Tag: places

  • “Happiness Effect” of Higher Ed “Fades in Richer Places”

    “Happiness Effect” of Higher Ed “Fades in Richer Places”

    In recent decades, the extra money that graduates earn has been touted as a good reason to attend university. But that has recently come under scrutiny with evidence suggesting the graduate premium has fallen.

    And now two separate papers have found that another supposed benefit of higher education—increased lifetime happiness—is also not quite as straightforward as thought.

    A new study, which analyzed data from 36 countries, reveals that both higher education graduates and the rest of the population experience a steady increase in well-being as a country’s social and economic prosperity gradually improves.

    However, the well-being gains associated with higher education were found to “level off” when a country becomes more economically developed.

    Therefore, the paper argues that graduates in countries with lower GDP per capita experience greater relative gains in terms of economic security, social mobility, higher social status and life satisfaction—leading to a higher sense of well-being.

    In contrast, the “happiness advantage” of a university degree in countries with a higher GDP per capita is less pronounced.

    The paper suggests that stress and dissatisfaction can be caused by rising expectations, increased competition and a “relentless emphasis on achievement,” particularly among highly educated individuals.

    “Highly educated individuals in more prosperous countries are generally much happier than their counterparts in less prosperous countries, although they may be less happy than less educated individuals within their own country,” writes author Samitha Udayanga, a doctoral candidate at the University of Bremen.

    This suggests that the happiness derived from higher education tends to weaken in wealthier countries, he adds.

    A separate study published in June found that the level of happiness associated with completing college has quadrupled since the mid-1970s.

    The study of over 35,000 people in the U.S. showed that higher education has shifted over this time from contributing to happiness through occupations to improving wages.

    The “happiness return” of higher education increased over the 45 years of the study and remains higher than the happiness linked to not studying for a degree.

    But the researchers discovered it “nosedived” in 2021–22 during the COVID-19 pandemic. And satisfaction linked to postgraduate degrees has stalled since the 2000s.

    “University graduates in contemporary America have a certain chance of gaining monetary rewards [by] bypassing occupations, resulting in a relatively higher probability of feeling happy,” they said. “Meanwhile, the same mechanism rarely operates for advanced degree holders, whose happiness largely depends on their occupational attainment.”

    The paper concludes that the overall happiness premium for higher education at both the undergraduate and postgraduate level may “vanish once their economic rewards become less pronounced.”

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  • Working with our places will help us to spread the benefits of higher education more widely

    Working with our places will help us to spread the benefits of higher education more widely

    In the North East of England, fewer than one in three 18 year olds enter higher education, compared to a national average of 37 per cent.

    For higher education institutions, including my own, this is more than a regrettable statistic. It must be a call to action. The Sutton Trust’s Opportunity Index highlights that the North East ranks lowest of all English regions for social mobility prospects, with the poorest students in the region facing some of the most limited chances for progression into higher education and good employment.

    As a country we have undoubtedly made progress in widening participation, but as someone who spends their days thinking about such things, I worry: are we measuring that progress in the right ways? It’s not just about the gateway to university, it’s about the university journey and beyond. Or, to put it in more human terms: are people who previously wouldn’t have gone to university not only getting in, but thriving once they’re in?

    If we carry on measuring widening participation purely by entry stats and graduate salaries, we’ll miss the bigger picture, and what many of us went into higher education to try to achieve: deeper, transformative impact. A university education does more than prepare someone for a job. There is good evidence that links it to longer life expectancy, better health, and greater stability.

    The benefits of university go beyond the individual. Children of university graduates are much more likely to attend university and perform better once there. When a young person from a disadvantaged background earns a degree, it can spark a ripple effect that changes their family’s trajectory for good.

    There’s also a clear economic case for seeing success more broadly. Graduates typically pay more in tax, rely less on welfare services, and are more likely to engage in civic life. In regions like ours, where economic renewal and social mobility are deeply connected, that impact is amplified. A university education doesn’t just boost an individual’s prospects – it helps build stronger, more resilient communities.

