Tag: Policy

  • The hottest HE policy topics of 2025

    The hottest HE policy topics of 2025

    It’s always fun at this time of year to hop on Google Analytics and see which topics and articles on Wonkhe have been the most read.

    At Wonkhe we don’t generally pursue “clicks” for their own sake. The nature of HE is that there are lots of people who have specialist and specific concerns they want to write about and that others enjoy hearing about – and if you have even a passing knowledge of our site you’ll be aware that as a team we have our own share of hobby horses, and niche interests. Thank you for putting up with us.

    But there are also moments in the policy cycle that seem to bring the sector together at the Wonkhe watercooler, typically major fiscal events like the Budget, or major government policies such as this year’s post-16 education and skills white paper. In those obvious Big Moments it’s clear that Wonkhe’s policy summaries are widely clicked on and shared. These are meant to be an accessible overview that help non-specialists understand the policy agenda in fairly broad strokes, so hopefully that means they are working.

    Beyond the Big Moments you get to the other issues and debates of the year, topics that have needed interpretation and analysis, and sense-making, sometimes with a bit of soap boxing thrown in.

    So here, in no particular order, are the top five topics of the year based entirely on my reading of Wonkhe’s web traffic. Do write in if you have a more robust evidence base – or if proper data is your thing change the channel to DK’s year in numbers on the other side.

    Artificial intelligence

    This conversation just keeps going, and for good reason – as the technology evolves, as students, academics and HE professionals test different use cases and roll out new policies, training and support, the meaning of artificial intelligence in the HE context is also shifting. It started with academic misconduct, but now it’s moving towards learning design, graduate skills innovation and efficiency – and all of those things need unpacking and critical appraisal. If that’s something you’re interested in, do join us at The Secret Life of Students in March 2026.

    Free speech

    Namely, the fine the Office for Students issued to the University of Sussex, which sent enormous reverberations around the sector and turned what was already a fairly fraught issue as higher education institutions grappled with executing their legal and regulatory responsibilities, into a seriously high-stakes challenges for heads of administration, governors and students’ unions. In 2025 the free speech legislation came into force, alongside modest government amendments to try to make the whole thing workable.

    But as the fervid debate over free speech subsides in favour of implementing the regulations the question remains hanging in the air: if 2026 passes without a major regulatory intervention on free speech will it be because regulation has enabled a resurgence of healthy debate on campus, or because higher education institutions are now so terrified of being the next against the wall they are shying away from any possible controversial issue in perpetuity?

    Franchising

    Last year saw interventions from the National Audit Office and Public Accounts Committee raising concerns about the culture around franchised higher education provision – and this year ended with confirmation of government “crack down” plans. Meanwhile Universities UK and GuildHE strengthened the sector’s code of conduct on admissions and its guidance on the use of domestic agents. Over on The Post-18 Project we made some suggestions about how to regulate franchised provision, learning the lessons from FE.

    So are we looking at steps in the right direction or bringing a knife to a gun fight? While there remain bad actors in the system we can’t be confident that it’s not the latter. It’s possible that in 2026 the government will get round to strengthening OfS’ duties to protect public money, as the post-16 education and skills white paper promised, but the whole agenda depends on “when legislative time allows.” In the meantime, the whole issue is being framed as a “governance problem” – increasingly a get-out-of-jail-free card for ministers wishing higher education institutions would act more against the incentives the current system has handed them.

    Mergers

    There’s a healthy market for futurologists prepared to speculate about the future size and shape of the HE sector, and lots of work around the margins to work out how to make the process of structural change, where institutions have decided it’s a good strategic choice, less burdensome.

    Given the scale of the proposal and its unusual nature it’s not surprising that the announcement that the Universities of Kent and Greenwich plan to merge to form a new multi-university group saw a huge degree of interest, especially as it’s offered a solution to the problem of loss of institutional identity in merger – the two institutions will remain distinct as trading entities while combining as a legal entity with single systems and policies.

    Higher education finances

    No, mergers and finances aren’t the same thing. Shame on you for suggesting it. Though it’s not insignificant to the broader prospect of structural change that the government has declined to say what it would do if a higher education institution became insolvent, preferring instead to rely on OfS to try and make sure that doesn’t happen.

    It will come as a surprise to nobody that higher education finance remains a much-engaged-with topic, as the sector tries to make sense of its circumstances and the implications for its future. In particular this year the financial challenges at the University of Dundee, while distinctive to that institution, have thrown into sharp relief the real risks facing the sector and the impact on higher education communities when an institution finds itself in impossible financial circumstances.

    What has changed at the end of this year is some clarity from the Westminster government about the funding settlement, but with a consultation on the Strategic Priorities Grant expected in 2026 plus elections in Wales and Scotland, plus ongoing efforts to manage risks to financial sustainability and/or transform operating models the finances conversation isn’t going anywhere any time soon. But in 2026 let’s change it up so that it’s less about how awful it all is and more about learning how others have managed significant financial changes – and maybe even come out the other side stronger and with a greater clarity of purpose. That’s my Christmas wish, anyway.

    Take a breather

    If you’ve listened to the podcast this week you’ll have heard DK’s annual Christmas song offering – and I think it’s not all that surprising that his main message this year seems to be less about the HE policy landscape and more about escaping from having to think about it for a week or two.

    Not the worst advice by any means – and so to help you switch off we’ll be dialling back our firehose of policy content and commentary to the merest trickle (plus whatever Jim can’t help himself from writing about while he’s supposed to be on holiday).

    Have a peaceful Christmas season and a jolly New Year, and we’ll be here in 2026 for another go on the HE policy merry-go-round. Happy festive season everyone and Wonk bless us, one and all.

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  • Mapping how the industrial strategy is, and isn’t, showing up in HE policy

    Mapping how the industrial strategy is, and isn’t, showing up in HE policy

    While for the average member of the public the industrial strategy might just be that thing the government drones on about while guaranteeing a £1.5bn loan for Jaguar Land Rover, it’s been one of the key talking points and organising principles in higher education policy in 2025 – at least in the English system, despite the strategy being UK-wide.

    The run-up to June’s publication of the finalised strategy was characterised by plenty of debate about whether sufficient recognition was being paid to higher education’s role, and far less – depressingly, but rather characteristically for the sector – about how the strategy seeks to reshape the higher education and research systems to achieve its ends.

    As an indicative example, one entirely unremarked on aspect of the strategy – admittedly buried in a complicated graphic on page 34 of the technical annex – was that one of its outputs is increased enrolments in higher education and apprenticeship subjects that address skills shortages in the eight chosen sectors. In the strategy’s theory of change, an output is the result of a policy intervention, and some 18 are chosen in all – one of them involves changing what subjects higher education students study. This was surely worthy of closer attention.

    Six months after publication, we can see the industrial strategy showing up all across the new HE landscape that Labour is oh-so-gradually taking steps to unfurl – in the Lifelong Learning Entitlement, in maintenance grants, in capital funding, in high-cost subject premia, in local innovation funding, in PhD scholarships, in strategic research funding. In some of these areas we just have mere hints to go on, whereas in others the strategy is already a central organising idea. It’s also clear that in different areas of government, the strategy is being interpreted in different ways and used to achieve different priorities.

