Going to university was always my dream. I knew from a young age it was the only way to make a better life for myself. Despite growing up in foster care, I was determined to work hard to achieve that dream.
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UKRI has a massive job.
As the National Audit Office’s (NAO) new report sets out in 2023–24 UKRI assessed close to 29,000 grant funding applications and spent £6bn on innovation grants. It featured in 105 policy papers across 13 ministerial departments in the last three years alone, and it has been seven years since the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) formally set out UKRI’s role and objectives.
The scale of UKRI’s work is so massive that according to its own estimates
[…] were it to receive a 2% budget increase each year for the following three financial years, its existing legal, statutory and political commitments would take up around 98% of its budget in 2025-26, 84% in 2026–27, and 74% in 2027–28. When also including investments that it considers critical, such as continuing to fund similar numbers of new doctoral students and similar levels of new curiosity-driven research, this would then take up around 103%, 101%, and 99% of its future budget, respectively, in those years
The obvious question here is if UKRI has so much to do, if it is then compelled to do even more, how can it possibly change as government introduces new priorities. Whether it is moonshots, levelling up, supporting the industrial strategy, fuelling government missions, working with devolved authorities, or whatever comes next, UKRI’s funding is so committed it has little bandwidth to put its massive resources behind emerging government strategies.
However, this assumes that UKRI has a clear idea of what it’s supposed to do in the first place.
Roughly, UKRI has a corporate strategy which then informs its funding calls which institutions then bid for and through post award work UKRI then assures that the thing it set out to do is being done in some way. The NAO found that how government communicates its priorities to UKRI is a bewildering mix of things:
ad hoc and routine meetings; board meetings; formal letters; key UK government strategies and mission statements; and spending review budgets. These are not consolidated or ranked, meaning that the government does not currently have an overall picture of what it is asking UKRI to do.
It is therefore not surprising that in UKRI’s own strategy none of its formal objectives are “specific, measurable or time-bound, making it difficult to understand what outcome UKRI is seeking to achieve.”
To the outside observer it would seem odd that UKRI doesn’t have a single ministerial letter with a single set of priorities which it can then pursue at the expense of everything else. Instead, in reading the NAO report it seems that UKRI has become the everything box where the entire hopes of a government are pinned, whether UKRI has the resources to achieve them or not.
It’s easy to see how the research funding ecosystem becomes so complex. UKRI is an important part but it sits alongside the likes of ARIA, charitable organisations, national institutes, venture capital, businesses, and others. The bluntest assessment is that if the government is unable to specify a single set of aims for UKRI, UKRI then cannot measure outcomes as clearly as it would like – and even if it could there is little spare budget to pivot its work. The report makes clear that there is ongoing “prioritisation” to address this confusion – but this work will not conclude until after the spending review, by which point key decisions will already have been made.
It’s not that UKRI is failing – by any reasonable assessment it is powering a world-leading research ecosystem, even with some deep cultural challenges – it’s that as NAO point out it is given a lot to do without all the tools to do it, and even when it can measure its work government priorities are liable to change anyway. The one thing that good research and innovation policy needs is time. The one thing every government has is little time to get anything done.
It is even harder to assess whether its measurable things are good value on their own terms. NAO is interested in ensuring the public gets value for money in the things it funds. One of the challenges in assessing whether what UKRI does is good value for money is that outcomes from research and innovation funding are diffuse, happen on a long-time scale, and may even fail but in doing so moves the research ecosystem toward something that works in some hard to measure and adjacent way.
Although not directly captured within the NAO report, assessing value for money within research and innovation also depends on which level it is assessed. For example, there may be investments in breakthrough science which return little direct economic benefits but expand the knowledge of a field in a way they one day might. There may be investments that achieve immediate economic benefits but have few long term economic benefits as new technologies become available.
It is clear that UKRI would benefit from fewer directions and fewer priorities which would allow it to use its resources more efficiently and in turn measure its impact more easily. The problem is that government policy overtakes bureaucratic needs which in turn encourages policy churn.
In lieu of being able to change the nature of politics part of the solution must lie in changing how UKRI works. The organisation is aware of this, and realises it needs a capacity which goes beyond adjusting the direction of its existing activities – rather, one that “incentivises applicants to put forward ideas that align with government objectives which can be quicker and more efficient than setting up new programmes.”
The fundamental problem for policy makers is that they have collectively turned to UKRI with an enormous list of asks without the resources to achieve them. UKRI either needs clearer direction or more resources, or both, what it does not need is more asks without clear priorities.
One of the most consistent problems in higher education, one that bedevils systems around the globe, is that of cost containment. Costs in higher education grow inexorably, both due to the Baumol effect, that is, services in labor intensive industries like education tend to have costs that grow faster than inflation. And the Bowen Effect, which states that because quality and education is unmeasurable and expenditures are often mistaken for quality, there’s a permanent ratchet effect on university costs limited only by the amount of resources a university can amass. Education’s expensive and getting ever more so.
But what if I told you there was a university out there that had the cost problem licked? It’s a university based in the United States and accredited by the very respected Western Association of Schools and Colleges. It delivers education the world over with 150,000 students in more than 200 countries and territories. And it educates all these students tuition free, for a grand total of about $150 US per year per student. Sound miraculous? Well, it is in a way, and it’s not easily replicable, but it is real and it’s worth learning from. It’s called the University of the People, an online institution founded in 2009 and based in California.
Today, my guest is the University of the People’s Founder and President Shai Reshef. He’s received global recognition for his work at University of the People. He’s an Ashoka fellow. He’s one of Fast Company’s Most Creative in Business, named the Top Global Thinker by Foreign Policy Magazine, and most impressively, he was winner of the 2023 Yidan Prize for Educational Development, which is probably the highest form of global recognition in the field of education.
In our chat today, Shai and I cover the basic economics of running a mega online university. We answer the questions: how do you serve students across 20 plus time zones? How does a university without government support stay tuition free? And most importantly, how — even if most of your staff are volunteer — are you able to manage things like academic governance and quality assurance on a shoestring?
And as I said, not everything Shai is going to tell us today is going to be transferrable to other institutions, but his message should have at least some resonance and the University of the People’s experiences can lead to change elsewhere.
But enough for me. Let’s listen to Shai.
The World of Higher Education Podcast
Episode 3.29 | Lean, Global, and Tuition-Free: The University of the People Model
Alex Usher (AU): Shai, let’s start with the basics. For listeners who might not be familiar—what is the University of the People? Who does it serve? And how does that make it different from a traditional university?