    Whole-journey approach

    If we are truly serious about transforming lives and levelling up opportunity, especially in so-called “cold spots” like County Durham, then we need to dig deeper, beyond continuation rates and into attainment and the feeling of belonging. Financial strains, cultural barriers, wellbeing concerns, and more must be recognised and overcome. These are challenges not just for admissions, but across the entire student journey.

    Attainment gaps have a substantial impact, and disadvantaged students can be up to 22.7 months behind advantaged peers by the time they take their GCSEs. GCSE performance is strongly correlated with later life outcomes, including university attendance and employment quality. Early outreach is therefore pivotal in closing these long-standing gaps.

    It’s a challenge we take seriously. We’re not just widening the door – we’re reshaping the whole experience: investing nearly £1.5m in programmes for Key Stage 4 and 5 students, strengthening our foundation programme, and working with Sunderland AFC’s Foundation of Light to create a new health hub in one of our most deprived communities.

    One of the clearest messages of our new access and participation plan is how deeply place and perception are intertwined. Many young people in North East England don’t just lack opportunities – they’re not even sure those opportunities are meant for them. And, sadly, some still perceive Durham to be a place where they wouldn’t belong. Multiple studies show a strong link between a sense of belonging and academic success, particularly for underrepresented groups. So we’re investing in transition support and the Brilliant Club’s Join the Dots programme, which connects incoming students with peer coaches from results day onward.

    What we’re trying to achieve with our strategy cannot and should not be measured solely in continuation rates and degree classifications. Our evaluation strategy includes:

    • Sense of belonging as a core outcome: Building on Durham-led research, we are embedding a validated survey tool into our access and participation work. This tool captures students’ sense of belonging across multiple domains — from college life to academic confidence. These survey findings will help us identify and support groups at higher risk of exclusion.
    • Quasi-experimental design: Where sample sizes allow, we will use matched control groups and multiple regression analysis to compare outcomes between intervention participants and non-participants, tracking progress from outreach through to graduation. Intermediate metrics include not only continuation and attainment but also self-efficacy and engagement.
    • Pre/post measures: Our use of TASO’s validated access and success questionnaire enables pre- and post-intervention analysis of psychosocial outcomes such as academic self-efficacy and expectations of higher education.
    • Theory of change models: These have been developed for each intervention strand and will be regularly updated to ensure our work is aligned with evidence and outcomes over time.

    While our approach is rigorous, we anticipate several challenges. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds face cost-related pressures that may impact belonging and continuation. And persistent concerns about whether students from working-class or Northern backgrounds “belong” at Durham risk undermining recruitment and retention. We aim to confront this through co-designed interventions, but change in perception takes time.

    Co-development is key

    We believe that we can only succeed for the North East by working with others: through Universities for North East England – which includes Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria, Sunderland, and Teesside; and the new Durham Learning Alliance partnership with four local colleges – we must expand educational opportunities and drive economic growth.

    When people see that their goals and dreams are genuinely realisable, they’re far more likely to engage. After all, who are we to define what success should look like for someone else?

    The government’s opportunity mission gives higher education a rare, and much-needed, moment to pause and reset. Let’s not waste it. We’ve got a chance to rethink what success means – not just for universities, but for the people and places we serve. Let’s broaden the conversation beyond who gets through the door. Let’s put co-development at the heart of everything we do. And above all, let’s keep listening – not just to what students need, but to what they hope for. In the end, the real test of progress isn’t just who gets in. It’s who gets on – and how far they go, with us walking alongside them.

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  • We have to work together to improve school culture and make our public schools great places to teach, work and learn

    We have to work together to improve school culture and make our public schools great places to teach, work and learn

    A torrent of controversy has erupted over the Trump administration’s decision to shutter the federal Department of Education. Critics howl that it will destroy public education in America. Supporters insist it will somehow make things better.

    The only thing that’s clear is that our public education system is broken. It’s time for politicians to stop using education as a political football, with blue and red teams competing for control rather than sharing the responsibility to prepare our children for their futures.

    The resulting chaos and confusion and rigid policies choke the joy out of learning and of working in our schools. Insufficient attention by leaders to education culture can result in fear and distrust, turf wars and a tendency to blame and make excuses for a lack of progress.

    Such behaviors produce a toxicity that disables learning and disempowers leadership. Instead of increasing our nation’s economic prosperity, we’re deepening inequality, limiting opportunity and sadly wasting the potential of many children, on whose ability to thrive our country depends.

    Poor work conditions, insufficient support, inadequate pay and limited career opportunities are among some of the reasons teachers are leaving and schools are struggling to attract top talent. Reductions in funding from the Great Recession through the present render our facilities dangerous in some instances and unwelcoming in others. Would you buy a house with barbed wire fencing and unkempt grounds that make you wonder whether the aim is to keep something out or in?

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

    What should we do to change what is going on inside our schools?

    We must first of all start working together to make our public schools great places to teach and learn.

    Great places to work and learn are places that are well led, fueled by purpose and guided by shared, positive behaviors that advance learning goals and serve as “rules of the road” for how employees and students are expected to behave.

    In great schools, employees, students and families are respected and valued. Leaders in great schools inspire their employees — all of them — to do more than they think they can. Employees align behind the purpose of enabling learning, which creates momentum and camaraderie for what they are working to attain together.

    In great schools, leaders inspire their communities to join them in cheering for and supporting kids’ future successes. Families, no matter their socioeconomic status, feel a sense of belonging.

    Problems are perceived as opportunities to get better, not sources of indiscriminate blame. Solutions are found by looking in the mirror first. External threats to learning, such as poverty or parents’ underemployment, are acknowledged and addressed. Schools don’t dodge their responsibility to educate all kids.

    In great schools, kids are known by caring employees; they feel seen and heard and are deeply engaged and invested in their learning.

    Every employee working in a great school district feels responsible for achieving the district’s mission, no matter whether they work inside or outside of the classroom.

    When kids return after being absent, employees welcome them back, tell them they were missed and focus on catching them up. They do not judge the constraints of their families’ lives or mete out punishment as though missing school is a crime.

    Related: Horticulture, horses and ‘Chill Rooms’: One district goes all-in on mental health support

    Great places to learn must also be great places to work. We must reframe our concept of schools as not just places where kids learn. Great places to work care about the needs of all the human beings in their care, including and especially their employees.

    “To win in the marketplace, you must first win in the workplace,” Douglas R. Conant, former Campbell Soup Company CEO famously said. He knew what is becoming clearer within our public school systems — that unhappy, unfulfilled employees lead to high turnover, disengagement by students and staff and disaffected families turning to alternative educational offerings.

    It is no secret that attracting and retaining top talent to work in our schools is increasingly difficult as employees seek more stability. Attracting younger workers is even more difficult.

    Many of those who currently work in schools, especially teachers, are stressed, burned out and dissatisfied. Being stressed and burned out is not a normative experience; it’s a symptom of a weak culture, and an organizational problem to be solved. And employee turnover is no longer limited to teachers. There are increasing vacancies among principals, bus drivers and food service and facilities staff.

    The quality of the experiences of employees working in our schools must be higher. Every point along the employee experience continuum, from applying for a job to choosing to leave, is an opportunity to deepen employee engagement and commitment to being a high performer.

    We can fix what we have broken. Thinking differently about making our public schools great places to work and learn is a good place to start. No policy changes are required to demonstrate concern for the human beings the system employs and seeks to educate.

    Etienne R. LeGrand is a thought leader, writer and culture-shaping strategist and adviser at Vivify Performance.

    Contact the opinion editor at [email protected].

    This story about school culture was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • The widening access narrative must return to speaking about places

    The widening access narrative must return to speaking about places

    Widening access to higher education has experienced a precipitous fall from grace in the eyes of politicians over the last ten years – a fall that may have slowed slightly but as yet to stop under this government.

    This fall may have coincided with the shift away from place-based to institutional-focused approaches to the problem. The access and participation plan regime may have stopped widening participation slipping out of sight completely but as our latest report shows, they have done little to increase higher education participation for those from the poorest backgrounds, particularly in rural and coastal areas.

    Split geographies

    The report – Coast and country: access to higher education cold spots in England – looks at the data published annually by the Department of Education on participation in higher education by free school meal (FSM) backgrounds. There are things we know about what this data shows as outlined in previous reports I have written and more recent work such as that from the Sutton Trust – in particular that London does far better than everywhere else.

    In this report, though, we show exactly how much. The national higher education participation rate in 2022–23 for those from FSM backgrounds was 29 per cent. If you take out London, which has only 16 per cent of the population of England, it falls to 23 per cent. London is covering up a much more challenging situation in the rest of the country than we are prepared to admit.

    These challenges increase as areas get smaller. The report looks at the relationship between the size of an area and the FSM higher education participation rate. It drops steadily as population decreases from 43 per cent in big cities to 18 per cent in rural villages. Nor is the situation improving. The gap between London and the other 84 per cent of the population has increased 3 per cent from 2012–23 to 2022–23 and just under 3 per cent between predominantly urban areas and predominantly rural areas over the same period.

    Many coastal areas in England – especially seaside resorts – have well documented problems with poverty, unemployment and health inequalities and higher education participation can be added to that list. The higher education participation rate for those from FSM backgrounds coastal communities was 11 per cent lower than in inland areas in 2022–23 with in many areas less than one in five such young people going onto higher education. There is an overlap here between rural and coastal areas here with the South West especially including areas of lower higher education participation.

    It is often said that the differences in higher education participation described above are associated with attainment in schools. Increasing attainment was the priority where widening access work was concerned for the Office for Students for a number of years. In the report, we map GSCE attainment at the area level against FSM higher education participation – and the correlation is indeed strong.

    It is far weaker, though, in villages and coastal areas than the rest of the country. This suggest that in the places where the problems are the greatest, better GCSE results alone won’t be enough. In 2022–23, six of the ten areas with the lowest levels of higher education participation did not have a university campus within them. What provision exists also matters.

    We need new (old) stories

    If any progress in closing the gaps between regions described above is to be made then place must again become the central focus for widening access to higher education work – as it was when the last Labour government championed the issue so vigorously in the 2000s.

    The pendulum has swung too far since then toward what institutions themselves do. Consequently, that political link between widening access, opportunity and growth has been broken. It is possible that the government itself will swing the pendulum back to place, and some of the signs coming from the Office for Students in recent months have been promising.

    However, higher education providers themselves can take the initiative themselves here and look for new ways to form stronger partnerships – ones that take whatever replaces Uni Connect as the start, not the endpoint, of what regional collaboration means.

    While the sector’s financial challenges make competition for students more intensive than it has ever been – and thus collaboration in this area more difficult – the value of higher education itself is being questioned by young people more than it ever has been since participation increased rapidly in the 1990s. Fighting between each other for young people’s and their schools’ attention won’t convince those, especially from the poorest backgrounds, that higher education is worth it. But collaboration will.

    Collaboration won’t produce additional provision in rural and coastal areas, or the money to fund it. But unless we shift the story and the practice of widening access back to place, this additional provision will never come.

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  • Social capital and the degree awarding gap: spaces, places and relationships

    Social capital and the degree awarding gap: spaces, places and relationships

    • Amira Asantewa is Director of Programmes, Grit Breakthrough Programmes
    • Reuel Blair is Lead Diversity Programmes Coordinator at the Centre for Student and Community Engagement, Nottingham Trent University

    Progress on the Black-white degree awarding gap has gone into reverse.  Figures published by Higher Education Student Data (HESA) in autumn 2024 show that in 2022/23 the difference in the percentage of Black students and white students getting a first- or upper-second-class degree went up to 21.4 percentage points (pps) – from 19pps in 2021/22 and 17.6pps in 2020/21.

    Across the sector, institutions are responding. Access and Participation Plans have been signed off.  Work towards achieving Race Equality Charter marks is underway. Faculties and departments are decolonising curricula, diversifying assessment modes, tackling the lack of Black representation in the staff body and the postgraduate community.

    While there are debates about the way the sector analyses and addresses the awarding gap, what we do know is there is, as yet, little to say about what works in UK universities. However, evidence from our work with students of Black Heritage that suggests social capital is key.

    Black leaders

    It was back in 2019 that Nottingham Trent University and Grit Breakthrough Programmes co-designed with students the Black Leadership Programme (BLP) – a mix of community-building activities, mentoring, inspirational speakers and work with both employers and global institutions. Centrepiece workshops are delivered by Grit: breakthrough programmes.

    Six years on and an independent TASO-funded evaluation found strong statistical evidence of impact on final year grades and that these higher grades were likely to have been caused, not by increased academic engagement, but instead by increased motivation, social capital and sense of belonging. 

    This reinforced the findings of the independent evaluation of Grit’s Black Leaders and Students of Colour programme across seven universities, which suggested that students were able to apply skills and confidence from having expanded networks and engagement in new experiences, to their academic lives. And the students tell us what this looks like.

    Spaces for Black students

    Students talk about the importance of access to Black spaces. This space, this community, is a place where Black students are not, as Anike from Liverpool John Moores University puts it, ‘self-censoring to make myself palatable to white people.’ Instead, it is where ‘I can get into the conversations I always wanted to have, feel free to talk about what’s important to me.’

    Research describes how Black-affirming campus spaces are vital for Black student academic success and supporting Black student inclusion and well-being. Kwaku from Nottingham Trent University describes the value of ‘a space where there isn’t the weight of always being different. I want a space to connect with people, people who I can talk to about how I am feeling, what I am going though, and who I know would understand.’

    So social capital is also about belonging. Zelena from Bath Spa University describes wanting ‘to belong to a community of people we can all turn to, to draw strength from, to look up to and connect with.’

    Identity and representation

    It is about identity. Students tell us about the importance of ‘realising the value of my own upbringing, my heritage, my culture… that it is not something to be left behind or discarded… I want to explore and appreciate who I am and what I am.’ As Gemma from the University of Greenwich says, it’s about ‘finally claiming my identity. Becoming proud of being Black.’ University is a time for building a new independent life, figuring out who you really are and how your evolving identity fits in this new space. And there is a strong correlation between identities and deeper approaches to learning.

    It is about representation, both in the messaging about opportunities and in the ability of those delivering them to relate to the racial identity and cultural backgrounds of the students. Or, as Kane from Nottingham Trent University says, ‘it’s about how we have the right to be noticed, feel heard, to see that my voice, my opinion matters.’

    And social capital is also about wanting to make a difference, making a contribution. Afreya from the University of Manchester describes ‘helping other people who are feeling the same as I was. Going out of my way to be visible, showing how anyone just like me, can be successful.’

    Students are very clear about social capital: ‘I made friends from the programme. I’ve joined societies… I’ve been a course rep and a Student Ambassador… I’ve been part of a project supporting young Black learners in schools in the city…’

    They are very clear about its value: ‘It gave me strength… I’ve been relentless in seizing every opportunity available… I work more efficiently… harder and smarter… I feel that the university has an interest in nurturing Black talent and my growth and development.’

    So, alongside all the institutional plans, strategies and initiatives, there also have to be the spaces, places and relationships for Black students to be their full, authentic, very best selves and, just like their white peers, grow the social capital to thrive and succeed in their time at university and beyond.

    On 5th June at Nottingham Trent University, Grit Unleashed will take a deep dive into the university experience for Black students and Students of Colour across the UK in a day co-designed and co-delivered by student participants. For more details email [email protected]

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