    We’re going to take a run through all of this, and attempt to gauge where the strategy is cutting deep and where it’s running pretty shallow. But to begin with we need to look back over the development process since Labour came to power, in order to understand what the industrial strategy is seeking to achieve and – just as importantly – where.

    From green to white

    The Invest 2035 green paper in autumn 2024 chose eight “growth-driving sectors” to be the focus of policy intervention and prioritisation (cue a degree of huffing and puffing that universities were not given enough prominence). This was followed by a consultation to greatly refine the detail and identify sub-sectors within each that were most key.

    Each of those concepts got a rebrand – the growth-driving sectors became the IS-8, the sub-sectors were rebadged as “frontier industries” – but at heart this was the thrust of the move from green paper to finalised strategy: a process of concentrating on a subset of the initial sectors.

    If you’re interested in how these choices were made, we are told that a five-point assessment of different possible sub-sectors took place, based around the criteria of growth potential, strategic alignment, sector interconnectedness, rationale for intervention, and presence of policy solutions.

    Here they all are (the IS-8 are the headings in red boxes, while the frontier industries are the bullet points):

    (the frontier industries in the finalised defence industrial strategy, published in September, were essentially unchanged)

    So with the chosen priority areas selected, our next step would be to think about how higher education fits in, you would think. But there’s a further element that is regularly overlooked – how the industrial strategy relates to place.

    A bowl of clusters

    The final strategy is clear throughout that its “picking winners” philosophy extends not just to specific parts of the economy, but also to the location in which they will be supported:

    The Industrial Strategy will concentrate efforts on those places with the greatest growth potential for the IS-8 sectors, namely city regions and clusters.

    The focus on sectors “cannot be divorced from considerations around place,” we are told – the “specific relationships between sectors and between places” has to be part of the equation. “All economic activity occurs somewhere,” it uncontroversially emphasised. All this focus on place “does not preclude” support for sectors in other, non-beknighted locations, however. And so:

    We focused on identifying and prioritising those city regions and clusters most important to the delivery of the Industrial Strategy. This process identified a set of unique city regions and clusters across the IS-8. To drive effective policy and maximise their growth potential, we also considered the interconnections between them.

    A cluster, in case you were wondering, for the purposes of the strategy is a geographically-connected network of “businesses, research capabilities, skilled talent, and support structures in related industries.” These ecosystems bring benefits of proximity for the businesses within them, including “deeper labour markets, knowledge sharing, innovation spillovers, and collaboration opportunities.” Their specificity makes them “well-suited to benefit from targeted support.”

    Similarly to the frontier industries, the move from green to white paper saw a process of cluster identification, which we’re told in the technical annex involved qualitative and quantitative analysis and engagement within government and with external experts, all to draw up a longlist (which we don’t get to see). This was then winnowed down to retain those with “highest growth potential” for each sector. Here’s a diagram of the process, for reference:

    In terms of the results – well, if you’re searching for specificity on exactly what is covered by each cluster, the finalised strategy documents don’t make it easy for you to pinpoint what’s included. Here’s the map for advanced manufacturing, taken from the technical annex again:

    This, however, assigns geographies to the sector as a whole, rather than to particular priority industries. For that, we need to look at the sector plans which (for the most part) were released alongside the industrial strategy. Here’s the first part of the map for advanced manufacturing again, this time with the priority industries specified:

    The regions in question are very broadly drawn at times – the clean energy industries map groups together Oxford and Solent (two areas which are not connected in any way, surely?) and has one “Scotland” cluster which includes Aberdeen, Highlands and Islands, the North Sea coast and, oh, the entire Central Belt. The bullet points are odd too, a mix of promotion of existing capacity and plans for future actions.

    There’s a much more thorough mapping of industrial strategy sector geographies available in the form of the DSIT cluster map, which was one of the inputs to the selection process. However, it’s only currently available for five of the IS-8, and is at the sector, rather than subsector, level.

    Handily, the map lets you superimpose university and R&D facility locations onto the clusters, which in theory would let you assess which are the “right” places for different kinds of higher education provision and research, were you so minded.

    It’s not clear this is on the government’s radar for tying together industrial strategy and HE policy, however – rather, what we’ve seen so far largely has its roots in a different way of thinking about the country’s skills needs.

    Demand for priority skills

    To recap: in order to finalise the industrial strategy, the Department for Business and Trade identified priority sectors (and “frontier” sub-sectors) of the economy, and engaged in a degree of prioritising certain places. At the same time, Skills England was taking a complementary but at the same time rather different approach – identifying priority occupations and priority skills.

    The main piece of work here was the quango’s Assessment of priority skills to 2030 report, which we looked at when it first arrived in August. But it’s worth going over some of the main beats of the analysis performed, and recognising how it represents certain choices beyond what the industrial strategy itself set out.

    The report looks at “future employment demand across 10 key sectors important for delivering the government’s Industrial Strategy and Plan for Change priorities” – see our initial coverage for some of the oddities in how this forecasting was performed, but what’s done is done – and then goes on to pinpoint the “key education pathways” associated with the priority occupations in these sectors.

    In addition to the IS-8, Skills England had been asked to roll in both health and social care and construction. For each of the ten sectors, it looks at a specific subset of occupations – those where there is expected growth in employment, current skills shortages, general “high demand” or which are otherwise judged important in some way. Each list was chosen by the lead government department for the sector in question.

    By my calculations – removing the duplicates on the “priority occupations” tab of this spreadsheet – this brings us to 148 unique occupational areas which, in theory at least, are now the government’s priorities. This is as defined by SOC20 units (the four-digit codes), of which there are 412 in total. Feel free to check whether your job is there or not.

    This wasn’t all though. Skills England then took an additional step – some might say leap – in plotting a link between these priority occupations and higher education subject of study. In coming to a judgement about what education pathways “feed” the priority occupations, one approach would be to actually look at the occupations themselves (for example, musicians are one of the priority occupations in the creative industries sector, so surely music degrees would be a winner?). But a different approach was taken, one that aggregates up degree choice and field of employment.

    As seen in table 6 of the report (and in an expanded version in the accompanying spreadsheet), what Skills England chose to do instead was to generate a percentage for each subject area – at the very top level of the Common Academic Hierarchy classification, i.e. the broadest possible brush – according to the historic likelihood that a graduate of a degree in that field would go on to be employed in a priority occupation:

    The probabilities were applied to a cohort of education leavers from LEO Graduate and Postgraduate Outcomes who were in sustained employment in the year after education, to estimate their occupations at 4-digit SOC. We include graduates and post-graduates employed in the 2021 to 2022 tax year and who graduated in 2019 to 2020 academic year.

    This, essentially, generates a ranking of higher education subjects, by their past propensity to funnel graduates into a list of priority occupations chosen by government departments. These choices tie in with – but are very much not the same as – the industrial strategy. They are also place-blind, in a way that the strategy sought to avoid.

    Not just a desk exercise

    While the fact of the Westminster government deciding that there are certain occupations that are more of a priority than others is notable in itself, the Skills England report isn’t just a fun bit of modelling – policy consequences have followed, even if they haven’t been spelled out.

    For one thing, the top ten ranking of priority subject areas has given rise to the list of subjects eligible for modular provision under the Lifelong Learning Entitlement. It took a bit of digging at the time for us to make that connection, but it’s since been essentially confirmed by DfE.

