In today’s fiercely competitive higher education landscape, enrollment leaders are being asked to do more with less. That means more inquiries, more conversions, and more starts, all while working with fewer resources and a shrinking pool of students actively seeking traditional degree paths.
What separates the institutions that are growing from those that are treading water? In my experience, it’s the willingness to question the status quo. The leaders seeing results are the ones taking a hard look at internal processes and policies and making bold decisions to remove what’s in the way of progress.
The urgency to remove enrollment barriers
Many institutions face enrollment plateaus not because they lack student interest, but because of self-imposed friction. Burdensome application requirements, slow review cycles, and legacy processes that haven’t evolved with changing student expectations can all stand in the way of progress.
Students today expect seamless, responsive experiences. They compare your enrollment process not only to peer institutions but also to the intuitive digital experiences they encounter every day. If your application process is full of red tape or requires too many steps, students will disengage and likely move on to a more accessible option.
Colleges and universities that want to stay competitive need to start clearing the path. By taking the time to understand how your enrollment process actually operates and identifying where students tend to get stuck, you can make meaningful changes that increase both efficiency and enrollment success.
Start with a map: Uncovering friction through process review
The first step to solving an enrollment slowdown is understanding where it’s happening. That’s where process mapping comes in.
At Collegis, we partner with institutions to conduct comprehensive process assessments. We document and analyze every step of the applicant journey, from inquiry through registration, to uncover inconsistencies, delays, and points of friction that may be limiting your enrollment funnel. We often find that a student’s experience varies widely depending on who they interact with or when they enter the process, revealing a need for greater consistency and coordination.
In many cases, we find students getting stuck at multiple points across the enrollment journey, starting with the application itself. Lengthy or confusing questions, lack of helpful guidance, and irrelevant fields can all create unnecessary complexity early on. Students may also encounter inconsistent or impersonal communication, making it unclear what to expect next or where they stand in the process.
Further down the funnel, delays often occur during application review, sometimes taking a week or more due to internal handoffs or manual processes. In some cases, applications sit idle because there’s no system in place to move files forward or flag them for outreach. These gaps add up, slowing momentum and causing potential students to disengage.
When you can see the entire process visualized, it becomes easier to ask the right questions:
Is the application process intuitive and easy to navigate, or are we introducing unnecessary complexity?
Are there clear next steps and calls to action for students at each stage?
Do students receive consistent, timely communication that reflects where they are in the journey?
Is the messaging and cadence of our marketing and operational emails aligned with what students hear from admissions counselors?
Are there opportunities to streamline handoffs, automate manual steps, or standardize the process to ensure every student receives a cohesive experience?
Process mapping isn’t just a troubleshooting exercise. It’s a strategic investment in institutional agility and student-centered design. Institutions that complete this type of review often uncover both quick wins and opportunities for deeper transformation.
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Rethink the rules: Policies that reduce friction and drive results
Some of the most impactful improvements we’ve seen don’t require major investments or cutting-edge technologies. More often, they come from rethinking the policies that shape your admissions process and how those policies either support or hinder the student experience.
When we conduct policy reviews with our partner institutions, we often find that some admissions requirements add more complexity than value. It’s crucial to determine whether each requirement is truly essential to making an informed admissions decision. By removing or refining requirements that no longer serve a clear purpose (such as excessive documentation or overly rigid review criteria) institutions can streamline internal workflows and reduce avoidable delays. These targeted adjustments not only improve operational efficiency but also create a more accessible and student-centered experience.
Impact in action: Practical examples of enrollment transformation
These are not just hypothetical improvements. We’ve worked directly with institutions to implement these strategies and have seen the tangible impact they can deliver. Here are a few real-world examples that show how practical adjustments have translated into measurable results:
Waiving letters of recommendation for applicants who meet a defined GPA threshold. This eliminates a common bottleneck while maintaining admissions rigor.
Simplifying transcript requirements by only requesting documentation that includes a conferred degree and any prerequisite coursework required for program entry. Additional transcripts are collected later if necessary, which speeds up the initial review process.
Automating workflows that trigger application reviews as soon as all checklist items are complete. This ensures students move through the process without unnecessary delays.
Setting up notifications to ensure timely engagement. For example, alerts can be set when a new inquiry or applicant hasn’t received contact from an admissions counselor within 24 hours, or when application reviews are taking longer than expected.
These types of changes create a more efficient, student-centered process that helps institutions convert interest into enrollment more effectively.
Don’t just tweak the process, transform it
If your institution is still relying on outdated processes and rigid policies, now is the time to reevaluate. The enrollment environment is only becoming more competitive. But with the right changes, your institution can become more efficient, more agile, and more appealing to today’s students.
This isn’t about cutting corners or lowering standards. It’s about rethinking how your process serves students. Process mapping helps uncover ways to simplify steps, ensure consistency, and build trust through clear communication and meaningful staff connections. The result is an experience that’s more efficient, more personal, and better aligned with your institution’s goals.
Let’s break the bottleneck together
A process mapping assessment is a powerful starting point. At Collegis, we go beyond identifying issues. We work side by side with our partners to solve them. Our approach is collaborative, our recommendations are practical, and our focus is always on impact.
If your institution is ready to accelerate enrollment growth, strengthen internal operations, and deliver a more consistent and personalized experience for your students, let’s talk.
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Jim Callinan leads enrollment strategy and operational excellence at Collegis Education, where he partners with higher education institutions to design and deploy data-informed admissions and student-journey models. With nearly 20 years of higher education experience, Jim brings deep expertise in aligning cross-functional teams across technology, marketing, analytics, enrollment, and student success to drive growth, streamline operations, and elevate the student and staff experience. His collaborative approach helps institutions align strategy, process, and performance to achieve sustainable success.
While affordability remains the greatest obstacle for students, IDP Education’s new Emerging Futures survey has revealed the growing impact of sudden and unclear policy changes shaping students’ international study decisions.