Shai Reshef (SR): The University of the People is the first nonprofit, tuition-free, accredited American online university. Our mission is to open the gates of higher education to anyone in the world who is qualified but has no other way to access it—either because it’s too expensive, like in the U.S., or because they live in countries where there aren’t enough universities. Africa would be a great example.
We also serve people who are deprived of access for political or cultural reasons—refugees, women in Afghanistan, or anyone else who, for personal reasons, can’t attend a traditional university. We use the internet to bring higher education to them.
AU: How big is the institution? How many students do you have? Where are they from? And what’s the breadth of programming that you offer?
SR: We started in 2009. As of now, we have 153,000 students from 209 countries—so, pretty much from almost every country in the world.
Our students are typically people who did go to high school but didn’t attend university afterward. Many of them started working and later realized they needed a degree to advance their careers. Our student body tends to be older; they’re not your typical 18-year-olds. They come to us because they want a better future.
That’s why we only offer degrees that are likely to help them find jobs. At the undergraduate level, we offer degrees in business administration, computer science, and health science. At the graduate level, we offer programs in education, information technology, and business—specifically, the MBA.
AU: That’s huge. This must cost an awful lot of money. You’re not a public university in the sense of being government funded, and you’re not charging tuition. So how does it work? What does it cost, and how do you make ends meet?
SR: Well, first of all, we are nonprofit. So, we’re not making money—maybe a small surplus, but not profit. And we are tuition-free. That means students can study for free, but when they get to the exams, we ask them to pay $140 USD per exam.
Now, for some students—especially those from developing countries—even that amount is too much. So we provide scholarships where we can. About half of our students pay the exam fees, and the other half receive scholarships.
We’re able to stay sustainable and tuition-free because we run a very lean operation. We rely heavily on technology. We offer only a few degree programs, all of which are directly relevant to the job market. We also operate in many parts of the world where we can deliver quality education at lower costs.
We don’t have buildings—since we’re fully online—and importantly, we lean heavily on volunteers. I’m a volunteer. The deans are volunteers. Our professors and faculty are volunteers too. In fact, we have over 40,000 volunteers supporting the university.
AU: But surely $140 per exam on its own isn’t enough to run the institution, right? You must have other sources of income, I imagine?
SR: Our budget—running a university with 153,000 students—is about $20 million USD. Two-thirds of that comes from student fees. The remaining one-third comes from donations. These include contributions from wealthy individuals and foundations such as the Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Ulet Foundation. We also receive some government support—for example, from the German government.
So, about $7 million comes from donations, and $13–14 million comes from student fees. But again, we operate on just a fraction of the budget that any other university of our size would require.
AU: I’m just looking at the numbers—$20 million to teach 150,000 students. That’s about $120 or $130 per student. That’s very, very low. And one of the ways you manage that, I understand, is through your use of volunteers. How do you get people to teach for free?
SR: It’s a good question. In my previous life, before I started the University of the People, I launched and ran the first online university in Europe. So I had a good understanding of how an online university should operate.
When I decided to start the University of the People and make it tuition-free, the main difference—among several—was to rely on volunteers rather than paid faculty and staff. At the time, I wasn’t sure how well that would work.
I announced the university in January 2009 at a conference in Munich. The next day, The New York Times ran a full-page article about it. And the day after that, I already had hundreds of professors writing to me saying, “We love this idea. We want to help.”
So people come to us. I’m not out there recruiting them—they come because I’m not the only one who believes higher education should be a basic right, and that money shouldn’t be a barrier. I came with the idea of tuition-free higher education, and a lot of people believe in that mission. They want to be part of it and help.
AU: What kind of support services are you able to offer students? I mean, student services, academic support—how can you do that within a tuition-free model? Are there still some things you’re able to provide?
SR: Oh, we’re able to do a lot. First of all, all of our courses are written in advance by subject matter experts. They go through a peer review process, just like any other academic program. Once finalized, they’re taught in our online classes.
When students sign up, they’re placed in a class of 20 to 30 students—each time with peers from 20 to 30 different countries. Every course runs for eight weeks. On the first day of the week, students receive their lecture notes, reading assignments, homework, and discussion question.
The core of our pedagogy is peer discussion—students engage in week-long discussions around the topic of the week. Every class has a professor who reads and moderates the discussion daily.
Each student also has a program advisor who follows them from the moment they enroll until they graduate. So there is a lot of support. If a student stops showing up to class, they’ll typically get an email asking where they are.
Even though our professors are volunteers, they commit 10 to 15 hours per week, per course, to support students with everything they need. So it’s a full-service university.
The difference between us and a traditional university is that we don’t offer the “nice-to-haves.” We don’t have a football team, a gym, or psychological services—which are important, but we simply can’t afford them. But everything core to the academic experience is there—and delivered with high quality.
AU: Shai, I want to ask—one of the things you must have to navigate when you’ve got students from all over the world and you’re operating in so many jurisdictions is accreditation. That seems like something that’s very bureaucratic and time-consuming. So how do you handle that? Do you do any jurisdiction shopping? Where are your degrees accredited, and is that part of the reason people pursue them?
SR: Originally, in 2014, we were accredited by DEAC, which is a national accreditation agency in the U.S. And just a couple of weeks ago, we were accredited by WASC—the Western Association of Schools and Colleges—which is one of the six regional accrediting bodies in the U.S.
That puts us in the same group as Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA. Some might argue they need to work a little harder to meet our standards—but in any case, we’re now in the same accreditation category.
Now, even though our students come from around the world, many of them admire American education. That’s a big part of why they choose us. In a few countries, we’re not locally recognized because we’re fully online. But still, thousands of students study with us because they value the American degree, and because local employers recognize and appreciate the quality of our education.
Was it easy to get accredited? No, it was hard. It took a lot of work. We had to prove that what we offer is equivalent, in terms of outcomes, to what traditional universities offer. That includes how we admit students, how we support them, and how we assess their learning outcomes.
In the end, we did everything required to meet those expectations—and we succeeded. That’s why we were granted accreditation.
AU: It just occurred to me, as I was thinking about this, that maybe this is your secret sauce. These are the kinds of things that cost millions of dollars at many universities. And if you’re able to do it without complex quality assurance structures, academic senates, registrar’s offices, and all those kinds of things—if you’re able to do it with the leanest version of those—isn’t that something other institutions could learn from?
SR: Yes, they can learn. But do they want to learn? That’s a different question.
One of the challenges we pose to other universities is this: when you’re charging $30,000 to $50,000 a year, and then here comes a university charging just $1,400 a year—if students pay in full and study full time—that’s a huge contrast. And when traditional institutions see that, they often just turn around and say, “No way,” because they don’t believe it’s real.
The truth is, our advantage comes from the fact that we built a new institution from scratch. That allowed us to decide what to do—and what not to do.
Let me give you an example. At a university our size, the admissions office alone might have thousands of people reading student résumés, essays, checking social media, verifying every detail—thoroughly evaluating each application.
We do it differently. We say: if you have a high school diploma, come and take two courses. If you pass, you’ve shown us you meet our standards. You get credit for those courses and become a degree-seeking student. If you can’t pass, you can’t continue.
Now, not only is that a better system in my view—because it tests students based on how they actually perform, not how well someone coached them on an application—but it also saves a ton of money. We don’t need a large admissions operation. Just come in and prove yourself.
It’s a different way of operating—and a much more efficient one. And I think that’s our real secret. It’s not really a secret—but it works.
AU: You’ve scaled up incredibly quickly—15 years to reach 150,000 students, and to be embedded in, I guess, just about every country in the world. What were the biggest hurdles in that scaling process? Were there moments where you stumbled and thought, “Wow, I’m not sure we can grow this quickly?” Or was it pretty smooth?
SR: Well, if you ask me, I’d actually answer a different question: Why aren’t we even bigger than we are?
Because the truth is, we’re online—there are no physical seat limits. Nobody has to stand at the back of the lecture hall. So, in theory, we could double our student body. Why haven’t we?
The main challenge is that most people in the world haven’t heard of us. Even when I travel and someone asks what I do, and I say, “University of the People,” I’m surprised if they’ve heard of it. Most people haven’t—and especially not the ones who need us most, like refugees or people in remote or underserved regions.
The second challenge is that even when people do find us, we don’t have enough resources to support everyone. For example, we have 4,300 Afghan women currently hiding and studying with us inside Afghanistan—but we received 20,000 applications from there. So yes, it’s incredible that we can serve over 4,000 women, but we simply can’t accommodate all who apply.
To go back to your original question about the difficulties we’ve encountered—yes, there are some. For instance, there are countries that still don’t recognize online education. In those places, we’re just waiting for governments to become more open to 21st-century technologies and new models of learning.
So that’s been one of our biggest challenges: growing awareness and overcoming regulatory barriers.
AU: In lots of traditional universities, success is measured through things like research output, income, or rankings. How do you measure success at the University of the People?
SR: Well, the first thing we look at is how many people we’ve given the opportunity to pursue higher education—people who had no other alternatives. That’s a key measure for us.
I was once interviewed by a student journalist from an Ivy League school, and he said, “You’re setting up competition for my institution.” And I told him, “Anyone who wants to go to your institution should absolutely do so. But we’re here for those who don’t have that option.”
So one measure of our success is how many doors we open. Another is how many of our students actually graduate—and what they go on to do. We have graduates working at Amazon, Google, Apple, IBM, the World Bank—that’s another sign of success.
Ultimately, we measure ourselves by whether we’ve helped people build a better life. Are they better off while studying with us? That’s what matters to us.
We don’t participate in rankings competitions. We don’t try to be the most expensive institution—though in some parts of the sector, it seems the more expensive you are, the better you’re perceived to be. That’s a strange way to measure quality, but it’s common in higher ed.
We’re proud to be different. We’re changing the model of higher education to make it accessible, affordable, and high-quality.
AU: A few days ago in The New York Times, there was an article by the Russian writer Masha Gessen. They were talking about the attacks on higher education in the United States and mentioned that the ideal model right now might be the University of the People in Poland—a communist-era, tuition-free university. As I was preparing for this interview, I thought, “Wait a minute, that sounds a lot like your University of the People.” I’m curious what you think about that argument. Given all the challenges in U.S. higher education—even before Trump—are approaches like yours part of the solution?
SR: I actually read that very article. Believe it or not, we just sent them an email today saying the same thing—basically, “It sounds like you’re talking about the University of the People.” I assume they don’t know about us—otherwise, they probably would have mentioned us directly.
I truly believe we are the future. Every person should have the right to higher education. Universities should open their gates far wider than they do now. The more people who are educated, the stronger the country: people have better futures, the economy improves, and society benefits from individuals who are well-rounded and capable of critical thinking. That’s what the world needs.
The American system has created some of the best universities in the world—there’s no question about that. I’m not against those institutions. What I’m against is the lack of opportunity for everyone else. And I think what we’ve demonstrated is that higher education can be accessible and affordable for all.
That’s part of why we’ve grown so quickly—we want to show that this model works, that it’s sustainable, and that others can follow it, in the U.S. and around the world. The challenges facing higher education aren’t unique to one country; they’re global. And anyone can look at what we’ve done and replicate it—or ask us to help them replicate it. We’d be happy to help.
AU: So, you’ve been around for just over 15 years. If I ask you to look ahead—what does the University of the People look like in 2040? Will you be twice as big? Even bigger than that? Will you offer different kinds of degrees? How do you see the next decade and a half playing out?
SR: You know, in 2010, following the earthquake in Haiti, we announced that we would take in 250 Haitian students and teach them for free. What I didn’t realize at the time was that, after the earthquake, many of them were living in tents, without electricity or internet.
Still, two months later, the first group of 15 or 16 students began studying. I went to Haiti to welcome them, and I met many students while I was there. One of them asked me what the future of University of the People looked like. I gave them the same answer I’d give today:
We’ll keep growing to serve more and more students—until one day we wake up and realize that all the students in the world who need access to higher education are being served. And then, maybe, we’ll go back to sleep and wake up with another dream.
Until then, we have a long way to go. So yes, we’ll continue to grow, we’ll continue to serve more people, and hopefully, others will replicate what we’re doing. We don’t need to educate the entire world—just help show that it’s possible.
AU: Shai, thank you so much for being with us today.
SR: Thank you very much for this interview. It was fascinating—thank you.
AU: And it just remains for me to thank our excellent producers—Tiffany MacLennan, Sam Pufek—and you, our viewers, listeners, and readers, for joining us. If you have any questions about this podcast or suggestions for future episodes, please don’t hesitate to get in touch at podcast@higheredstrategy.com. Quick request from us: head over to our YouTube page and subscribe to the Higher Education Strategy Associates channel so you never miss an episode of The World of Higher Education.
Join us next week—my guest will be John Stackhouse. He’s the Senior Vice President at RBC and former Editor-in-Chief of The Globe and Mail. He’ll be joining me to talk about a new post-secondary education initiative that RBC is undertaking, in partnership with the Business + Higher Education Roundtable and us here at Higher Education Strategy Associates. I’ll be asking in particular about the future of Canadian higher education and how better links can be forged between universities and the private sector. See you then.
*This podcast transcript was generated using an AI transcription service with limited editing. Please forgive any errors made through this service. Please note, the views and opinions expressed in each episode are those of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host and team, or our sponsors.
This episode is sponsored by KnowMeQ. ArchieCPL is the first AI-enabled tool that massively streamlines credit for prior learning evaluation. Toronto based KnowMeQ makes ethical AI tools that boost and bottom line, achieving new efficiencies in higher ed and workforce upskilling.
Can youth doing journalism help save local news media?
Unfortunately, this isn’t a rhetorical question. The crisis around the world for local news outlets is so dire, people who understand the importance of unbiased news at the local level are looking for any and all solutions to save the industry.
This is a worldwide phenomenon. Data collected by researcher Amy Watson in August 2023, for example, found that more news outlets in the UK closed than were launched. Between 2008 and 1 April 2025, a total of 566 local news outlets closed in 372 communities across Canada, according to the Local News Map crowd-sourcing data initiative. And a report from the Brookings Institution found that in the United States in 2023, some 2.5 local news outlets folded every week.
That’s why Global Youth & News Media, a French nonprofit affiliated with News Decoder, is offering an award for youth collaborations that support struggling local news outlets by providing content produced in their schools and helping to expand the outlet’s audience. Entry deadline is 16 June and details are here.
“We and the partners in this award around the world want to find and spread the word about the lessons from the best cases of success as well as cautions about inevitable problems and challenges,” said Aralynn McMane, executive director of Global Youth & News Media.
“At the very minimum, ‘success‘ means a discernible audience for the work that youth reporters — up through university age — produce in news media that serve a wider local community than their classmates,” McMane said “It’s even better if their efforts can be linked to financial sustainability.”
The main goal of the award is to highlight successful collaborations between youth and local outlets so that other organizations around the world can adopt those strategies. McMane said that she has seen this happen many times — smart news media innovators will come up with a solution to a problem, and those solutions can help news producers even very far away adapt that idea to solve a similar issue.
Award partners that support local news efforts internationally as well as from Africa, North America, Europe and Asia have stepped up to help make sure the search for such cases is as wide as possible and to distribute the intelligence gained from this search to as many news organizations in as many places as possible.
First to sign up to help was the University of Southern California’s Communication Center on Leadership and Policy (CCLP), located within the USC Annenberg School for Journalism and Communication.
In 2024, CCLP launched the Local News and Student Journalism Initiative to study the role of student journalists across America and issued this first report on their work.
“We are delighted to partner with Global Youth & News Media to celebrate impactful local news stories produced by young journalists around the world, as well as to share and amplify their efforts with the goal of inspiring more young people to cover the news of their communities who are already providing first-rate local news coverage,” said Geoffry Cowan, center director.
Another national academic partner, the Medill School at Northwestern University, released a report earlier this month about collaborations between local news outlets and student journalists in the United States as part of its Local News Initiative.
The report found a trend for such collaborations in the United States. “Instead of news organizations giving boosts to students, students are supporting often-short-staffed outlets by providing coverage as part of their curricula,” the report said.
Senior Associate Dean Tim Franklin, the project’s director, said Medill started the initiative seven years ago to see how they could leverage the school’s resources to help local news outlets, journalism organizations, scholars and scholastic media at a time of crisis in the industry.
“Our research provides insights about trends and issues in local news in this fast-changing landscape,” Franklin said. “And through our programs, we’re helping news organizations with things like business strategy and product development at a time when many can’t do R&D themselves. We’re also creating opportunities to inspire young people to pursue careers in journalism.”
The quest to help local news is global. The Austria-based International Press Institute, for example, has run two editions of an “accelerator” program to support digital innovation in local journalism’s editorial and business models around the world. It also runs a related network.
Other partners include the International Center for Journalists and the Media Diversity Institute, both of which have extensive local news programs, Youth Community Journalism Institute founded by the Strong Mind Strong Body Foundation, a U.S. nonprofit, Europe Youth Press, a consortium of outlets in 34 countries, Africa Media Perspectives, The Media Lab in Jordan, Asia division of the Asian-American Journalists Association, the Panhellenic Federation of Journalists’ Unions of Greece and Toronto Metropolitan University’s Local News Research Project.
Stefano Zamparo, an executive board member for Europe Youth Press said that the award aligns with the group’s work empowering youth voices through journalism, ensuring their stories resonate within their local communities and beyond.
“Celebrating successful collaborations between young journalists and local media helps foster greater press freedom and media literacy across Europe,” Zamparo said.
Ivor Price, founder of Africa Media Perspectives, sees young people as the driving force behind a rebirth of local news. “For local news to survive and thrive, it must become a true reflection of the communities it serves, which means opening our newsrooms and our storytelling platforms to new voices,” Price said.
Since 2018, the Global Youth & News Media Prize has honored the important work that sees news media meaningfully engage the young with notable results that benefit both parties.
Its first award recognized a cooperation between the United States digital edition of the The Guardian news organization and reporters from the Eagle Eye, a student news operation at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which was the site of a 2018 school shooting in which 17 people were killed. Through the journalism collaboration, the Parkland students contributed live digital coverage of an anti-gun violence demonstration in Washington, D.C.
News Decoder has been a partner in these competitions from the start.
“This particular award theme resonates particularly strongly with us,” said News Decoder managing director Maria Krasinski. “All around the globe, student journalists are telling important stories, but often those stories aren’t heard outside their schools. This competition will rightfully recognize the important work youth are doing to help inform local communities.”
Should the economic fortunes area you grew up in have an impact on your chances of attending university?
There has always been a stubborn connection between 18 year old participation rates and your (UK) region of residence.
Currently UCAS data tells us that 18 year olds living in London are more likely than not to go on to attend university, whereas in the North East just 29.9 per cent will get there.
And in many parts of the UK the proportion of 18 year olds getting to university has stagnated (or even dropped over recent years), as the population of 18 year olds has expanded.
If you are concerned about left-behind parts of the UK, this is something that should concern you. It’s widely acknowledged that graduates are key to levelling up a region, and a surprisingly large number of graduates return to their home area (at least in the short term) after graduation.
The counter argument to that is very often cultural – the idea that going to university changes a person, and dilutes the essence of what makes (frankly) a deprived area a deprived area. Polling from Public First for the UPP Foundation (which is kicking off an inquiry into the state of widening participation in higher education) happily suggests that this is not an attitude prevalent among UK parents.
What does worry parents is the sheer cost of study – both in terms of tuition fees (36 per cent cite this as a top three reason to be concerned about their children attending university) and living costs (31 per cent). The overall level of debt on graduation is the other big one (35 per cent).