    The list isn’t exactly the same – medicine and pharmacy aren’t given the LLE nod, presumably not being seen as well-suited for unbundling. And Skills England’s analysis found that business and management degrees had a higher likelihood (53 per cent) of leading to employment in a priority occupation than health and social care degrees (51 per cent) – again, you can imagine the careful political choices being made there, though further transparency from the department about what exactly its thinking is for modular study would have been welcome.

    If you’re not a big believer in the presence of much demand for loan-backed modular study, this may seem like only a minor exercise in picking winners, especially as the government has said that the current list is, in theory, just a starting point. More important, perhaps, are the clear indications that a similar process will be used for determining which courses of study are eligible for maintenance grants. The department had previously indicated that it would use much the same list as for the LLE, only to somewhat walk this back in the slight policy paper that accompanied the Budget:

    It is crucial that the list of subjects eligible for maintenance grants is informed by the best and most up-to-date evidence on skills needs. This list will be confirmed in advance of grants being introduced in the 2028 to 2029 academic year.

    We will: draw on further stakeholder engagement and ongoing work from Skills England to assess future employment and skills priorities; explore alignment with the subject lists for Lifelong learning entitlement (LLE) modular and priority additional entitlement funding.

    What we can read into this is that a similar process will probably be employed, though coverage might not match up precisely, especially if you are erring on the side of scepticism regarding how much funding is going to be put towards the grants (or optimistically pinning hopes on ministerial nods to rolling it out further in future years).

    The third area where we might expect the Skills England subject ranking to show up in policy relates to the ongoing reforms to the Strategic Priorities Grant (SPG). Returning to the parliamentary written answer referred to above – which in passing I will observe seems an odd thing for former Reform MP James McMurdock to have been asking after – the Skills England list is also juxtaposed with plans to align SPG funding with “the priority sectors which support the Industrial Strategy and the Plan for Change and future skills needs.” Making high-cost subject funding more effectively targeted towards what was then termed “priority provision” was first announced in the SPG guidance letter to the Office for Students back in May.

    Given the specific choices made in translating “priority sectors” into “priority subjects”, it’s worth considering a few further consequences of the department’s decision to use Skills England’s analysis in Assessment of priority skills to 2030 as a basis for determining subject-level policy decisions. First, even if you go along with the logic steps in the process, it is noticeably based on old data. Is it possible that at some point the modelling gets updated with new graduate outcomes figures, and we see (say) chemistry no longer make the top ten, with its spot taken by languages and area studies (for example – it was only a handful of percentage points lower down on the ranking generated by data from the 2021–22 tax year)?

    This wouldn’t be any kind of stable basis on which to determine which subjects are funded as high cost, which are in scope for modular provision, and which attract small maintenance grants for disadvantaged students. Yet taken to the extreme it’s the consequence of the way DfE has gone about its planning.

    The approach also bundles together subjects into top-level classifications and then applies broad-brush percentage propensity scores to them, ignoring essentially any other factor, such as applicant or institution characteristics. Once you go down this road of picking priority subject areas, some loss of resolution is probably inevitable. But it didn’t have to be done in this way (indeed, as was much remarked at the time someone from the department stepped in and took out landscape gardening from the architecture, building and planning subject group, with no explanation given). If you’re going to pile one methodological assumption on top of another, shouldn’t the chosen process at least go out to consultation?

    Cosplay

    But methodology aside, there’s also a question of whether this approach is in the spirit of the industrial strategy, which as we have seen in its purified form had a focus on frontier industries and their geographical distribution.

    Let’s take the Lifelong Learning Entitlement modular provision process as an example. If you want to apply to deliver a module of a full degree programme at level 4, 5 and 6, as we’ve already seen it will need to be in one of the subject areas generated from Skills England’s calculations – but also, you will need the Department for Education’s approval for it to qualify for loan funding.

    The process of applying was set up in an interesting way. Providers are required to demonstrate that their modular “offer” has been developed in response to employer and learner needs. Applications will be required to have established relationships with employers or industry bodies relevant to the subject area, and show that specific employer (and/or learner) engagement in the module’s design has taken place. Indicative evidence includes letters of support from industry bodies, evidence of co-design of curricula, and even “learner or employer consultation summaries, surveys or focus group findings.”

    This is quite the thing – the proportion of full degree programmes that could say they have been through such a process of due diligence is probably pretty slim. It’s a level of reflective employer engagement quite rarely seen in the sector, as opposed to gestures at the promise of fairly generic “employability” outcomes. Part of the reason for this is how time-consuming it appears.

    There’s certainly a question whether all this admin is worth it – there are various other hoops to jump through as well, in order to demonstrate to DfE a track record of delivery over time as well as evidencing quality [sic] through continuation and completion data. It would make more sense if being able to offer modular provision through the LLE was really the treat that the government seems to be hoping, and you could be confident (as opposed to extremely sceptical) that you would have potential students knocking on your door to enrol on your freshly approved course.

    But we could certainly draw some lines to the industrial strategy – not only has the provision been restricted (in a manner of speaking) to those subjects most relevant to the strategy, this provision is also directly linked up with the industries in question, and stems from engagement with specific areas, both in terms of prospective students and graduate employers. It’s also of a piece with the recent moves on local skills improvement plans that Labour is looking to nudge universities towards. Put simply, it is very out of character for higher education policy over the last decade or more to have the government approving whether provision can go ahead based on individual provider contexts, rather than what we might term the “have at” approach of letting anyone anywhere deliver anything and then seeing if the market will accommodate (if that is not too much of a simplification of post-2010 policy).

    There is one mammoth caveat, however. The issue is that everything I’ve outlined above only applies to a small proportion of providers in England – anyone with a TEF gold or silver, or who had a suitable headline Ofsted rating back when they were not obsolete, can skip all of this. So all the finickety detail which gestures at a move to a different kind of system is basically irrelevant for all but a small number of providers who both performed poorly in the 2023 TEF (wait, wasn’t bronze a mark of “high quality”?) and who fancy throwing their very expensive hat into the LLE’s very small ring.

    This is the perfect encapsulation of how the Department for Education’s adoption of the industrial strategy has – so far at least – the appearance of a performance rather than a real sea change. It is to an extent choosing priority subject provision that meshes with the strategy, though in a way that is very STEM-focused in a way that plenty of the strategy is not. And then it is more or less letting anyone participate who fancies taking a crack at it, with a small number of exceptions for whom the process would actually be much more in keeping with the strategy’s principles.

    There are pragmatic reasons for taking an expansive approach to the LLE rollout, of course, given the well-founded fears about how much demand is there. It will be interesting to see how the approvals process develops over time.

    The same could be said for both maintenance grants and SPG reforms. Tying them (in some way yet to be determined) to the Skills England list is a kind of gesture towards the strategy, but a more thorough engagement would involve thinking much more deeply about types of provision, specific subject choice rather than top-line groupings, and – most of all – place. At time of writing, there is little indication the department is minded to go in this direction for either policy.

    And there is surely little appetite in the sector for it to do so. It would be highly interventionist, get bogged down in bureaucracy, and result in far more by way of “picking winners” than the current vibe of endorsing the idea of specialisation but doing little to make it happen. But you could make the case that it’s what an industrial strategy-led higher education policy should look like.

    Other futures are possible

    These particular moves are only a small slice of the much greater volume of work the industrial strategy has kicked off, much of it very relevant to higher education. For a start, the way the capital funding element of this year’s SPG allocations was set up was structured around the IS-8 sectors directly, rather than Skills England’s interpretation of which subject provision is most likely to feed them. In the winning bids we can see plenty of projects linked to areas of the strategy, such as creative industries or financial services, that have not made the cut for the LLE and presumably will not for maintenance grants either.

    Skills England’s own future moves are important to watch as well. The work-in-progress UK Standard Skills Classification holds the potential for much more nuanced work about the links between study, employment and place than has filtered into policy so far.

    On a larger scale, the sweeping changes to R&D funding which the government is slowly bringing to bear show a much more thorough engagement with the industrial strategy, even if the place elements are not always there. From our vantage point at the end of 2025, we can see a range of different ways the strategy is reflected in new initiatives, and different levels of prominence, from lip service to central governing principle.

    The half a billion pounds in investment for the Local Innovation Partnership Fund has one of the tightest connections. Each “triple helix partnership” (which will include an academic institution) that wants to bid will need to define a cluster in which it will operate and link its proposal to strategic objectives such as the industrial strategy. For the open bidding competition, expert panel recommendations will inform a final decision from ministers – but in picking successful applications, the government will also “seek to ensure adequate geographic and sectoral balancing that aligns with regional assets and national capability.”

    On the Innovate UK end of R&D, the industrial strategy is exceedingly directive. In advanced manufacturing, the government’s desire to directly support automotive industry R&D was so strong that it had to refer itself to the Competition and Markets Authority to ensure it wasn’t breaching laws around state aid.

    For funding flowing solely to universities, the picture is not yet as clear. The reforms to Higher Education Innovation Funding (HEIF) announced in the autumn are more focused on economic growth in general. Revised accountability statements ask higher education providers to “consider” how to support the industrial strategy’s “key foundations”, but for now at least this sounds like an instruction to make passing reference to the strategy in one’s narratives, rather than a spur for deeper changes.

    Over in the curiosity-driven “bucket” – with apologies to anyone who’s already sick of that terminology – the strategy’s influence is less clear. The post-16 white paper did promise that institutions will be recognised and rewarded, including through REF and QR, for “demonstrating clarity of purpose, demonstrating alignment with government priorities, and for measurable impact.” This seems to be a reference to the ongoing review of strategic institutional research funding – but as Research England’s Steven Hill said on Wonkhe last week, this is a complex piece of work where change will take time.

    At the very least the government will start to understand university research through the industrial strategy lens. As the white paper put it:

    The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, together with UK Research and Innovation, will audit the provision of research activity which delivers against the Industrial Strategy, missions and sovereign capability, and assess changes in capability against our needs.

    We should also expect to see more further intervention to support doctoral provision in areas linked to the industrial strategy. The TechExpert scholarships, for example, are explicitly targeted not just at the broad industrial strategy sectors, but at specific “frontier industry” sub-sectors within them.

    Nights at the circus

    There are many models for how the industrial strategy could dictate or at least influence higher education and research across the UK (even if, as I started by saying, for political reasons much if not all of the impact is focused on England). Some of the ones we’ve seen different government departments and arm’s length bodies apply so far have the potential to be quite transformative, while others feel superficial as it stands.

    On paper, the government’s desire to push further ahead with the strategy as an organising principle for the state’s engagement with industry and geography should intertwine with a less place-blind higher education policy, though there are many forms this could take. Currently, whether for reasons of capacity, politics or inertia it doesn’t feel like this will be comprehensively realised any time soon. On the education side of things in particular, the government’s nods towards cold spots and local collaboration don’t yet seem to be reaching deep into the longer-term thinking which Jim Dickinson has characterised as “more graduates, just not that sort and not there” – a proper consideration of how place and subject of study interact.

    The political challenges around setting out a vision for higher education can’t be shrugged off either. It’s relatively painless for DfE to trumpet more apprenticeships, more engineering, and more computing. But as written, the industrial strategy should also support more creative arts provision, and it should encourage the delivery of more management training. And all the while it ought to be thinking about which places are most suitable for each.

    At the end of the day, the strategy is a recipe for a highly planned higher education system – and one that encroaches heavily on university autonomy. The initial indicators are that the government, at least in part, is happy to perform a certain coordination between it and the English higher education system, rather than follow some of its more radical possibilities through to their logical conclusion. There are plenty of reasons why this is probably something of a relief for the sector. But it also runs the risk of leaving higher education adrift from the government’s most important agenda for reshaping the state and the country, and ducking the big long-term questions about what universities do, and what they are for.

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  • Trump calls for federal policy framework preempting state AI laws

    Trump calls for federal policy framework preempting state AI laws

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    President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday challenging the growing ecosystem of state AI laws and setting the stage for a federal policy to oversee the technology, citing concerns over compliance challenges for businesses and stymying innovation. 

    The executive order tasks U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi with creating an AI Litigation Task Force in the next 30 days to challenge state AI laws that “unconstitutionally regulate interstate commerce” or clash with existing federal laws. Trump also called for a national policy framework for AI that would preempt state AI laws, add child safety protections, ensure copyright safeguards and hinder censorship. 

    “My administration must act with the Congress to ensure that there is a minimally burdensome national standard – not 50 discordant State ones,” the order said. “The resulting framework must forbid State laws that conflict with the policy set forth in this order.” 

    States will face evaluation of their AI laws under the executive order, as well as potential restrictions on funding if their laws are found to be burdensome, according to the document.

    The proposal was met with sharp criticism from some advocates and lawmakers including Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who described the executive order as “dangerous, and most likely illegal,” in a post on social media platform X. 

    “Trump’s new executive order tries to eliminate state AI laws – in both red and blue states – that are protecting Americans from harmful deepfakes, scams, and online exploitation,” Klobuchar said on X. “We shouldn’t remove the few protections Americans have as Congress fails to act.” 

    Trump’s move to create roadblocks for state AI law implementation aligns with the interests of tech companies, which have worked against state regulations in 2025 as new models, agentic tools and applications spread among enterprises. 

    Despite its attempt to slow state efforts regulating AI, the executive order isn’t likely to shift enterprise compliance or AI governance strategies as a result, said Forrester Principal Analyst Alla Valente. 

    “They can’t pull back on what they’re doing when it comes to AI standards, assessments, controls and governance,” Valente said. “They’re going to have to stay the course on it.”

    Companies building AI products, particularly in highly regulated fields such as healthcare, are aware they can’t adopt a technology without managing risk, said Alaap Shah, an AI, privacy, cybersecurity and health IT attorney at Epstein Becker Green. Many companies that have already adopted compliance frameworks based on consensus-based standards will likely continue to implement them, he added.  

    Still, businesses will continue to advance AI development and deployment regardless of the state of the regulatory landscape, Shah said. 

    “It’s sort of like a build now, fail fast, mentality and investors are continuing to invest,” Shah said. 

    The pushback against state AI regulation comes at a time when tech companies like Google, OpenAI, AWS, Microsoft, Meta and more are investing billions in building out infrastructure in the U.S. and globally. Gartner estimated that global AI spending will reach $1.5 trillion in 2025. 

    Google and OpenAI earlier this year advocated for a federal policy preempting state AI laws. Meta also launched a lobbying effort to support political candidates who aligned with the company’s views on AI oversight, marking another step by Big Tech against state AI regulation after a proposed 10-year moratorium on state AI laws failed to pass in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. 

    What CIOs can expect from U.S. states  

    As the AI market rapidly expands, U.S. states including California, Colorado, Connecticut and Texas have passed AI legislation in an attempt to regulate AI model developers and deployers. California’s AI law requirements stand to have a particular effect on CIOs and businesses because the law imposes direct obligations on companies that run data centers or are building their own AI models. 

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  • Policy Impact Undervalued by Universities

    Policy Impact Undervalued by Universities

    Barely a third of social scientists believe their university would promote them based on the strength of their research impact, a global poll of researchers has found.

    Asked whether their institution would promote or give tenure to a scholar for their efforts to apply research outside academia, only 37 percent of 1,805 social scientists surveyed by Sage agreed.

    Only 28 percent of respondents said their efforts to make a difference outside academia would lead to additional research funding from their institution, while just 35 percent said their university offered awards or prizes to recognize impact.

    Thirty percent of the survey’s respondents, who came from 92 countries, say they receive no recognition at all for this work.

    Instead, the survey by the U.S.-based social sciences publisher suggested institutions tend to value and reward publication in highly cited journals more than academics. Asked whether the ultimate goal of research is to make a positive impact on society, 92 percent agreed this is the case for themselves, but only 68 percent believe it’s true for institutions.

    “I don’t care about impacting my colleagues and being cited—I want to impact practice in the field,” explained one U.S.-based respondent, who added there is “no good way to know if this happens.”

    “All the other metrics (like rejection rates, Google scores) are internal to the discipline and don’t really measure anything useful,” the researcher continued, according to the Sage report, titled “Do Social Scientists Care If They Make Societal Impact?” and published Tuesday.

    Similarly, 91 percent of researchers agree the ultimate goal of research is to build on the literature and enable future research, but only 71 percent think the leaders at their institution agree with this.

    That perceived misalignment between the motivation of social scientists and institutions should prompt a rethink on whether prestige metrics used in academia are misaligned with values, argues the Sage report.

    It notes that researchers value peer regard more than citation metrics, yet they perceive that administrators prioritize impact factors, creating tension in tenure and promotion decisions.

    “At times, this means we have to challenge the status quo of what matters in higher education—for example, by moving beyond an overemphasis on scholarly impact measures [and] toward recognizing research that benefits people through policy, practice and public life,” said Ziyad Marar, president of global publishing at Sage.

    “It’s important that we listen closely to researchers themselves as we do this work—understanding what motivates them, where they focus their efforts and what barriers stand in their way. This report does exactly that,” he added.

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  • The NIH Policy Holding Researchers “Hostage”

    The NIH Policy Holding Researchers “Hostage”

    Rachael Sirianni is one of the thousands of research scientists whose work has been decimated by the Trump administration’s massive cuts to the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies.

    “My lab is crumbling,” said the pediatric brain cancer researcher, who works at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School. “Over the course of the last eight months, I’ve had to shutter more than half of my research program.”

    At the same time, she has a backlog of papers she’s still trying to get published in journals that are the best fit for her research and career, including several that charge thousands in fees to make the paper free to access. And if she wants her work to comply with a new NIH policy to expedite public access to federally funded research—part of the agency’s effort to restore trust in science, it says—she may have to start paying even more.

    The 2024 Public Access Policy, which took effect July 1, requires federally funded researchers to deposit their accepted peer-reviewed article manuscript into an open-access repository, such as the NIH-managed PubMed Central, immediately after a journal accepts it for publication. But researchers are reporting that some journals, including at least several high-impact titles owned by Elsevier, Wiley and Springer—are charging authors anywhere from $2,000 to more than $10,000 in article processing charges (APCs) to make their work immediately accessible.

    While researchers can use their NIH grants to pay for APCs, that’s hard for some to justify in such a precarious funding environment.

    “If I had full access to the institutional dollars that normally support my research program, or if I really believed that that grant that scored well is eventually going to get funded, I could risk my research dollars on these open-access fees,” Sirianni said. “But because of the trauma that the Trump administration is imposing on scientists across the country, we are faced with impossible decisions. Do we dedicate our money to the experiments? Do we maintain our research personnel? Do we comply with open-access fees?”

    Open-access advocates and experts say that predicament is exposing the limits of the government’s ability to rein in the $19 billion scholarly publishing industry, which is fueled by academic incentive structures that reward researchers for publishing frequently in widely cited, prestigious journals. Meanwhile, the publishing industry—which has long opposed immediate open access in part because it threatens subscription-dependent business models—says the rollout of the policy gives them no choice but to charge APCs.

    Zero Embargo

    The 2024 policy replaces the 2008 Public Access Policy, which allowed publishers to embargo new peer-reviewed federally funded research articles for 12 months before making them publicly available. That embargo period allowed publishers to turn a profit from selling academic libraries subscriptions to exclusive content; authors who wanted to make their papers publicly accessible before the embargo was lifted typically paid an APC.

    The government’s goal in lifting the embargo was to promote “equity and advance the work of restoring the public’s trust in Government science, and to advance American scientific leadership,” Alondra Nelson, the former acting director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, wrote in a 2022 memo bearing her name. “A federal public access policy consistent with our values of equal opportunity must allow for broad and expeditious sharing of federally funded research—and must allow all Americans to benefit from the returns on our research and development investments without delay.”

    Although the Biden administration finalized the policy, the Trump administration is carrying it forward. It was set to take effect across federal agencies on Dec. 31, but NIH director Jay Bhattacharya announced in April that he was implementing it six months ahead of schedule to promote “maximum transparency.”

    Although Sirianni supports the spirit of NIH’s new open-access policy, she’s worried that high APCs will deter researchers from submitting their work to influential journals that might otherwise be a good fit, to the detriment of the scientific literature.

    “There’s absolutely going to be a lot of work that doesn’t get published or gets published in the wrong journal,” Sirianni said. “This policy is harming scientists. Instead of ensuring that research dollars are invested in providing knowledge to the scientific community and to the public, those dollars will be spent on feeding giant publishing corporations more money.”

    ‘Not Sustainable’?

    However, publishers say the NIH’s zero-embargo policy is forcing them to recoup lost subscription revenue through APCs to sustain operational costs, including article selection, curation, peer and editorial review, publication, archiving, and maintenance.

    “We are unable to support approaches that aim to make subscription articles immediately and freely available, which are not sustainable in the long term given they undermine the subscription model on which they depend,” an Elsevier spokesperson said in an email to Inside Higher Ed.

    “The best method for addressing issues of cost in publication is through a vibrant, competitive, and dynamic publishing marketplace with maximum author choice, including fee-based public access and read-and-publish agreements,” Carl Maxwell, senior vice president of public policy for the Association of American Publishers, who lobbied against the zero-embargo policy, wrote in an email. “We don’t think it’s a good idea to compel researchers to use a one-size-fits-all open access business model that has the potential to require NIH-funded researchers to pay out of pocket to fund the peer review process, in some cases harming their ability to communicate their research results to the scientific community and the general public.”

    Caroline Sutton, CEO for the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers, added that researchers’ frustration with the NIH’s new open-access policy “reveals one of the real human impacts of well-intentioned policies that do not fully consider the operational realities of the research ecosystem.”

    It also raises long-standing questions about how to sustain that ecosystem.

    “Should the responsibility for funding this work lie with the funder? With the research or institutional library? Should publishers not be compensated?” she wrote in an email. “And how can the critical system of checks and balances—which must be resourced—endure if it is not sustainably funded?”

    But another sector sustaining the scientific publishing industry is the faculty who produce and peer review research for little to no financial compensation. The most productive are often rewarded instead with tenure, promotion and cachet.

    Holding Articles ‘Hostage’

    While the NIH policy doesn’t require authors to publish in journals that charge APCs—plenty of reputable, fully open-access journals exist—researchers say where they publish matters to their careers. At most universities, frequently publishing research in prestigious, high-impact journals—including many with hefty APCs—carries more weight with tenure and review committees than publishing in more obscure journals.

    But researchers aren’t always clear on a journal’s APC guidelines until they get through the review process and are asked to pay open-access fees to comply with the NIH policy, Rachel Widome, a public health professor at the University of Minnesota, told Inside Higher Ed. She withdrew an article from the Elsevier-owned Sleep Health on how school start times impact adolescents after she realized she’d have to pay a $2,500 fee to upload her accepted manuscript to PubMed Central in compliance with NIH policy.

    “When that happens, they’re holding your article hostage,” she said. “Do you start from scratch and submit it to a new journal? It can take six to nine months to go through another review.”

    She ended up resubmitting the article to Sleep Health after her NIH grant ended, exempting her from the zero-embargo policy. Although “time has been wasted,” she said the APCs stand to hurt early-career scientists the most. “It’s so critical that they establish a publication record,” Widome said. “If the options of which journals they can submit to are really limited [because of APCs], that hurts their chances of getting her research out and launching her career.”

    ‘Valuing Prestige’

    But those academic incentive structures have also emboldened publishers to levy APCs in response to the NIH’s zero-embargo policy, said Dave Hansen, executive director of the Authors Alliance, a California-based nonprofit that supports authors in disseminating their work.

    “So much of the system is wrapped around valuing prestige journals that are published by some of these bigger commercial publishers. That’s really hard for even a big institution like the NIH to nudge researchers away from,” Hansen said, adding that the NIH could de-emphasize prestige factors when evaluating researchers. At the same time, “a lot of publishers recognize that there’s a massive amount of federal funding that they can now demand access to because of this new federal policy.”

    The zero-embargo policy isn’t the NIH’s only attempt to regulate the scientific publishing industry. This summer, Bhattacharya proposed capping APCs to weaken the market power of publishers, dilute the scientific elite and “make science accessible not only to the public but also to the broader scientific community, while ending perverse incentives that don’t benefit taxpayers,” he said. But critics say the plan is neither comprehensive enough to dismantle academic incentive structures, nor likely to substantially lower APCs.

    And the frustration researchers are experiencing in the early days of the NIH’s new zero-embargo access policy—which was crafted with some of the same goals as the NIH’s proposed APC caps—is already offering support for those predictions.

    “The NIH public-access policy applies to a vast amount of research, but it’s also just a percentage of the overall landscape. There are a number of players here, including the funders, researchers, institutions, publishers and libraries,” said Katie Funk, former program manager for PubMed Central, who helped develop the zero-embargo policy.

    “Without addressing the whole system, it just causes confusion,” she added. “Larger conversations need to be had about the costs of publishing. It’s not transparent and it’s pervading the whole system.”

    (This article has been updated to correct the name of the UMass medical school.)

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  • New HEPI Policy Note: Views on University Governance

    New HEPI Policy Note: Views on University Governance

    Author:
    Professor Steven Jones on behalf of the Council for the Defence of British Universitie

    Published:

    HEPI’s new Policy Note finds striking consensus across the higher education community for more ethical, transparent and balanced university governance.

    Summarising responses to the draft Code of Ethical University Governance from the Council for the Defence of British Universities (CDBU), this Policy Note finds that 81% of the 129 submissions received endorse the principle of a new ethical code. This signals a widespread recognition that governance structures must better reflect the educational and public missions that universities serve.

    The revised CDBU Code directly responds to the concerns raised in the consultation and offers practical ways to reduce power imbalances, avoid insular decision-making and bring greater transparency to governor recruitment.

    For anyone interested in how universities can strengthen trust and increase transparency, the report makes for important reading. You can find the press release and link to the full text of the policy note here.

    The author of this report, and the author of a second report HEPI is publishing on governance in the run-up to Christmas will be at a free webinar on governance issues running on Thursday, 11 December 2025 from 10am to 11am. Sign up now to hear our speakers explore the key issues.

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  • Policy and Financial Issues Drove November Cuts

    Policy and Financial Issues Drove November Cuts

    Multiple public and private universities announced job and program cuts, as well as other money-saving measures, last month in response to financial challenges driven by a range of factors.

    Some institutions noted the loss of federal research funding, while others cited declining international enrollment amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on foreign students. Still others pointed to sectorwide challenges, including the worsening public perception of higher education. And some colleges cut low-demand programs to comply with state laws such as Ohio’s Senate Bill 1.

    Here is a look at job and program cuts as well as other moves announced last month.

    University of Central Florida

    The public university cut 65 jobs last month, 57 of them at the affiliated Florida Solar Energy Center, Central Florida Public Media reported.

    The center has been the state’s designated energy research institute since 1975.

    UCF officials told the news outlet in a statement that the university “made the difficult but necessary decision to reduce staffing at the Florida Solar Energy Center to ensure responsible stewardship of university and state resources,” noting that the center was not financially sustainable.

    University officials also cited a decline in external funding, which hampered research activities, as well as “recent shifts in federal funding priorities in energy research, including reductions and cancellations of key programs that historically supported the center’s research activities.”

    In addition to cuts at the Florida Solar Energy Center, UCF also laid off six employees in its technology department and two workers at the UCF Arboretum, The Orlando Sentinel reported.

    Lewis University

    Citing a significant decline in international students, the private university in Illinois is cutting 10 percent of its workforce through a combination of layoffs and buyouts, Shaw Local reported.

    Altogether, 63 people are on the way out.

    The university reportedly laid off 17 staff members and 16 professors and eliminated some vacant roles. Some eligible employees opted into early retirement programs offered by the university.

    Lewis officials told the news outlet that international enrollment has collapsed, dropping from a peak of 1,417 students to just 847 this fall. That decline comes amid a flurry of action at the federal level, where the Trump administration has sought to limit international enrollment and increased scrutiny of foreign college applicants as it takes a hard line on immigration policy over all.

    Calvin University

    The private Christian university in Michigan is shedding jobs and programs as part of a restructuring that will see multiple faculty members laid off over two years, MLive reported.

    Calvin is cutting 12.5 percent of the faculty. While the university did not specify a precise head count, it employed 363 faculty members last fall, 197 of whom were full-time, according to its Common Data Set. Based on those numbers, Calvin appears poised to cut as many as 45 professors.

    University officials declined to provide the exact number of jobs cut to Inside Higher Ed.

    “Most of these departures are voluntary (e.g., retirements, voluntary exit incentive packages, etc.), and many were identified during budget planning that occurred within the academic division last year,” President Greg Elzinga wrote in an email to the campus community last month announcing the changes. “Involuntary departures will amount to approximately 3% of our current full-time faculty workforce, and those impacted have already been notified.”

    Elzinga also told MLive that Calvin’s finances remain strong and it is on track for a balanced budget for the current academic year, despite sectorwide challenges such as diminishing public confidence in higher education and international enrollment declines stemming from federal policy changes. Visa processing delays reportedly cost Calvin 65 international students who were unable to make it to campus.

    Rider University

    The private university in New Jersey announced last month that officials plan to lay off 35 to 40 full-time faculty members, cut salaries by 14 percent and enact other cost-cutting measures as it navigates financial challenges.

    President John R. Loyack wrote in a letter to the campus community that the university was taking steps to address “the financial risks that have grown increasingly serious in recent years and have intensified in severity in recent months.” He noted that the university faces “a significant cash shortfall” due to “new and unforeseen developments” and could run out of money “to meet its payroll and other obligations before the end of the current fiscal year.”

    Rider also plans to indefinitely suspend retirement contributions, increase faculty workloads, end faculty tuition remission benefits and cut some senior administrative roles, among other moves.

    The university was placed on probation by its accreditor, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, in late October due to compliance concerns related to financial standards.

    Keene State College

    Grappling with a $4 million budget deficit, the public college in New Hampshire is cutting 25 staff positions and offering voluntary separation agreements to faculty, The Keene Sentinel reported.

    Of the 25 staff positions cut last month, eight were reportedly vacant.

    So far, 12 faculty members have accepted buyouts, reportedly in line with the goal of 12 to 15; eight of those professors will exit after the fall semester and four will leave in the spring.

    Roger Williams University

    The private university in Rhode Island is mandating unpaid furloughs for up to half of its full-time workforce in an effort to shrink a projected $3.5 million budget gap, The Boston Globe reported.

    According to the newspaper, layoffs are not currently being considered.

    A university statement described the mandatory, unpaid one-week furloughs as a “temporary measure that will allow the university to preserve positions, wage increases, and healthcare benefits for our dedicated staff and faculty, while maintaining the student experience.”

    University of Providence

    A split from the Providence Health System has prompted officials at the private Catholic university in Great Falls, Mont., to ask its Board of Trustees to declare financial exigency, NBC Montana reported.

    While Providence Health has provided financial support, that arrangement is reportedly set to end in December 2027 and the university must become financially independent, which means plugging an $8 million budget shortfall. University officials told NBC Montana that it previously relied on $8 million or more in health system support to balance its budget.

    Layoffs and program cuts are expected to be part of the financial recovery plan.

    Cornell College

    Multiple programs are set to be eliminated at the private liberal arts college in Iowa, a process that officials said in a statement last month was driven by student enrollment data and interest.

    Majors being cut include classical studies, French and Francophone studies, German studies, religion, Spanish, and multiple music programs. Students enrolled in those majors will be able to complete their degrees through teach-out plans, according to the announcement.

    An unspecified number of job cuts will accompany the program eliminations.

    The New School

    The private university in New York City announced last month that it is offering faculty buyouts, freezing hiring for certain positions, cutting pay for some employees and pausing retirement contributions for up to 18 months, among other changes, in an effort to balance its budget.

    Further, the New School plans to pause admission to most doctorate programs for next year. Program closures are also expected.

    President Joel Towers wrote last month, “The New School continues to face serious and persistent financial deficits that require immediate decisive action.” Now the university is offering early retirement packages to professors and voluntary separation packages to employees, as well as cutting top salaries by 5 to 10 percent. Still, he wrote that job cuts “will very likely be necessary” depending on “participation in voluntary programs” and “progress toward our budget goals.”

    University of Lynchburg

    Faculty buyouts are on the table at the private liberal arts college in Virginia as it seeks to reduce a persistent budget deficit it has been whittling down for the past three years, Cardinal News reported.

    That deficit has reportedly dropped from $12 million in late 2022 to about $2.7 million currently.

    Ohio State University

    The public flagship is eliminating eight programs to comply with Senate Bill 1—controversial and sweeping legislation that has forced higher ed cuts across the state—The Columbus Dispatch reported.

    Programs on the chopping block, all at the undergraduate level, include an integrated major in math and English, medieval and Renaissance studies, music theory, and musicology, among others. Students currently enrolled will be able to complete those programs before they are terminated.

    Signed into law earlier this year, SB1 bans diversity efforts in higher education and requires colleges to drop undergraduate programs that yield fewer than five degrees annually, averaged over a three-year period. However, colleges can ask the Ohio Department of Education for waivers to keep such programs, which Ohio State has done for a dozen offerings.

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  • What government policy still fails to understand about international education

    What government policy still fails to understand about international education

    This blog includes personal reflections shared at the 2025 Independent Higher Education Conference by  James Pitman, Outgoing Chair of IHE and Managing Director U.K. and Ireland, Study Group.

    International education is important to many IHE members but for some of our biggest members, including my own organisation Study Group, it is our entire business. 

    Government policies on international education over the last 15 have been less than supportive, and some in the last 2 years have been materially value destructive for the UK.

    The Dependents Visa – policy and discrimination

    The removal of the Dependants visa in 2024 and questions over the Graduate Route cost the UK 54,000 international students in 2024 vs 2023.  That is worth £6 billion at today’s values, and over £2 billion in receipts to the exchequer each year.  Certainly the dependants visa had a major flaw, but it was one that could have been corrected rather than withdrawing the whole visa scheme entirely for taught degrees.

    As predicted by the sector, that withdrawal was gender discriminatory, leading to the loss of 19,000 female students vs the prior year, in the January 2024 intake alone.  Every one of those was a human story, of ambitions denied, families fractured, careers restricted and yet again women being discriminated against – in this case by UK government policy. It is particularly ironic, considering the importance the UN Sustainable Development Goals place on women’s education as arguably the most effective way of lifting a whole society.

    Such discrimination is also a risk with the tightening of the BCA metrics to barrier levels that no other export sector has to endure, such that universities are already withdrawing completely from certain countries. This is collateral damage that will stop those good students that do exist in every country from coming to study in the UK.  Compliance absolutely yes, but constriction beyond what is rational – that is a step too far.

    This government makes much of taking decisions that are in the interests of the UK and not overtly political; and they tell us that they are driving growth and jobs.  And yet the loss of international students almost always leads to the loss of jobs in every region of our country, most especially those that need inward investment the most and will find it hardest to fund an alternative.

    Those lost 54,000 international students lost us well over £1 billion in inward investment, and the UCU says nearly 15,000 jobs have been lost in Higher Education, many probably at graduate level.

    Research from Oxford Economics and others implies that you can double that with job losses in local economies and supply chains. So, some 30,000 jobs lost or at risk with no substitution possible, as those students have already taken their £1 billion elsewhere. When Tata Steel’s Port Talbot plant announced 2,800 job losses, with more in the supply chain, this was front-page news. Where are the headlines that ask for immediate intervention to prevent ten times that impact?