“Students and families are prepared to make sacrifices to afford their international education dreams. They can adjust budgets, seek scholarships and rely on part-time work. But they cannot plan for uncertainty,” said IDP chief partnerships officer Simon Emmett.
“When the rules change, without warning or clarity, trust falls away. Students hesitate, delay, or choose to study elsewhere.”
Drawing on the views of nearly 8,000 international students from 134 countries between July and August 2025, the results highlighted the critical importance of study destinations communicating policy changes to sustain trust among students.
The US and UK were rated the lowest for providing clear guidance on visas and arrivals processes, while New Zealand was identified as the top communicator in this respect.
What’s more, the UK saw the steepest rise in students withdrawing from plans to study there, indicating recent policy changes including plans to shorten the Graduate Route and increase compliance metrics for universities are creating uncertainty among international students.
Of the students who said they were pivoting away from major study destinations, over half (51%) indicated tuition fees had become unaffordable and one in five said it was too difficult to obtain a visa.
In markets such as Malaysia, the Philippines and the UAE, students reported delaying or redirecting applications almost immediately after unclear announcements by major destinations, the report said.
Meanwhile Canada’s share of withdrawals was shown to have eased, indicating messaging is helping to rebuild stability, the authors suggested, though Canadian study permit issuance has fallen dramatically in 2025.
Without that stability, even the most attractive destinations risk losing trust
Simon Emmett, IDP
Despite policy disruptions in Australia over recent years, the country remained the most popular first-choice destination globally, ranked highly for value for money, graduate employment opportunities and post-study work pathways.
At the same time, many respondents flagged sensitivities to recent visa and enrolment changes, highlighting the need for consistent and transparent messaging to maintain Australia’s competitiveness, according to IDP.
The US saw the largest decline in popularity, dropping to third place behind Australia and the UK.
NAFSA CEO Fanta Aw said the findings should serve as a “wake-up call” that policy uncertainty has real human and economic costs, emphasising the need for “clear and consistent” communication from institutions and policymakers.
“Students are paying close attention to how the US administration handles student visas and post-study experiential learning opportunities like Optional Practical Training,” said Aw.
Visa restrictions and policy hostility have rocked the US under Trump’s second presidency, with global visa appointments suspended for nearly a month this summer, as well as thousands of student visa revocations and travel restrictions on 12 nations.
Post-study work opportunities are increasingly fragile in the US with government plans to overhaul the H-1B skilled worker visa to favour better paid jobs and OPT coming under increased scrutiny from policymakers.
Emmett highlighted the knock-on effect of these policy shocks, with student journeys being disrupted “not by ambition, but by uncertainty”.
“Countries that provide predictability will win the confidence of students and their families. Without that stability, even the most attractive destinations risk losing trust,” he said.
Despite financial and political challenges, demand for global study remained strong, with half of all prospective students intending to apply within six months, and a further 29% within a year.
South Asia emerged as the main driver of intent, with more than 60% of students surveyed from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh preparing near-term applications, though this region was also the most sensitive to abrupt or confusing policy shifts.
This speech was delivered by HEPI Director Nick Hillman at the University of Cardiff on Thursday, 16 October 2025.
Introduction
The other day, I was speaking to the University of Liverpool Council at the Ness Botanic Gardens on the Wirral, which as you know is four hours due north of here, pretty much on the Welsh / English border. I started my speech there by noting that I only exist because of the University of Liverpool, as my maternal grandparents met there in the early 1930s. Well, I also only exist because of the Welsh university system, as my parents met while they were students here in Wales in the early 1960s, just as my own children only exist because I met my wife in the early 1990s at university.
The fact that three generations of my family originally met while at university is a powerful reminder, at least to me, that higher education change lives. And at HEPI, we had another powerful reminder of that during our first event of this academic year, when – last month – we hosted the UK launch of the OECD’s Education at a Glance publication.
Education at a Glance
In case you have not come across it before, this is the most useful but worst titled publication on education that appears anywhere in the world each year. It is a vast 541-page compendium of comparative data that you need to pore over rather than glance at.
This year’s OECD report had a particular focus on tertiary education. While we have become used to people beating up on the UK higher education sector, the OECD actually painted a picture of a very successful sector playing to its strengths. When you look in from the outside, it seems the UK’s higher education institutions are not so bad after all.
For example, the OECD showed that, among the many developed countries covered in their report, the UK has:
higher than average participation in higher education;
lower than average graduate unemployment, irrespective of whether the individuals studied STEM, business or humanities; and
among the very highest undergraduate completion rates anywhere in the world, vying with Ireland for the top spot.
I recognise the OECD is looking at averages for the UK as a whole and the position of Wales is not necessarily the same but, in general, the weaknesses the OECD found in were on the lack of good opportunities for people who do not succeed in education first time around.
Specifically, the OECD found a profound problem among young men, a rising proportion of whom are classified as NEETs (Not in Employment, Education or Training). While the OECD use historic data for a year or two past, last week’s brand new NEET data for Wales confirms the depressing picture. Indeed, it was even more salutary, noting:
The proportion of young people aged 16 to 24 in Wales who were not in employment, education or training (NEET) was 15.1% in the year ending June 2025, an increase of 3.6 percentage points over the year.
The OECD additionally found that the UK has the biggest gap of all developed countries when it comes to the difference in earnings between low-skilled adults and those who leave school with A-Levels (or equivalent). This should perhaps worry Wales even more than the rest of the UK, given that Wales scores the worst for schoolchildren’s academic performance for any part of the UK. Indeed, Wales is the only part of the UK to perform worse than the OECD average in all three areas of Mathematics, Reading and Science.
When it comes to funding of higher education, the OECD found the UK spends more than most other countries … but the shift to loan-based finance means direct government spending on each student in higher education is only half the OECD average and only half the amount spent ‘at primary to post-secondary non-tertiary levels’ ($13,000). Of course, the UK’s figures are distorted by England’s numbers because England is much larger than the other parts of the UK and has moved towards loans to a greater degree than Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. That is one reason why we have worked with London Economics and the Nuffield Foundation to look at the picture in each part of the UK separately.
There are three profound differences. First, the Exchequer cost is lowest in England, which also has the highest per-student income for institutions. Scotland is at the other end of the scale, with the largest Exchequer cost but the lowest unit-of-resource for institutions. Wales is, as you may expect, somewhere in the middle, with an Exchequer cost and a per-student income for institutions that lies between those in England and Scotland.
There is a similar picture when we look – secondly – at the balance of who is paying the costs of higher education. In England, it is mainly former students via the loan system; in Scotland, it is entirely taxpayers (and then some). In Wales there is a more even split approaching 50:50 between the Exchequer and graduates, arguably reflecting the public and private benefits of higher education more accurately. There are probably lessons from Wales for the rest of the UK here, though seemingly not for Kemi Badenoch, who complained at the Conservative Party Conference last week that higher education in England still costs taxpayers too much.
The third big difference is on student maintenance, where the system in Wales is more generous and more logical than those elsewhere in the UK. Each student gets more and the non-repayable grants are more generous in Wales than elsewhere – all undergraduates have at least a small grant whereas no one currently gets a grant in England, where grants were abolished in 2016. (Ministers promised the return of grants in England at the Labour Conference a fortnight ago, but only for some students on some courses, meaning it is likely to prove a mouse of an intervention and a very complicated one at that. It is certainly set to be nothing like the Welsh system.)
Many people I know are fans of the system in Wales for the way that it tries to strike a balance. However, while there are certainly far worse systems even within the rest of the UK, I personally think the benefits of the Welsh system are sometimes oversold. For example, I think the structure of student support in Wales is excessively generous to students who come from wealthy households. In other words, it is not means tested enough, perhaps explaining the need for the recent cuts to postgraduate support.
I have held this view consistently since the current Welsh funding system was introduced on the back of the Diamond review in 2018, but it has got me in trouble. After my concerns reached the front page of the Western Mail, I got not only an official rebuke from the Welsh Government but HEPI also received a formal complaint that came jointly from Universities Wales and NUS Wales. Rather than persuading me to change my view, I must admit this mainly had the effect of making me wonder if higher education debates in Wales are sometimes a little too cosy and stifled.
Boys, Boys, Boys
One other area where the OECD painted a less positive picture is on the differential educational performance of young men and young women. Women are more likely to obtain tertiary education across the developed world but the gap between men and women is bigger in the UK than elsewhere and has been growing while it has stayed the same on average across the OECD as a whole. According to the OECD:
In the United Kingdom, they [women] accounted for 56% of first-time entrants in 2023, up from 55% in 2013. Across the OECD, women make up 54% of new entrants on average, the same share as in 2013.
This is a convenient segue into some more of HEPI’s recent output because we have long worried about the educational performance of boys and young men and have published a number of papers on the topic over the years, with the most recent one appearing in March 2025. As Mary Curnock Cook wrote in the Foreword:
Something has surely gone wrong with education if boys – in aggregate at least – do worse than girls at all stages of education from early years to higher education and beyond.
Overall, out of every 100 female school leavers, 54 proceed to higher education by the age of 19; out of every 100 male school leavers, just 40 do so.
Again, the problems are worse in Wales than elsewhere. Over half of Inner London school leavers eligible for Free School Meals reach higher education by the age of 19; it is hard to get directly comparable figures for Wales but it seems the numbers are less than half as much for FSM Welsh-domiciled school leavers. Overall, while the gap in school leavers’ entry rates to higher education between men and women is dire in England, it is even worse in Wales. In fact, the proportion of young men who make it to higher education in Wales is lower than in every other part of the UK. It has been a known problem for at least 20 years yet for whatever reason, and perhaps because of misplaced fears of seeming politically incorrect, it has not been addressed.
Yet if male educational underachievement is not tackled, it seems certain that we will store up further societal problems for the future – including having more under-educated men veering towards the political extremes. Here, I note in passing the high polling of Reform for next year’s Senedd election. It is not rocket science to solve the boy problem, however, to take just one example, some schools following a ‘boy positive’ approach have managed to equalise their results for boys and girls and there is some great work underway in our own sector – for example, at Ulster University and the Arts University Bournemouth.
What remains completely absent, however, is any concerted interest at a national and ministerial level – certainly at Westminster and as far as I can tell in the Senedd too. People who did not want to take the Black Lives Matter protests seriously a few years ago sought to deflect attention from them by saying ‘All Lives Matter’, as if that was ever in doubt. Similarly, when Ministers wish to deflect attention from the crisis in boys’ education they like to respond by saying things like ‘Opportunity should be available to all’, which is true but it papers over the specific challenges faced by young men.
Our work on male underachievement sits alongside our work on the disadvantages faced by women, such as our reports on the substantial gender pay gap that remains in higher education as well as our other work on the overall gender pay gap among graduates. It also sits alongside a new HEPI report published just three months ago on the impact of menstruation on undergraduates’ attendance, academic engagement and wellbeing.
This revealed 70% of female students report being unable to concentrate on their studies or assessments due to period pain and that female students miss an average of 10 study days per academic year due to menstrual symptoms. It also suggested that just 15% of universities have a specific menstruation policy and, for those that do, the policy relates solely to staff rather than students.
So as I hope you can sense, the topics that tend to work best for HEPI are issues – like boys’ underperformance and the impact of menstruation on learning – that we should be speaking about more than we have done. Another area where that is true is public perceptions of higher education.
Misperceptions
A year ago, I had a drink with a neighbour who has a background in banking and two graduate children, meaning – in theory at least – that he knows the value of money and the value of education. However, when it came to universities, he expressed some typical rhetoric about them being too numerous, too big, too expensive and so on.
I responded by telling him I was on the Board at the University of Manchester and asking him to guess that institution’s financial turnover. His reply was £30 million – which is between 40 and 50 times smaller than the actual number of c.£1.3 billion (and over 20 times smaller than Cardiff’s turnover). Once my hangover had subsided, I contacted Bobby Duffy of the King’s College Policy Institute, who is the UK’s greatest expert on misperceptions – that is, the difference between what is true and what we tend to believe is true. This led over a process of many months to a new research project on what the public think about higher education, which we and King’s College launched the results of last month.
The findings are worth poring over in detail and we have brought hard copies of the work along for each you. Sone of the results particularly stand out.
For example, we gave people a list of seven institutions: Manchester City, Manchester United, the University of Manchester, the University of Oxford, the Daily Mail, MoneySupermarket.com and Greggs bakery.
When the public were asked about the relative financial size of these seven, the University of Oxford came fifth and the University of Manchester seventh, at the very bottom. More than half of respondents said they thought either Manchester City or Manchester United was the biggest in terms of their financial size; only 6% chose the right answer, the University of Oxford. The University of Manchester should be third in that list of seven by the way because, while it easily beats City and United in terms of its financial size, you might be surprised to know that Greggs has a turnover of £2 billion.
Similarly, when we gave the public a list of five big industries – legal services, accountancy services, aircraft manufacturing, telecommunications and higher education – and asked them to say which is least important in terms of export revenues, higher education was the most popular option. That result could not be any more wrong because higher education actually brings in much more export income than each of the others.
Let me share three other fascinating data points from the survey with you too:
people greatly overestimate the level of graduate regret about going to higher education – on average, the public guess 40% of graduates would opt not to go to university if they had their again, when the actual proportion of graduates who say this is only 8%;
on average, the public guess half (49%) of graduates say their university debt has negatively impacted their lives – in reality only 16% of graduates feel this way; and
a majority of people, including a majority of Reform voters at the 2024 general election, have positive feelings about universities.
Oversight and regulation
Over the past decade, the oversight of tertiary education and research has been transformed in England, though not necessarily for the better. When I worked as a Special Adviser in Whitehall a dozen years ago, there was one Minister for Universities and Science who sat in one Government Department and who had oversight of one regulator that oversaw both teaching and research (known as the Higher Education Funding Council for England). But in recent years we have had different regulators, different Ministers and different Departments for the teaching and research functions of universities, meaning coordinated oversight has been missing.
Moreover, while the Westminster Government has promised more ‘clarity and coherence’, the latest Machinery of Government changes have made the current situation even more of a dog’s dinner. The Minister for Skills, who has responsibility for higher education, now has one foot in the Department for Education and another in the Department for Work and Pensions, which has just taken on the responsibility for ‘skills’, while the Minister for Science has one foot in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and another in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. Split ministerial posts tend to be a recipe for chaos, as I saw close up during my own time in Whitehall.
So while I know that the new Medr (the Commission for Tertiary Education and Research) here in Wales has had some teething challenges, on paper it makes a lot more sense than what England has. At one point, it was thought England’s long-awaited post-16 skills white paper was likely to be heavily influenced by Wales; given the latest reshuffle and associated changes, that now – perhaps regrettably – seems less likely.
International students
Finally, I want to end by touching on the issue of international students. The majority of the really big projects HEPI has undertaken over the past few years have focused on international students. Perhaps that is not surprising, given the OECD data I started with, which shows that, while there is one international student for every thirteen home students across the OECD as a whole, the ratio in the UK is completely different at 1:3.
That helps to explain why we have calculated (more than once) the net economic benefits of international students to the UK. The latest iteration found a gross benefit of £41.9 billion for just one incoming cohort of students and a net benefit (after taking account of the impact on public services and so on) of £37.4 billion. We split up this total to reveal a number for each one of the 650 parliamentary constituencies across the UK, including Cardiff South and Penarth, which is the top-performing constituency in Wales and one where international students contribute significantly over £300 million a year.
We have separately calculated the positive tax contributions of those former international students who stay in the UK to work after completing their studies, undertaken detailed studies on the Graduate Route visa and looked specifically at the experience of Chinese students in the UK. In addition, we produce each year a Soft-Power Index that looks at how many very senior world leaders have been educated to a higher level outside of their own home country. If they return home with fond memories of their time in the UK and a better understanding of our country, then this tends to bring real benefits. We will be launching the results for 2025 next week but last year’s Soft-Power Index, which is regularly quoted by Ministers, showed that, across the globe’s 195 countries, there were 58 serving world leaders who received some higher education in the UK, second only to the US.
I am going to stop here because I started the speech on a positive – on the way higher education changes lives for the better. And despite all the numerous political, financial and geopolitical challenges facing higher education across the UK, the continuing immense soft-power benefits delivered by UK higher education institutions is another area where there is a huge amount of which we can be proud.
Journalists from FOX News, ABC, and over a dozen other news organizations are refusing to sign the Pentagon’s new policy for press credentials, saying in a joint statement that it “threatens core journalistic protections.” They’re right about that. At least a couple of the policy’s provisions burden fundamental newsgathering with vague restrictions that invite government overreach.
There’s no way to know when you’re ‘soliciting government employees to break the law’
The most troubling provision of the policy is found in the “Security Risks” section and states, in part:
There is a critical distinction between lawfully requesting information from the government and actively soliciting or encouraging government employees to break the law. The First Amendment does not permit journalists to solicit government employees to violate the law by providing confidential government information.
This runs into a functional problem and a legal problem. Let’s deal with the functional problem first.
In most cases, journalists don’t know what answer they’re going to get to a question before they ask. For example, if a journalist asks a question about whether the department is investigating a report on social media of overseas terrorism targeting American assets, the potential responses range from the totally unclassified (e.g., no) to the highly sensitive (e.g., troop locations and plans).
While a journalist might reasonably infer that the United States is engaging in some activity that falls into the sensitive or classified categories, they don’t have any power to determine what answer they actually receive. The policy’s interpretation of solicitation or encouragement seems to invest a lot of discretion into the Department of War to decide whether the question was soliciting sensitive information. And it also sets up reporters to be scapegoats for when federal employees release too much information. The fault there starts — and ends — with those employees, not journalists simply doing their job.
The legal problem with this provision is that it’s not based in any actual law. As stated, it undermines well-established law. The First Amendment has limited enumerated exceptions, such as speech that is defamatory, speech that would inspire imminent lawless action, and obscenity. “Asking a question where the answer might be classified” isn’t on the list, and reporting on national security matters is protected speech.
The fundamental “right of citizens to inquire” includes asking the government questions. If the First Amendment guarantees the right “verbally to oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest,” then it guarantees the right to peaceably ask an officer questions without risking arrest. [City of Houston v.] Hill, 482 U.S. at 462–63. Likewise, if the government cannot hold Americans in contempt for “speak[ing] one’s mind, although not always with perfect good taste, on all public institutions,” it cannot jail them for posing questions to public institutions. Bridges v. California, 314 U.S. 252, 270 (1941).
There’s an attempted savings clause in the policy that says the rules “do not prohibit you … from engaging in constitutionally protected journalistic activities, such as investigating, reporting, or publishing stories.” That offers little comfort when it also opines that some questions aren’t constitutionally protected.
The remedy here is not to go after reporters, who we expect to ask tough and probing questions of government officials. Rather, it’s for Pentagon staff to practice message discipline by following law and policy when asked sensitive questions. This is not an unreasonable ask; after all, the government has spent decades finding new and creative ways not to answer such questions, like the Glomar response. It doesn’t need to threaten journalists with punishment if, by misadventure, they accidentally get one answered.
‘Unprofessional conduct’ could lead to loss of credentials
Appendix A lists reasons why credentials might be pulled from “any person reasonably determined to pose a security or safety risk to DoW personnel or property.” That includes “those who have been convicted of any offense involving . . .unprofessional conduct that might serve to disrupt Pentagon operations.” But a later sentence clarifies that “actions other than conviction may be deemed to pose a security or safety risk” and might also lead to loss of credentials.
One can imagine situations where this might be appropriate, but if I’m parsing that correctly, a journalist merely seen as unprofessional — even without being “convicted of any offense” — could be regarded as a security risk and have their credentials revoked. That by itself sounds like a problem. It sounds like even more of a problem after President Trump was asked whether he would consider removing the restrictions and replied that he thinks Secretary of War Pete Hegseth “finds the press to be very disruptive in terms of world peace and maybe security for our nation,” adding, “The press is very dishonest.”
Most journalists would agree that dishonesty is unprofessional. If the commander in chief already thinks you’re dishonest, then what journalist’s credential is likely to survive this provision?
In one instance, the policy singles out journalists for diminished rights
One thread that runs through the entire credentialing policy is that the government doesn’t want anyone taking pictures of the Pentagon or its environs (the “Pentagon reservation”). In most cases, people need permission and a handler before engaging in recording. When it comes to sensitive areas, this is understandable. But the policy has a particularly odd restriction at the 9/11 Memorial on Pentagon grounds:
News media visiting the National Pentagon 9/11 Memorial in their personal capacity, not as a member of the press, may take photos using their personal devices. Filming or photography in the Memorial for a news media interview or to obtain b-roll requires an exception, as described below under Filming/Photography Exception Requests.
If this were a restraint directed at order, traffic, the use of large cameras or amplification devices, that might make sense. If it were a general time, place, and manner restraint, that might make some sense. But this is a restriction on photography based on the intent to engage in the freedom of the press guaranteed by the Constitution. In other words, you can have the picture, as long as you don’t intend to show anyone. It’s hard to imagine a worse reason to restrict photography.
How would this even work in practice? Every day, we see reporters crowdsource photos from events on social media. So reporters are barred from taking a picture, but can get permission from the non-journalist next to them who published the photo on X? I understand the need for extraordinary security around the Pentagon, but singling journalists out for less favorable treatment than the general public is inherently suspect.
With these issues, it shouldn’t be surprising that nearly every media outlet has refused to sign the acknowledgement, including CNN, NPR, CBS, FOX, The Washington Times, and The New York Times. Only One America News, a pro-Trump news outlet, has agreed so far.
In recent months, the Pentagon had made revisions to improve this policy based on feedback. It’s unclear how much the outlets and the Pentagon will cooperate going forward.
(H/t to the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press, both for writing to the Department of War about the policy and actually sharing the policy with the world, which, in the most recent version, was rare indeed.)
in recognition of the explosion in demand for higher education in India – with 70 million places needed by 2035, which has created a huge opportunity for UK universities seeking new funding streams.
The last couple of years have seen a loosening of restrictions on overseas campuses in India and a corresponding piling in from universities in the UK, US, Australia and elsewhere, in particular within the new Edu City development in Navi Mumbai. On the UK side, Southampton, Surrey, York, Aberdeen, Bristol and Liverpool have either opened a new campus or received the go-ahead from India’s University Grants Commission to move forward with plans for one, whether in the new education hub area or elsewhere.
The government seems keen to trumpet UK higher education’s growing overseas presence as an economic win for the country and the institutions involved. It has also shrewdly observed that some UK universities are indeed “seeking new funding streams.” The future looks bright for TNE then – right?
Overdue refreshments
There’s a school of thought which says the government’s long-delayed international education strategy refresh will lean into transnational education, although exactly what this would entail is unclear – probably more trade delegations and better intertwining of the sector’s efforts with wider diplomatic work, rather than anything as flashy as a student number target.
If we look, for example, at the value of transnational education, where UK universities have sites in or relationships with other countries, we see a growing sector, and these are all areas that we will want to look at in the international education strategy.
This way of thinking is perhaps stimulated by the unlikelihood of Labour’s vision for the strategy being particularly bullish in any other area. A new international student number target is surely off the cards, and while there may be aspirations around overall education export totals, such a large slice of this comes from international students’ fees and living expenses that it’s tricky to be realistic about increases if numbers don’t return to growth.
About the only thing we do know at this point about the new strategy is that it will be co-led by the Foreign Office as well as DfE and the Department for Business and Trade (the Home Office still doesn’t seem to be closely involved with the strategy – history suggests that it will suddenly have thoughts at a later date).
And while the UK trade strategy, launched just before the summer, made only passing reference to education, more recently the business department has continued funding for the QAA to address “regulatory barriers to the growth of UK higher education in priority nations.”
Doing things leanly
The future regulatory environment has begun to look more promising too, with new Office for Students chair Edward Peck telling the education committee back in March that increased scrutiny of TNE would not be a priority:
I think there may be ways of doing things more leanly, which is why I want to explore the legal framework, as I noted. There may be some things that at the moment just are not a priority. The one that has been raised with me by the sector is the interest in more regulatory activity around transnational education. I would want to explore with the OfS why that was thought to be a priority at this moment, given everything else that is going on.
The regulator’s draft free speech guidance had left the territorial extent of the new requirements somewhat vague, leading to some pointed consultation responses from sector representatives as to why they should very much not apply elsewhere in the world. But the finalised guidance in June 2025 put it bluntly:
HERA does not require providers or constituent institutions to take steps to secure freedom of speech in respect of their activities outside England.
Plus earlier this year OfS (and Medr) announced that providers would not be required to submit individualised TNE learner data to the HESA student record “until further notice”, backtracking on earlier plans intended to provide a better understanding of the quality and standards of TNE provision and thus assist the regulator to “more effectively protect the interests of these students.” The regulatory outlook for TNE looks light-touch for the foreseeable future.
The Industry and Regulators Committee inquiry into OfS was told that the regulator’s falling-out with the QAA was putting at risk future transnational education partnerships involving English providers. But the recent glut of new campuses and programmes seems to bely these fears.
Sovereign glut
To pick out a few recent examples, the last year or so has seen new overseas campuses (opening or announced) involving Exeter in Egypt, Lancaster in Indonesia, Keele and York in Greece, and all the ones in India mentioned above. There is plenty more action besides – and plenty of TNE which doesn’t follow the more eye-catching branch campus model.
Around 20 per cent of UG and PGT students registered for a higher education award are now based overseas in one form or another of TNE. We’re rapidly approaching the inflection point where there are more TNE students in UK higher education than there are international students travelling over here (in fact we may have already passed this important moment, we just don’t have timely enough data to tell us).
Despite the occasional fears that there are reputational skeletons lurking in the overseas activities of UK universities, the media spotlight is rarely turned their way. We get the occasional scare story when the Telegraph is told the student numbers involved, or occasional deeper digging when an overseas partner becomes too involved in geopolitics – but these are relatively few and far between, as opposed to the incessant drumbeat of negative coverage for many other higher education issues.
At the risk of breaking the unwritten Wonkhe rule of not writing up imagined HE futures for the second time in a week, you can see a world 20 years hence in which transnational higher education has gone from strength to strength, with UK universities having continued to grow their overseas offer, and the proportion of higher education students whose awards come from institutions outside their country of study ticking ever upwards.
The UK can benefit from its huge pool of expertise in getting programmes off the ground – and plenty of experience in what can go wrong, if it’s able to learn from it. If the government leans in, the regulators stay largely unengaged, and the press generally continues to ignore the detail of what happens elsewhere in the world – it feels plausible.
Rescue me
But there are clearly challenges. Jisc’s new survey of staff and student digital experiences in TNE is a rare window into actual teaching and learning environments at a decent scale (more than 5,000 responses from a wide variety of countries and provision types).
Staff and students alike reported fairly widespread problems logging into university systems, accessing e-books, journals and software, and restrictions to certain apps or websites. One-third of teaching staff said that unreliable wifi negatively affects student learning – a “significant proportion” of TNE students were found to be paying cellular data costs to access learning resources via smartphones. Of the teaching staff surveyed, only 32 per cent said that most or all students had an understanding of acceptable use of generative AI.
It’s not all directly about tech either. Students highlighted unclear marking criteria, especially for those learning online, and some mentioned a lack of feedback. The report has two examples (both in China) of students being placed in “potential danger” from the government due to political content of their past or present assignments. There’s an example of synchronous content from the UK being packaged up as an asynchronous programme for learners abroad in a way that hardly screams high quality.
Some of the issues that emerge are simply around the challenges of delivering university study which is ever more designed around access to tech in places which suffer from moderate to high digital poverty. But others – and it’s these you’d be interested in if prognosticating about future trends in TNE – revolve more around the extent to which the world is becoming more or less technologically, and intellectually, open. You wouldn’t want to bet the farm on models of learning which suppose that internet access internationally is going to become more open, or that the same countries’ companies will continue to enjoy the same access to developing markets that they have over the last decade or so.
The problems aren’t all insurmountable – the Jisc report emphasises the opportunities of transnational licensing agreements and the importance of the sector setting up publisher agreements in a way that doesn’t forget that it has thousands of students in different domiciles.
If regulators began to take a closer interest in TNE student experience (and other topics such as assessment and feedback, or academic freedom), the report spells out some areas where there would be a greater impetus for action. Though many of these issues have not really been effectively tackled for UK-based students either.
Travelling long haul
Practicalities of staff and student experiences aside, there are plenty of sensible reasons why TNE isn’t a policy solution to the UK higher education sector’s wider funding challenges, a claim the government seems to be flirting with in its trade deal boosterism.
The chance to relitigate the question of how much it costs to deliver higher education, and at what fee, to students studying in their home country is an enticing one, given how the various UK governments have boxed universities in from doing so here. There may be more margin available in some instances – but there are certainly plenty of examples of institutions losing more than they put in, even if they are not public-spirited enough to fess up and enhance everyone else’s understanding of what not to do.
The long-term stability of programmes is unclear too. The risk of big geopolitical upheaval changing the landscape in one fell swoop is fairly well-trodden ground at this point (even if it still gets ignored in planning) but smaller policy changes – take Malaysia’s recently instituted tax on international students as but one example – can also make the difference between viability and non-viability. Another clear direction of travel in global TNE is competition: countries who have typically been hosts pivoting into setting up their own initiatives. Transnational education might be ubiquitous in global HE in 2050, but this doesn’t translate to UK institutions necessarily enjoying an ever-upward trajectory.
The other point that gets largely overlooked is what this hypothetical boom in TNE looks like across the sector – it’s surely unrealistic to see all, or even most, universities with mature transnational offers a couple of decades hence, in the same way that other export industries don’t have a plethora of successful UK actors on the world stage. A more compelling prediction would be a relatively modest number of institutions getting TNE “right” for the longer-term, leaving the others to focus on all that stuff the government wants but doesn’t fund: more civic and local focus, the (re)building of links to local economies and businesses, an ever more ambitious role in enabling opportunity in the UK on a shoestring.
So TNE might well be an enormous part of UK higher education’s future – but you’d have to predict that for many individual universities it will certainly not be, however much the government might want to trumpet its potential role as a new funding stream. This complicates any efforts to use it as a policy plug for a sector taking on water.
Hi all. I thought I would take some time to have a chat about how research policy is evolving in other countries, because I think there are some lessons we need to learn here in Canada.
One piece of news that struck me this week came from Switzerland, where the federal government is slashing the budget of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) by 20%. If the Swiss, a technological powerhouse of a nation, with a broad left-right coalition in power and a more or less balanced budget, are cutting back on science like this, then we might all have to re-think the idea that being anti-Science is just a manifestation of right-wing populism. Higher education as a whole has some thinking to do.
Over to Australia, where a few months ago the government set up a Strategic Examination of Research and Development, which released a discussion paper, held consultations and got feedback (which it published) and has now released six more “issue” papers for consultation which detail government thinking in many different and more detailed ways. If this sounds magical to you, it is because you are from Canada, where the standard practice for policymaking is to do everything behind closed doors and treat stakeholders like mushrooms (in the dark with only fecal matter for company) instead of a place where policy-making is treated as a serious endeavour in which public input and expert advice is welcomed.
For today’s purposes however, what matters is not process but policy. The review is seriously considering a number of fairly radical ideas, such as creating a few national “focus areas” for research funding, which would attract higher rates of overhead and requiring institutions to focus their efforts in one of these priority areas via mission-based compacts (which are sort of like Ontario’s Multi-Year Agreements, only they are meaningful) so as to build scale and specialization.
Whew.
One thing that strikes me as odd about both the UK and Australian line of thinking is the idea that institutional specialization matters all that much. While lots of research is done at the level of the individual lab, most “big science” – the stuff people who dream about specialization have in mind when the talk about science – happens in teams which span many institutions, and more often than not across national borders as well. I get the sense that the phenomenon of institutional rankings have fried policy makers’ brains somewhat: they seem to think that the correct way to think about science is at the level of the institution, rather than labs or networks of laboratories. It’s kind of bananas. We can be glad that this kind of thinking has not infected Canadian policy too much because the network concept is more ingrained here.
Which brings me to news here at home.
The rumour out of Ottawa is that in the next few months (still not clear if this is going to be fall 2025 or Spring 2026) there will be an announcement of a new envelope of money for research. But very definitely not inquiry-driven research. No, this is money which the feds intend to spend as part of the increase in “defence” spending which is supposed to rise to 2% of GDP by 2025-2026 and 5% by 2035. So, the kinds of things it will need to go to will be “security”, likely defined relatively generously. It will be for projects in space, protection of critical infrastructure, resiliency, maybe energy production, etc. I don’t think this is going to be all about STEM and making widgets – there will be at least some room for social science in these areas and maybe humanities, too, though this seems to me a harder pitch to make. It is not clear from what I have heard if this is going to be one big pie or a series of smaller pies, divided up wither by mission or by existing granting council. But the money does seem to be on its way.
Now before I go any further, I should point out that I have not heard anyone say that these new research envelopes are actually going to contain new money beyond what was spent in 2024-25. As I pointed out a couple of weeks ago, that would be hard to square with the government’s deficit-fighting commitments.
In fact, if I had to guess right now, the best-case scenario would be that the Liberals will do this by taking some or all of the 88% of the Budget 2024 research commitment to the tri-councils and push it into these new envelopes (worst-case scenario: they nuke the 88% of the 2024 Budget commitment they haven’t yet spent and claw back money from existing commitments to make these new envelopes).
So, obviously no push here for institutional specialization, but where our debate echoes those of the UK and Australia is that all three governments seem to want to shift away from broad-based calls for inquiry driven research and toward more mission-based research in some vaguely defined areas of national priority. I know this is going to irritate and anger many people, but genuinely I don’t see many politically practical alternatives right now. As I said back here: if defending existing inquiry-driven tri-council budgets is the hill the sector chooses to die on, we’re all going to be in big trouble.
No one will forcing individual researchers or institutions to be part of this shift to mission-driven research, but clearly that’s where the money is going to be. So, my advice to VPs Research is: get your ducks in a row on this now. Figure out who in your institution does anything that can even tangentially be referred to as “security-enhancing”. Figure out what kinds of pitches you might want to make. Start testing your elevator pitches. There will be rewards to first movers in this area.
In recent weeks, the plight of Gazan students and scholars accepted to UK universities has gained attention in British and international media. These individuals are recipients of highly competitive scholarships such as Chevening, as well as other academic awards. They have earned their place at some of the most prestigious institutions in the United Kingdom. Their achievements are remarkable by any standard, but especially so given that they were reached under the harshest conditions imaginable: the collapse of Gaza’s educational infrastructure under bombardment, the absence of functioning universities, and the daily struggle for survival amidst man-made famine and starvation, displacement, and violent death.
Yet despite this extraordinary resilience, these students faced the risk of losing their places before they could even set foot in the UK. The obstacle was not academic performance or funding but rather a bureaucratic and logistical impasse deriving from the Home Office requirement to provide biometric data. Following the brutal assault by Hamas and other armed organisations on Israeli civilians and military bases on October 7th, 2023 and the horrific devastation Israel has unleashed on the Palestinians in Gaza since, the Visa Application Centre (VAC) in Gaza has been closed, thus preventing biometric processing.
Support for Gazan Students
As Israeli academics organised under the banner of the Black Flag Action Group, opposed to the ongoing war in Gaza, we mobilised in support of these students. Over 140 signatories, including Israeli students and scholars at British universities as well as Israeli graduates from British universities, urged the UK government to act decisively and inclusively. In our open letter, we stressed that no administrative hurdle should prevent prospective students from taking up the places they have already earned. When laboratories, libraries, lecture halls and archives lie in ruins, the opportunity to study abroad is not just a personal achievement; it constitutes a lifeline for the ongoing intellectual and professional life of Gazan Palestinians. To have denied these students their places would have been to contradict the UK’s own commitments under schemes like Chevening, which are premised on the idea that education can foster leadership, dialogue, and international understanding.
Window of Hope and Future Implications
On 3 September 2025, the UK government announced that it would expedite visas for Chevening scholars and others to travel to a third country for biometric processing. We were also very relieved to hear that a group of 34 Palestinian students with places at UK universities have safely arrived in the UK to begin their studies after being evacuated from Gaza last week. These are surely welcome steps, but urgent policy questions for higher education in the UK still remain, including what seem to be the remaining rules preventing students from Gaza from bringing family members with them. In fact, as recently reported by the BBC at least four mothers and one father have so far declined places because they would not leave their children behind. As the recent public discussion shows, these go beyond the immediate emergency and touch on structural issues that universities and government alike must confront:
Visa and Mobility Frameworks: Current biometric requirements are ill-suited to situations of war and humanitarian crisis. Universities and advocacy groups must press the Home Office to establish flexible, transparent, and accountable procedures for students from conflict zones.
Equity of Access: Scholarship schemes such as Chevening are designed to promote global leadership. Yet their credibility is undermined if access is contingent not only on merit but also on whether students can survive a war zone and navigate opaque visa procedures.
Moral Responsibility of universities to students and their dependents: UK institutions that have offered places to Gazan students cannot treat their admission as symbolic. They must actively lobby the government, provide legal and financial assistance, and ensure that students’ right to education is not hollow.
The plight of Gazan students is not an abstract problem. It is about gifted men and women who have already demonstrated courage, brilliance, and commitment. Universities, civil society, and policymakers have an ethical obligation to work together to ensure that the promise of higher education for Gazan students in the British system of higher education will not be abandoned at the very moment it is most needed.
Kentucky Attorney General Russell ColemanThe U.S. Department of Justice and the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education have reached a preliminary settlement agreement that would end the state’s policy of offering in-state tuition rates to undocumented students who graduate from Kentucky high schools.
The agreement comes after the DOJ filed a federal lawsuit in June challenging Kentucky’s practice of extending in-state residency status—and the accompanying lower tuition rates—to any student who completes high school in the state, regardless of immigration status. The Justice Department argued this policy creates unequal treatment by providing financial benefits to undocumented immigrants while denying the same rates to U.S. citizens living in other states.
“No state can be allowed to treat Americans like second-class citizens in their own country by offering financial benefits to illegal aliens,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in announcing the federal lawsuit.
The legal challenge reflects broader federal immigration enforcement priorities under the Trump administration, which has issued executive orders aimed at preventing undocumented immigrants from accessing taxpayer-funded benefits or preferential treatment in government programs.
Kentucky’s Republican Attorney General Russell Coleman has supported the federal position, arguing that state policy conflicts with federal law prohibiting undocumented immigrants from receiving college benefits unless identical benefits are available to all U.S. citizens. In July, Coleman urged the Council on Postsecondary Education to voluntarily withdraw the regulation rather than pursue costly litigation.
“The federal government has set its immigration policy, and the Council must regulate in accordance with it,” Coleman wrote to the CPE. “To that end, I urge the Council to withdraw its regulation rather than litigate what I believe will be, and should be, a losing fight.”
Under the tentative settlement terms, the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education has acknowledged that its tuition policy violates federal law and agreed to terminate it immediately. However, the agreement remains pending approval from U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove in the Eastern District of Kentucky.
The Kentucky case mirrors a similar federal challenge resolved earlier this year, when Texas reached a settlement with the DOJ over comparable in-state tuition policies for undocumented students.
The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), a prominent Latino civil rights organization, has filed a motion seeking to intervene in the Kentucky lawsuit on behalf of affected students. The motion remains under judicial review. MALDEF was previously denied intervention rights in the parallel Texas case.
The policy change could significantly impact college affordability for undocumented students who have spent their formative years in Kentucky’s educational system. In-state tuition rates are typically substantially lower than out-of-state rates, making higher education more accessible for students from families with limited financial resources.
International Education Assistant Minister Julian Hill. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui
The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) has been met with widespread criticism from the federal and NSW governments for its plan to cut 1100 subjects including its entire teacher education program.
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With the UK Government moving to a posture of ‘war fighting readiness’ amid intensifying global conflict, a new HEPI Policy Note warns higher education remains an untapped asset in national preparedness.
The Wartime University: The role of Higher Education in Civil Readiness by Gary Fisher argues UK universities must be recognised as central pillars of national security and resilience. The paper highlights how higher education institutions represent a ‘composite capability’ to enhance and sustain civil readiness, spanning defence, health, skills, logistics and democratic continuity, but warns this potential remains under-recognised and poorly integrated into emergency planning frameworks.
You can read the press release and access the full report here.