But that’s not to say that there are not other reasons – number four in the list is the idea that “they won’t get a better job just because they have been to university” (particularly prevalent in London), number six is “poor value for money” (an East Midlands, North East, and Northern Ireland prevalence). The size of the sample makes the regional splits difficult to draw accurate conclusions from, but the trends are interesting.
Teachers are a primary source of information about higher education – happily UPPF also commissioned Public First to look at what teachers felt were the barriers to participation, and there are (some) regional splits.
The question here focuses on why teachers don’t expect some pupils to go to university – we are looking across all types of schools at the top of secondary education. Here we see that the big barriers are academic – teachers tend to feel that students are unlikely to get the required grades (24 per cent) or to rise to the academic challenge (18 per cent). And this is true across all English regions.
Notably prevalent in the North East and Yorkshire (combining two standard, ILTS1, regions) is the idea that the family will be unable to support a student. In that region this was cited by 13 per cent of teachers – enough to feel concerning, but similar to the proportion that simply don’t want to go to university (again note that the margin of error will be high with small subsamples).
Twenty per cent of teachers in London feel like all of the last class they taught will go on to university – just four per cent of teachers in the North West, North East, and Yorkshire had similar confidence. Indeed 14 per cent of teachers in the North East and Yorkshire felt that only 10 per cent of their class would go on to university. As you might expect, the modal answer for most regions was “about half” of pupils – the North East and Yorkshire is the only exception.
This, then, is what access and participation in the north is up against. Attainment and capacity is an issue everywhere, and one that the access and participation regime in England attempts to address via collaboration between universities and schools – something that also contributes to aspiration.
But aspiration and attainment count for little when parents and teachers are agreeing that for many in the UK’s most deprived areas university study simply is not affordable. And though participation among disadvantaged groups is improving – disadvantaged areas continue to struggle.
When I first arrived in Dundee, I anticipated an academic journey that would challenge my perspectives and expand my knowledge.
What I didn’t foresee was how profoundly it would transform my understanding of identity and belonging, compelling me to reexamine my sense of self and my place in broader societal structures.
Having moved from India to pursue a Master of Education (MEd) in the UK, this journey not only offered a world-renowned education but also a deeply personal exploration. I encountered labels—both explicit and implicit—that reshaped how I viewed myself and how others perceived me.
A year after graduating, with distinction, this reflection examines the unintended consequences of such labels, navigating an evolving sense of identity and belonging, and how higher education institutions could approach identity.
In India, my identity felt clear and unchallenged. Growing up in a community where cultural and national homogeneity was the norm, I seldom encountered the complexities of navigating diverse cultural spaces.
As a proud citizen, I had always viewed myself through a singular lens—an educator, a parent, and a lifelong learner.
Yet, upon arriving in the UK, I gradually found myself assigned new labels: “South Asian,” “brown,” “BAME,” or “non-native English speaker.”
These descriptors, while often used to acknowledge diversity, and well-intentioned, created a sense of “otherness” I had never felt before.
They carried with them an uneasy sense of stereotyping relating to cultural norms, economic motivations, or professional capabilities, overshadowing my individuality and the intentionality behind my journey. Or so it seemed to me.
This was shaped by my specific circumstances. I hadn’t come to the UK fleeing hardship or seeking greener pastures. After over two decades of a successful career, my journey was a deliberate choice to grow and challenge myself within a global academic system.
Nevertheless, I found myself viewed through a lens that reduced my presence to that of a “brown immigrant” – a categorization laden with assumptions I neither recognized nor accepted as my own.
Becker’s (1963) labelling theory, as detailed in his seminal work Outsiders, highlights how societal labels can shape individuals’ self-perceptions and interactions. For instance, being termed a “non-native English speaker” undermined my confidence, despite my strong command of the language. I became acutely self-conscious of my speech and writing, scrutinizing every phrase and mannerism.
Similarly, whilst being classified – for diversity reporting purposes – as “BAME”—a term that homogenized diverse ethnicities—diminished my unique identity as Indian. Condensing the diversity of a vast continent like Asia, and beyond, into a single category overlooked its rich individuality and distinct experiences.
At 48 years of age, with significant professional and personal capital, this phase felt like a rebirth, requiring me to relearn how to approach daily interactions, meet people, and manage emotions in an unfamiliar environment.
As a parent, I grappled with the tension between fiercely guarding my child in this new space and allowing her to grow freely as her own person. These dilemmas became an integral part of my journey, shaping my reflections on belonging. However, through these challenges, I discovered that cultural exchange offered a path to understanding identity and belonging.
One of the most enriching aspects of my time in the UK was finding harmony between embracing new cultures and retaining my distinct and individual, Indian identity. While cultural disconnections were inevitable, moments of connection highlighted opportunity and potential.
Simple acts, like sharing Ayurvedic home remedies with colleagues or discovering the vegetarian version of haggis and tatties—a Scottish dish that reminded me of flavours from Indian cuisine – sparked conversations, and mutual appreciation and understanding. Such experiences underscored the universality of care and the connections that form through everyday activities or practices.
Collaborative projects were equally transformative. A group initiative to design an innovative education program with a focus on MOOCs brought together diverse perspectives shaped by educational systems in Uganda, Ghana, Sri Lanka, India, and the United States. Engaging authentically with these cultures helped me realize that my identity wasn’t being erased—it was evolving.
This drew me to the conclusion that labels no longer seemed like barriers but also served as bridges. Interacting with domestic students further revealed our shared passions for equitable education and learner well-being, reinforcing the commonality of human experiences and aspirations.
Such moments emphasized that despite our differences, shared humanity forms the foundation of genuine connection and collaboration.
Higher education institutions play a crucial role in shaping how identity and belonging are experienced. As an International Postgraduate student, I found value in lectures exploring diverse educational philosophies from thinkers like Confucius, Paulo Freire, bell hooks, Ivan Illich, and Sugata Mitra, alongside predominantly Western curricula.
These discussions offered a balanced perspective and inclusive learning environment, aligning with culturally responsive teaching (Gay, 2010) and ensuring students saw their identities reflected in education. Similarly, initiatives like the University of Edinburgh’s Global Citizenship Initiative and Kingston University’s Inclusive Curriculum Project provide platforms for students to share their unique experiences.
Labels like “South Asian”, “BAME”, or “Global South” can serve as useful starting points for addressing systemic inequities but risk oversimplifying diverse experiences and perpetuating stereotypes. Institutions should creatively rethink these categorizations to highlight individuality.
Platforms like self-identification surveys, narrative-sharing workshops, intercultural initiatives, peer-support groups, and reflective writing can foster mutual understanding, empathy, and respect. Staff training in dialogic engagement and curricular reforms can further nurture inclusivity.
Tinto’s Leaving College: Rethinking the Causes and Cures of Student Attrition (1993) underscores how academic and social integration are pivotal in fostering a sense of belonging, which thrives when institutions celebrate individuality and embrace diversity as a strength.
For me, this journey has been one of rediscovery. As I walked across the stage at my graduation ceremony, surrounded by peers from around the world, I felt an overwhelming sense of belonging.
I realized my journey was not just about academic achievement; it was about embracing a deeper, more inclusive understanding of identity. Engaging authentically with new cultures doesn’t mean losing oneself—even under a label—but rather gaining dimensions to one’s sense of self.
My reflections are a reminder for myself, and perhaps the broader global society that shared experiences cultivate a true community where individuals feel recognised and valued. Identity evolves, but the need for acceptance and respect as a person remains constant.
Higher education must create spaces where individuality is honoured, differences are embraced, and restrictive labels are thoughtfully reevaluated. By doing so, institutions can harness the richness of diversity—not only to enrich learning experiences but also to dismantle stereotypes and foster a deeper sense of unity within our global community.
This week on the podcast universities failing to promote diversity will face funding cuts – so said The Times. We chat through the controversy building around the REF.
Plus we look at what the sector is asking for in the spending review, and consider the government’s push for lower-level, shorter apprenticeships.
With Shitij Kapur, Vice Chancellor and President at King’s College London, Jess Lister, Director (Education) at Public First, Debbie McVitty, Editor at Wonkhe and presented by Mark Leach, Editor-in-Chief at Wonkhe.
Universities UK submits to spending review
The barriers that must be removed for degree apprenticeships to meet NHS workforce targets
Higher education institutions have invested time, effort and money in level 7 apprenticeships
Societies that are humane are thoughtful about promoting equality, diversity and inclusion
There is a multi-directional relationship between research culture and research assessment.
Poor research assessment can lead to poor research cultures. The Wellcome Trust survey in 2020 made this very clear.
Assessing the wrong things (such as a narrow focus on publication indicators), or the right things in the wrong way (such as societal impact rankings based on bibliometrics) is having a catalogue of negative effects on the scholarly enterprise.
In a similar way, too much research assessment can also lead to poor research cultures. Researchers are one of the most heavily assessed professions in the world. They are assessed for promotion, recruitment, probation, appraisal, tenure, grant proposals, fellowships, and output peer review. Their lives and work are constantly under scrutiny, creating competitive and high-stress environments.
But there is also a logic (Campbell’s Law) that tells us that if we assess research culture it can lead to greater investment into improving it. And it is this logic that the UK Joint HE funding bodies have drawn on in their drive to increase the weighting given to the assessment of People, Culture & Environment in REF 2029. This makes perfect sense: given the evidence that positive and healthy research cultures are a thriving element of Research Excellence, it would be remiss of any Research Excellence Framework not to attempt to assess, and therefore incentivise them.
The challenge we have comes back to my first two points. Even assessing the right things, but in the wrong way, can be counterproductive, as may increasing the volume of assessment. Given research culture is such a multi-faceted concept, the worry is that the assessment job will become so huge that it quickly becomes burdensome, thus having a negative impact on those research cultures we want to improve.
Just as research culture is not so much about the research that you do but the way that you do it, so research culture assessment should concern itself not so much with the outcomes of that assessment but with the way the assessment takes place.
This is really important to get right.
I’ve argued before that research culture is a hygiene factor. Most dimensions of culture relate to standards that it’s critically important we all get right: enabling open research, dealing with misconduct, building community, supporting collaboration, and giving researchers the time to actually do research. These aren’t things for which we should offer gold stars but basic thresholds we all should meet. And to my mind they should be assessed as such.
Indeed this is exactly how the REF assessed open research in 2021 (and will do so again in 2029). They set an expectation that 95 per cent of qualifying outputs should be open access, and if you failed to hit the threshold, excess closed outputs were simply unclassified. End of. There were no GPAs for open access.
In the tender for the PCE indicator project, the nature of research culture as a hygiene factor was recognised by proposing “barrier to entry” measures. The expectation seemed to be that for some research culture elements institutions would be expected to meet a certain threshold, and if they failed they would be ineligible to even submit to REF.
This proposal did not make it into the current PCE assessment pilot. However, the REF already has a “barrier to entry” mechanism, of course, which is the completion of an acceptable REF Code of Practice (CoP).
An institution’s REF CoP is about how they propose to deliver their REF, not how they deliver their research (although there are obvious crossovers). And REF have distinguished between the two in their latest CoP Policy module governing the writing of these codes.
But given that REF Codes of Practice are now supposed to be ongoing, living documents, I don’t see why they shouldn’t take the form of more research-focussed (rather than REF-focussed) codes. It certainly wouldn’t harm research culture if all research performing organisations had a thorough research code of practice (most do of course) and one that covers a uniform range of topics that we all agree are critical to good research culture. This could be a step beyond the current Terms & Conditions associated with QR funding in England. And it would be a means of incentivising positive research cultures without ‘grading’ them. With your REF CoP, it’s pass or fail. And if you don’t pass first time, you get another attempt.
The other way of assessing culture to incentivise behaviours without it leading to any particular rating or ranking is to simply start collecting & surfacing data on things we care about. For example, the requirement to share gender pay gap data and to report misconduct cases, has focussed institutional minds on those things without there being any associated assessment mechanism. If you check out the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) data on proportion of male:female professors, in most UK institutions you can see the ratio heading in the right direction year on year. This is the power of sharing data, even when there’s no gold or glory on offer for doing so.
And of course, the REF already has a mechanism to share data to inform, but not directly make an assessment, in the form of ’Environment Data’. In REF 2021, Section 4 of an institution’s submission was essentially completed for them by the REF team by extracting from the HESA data, the number of doctoral degrees awarded (4a) and the volume of research income (4b); and from the Research Councils, the volume of research income in kind (4c).
This data was provided to add context to environment assessments, but not to replace them. And it would seem entirely sensible to me that we identify a range of additional data – such as the gender & ethnicity of research-performing staff groups at various grades – to better contextualise the assessment of PCE, and to get matters other than the volume of research funding up the agendas of senior university committees.
That is not to say that Codes of Practice and data sharing should be the only means of incentivising research culture of course. Culture was a significant element of REF Environment statements in 2021, and we shouldn’t row back on it now. Indeed, given that healthy research cultures are an integral part of research excellence, it would be remiss not to allocate some credit to those who do this well.
Of course there are significant challenges to making such assessments robust and fair in the current climate. The first of these is the complex nature of research culture – and the fact that no framework is going to cover every aspect that might matter to individual institutions. Placing boundaries around what counts as research culture could mean institutions cease working on agendas that are important to them, because they ostensibly don’t matter to REF.
The second challenge is the severe and uncertain financial constraints currently faced by the majority of UK HEIs. Making the case for a happy and collaborative workforce when half are facing redundancy is a tough ask. A related issue here is the hugely varying levels of research (culture) capital across the sector as I’ve argued before. Those in receipt of a £1 million ‘Enhancing Research Culture’ fund from Research England, are likely to make a much better showing than those doing research culture on a shoe-string.
The third is that we are already half-way through this assessment period and we’re only expected to get the final guidance in 2026 – two years prior to submission. And given the financial challenges outlined above, this is going to make this new element of our submission especially difficult. It was partly for this reason that some early work to consider the assessment of research culture was clear that this should celebrate the ‘journey travelled’, rather than a ‘destination achieved’.
For this reason, to my mind, the only thing we can reasonably expect all HEIs to do right now with regards to research culture is to:
Once again, there is an existing REF assessment mechanism open to us here, and that is the use of the case study. We assess research impact by effectively asking HEIs to tell us their best stories – I don’t see why we shouldn’t make the same ask of PCE, at least for this REF.
The UK joint funding bodies have made a bold and sector-leading move to focus research performing organisations’ attention on the people and cultures that make for world-leading research endeavours through the mechanism of assessment. Given the challenges we face as a society, ensuring we attract, train, and retain high quality research talent is critical to our success. However, the assessment of research culture has the power both to make things better or worse: to incentivise positive research cultures or to increase burdensome and competitive cultures that don’t tackle all the issues that really matter to institutions.
To my mind, given the broad range of topics that are being worked on by institutions in the name of improving research culture, and where we are in the REF cycle, and the financial constraints facing the sector, we might benefit from a shift in the mechanisms proposed to assess research culture in 2029 and to see this as a stepping stone REF.
Making better use of existing mechanisms such as a Codes of Practice and Environment and Culture data would assess the “hygiene factor” elements of culture without unhelpfully associating any star ratings to them. Ratings should be better applied to the efforts taken by institutions to understand, plan, monitor, and demonstrate progress against their own, mission-driven research culture ambitions. This is where the real work is and where real differentiations between institutions can be made, when contextually assessed. Then, in 2036, when we can hope that the sector will be in a financially more stable place, and with ten years of research culture improvement time behind us, we can assess institutions against their own ambitions, as to whether they are starting to move the dial on this important work.
Etus Hurata, 56, and Tatoyo Penes, 64, gather sago, a starch found in tropical palm, in the forest near the Kali Meja River with bamboo sticks and machetes. They will process the sago they collect into daily food ingredients.
Daniel Totabo, 27, meanwhile, hunts for Sogili, a type of eel, in the middle of the fast-flowing river.
According to data from Survival International, 300 to 500 O’Hongana Manyawa people still reside in the forested interior of the island of Halmahera. The tribes have never had direct contact with people outside the forest.
But mining companies have already taken over increasing parts of their forest. The latest research data from the Association of Indigenous Peoples Defenders of Nusantara reports 21 matarumah (lineages) of this tribe inhabit the entire Halmahera mainland. One matarumah usually consists of 4–5 heads of families.
Nickel dredging projects in the corners of Halmahera have disrupted their lives. Based on observations on digital maps, there are at least four mining companies operating within a 50–100 kilometers radius of the forests inhabited by indigenous peoples. This number is likely to increase in the next few years as global demand for nickel continues to increase.
“If it continues like this, the forests in Halmahera will be destroyed,” Sumean said. “The trees will be cut down and the animals will be driven out and die because their homes have been completely cleared. Then where will we live?”
The Indonesian government has tried to resettle people in other hamlets and villages, like Dodaga Village where Sumean lives. But supporting facilities such as health, economy and education built there are often inadequate. And for a people who lived nomadically, moving from forest to forest, it is difficult to adapt to land and houses in a village.
“The house is very hot during the day and very cold at night because it uses a zinc roof. It is different from a leaf roof that can adjust to the season,” Sumean said. “We did get a house, but maybe they forgot that we also must find our own food every day.”
As a result, the indigenous community largely abandoned Dodaga Village. It is now inhabited by immigrants from outside the area.
Some are pinning their hopes on Tesla which seemed to take a firm stand for Indigenous peoples in its 2023 Impact Report published in May 2024. The electric car manufacturer owned by Elon Musk says it is pushing for a no-go zone for mining system or a mining-free area that can protect the rights of uncontacted Indigenous peoples such as O’Hongana Manyawa.
The UK-based nonprofit organization Survival International has said that this concept could provide fixed boundaries for the industrial sector and any mining company so that they do not pass through the living space of indigenous peoples.
But until now, the company has not provided any follow-up regarding the development of the concept in the report. Tesla says it uses around 13% of nickel ore from Indonesia and that energy transition is almost impossible without these nickel supplies. Moreover, they predict that nickel production in Indonesia will continue to increase along with the increasing demand for electric vehicles in the global market.
Travel six hours by road from Dodaga Village and the beautiful, green and dense Halmahera plains begin to change shape as the highway reaches the Indonesia Weda Industrial Park (IWIP) located along Weda Bay. In Lelilef Sawai Village, coal-fired power plants and nickel smelters stand where the forest once stood. Thick smoke from chimneys billow without pause.
This industrial area began operating in 2020 through development carried out by PT Weda Bay Nickel, a joint venture between state-owned company PT Aneka Tambang and Strand Minerals which was initially formed in 1998.
The two parties then also attracted French mining company Eramet and Chinese stainless steel company Tsingshan Holding Group. Over time, Tshingsan and Eramet took full control of the project. This area, included in the Indonesia’s National Strategic Project since November 2020, is predicted to attract investment worth U.S. $15 billion
The mountainous area on the north side of IWIP has long been known to be rich in nickel reserves. The world’s nickel needs are predicted to increase drastically by 60% by 2040 to meet carbon reduction requirements of the Paris Agreement.
While sales of electric vehicles have slowed in the United States and Europe, it is projected that half of all new cars sold in China will be electric. China, Europe and the United States represent the largest markets for electric vehicles, collectively accounting for approximately 95% of all sales in 2023.
The carbon footprint of the nickel smelting in Indonesia could negate much of the carbon reductions the e-cars promise. In addition to the smoke coming out of a total of 12 new coal-fired power plants there, deforestation activities are also clearly visible.
Seen from satellite imagery monitoring, queues of trucks carrying materials snake along the road. Dozens of heavy equipment are also digging the hills next to it. This view will be visible up to 10 kilometers away.
Geospatial analysis research conducted by Climate Rights International and the AI Climate Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley revealed that nickel mining activities throughout the island of Halmahera have destroyed 5,331 hectares of tropical forest that act as absorbers of greenhouse gases.
The industrial area currently employs around 43,000 employees. They are housed in huts built not far from the smelter and power plant chimneys. The huts are built close together with very limited ventilation in each room. In some places, garbage is left to pile up in the open space. The grass and plants growing around it are also covered in road dust.
The massive deforestation that has taken place, mostly in the upstream areas of large rivers, has increased the risk and frequency of flooding.
JATAM, an organization that advocates for communities affected by the mining industry, reported that between 2020 and 2024, floods with a height of more than one meter occurred more than 12 times. In the summer of 2024, a flood in the Weda Bay mining area submerged seven villages, sending some 1,670 residents into temporary tents.
Flood waters completely covered the home of Ahmad Kruwet, 62, a transmigrant from Tegal who now lives in Woe Jarana Village, Central Weda. “I think this is the effect because the forest upstream has been cut down until it is completely gone,” he said.
Ahmad added that changes in the quality of the groundwater around his house made it unsafe to use. Since the industrial park started operating, he has had to buy gallons of water to meet his daily drinking water need.
Meanwhile, in Lukolamo Village, Central Halmahera, cocoa farmer Adrian Patapata, 64, also saw a change in the quality of his water, which became smelly and colored.
“Before, the water in our house was still clean and fresh,” he said “We drank this water. After the mine came here, the water could no longer be used. Let alone for drinking, we couldn’t even bathe.”
Now he and his family make sure they are prepared for the next flood. They will run to the tent on the hill behind his village where there is a new post set as an initial mitigation site for flood victims.
Mining activities and the disasters that occurred also have physical and health consequences. Beside Adrian, Juni Nadira Patapata, 9, was scratching her feet which looked blistered as result of being submerged in the floodwater for too long. In addition the local health center has been seeing an increase in upper respiratory infections in areas near the industrial areas, mostly in children and the elderly, but some mine workers as well.
In January 2024 the center saw 174 cases. That increased to 345 in July. He has special attention for them, because every day almost 40% of patients who come to the health center are workers.
Data from Eramet shows that the company plans to mine around 6,000 hectares of the total area of Weda Bay Nickel’s 45,065-hectare concession over a 25-year period.
Currently, as many as 2,000 hectares of land and forest have been exploited, both for the construction of new smelters and for mining activities.
Mining activities in the industrial area and massive deforestation around it have also damaged the ecosystem of agricultural land and plantations owned by residents who live not far from there. Many farmers have experienced crop failures because the plants they planted died or sickened due to declining water and soil quality. Others were lost in the flooding.
In his plantation in the Trans Kobe area, Adrian saw coconut and chocolate trees that he had cared for destroyed by the flood.
For many years he has maintained a 5.5-hectare plantation planting cocoa, coconuts, nutmeg and a fuzzy fruit called langsat. “Before the mud flood like now, I could even plant bananas and sweet potatoes. Now I can’t anymore,” he said.
Adrian said floods occurred even before the logging and nickel extraction but the puddles of water and sand that rose to the surface of would recede quickly. The mud that now inundates his garden takes longer to recede, and inhibits plant growth.
“When it is already flooded and muddy like this, the roots absorb too much water,” he said. “Now it is just left like that, the children are also lazy to clean the garden because not much is growing anymore.”
Meanwhile, the same situation is also seen on the coast. The expansion carried out by mining companies coupled with the contamination of liquid waste and heavy metals from the ferronickel processing smelter also polluted the estuary, beach and Weda Bay areas where fishermen would catch fish every day.
One day, Hernemus Takuling left his fishing boat abandoned on the beach. Although it was a good season for fishing, the waves were too high and fierce and he was reluctant to fish on the beach. Hundreds of meters from where he stood, a pipe from the smelter was discharging waste into the sea, turning the water around the beach brownish yellow.
Now, Hernemus and most fishermen on the coastal villages directly adjacent to the industrial park must travel farther to get better quality fish without exposure to hot water radiation from the waste disposal.
Some even fish as far as other islands. “Now, I rarely fish here,” Hernemus said. “Usually, I take the closest boat up to four kilometers from the end of the beach because there the condition of the fish caught is much better.”
He leaves every day at 4 AM and returns around 3 PM. In one day, he might only get a few fish with an average weight of just one kilogram. “Now I need more time and energy just to catch fish,” he said. “Moreover, I must buy diesel for boat fuel. When I get fish, it’s sometimes hard to sell. In the end, I just eat it alone with my family at home.”
1. How is nickel mining and processing affecting the Indigenous people of Indonesia?
2. What is being proposed to help the people who live near nickel plants?
3. Do you think the benefits from electric cars outweigh the damage done from mining the needed metals?
by CUPA-HR | July 17, 2024
New research from CUPA-HR on the state of the professional workforce in higher education shows that women and people of color are not only being paid less than White men in the same position, but also are less likely to hold higher-paying positions.
CUPA-HR’s research team analyzed data from the Professionals in Higher Education Survey, a comprehensive data source that collects salary and demographic data on more than 293,000 professionals in 409 positions from approximately 985 higher ed institutions, to evaluate representation and pay equity for women and professionals of color from 2016-17 to 2023-24.
Women and people of color have lower representation among the highest-paying professional jobs. Women and people of color have lower representation among six-figure (i.e., paid more than $100,000) jobs in comparison to all other professional jobs. White men held 40% of six-figure jobs but held 28% of jobs paying less than $100,000.
Pay equity has improved slightly for women over the past eight years, but women of most races/ethnicities are still paid less than White men. Except for Asian women, women of all other examined races/ethnicities were paid less than White men in 2023-24.
Over the past eight years, the representation of people of color increased among higher ed professionals; the increase in the representation of women of color was more than double the increase in the representation of men of color. The representation of people of color increased from 22% of professionals in 2016-17 to 26% of professionals in 2023-24. During this time, women of color had more than two times the increase in their representation than did men of color (26% increase for women versus 10% increase for men).
Older women experience greater pay gaps than younger women. Women over age 42 had larger pay gaps relative to White men than did women age 42 or younger.
Explore the interactive graphics and read the full report, The Higher Ed Professional Workforce: Composition and Pay Equity by Gender and Race/Ethnicity From 2016-17 to 2023-24.