    The International Student Levy – the new export tax

    Which brings me on to the International Student Levy, or more correctly, an export tariff or jobs tax.  The Institute for Fiscal Studies calls it a ‘tax on a major UK export’. 

    Whether the tariff goes on international student fees – which research indicates will lose us 16,000 students straight away – or is absorbed by universities (which they are in no position to cope with) jobs will be lost.  The loss of 16,000 students implies 4,000 jobs at risk in higher education and 4,000 more jobs in local economies. Martin Wolf in the Financial Times earlier this week wrote, ‘the proposed…tax on international student fees is a dagger aimed at one of the UK’s most successful export industries’.  Who can disagree!

    The Government is arguing that there is no alternative to fund domestic student maintenance (which to be clear is a worthy cause for support).  I can’t be the only one who can think of an obvious alternative. Current US policy is hammering the competitiveness of the market leader, so that offers the UK a golden opportunity, if government would only work with the sector to grow our international education exports rather than endlessly restricting them. 

    Back of the envelope calculation indicates that recovering only half of the students we lost in 2024 because of government policy would generate the required income to the exchequer to fund those maintenance grants sustainably and create jobs, not destroy them.

    The Graduate Route subsidy

    Finally the Graduate Route, which is an incredibly sensible tool to encourage students to study here and contribute after graduation, but which also subsidises UK tax payers and the NHS specifically, every year that it is available to international students. Why? If you pay the same Income Tax and National Insurance as a domestic equivalent but can, by law, only access less than half the services that are paid for from those taxes, then that is a subsidy in my book.

    We should all hope the Graduate Route visa is here to stay, but it has already been shortened by six months and the consequences could yet be dire. According to the ICEF, an Indian graduate on an average salary may take 25 years to repay the cost of undergraduate study in a Russell Group university –  36 without two years of post study work. As families calculate return on investment in a challenging market for graduate employment, nibbling away at policies that allow an opportunity to recoup investment may risk it altogether.

    Education not immigration

    A year ago, I recommended to the IHE conference that the Government needed to decouple international students from the toxicity of immigration politics, which research shows much of the public also supports.  They have not done so and show no inclination to do so.

    Education and immigration must be decoupled if we are to ever escape relentlessly self-harming  policies. Until they do so, I am afraid that their maxim of doing what is right for our country and not just what is supposedly popular is destined to continue to ring very hollow for international education, one of our greatest exports and probably greatest source of influence for good.

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  • Generative AI and the REF: closing the gap between policy and practice

    Generative AI and the REF: closing the gap between policy and practice

    This blog was kindly authored by Liam Earney, Managing Director, HE and Research, Jisc.

    The REF-AI report, which received funding from Research England and co-authored by Jisc and Centre for Higher Education Transformations (CHET), was designed to provide evidence to help the sector prepare for the next REF. Its findings show that Generative AI is already shaping the approaches that universities adopt. Some approaches are cautious and exploratory, some are inventive and innovative, and most of it is happening quietly in the background. GenAI in research practice is no longer theoretical; it is part of the day-to-day reality of research, and research assessment.

    For Jisc, some of the findings in the report are unsurprising. We see every day how digital capability is uneven across the sector, and how new tools arrive before governance has had a chance to catch up. The report highlights an important gap between emerging practice and policy – a gap that the sector can now work collaboratively to close. UKRI has already issued guidance on generative AI use in funding applications and assessment: emphasising honesty, rigour, transparency, and confidentiality. Yet the REF context still lacks equivalent clarity, leaving institutions to interpret best practice alone. This work was funded by Research England to inform future guidance and support, ensuring that the sector has the evidence it needs to navigate GenAI responsibly.

    The REF-AI report rightly places integrity at the heart of its recommendations. Recommendation 1 is critical to support transparency and avoid misunderstandings: every university should publish a clear policy on using Generative AI in research, and specifically in REF work. That policy should outline what is acceptable and require staff to disclose when AI has helped shape a submission.

    This is about trust and about laying the groundwork for a fair assessment system. At present, too much GenAI use is happening under the radar, without shared language or common expectations. Clarity and consistency will help maintain trust in an exercise that underpins the distribution of public research funding.

    Unpicking a patchwork of inconsistencies

    We now have insight into real practice across UK universities. Some are already using GenAI to trawl for impact evidence, to help shape narratives, and even to review or score outputs. Others are experimenting with bespoke tools or home-grown systems designed to streamline their internal processes.

    This kind of activity is usually driven by good intentions. Teams are trying to cope with rising workloads and the increased complexity that comes with each REF cycle. But when different institutions use different tools in different ways, the result is not greater clarity. It is a patchwork of inconsistent practices and a risk that those involved do not clearly understand the role GenAI has played.

    The report notes that most universities still lack formal guidance and that internal policy discussions are only just beginning. In fact, practice has moved so far ahead of governance that many colleagues are unaware of how much GenAI is already embedded in their own institution’s REF preparation, or for professional services, how much GenAI is already being used by their researchers.

    The sector digital divide

    This is where the sector can work together, with support from Jisc and others, to help narrow the divide that exists. The survey results tell us that many academics are deeply sceptical of GenAI in almost every part of the REF. Strong disagreement is common and, in some areas, reaches seventy per cent or more. Only a small minority sees value in GenAI for developing impact case studies.

    In contrast, interviews with senior leaders reveal a growing sense that institutions cannot afford to ignore this technology. Several Pro Vice Chancellors told us that GenAI is here to stay and that the sector has a responsibility to work out how to use it safely and responsibly.

    This tension is familiar to Jisc. GenAI literacy is uneven, as is confidence, and even general digital capability. Our role is to help universities navigate that unevenness. In learning and teaching, this need is well understood, with our AI literacy programme for teaching staff well established. The REF AI findings make clear that similar support will be needed for research staff.

    Why national action matters

    If we leave GenAI use entirely to local experimentation, we will widen the digital divide between those who can invest in bespoke tools and those who cannot. The extent to which institutions can benefit from GenAI is tightly bound to their resources and existing expertise. A national research assessment exercise cannot afford to leave that unaddressed.

    We also need to address research integrity, and that should be the foundation for anything we do next. If the sector wants a safe and fair path forward, then transparency must come first. That is why Recommendation 1 matters. The report suggests universities should consider steps such as:

    • define where GenAI can and cannot be used
    • require disclosure of GenAI involvement in REF related work
    • embed these decisions into their broader research integrity and ethics frameworks

    As the report notes that current thinking about GenAI rarely connects with responsible research assessment initiatives such as DORA or CoARA, that gap has to close.

    Creating the conditions for innovation

    These steps do not limit innovation; they make innovation possible in a responsible way. At Jisc we already hear from institutions looking for advice on secure, trustworthy GenAI environments. They want support that will enable experimentation without compromising data protection, confidentiality or research ethics. They want clarity on how to balance efficiency gains with academic oversight. And they want to avoid replicating the mistakes of early digital adoption, where local solutions grew faster than shared standards.

    The REF AI report gives the sector the evidence it needs to move from informal practice to a clear, managed approach.

    The next REF will arrive at a time of major financial strain and major technological change. GenAI can help reduce burden and improve consistency, but only if it is used transparently and with a shared commitment to integrity. With the right safeguards, GenAI could support fairness in the assessment of UK research.

    From Jisc’s perspective, this is the moment to work together. