester.
Universities UK International representatives were also in attendance, with Anouf El-Daher, policy officer for Africa and Middle East at UUKi, presenting at the British Embassy in Cairo and British Council Egypt, highlighting the value of international collaboration and the potential for long-term, mutually beneficial, EU-Egypt education relationships.
“Over three days, we visited higher education institutions across Egypt, gaining valuable insights into the local landscape and exploring opportunities for deeper collaboration. This mission allowed us to engage with key stakeholders, understand the evolving higher education landscape in Egypt, and witness the impact of UK-Egypt partnerships firsthand,” a LinkedIn post from UUKi read.
Over the course of three enriching days, the education team in Egypt led a higher education mission that was launched in the New Administrative Capital Heba ElZein, British Council
The mission offered numerous networking opportunities, as well as joint meetings for Egyptian universities wishing to cooperate and discuss opportunities with their British counterparts.
The delegation’s primary focus was to foster academic exchange, establish international university branch campus opportunities, and strengthen research collaborations. One of the most significant outcomes of the visit was the signing of multiple Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) between UK and Egyptian universities.
During that high-profile participation, three MoUs were signed between the University of Essex and Ain Shams University, the University of East Anglia and Ain Shams University, and the University of Sheffield Hallam and the British University in Egypt.
These agreements are expected to facilitate joint programs, faculty exchanges, and shared research initiatives in the coming years.
Students in Egypt show a strong interest in TNE as the UK-affiliated programs offer tuition fees from £800 to £13,500, depending on the partnership model. And due to economic and currency challenges, Egyptians are increasingly likely to opt to study in Egypt on a TNE model, as well as inbound students to the country, primarily from Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Nigeria, and Iraq.
Thus, with a population of around 111 million, and a youthful median age of 24.3, Egypt leads the MENA region in TNE enrolments with 27,865 students in 2022-2023, making it the 5th largest UK TNE host country globally.
Egypt has emerged as a leading host of UK transnational education students in the MENA region, and the UK remains Egypt’s largest partner in higher education.
This delegation’s visit is part of a broader initiative to further deepen these ties and provide Egyptian students with greater access to high-quality British education.
More Republican politicians are calling for colleges to end their partnerships with Chinese universities.
U.S. representatives John Moolenar and Tim Walberg wrote letters to the presidents of Eastern Michigan University, Oakland University and the University of Detroit Mercy demanding that they cancel their partnerships with institutions in China, expressing concerns that sensitive research could help the Chinese military advance its technological capabilities.
“The university’s [People’s Republic of China] collaborations jeopardize the integrity of U.S. research, risk the exploitation of sensitive technologies, and undermine taxpayer investments intended to strengthen America’s technological and defense capabilities,” Moolenar and Walberg wrote in all three letters. “You must immediately terminate these collaborations.”
Moolenar and Walberg’s letters come a few weeks after the University of Michigan ended a 20-year partnership with Shanghai Jiao Tong University. In September, Moolenar wrote a similar letter to Michigan president Santa Ono demanding an end to that collaboration after five Chinese international students were caught taking photos of training exercises at nearby Camp Grayling, where the state National Guard trains.
EMU has partnerships with Beibu Gulf University and Guangxi University; Oakland partners with Changchun University of Science and Technology, Zhengzhou University of Light Industry, and Beijing Information Science and Technology University; and Detroit Mercy offers dual-degree programs with Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Yancheng Institute of Technology and Anhui Polytechnic University.
February 10–16 is the Trades Union Congress ‘“HeartUnions” week, a week dedicated to celebrating the good work that trade unions do.
I love trade unions and higher education. Given that unions primarily receive media coverage when their members take industrial action, it’s easy to forget that, at their heart, they are solidarity movements, whose campaigns have driven social change.
Trade unions fought for and won a minimum wage, maternity and paternity rights, pension provision, and holiday and sickness entitlements. These victories have benefited every British person. Equally, those external to the sector may overlook the social impact higher education has due to the question of whether university still represents value for money for students.
The current picture
Higher education staff knowledge of how trade unions democratically work and the positive impact that a collective movement can have varies. Anti-union legislation over the past 50 years, such as the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act (1992) and the Trade Union Act (2016), has led to fewer people being members of trade unions or understanding their purpose, compared to previous generations.
My personal experience as a trade union representative has shown me that it has become increasingly important to explain what a trade union is to new staff entering careers in higher education, as there is a likelihood that they, or their parents, may not have been members of a union. Indeed, in 2021, only 14.1 per cent of trade union members in the UK were aged between 20 and 29 years. Furthermore, in a more interconnected and mobile world, assumptions about trade unions can be very different from stereotypes and experiences in other countries. Overall, there are a range of misconceptions about unions’ purpose and value.
Despite legislative challenges, trade unions in UK higher education have reasons to be optimistic. Some UCU branches have seen membership numbers grow and an increased level of member activism. A core reason for this appears to be that staff are increasingly viewing unions as part of the solution to overcoming problems faced in the sector. This seems to be driven by the successes branches are having locally, and by the number of universities currently undertaking or preparing to implement cuts.
Trade union branches and university management will never see eye to eye on every issue. Trade unions are there to protect their members, whereas university management is there to protect the organisation. As many reading this will know, differing objectives undoubtedly lead to disputes and industrial unrest. Withholding labour can sometimes be the best and/or only strategy unions have to win disputes. It should never be forgotten that many of the successes trade unions have had which we now often take for granted, such as the two day weekend, came through intense campaigning and struggle, including strike action.
I love trade unions and higher education, and see both for their flaws, including missed opportunities to collaborate. University management and trade unions often have shared purposes. Unfortunately, these are not always understood, limiting the impact trade union branches have.
New legislation
The Employment Rights Bill, which is currently going through Parliament, promises greater protection for workers, including repealing much of the Trade Union Act (2016). As written, it would significantly empower workers to act collectively, though it’s worth noting that parts of the bill are currently out to consultation and the legislation is not expected to receive Royal Assent until next year.
In essence, the bill encourages employers to work more closely with trade unions. It strengthens the rights of trade unions to access workplaces, simplifies trade union recognition processes, introduces new protections for trade union representatives (including equality representatives), and introduces a duty for employers to inform employees that they have a right to join a trade union.
Drilling down into the details of the bill as it stands, it can be seen how it will be easier for trade unions to successfully gain industrial action mandates. This makes it more vital than ever for university stakeholders, such as UCEA, as well as individual university management teams, to collaborate with trade union colleagues, enhancing how a diverse range of staff voices influence university decisions. This is important as staff working in various capacities across higher education may be well-placed to propose innovative ways of overcoming significant challenges faced by the sector.
Working in partnership
Trade unions and university leaders ultimately want the sector to be successful, with excellent teaching, research, and student support, as well as financial stability.
Personal experiences from working at various institutions have shown that trade unions are typically consultative mechanisms. While consultation must occur, in line with recognition agreements, in many cases it may have been more effective for trade union representatives to have worked in partnership with the university prior to reaching a consultative or approval stage. For example, policies relating to health and safety or sustainability.
A starting point to building any partnership is understanding how objectives align. Awareness of how trade union representative positions correlate with university structures and committees is a good way of identifying when objectives are shared. Trade union branches often have a range of different representatives who can actively contribute to committees and task-and-finish groups. Trade union health and safety representatives are very capable of assisting in evaluating workload, inspecting environments, drafting new policies, and many other tasks in partnership with the university.
Although partnership working between trade union branches and universities can be improved, there are good examples of it occurring in the sector. Universities such as Glasgow Caledonian have a “learning agreement” with their recognised trade unions. This agreement specifies how the trade unions will work in partnership on staff development activities.
Stories from Northampton
At the time of composing this article, the University of Northampton (UON) is completing a consultation process that has placed many staff at risk of redundancy.
Although the consultation process has been challenging for the UON UCU branch and the UON leadership team – as can be expected in these situations – UON UCU has continued to improve partnership working across the university, while simultaneously fighting hard to protect the jobs of all members at risk of redundancy.
The branch has been involved in interview selection processes, work relating to building an improved sense of staff belonging, and a new Race Equality Charter. The branch’s approach of being able to traverse between challenging management on some issues, while simultaneously working in partnership with them on others, has advanced the interests of our members and saved jobs.
It is also evident that UON UCU will come out of the consultation with enhanced credibility from UON management. Management has expressed willingness to work with recognised trade unions on issues such as workload stress risk assessments and its new learning development policy. It is also highly pleasing to note that membership and activism in the branch have increased. As part of HeartUnions week, activists are completing a live brief with fine art students. The students will be learning about trade unions while using skills developed in their programme to create a large UCU banner.
HeartUnions
If you like me love trade unions and higher education, and want them to be their best version going forward, now seems the perfect time to consider how we make their relationship work at every university.
Yes, like most relationships, there will be times when disagreement occurs. However, equally, there will be opportunities to work together, which will benefit the sector.
If this article or other activities that occurred as part of HeartUnions week have inspired you to join a trade union, a good starting point is to visit the TUC website. It’s worth checking out staff intranet pages too to learn what trade union agreements are in place at your university.
DANVERS, Mass. — It’s a rainy fall day in New England, but that doesn’t stop a group of students at Essex Tech North Shore Agricultural & Technical High School from donning work boots and hard hats and getting to work building a vegetable wash station on campus. This afternoon, they are installing wire mesh and prepping for a concrete pour under the watchful eye of Laborers’ Local 22 member Chris Moore, their teacher. “Hard hat hair don’t care,” reads the sticker on the hat worn by a young woman in the program.
The construction craft laborers track at Essex Tech, which Moore helps lead, is one of only a few high school-based programs in Massachusetts co-sponsored by a trade union. Students are initiated in union norms and expectations early on. Two Essex Tech teachers in the program are Local 22 members, with the New England Laborers’ Training Academy, which runs the laborers’ apprenticeship, paying Moore’s salary. As seniors, students can attend union meetings. And after graduation, many of them go straight into a union apprenticeship, fast tracked to a journeyman’s license. For all these reasons, Owen Paniagua, a 16-year-old junior, described the program as “a golden ticket to job security,” noting that he has learned everything from carpentry and concrete work to excavation and masonry.
“We feel as laborers that we should be in the schools,” said Lou Mandarini Jr., the retired business manager of Local 22 who now helps run the union’s school partnerships. “This is where your workforce is … If you treat young kids with respect, once they buy into your program, they are dead loyal.”
Students in the construction craft laborer program gather around Dave Collins, masonry head, before leaving to work on a project at Essex North Shore Agricultural & Technical High School in Danvers, Mass. Credit: Sophie Park for The Hechinger Report
In several states, including Massachusetts, Maryland and Louisiana, trade union leaders have forged similar, groundbreaking partnerships with high school CTE programs in recent years, ponying up their own resources for the efforts. There’s also been an uptick in training alliances between trade unions and community colleges. In a 2023 brief, AFL-CIO leadership encouraged these partnerships. “No one knows better how to do a job than someone who does the job,” the brief stated.
Whether more unions decide to embrace this advice likely will play a large role in determining the long-term health and vibrancy of both career and technical high schools, and the trades themselves.
Yet progress has been piecemeal and halting. And it’s too early to tell whether isolated partnerships across the country will translate into widespread change, said Taylor White, the director of postsecondary pathways for youth at the Center on Education and Labor at the think tank New America. “Schools and unions speak very different languages,” she noted. The same, she added, is true of employers and schools.
The longstanding dearth of partnerships says a lot about the history of America’s trade unions, which traditionally have operated as insular, sometimes parochial institutions, preferring to maintain tight control over their membership pipeline, and their training. In some communities, such as Milwaukee, that insularity kept unions predominantly white and male for generations. “Historically a lot of the high-paying skilled trades were handed down from father to son,” said Lauren Baker, a former education director in the printers’ union who also led Milwaukee Public Schools’ career and technical education program between 2002 and 2012. “That kept the trades looking a certain way.”
Mandarini, the retired union leader, said that in the past, “old timers didn’t help the young people.” But increasingly, he said, he hopes that mentality will become an anomaly.
Owen Paniagua, 16, and Isabella Gonzalez, 17, both juniors in the Construction Craft Laborer program at Essex North Shore Agricultural & Technical High School, pose for a portrait at Essex Tech in Danvers, Mass. The Essex Tech program’s partnership with the laborers’ union helps to foster job prospects for graduating students. Credit: Sophie Park for The Hechinger Report
For decades, many vocational school students have been held back by a lack of meaningful partnerships with both unions and employers at their schools, often leaving them without relevant training or clear pathways into jobs. “There’s skepticism from unions and employers that high school kids are ready for real training and real work,” said White, of New America.
There’s also been a longstanding desire on the part of many unions to maintain tight control over who can access often coveted apprentice slots.
Until recent years, most trade union apprenticeships in the Milwaukee area had admissions criteria that shut out many women, low-income, and Black and Hispanic city residents. “They were such closed communities, and it was a long process of breaking down some of those walls,” Baker said.
Back in the mid-1990s, Baker was the first woman to run a printing apprenticeship program for the union. In part to open up the field to as diverse a pool as possible, Baker abolished a requirement that apprentices had to be high school graduates. “Pretty much all a high school diploma told me was that they sat in a chair for four years,” she said, pointing out that many of the apprentices came from the academic bottom of their graduation classes. “I caught holy hell from the apprenticeship community for doing that,” she said.
While the SATs and other college entrance exams have at times been accused of being biased toward privileged white students, Baker said some of the apprenticeship admissions exams were challenging for anyone who hadn’t grown up in the home of someone already working in a specific trade. A question might presume that an applicant had experience helping fix their family’s car, for instance, something that young men were far more likely to have done — and those growing up in urban areas, where fewer households own cars, were far less likely to have done.
For decades, those tests contributed to keeping the construction trade unions, in particular, predominantly white and male. Only two of 16 Milwaukee area construction unions enrolled at least 20 percent Black apprentices in 2007, according to a report from researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Two of the unions, glazing and tile setters, had no Black apprentices in a city where, at that time, nearly 40 percent of the residents were Black.
Much of that bias and insularity continues in some Boston-area construction trade unions, said Travis Watson, who serves as a commissioner of the Boston Employment Commission and has critiqued some of the unions for their lack of racial diversity, citing specific practices that make it harder for prospective Black members to get a foothold. “If you look at every big downtown project in Boston, there are very few Black people who are working on union construction projects,” he said.
Some of the local unions have made changes to their admissions process to become more accessible to applicants from diverse backgrounds, said Danyson Tavares, who worked for several years in leadership positions at YouthBuild Boston, a pre-apprenticeship program that helps prepare young people of color in the city for jobs in the construction and design industries. But other unions might take applications only once a year or remain secretive about their standards and curriculum. “The electrical union is the one we really want to have more relationships with, there’s such a demand for that workforce,” Tavares said. “We’ve slowly started to penetrate but it’s a lot more work than I expected.”
One 25-year-old who recently finished his pre-apprenticeship in carpentry at YouthBuild said he got an interview with the union but was turned down for an apprenticeship for reasons that he said weren’t entirely clear. “I kind of felt like I wouldn’t get in,” said Keyshawn Kavanaugh. He found a non-union job easily at a company that he likes a lot, but he acknowledges that “the union is the best place to work,” at least from the standpoint of benefits and pension.
In Milwaukee, Baker said she’s seen some positive changes since she ran the printers apprenticeship, with more local unions developing inclusive and transparent admissions. “The trades themselves began to realize that they needed to look beyond their natural base in order to fill jobs,” she said. “It became more apparent that there is a vast opportunity out there with women and people of color.”
The idea that Massachusetts laborers should invest time and money in local schools originated over 20 years ago, when Mandarini and other Local 22 leaders decided they were neglecting a potential asset: kids. Mandarini proposed a pilot partnership to the vocational school in Medford, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston, which started in 2002. It wasn’t easy at first. “How do you adapt to a public school?” he said. “There was a lot of learning that we had to do on both ends.”
The union had to fight against a perception that a four-year college degree was the only path to a stable, rewarding career, Mandarini said. It helped with recruiting to explain to prospective students that, at that time, union laborers could expect to retire with an annuity of about $1.2 million, he added. (In Massachusetts, laborers typically earn between $90,000 and $100,000 annually, and that annuity is now more than $2 million, Mandarini said.)
A school bus sits in a parking lot at Essex North Shore Agricultural & Technical High School in Danvers, Mass. Credit: Sophie Park for The Hechinger Report
Over the years, the partnership model has spread to eight career and technical schools in Massachusetts. At some, the union pays a teacher’s salary, and at others it does not, Mandarini said. “We want to be in every vocational school in Massachusetts,” he said, “and hopefully every vocational school in New England. That’s where our workforce is coming from.”
In rural western Louisiana, it was a private company that encouraged a local trade union to partner with public high schools. The company, CapturePoint, which sells carbon storage services, reached out in March 2023 to the local branch of the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry, asking if the union would help build out a new career and technical track at the Vernon Parish School District.
To make it happen, the company paid for the electricity, classroom equipment and furniture to help turn an old woodworking shop at one of the district’s high schools into an updated welding shop. CapturePoint also took on several ongoing costs, paying for student transportation — the students can come from nine different high schools — and some administrative expenses. The union paid for some reconstruction and all the tools, and provided an instructor. The school offers the space and enrolls 30 students, who can skip their first year of apprenticeship if they join the union after graduating, thereby starting at a higher pay rate. “All of us have skin in the game,” said Lance Albin, who led the partnership for the union.
At high schools with trade union partnerships, there’s no shortage of interested students. Isabella Gonzalez, 17, creator of the “hard hat hair don’t care” sticker, said she hopes to move straight into an apprenticeship with Local 22 when she graduates in a year and a half. Aspiring laborers learn more diverse skills than students in related tracks like plumbing and electrical, she said, opening up the possibility of a greater variety of work.
That day last fall, juniors in the program practiced using a compactor to prep the ground for installation of a patio floor, part of the final stages in rebuilding a large cottage on campus. The construction students have been involved in the project since they poured the cement for the foundation in the summer of 2020, wearing masks during the pandemic’s early days, even outdoors.
By afternoon, the students had transitioned to another work in progress: the vegetable wash station by the greenhouse, where they needed to install enough wire mesh and rebar to do the concrete pour early the next week. “Put your hard hat on and help out,” their teacher Moore reminded a group of students holding back as the rain hardened. “No … statues here.”
Students in the Construction Craft Laborers program at Essex North Shore Agricultural & Technical High School lay mesh while working on a greenhouse washing station at Essex Tech in Danvers, Mass. Credit: Sophie Park for The Hechinger Report
Students say the partnership with Local 22 provides them increased career security and the confidence that they are learning relevant, up-to-date skills: Moore until recently worked part time in the field, including on Boston’s project to restore the tunnel to the city’s Logan Airport.
Paniagua, the 16-year-old student in the program, said he can command a higher pay rate than most of his peers at a part-time carpentry and landscaping job because of the expertise he has gained in the Essex Tech program. He’s used the extra money to buy two new trucks. The union partnership has also allowed him to make more thoughtful, informed choices about career steps, he added. Leaning on his teachers as mentors, Paniagua said he decided to continue studying at a specialized welding school in Wyoming after graduation to maximize his future earning potential. “We know what we want to do here and get on it,” Paniagua said, noting that it’s a stark contrast to some of his friends who are conflicted about the value of a four-year college degree. “We’re not lost,” he said, “or wasting money.”
Former President Joe Biden was exceptionally supportive of the labor movement, and specifically of partnerships between unions and schools. Some labor experts expect some of that support might continue in the new Trump administration. “We’re seeing indications of a Trump administration that might not be as hostile to unions as you might think,” said Shalin Jyotishi, founder and managing director of the Future of Work and Innovation Economy Initiative at New America. He cited Trump nominee Lori Chavez-DeRemer, opposed by many in the business community, for Labor secretary, and the president’s support of the longshoremen’s union over their anti-automation stance.
In any event, “these bottoms-up innovations are already happening locally,” Jyotishi said. “Federal decisions can help or hurt … odds of success, but the proof-of-concept is already out of the bag.”
A bigger question mark may be whether there is the will to expand capacity significantly on the ground. Some of the existing programs have not yet reached students in the most underserved communities who could potentially benefit most from a fast track into a union apprenticeship.
In Massachusetts, for instance, many of the high schools the laborers work with have become increasingly selective in admissions. Students from low-income homes were 30 percent less likely to be accepted at the state’s vocational schools in 2023 and 2024 than those from wealthier households, according to an analysis by the Boston Globe. Similar disparities existed for students receiving special education services and English learners.
The laborers have yet to expand their partnership model to Boston’s Madison Park Technical Vocational High School, where nearly all of the students are Black or Hispanic, about 85 percent come from low-income households, and 92 percent are identified as “high needs” — an umbrella term in Massachusetts that includes students with disabilities, English learners and low-income students, among other groups.
Madison Park, part of the city’s public school district, has some partnerships and many strong programs and instructors, said Bobby Jenkins, an alum and long-time advocate of the school. But the chronic turnover of both superintendents and school leaders in recent years has hindered progress in undertaking some more ambitious partnerships.
Isabella Gonzalez, 17, a junior in the Construction Craft Laborers program at Essex North Shore Agricultural & Technical High School, compacts gravel at the Larkin Cottage, a project site at Essex Tech in Danvers, Mass. Credit: Sophie Park for The Hechinger Report
Mandarini agreed that political and bureaucratic obstacles have made it more challenging to partner with Madison Park. But the union has made it a priority and is in promising talks with city officials about partnering with the school when a proposed new facility might be completed.
“When I was part of the building trades, I used to say, ‘I don’t understand why you aren’t taking more kids, especially in the city of Boston,’” Mandarini said. “Every single trade should be in (Madison Park).’”
For now, that attitude has not spread to all union leaders. It will take a cultural shift from trade union groups to expand their school partnerships beyond scattered, boutique programs. Among other things, they will need to prioritize flexibility and the learning and growth of young people more than they are accustomed to, said White, of New America.
She noted that many union leaders seem aware that they have a pipeline and recruitment issue but remain unsure what to do about it. More school-based partnerships could help not only with that challenge but also with reenergizing and selling unions to future generations of workers — and voters, White added. “All of the polling suggests that young people are pretty pro-union,” she said. “There’s a missed opportunity on the part of unions if they don’t capitalize on that.”
Reporting on this story was supported by the Higher Ed Media Fellowship, where Carr was a fellow in 2024. This year, Carr has a fellowship from New America to report on early childhood issues.
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The United Kingdom faces a critical shortage of medical professionals, a problem exacerbated by the limited availability of medical school places.
Each year, thousands of aspiring doctors compete for a finite number of spots, leaving many qualified candidates unable to pursue their dreams of contributing to the healthcare system. This bottleneck not only cuts down individual potential but also intensifies the workforce gap in the UK National Health Service (NHS).
However, there is hope, as innovative solutions are already being tried out. Additionally, new ideas, like partnerships with reputable European universities, present a unique opportunity to address these challenges while opening new pathways for aspiring medical students.
The Problem: Limited Medical Education Opportunities in the UK
UK medical schools are oversubscribed, with only a fraction of applicants securing a place each year. For instance, in 2023, only around 7,000 places were available for about 27,000 applicants, leaving thousands of capable students unable to pursue medical education domestically. Those potential students can afford medical school, but there are no seats available for them in the UK.
This situation places immense pressure on the healthcare system, which is already grappling with severe understaffing and increased demand. Published data suggests there were 125,572 vacancies (9%) in the NHS between March and June 2023. The broader economy also suffers, as estimates suggest poor health outcomes cost the UK between £30.7 billion to £138 billion annually, depending on the research cited.
Meanwhile, the demand for medical education continues to rise, with applications increasing by nearly 30% over the last decade. However, this increase remains insufficient to meet demand, even though the workforce has grown by 18% between 2018 and 2022, largely driven by international medical graduates (IMGs)
Even with the planned expansion of UK medical school places, which is already underway, the demand for healthcare professionals is projected to far surpass supply in the foreseeable future.
The Obvious Long-Term Solution: Expanding UK Medical Schools
The most logical long-term solution is to expand the UK’s medical school capacity. This initiative is already underway in various forms, including the addition of new medical school seats and pilot programmes like doctor-degree apprenticeships. However, scaling up these efforts requires significant time, planning, and financial investment, which comes with uncertainty.
In the meantime, the NHS faces mounting pressures. Currently, over 25,000 doctors registered with the GMC are aged 60 or older and nearing retirement. Without urgent action to fill this gap, the healthcare system will continue to struggle to meet demand.
While long-term plans are vital, they cannot meet the immediate need for doctors. This is where short-term solutions, such as leveraging partnerships with European universities, can play a critical role.
A Policy Proposal: Partnering with European Universities as a Short-Term Solution
To address the urgent need for more doctors, the UK government can explore strategic partnerships with European medical schools. Such partnerships could alleviate the strain on the domestic system while ensuring students receive high-quality, GMC-approved training abroad.
Key components of the proposal:
1. Hand-picked, Accredited Medical Schools
Partnering with select European universities ensures that students receive an education that meets UK standards. These partnerships would focus on medical schools that offer training recognised by the General Medical Council (GMC), guaranteeing seamless integration into the NHS upon graduation.
But would this approach cost more? Not necessarily. Tuition for UK medical students is currently capped at £9,250 per year, while many European medical schools charge between €3,000 and €18,000 annually. Factoring in lower living costs across much of Europe, studying abroad could be an affordable alternative for many students.
Even if the UK government were to subsidise part of the cost (an entirely political decision), the potential savings from addressing workforce shortages and improving public health could far outweigh the expense. With healthcare-related economic losses estimated to be at least £30 billion annually, the return on investment is compelling.
2. A National Branding Campaign for Medical Education Abroad
To overcome stigma, the government could launch a branding campaign to highlight the benefits of studying medicine abroad and emphasise the value of returning to serve in the NHS after graduation. Such a campaign would promote healthcare careers and position international education as a prestigious and viable path for aspiring doctors.
3. Financial Accessibility for Students
To ensure equitable access, the government could negotiate tuition discounts at partner universities or provide scholarships for a small number of students. This would not only serve as a great motivator but also open opportunities for lower-income students and diversify the future medical workforce.
Medlink Students is currently taking advantage of this approach by partnering with select universities in the Caribbean to give a broader range of students access to high-quality medical education.
Expanding this concept to European institutions could create a broader pool of skilled graduates ready to serve the NHS. This method can also secure a steady influx of motivated students to the partnered medical schools, improving their standings and boosting the local economy.
4. Return-to-Service Agreements
To ensure the investment benefits the NHS, students could sign contractual agreements committing to work within the UK healthcare system for a specified period after completing their training. Similar approaches have already been successfully employed in other countries that offer scholarships tied to public service commitments.
While some may argue that students could break these agreements, existing data suggests otherwise. In 2022, 52% of new doctorsjoining the GMC register were IMGs, showing the strong appeal of the NHS as a workplace. UK students with familial and social ties at home are even more likely to return.
Not coming back to the UK to practise would be an extreme exception, not the norm.
Learning from International Examples
Many countries have implemented programmes to address medical workforce shortages by partnering with international institutions. For instance:
Saudi Arabia: Saudi Arabia encourages students to study abroad with scholarships but requires them to return for mandatory public service. The UK could adopt a similar return-to-service model, ensuring overseas-trained doctors contribute directly to the NHS workforce.
Malaysia: Malaysia sponsors students to study in selected universities abroad under agreements prioritising national healthcare staffing. The UK could use this approach to target shortages in high-demand regions or specialities.
Singapore: Singapore integrates scholarships, branding campaigns, and competitive salaries to attract and retain healthcare talent. This comprehensive strategy demonstrates how financial incentives and targeted marketing can strengthen the healthcare pipeline.
These examples demonstrate how well-designed policies can address workforce gaps while maintaining financial and political feasibility.
What’s in it for European Universities?
European universities do not face the same capacity constraints as the UK, and many universities actively seek to attract international students.
Countries like Bulgaria, Georgia, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and others have long-established medical programmes that cater specifically to international students. These programmes provide high-quality, accredited, and internationally recognised medical education in English.
These programmes typically run parallel with domestic ones, meaning that an influx of UK students would not displace local applicants but would instead guarantee a steady intake of motivated international students. In fact, many universities are actively expanding their capacity to accommodate more international enrolment to increase revenue and demonstrate their ability to adapt to evolving needs and external pressures.
This makes partnerships feasible without creating strain on current educational systems. On the contrary, partnering with the UK presents substantial benefits for European medical schools, including:
Financial Stability: European universities could benefit from a steady stream of tuition income, particularly if the UK government negotiates direct subsidies or covers part of the costs through scholarships. This model has proven effective for institutions hosting scholarship-funded students from Saudi Arabia and Malaysia.
Reputational Gains: Collaboration with the UK and GMC recognition could enhance the standing of partner universities globally, attracting further international students.
Economic Impact: Hosting UK students would bring economic benefits to local communities, creating demand for housing, goods, and services.
Additionally, with the support of specialiсed agencies to assist students in managing their documents and application processes, the influx of students can be efficiently handled. Consequently, implementing partnerships with European medical schools is not only a matter of negotiation but also a viable and realistic political decision for the UK.
Conclusion
By initiating partnerships with European universities, the UK government can expand opportunities for aspiring medical students, reduce NHS workforce shortages, and make the dream of becoming a doctor more accessible to all. This potential policy would not only bridge the current gap but also create a more resilient and inclusive healthcare system for the future.
While expanding domestic medical school capacity remains essential, international collaboration offers an immediate, cost-effective solution to bridge the gap. By combining political will, financial support, and a focus on equitable access, the UK can turn its healthcare challenges into opportunities for growth and innovation.
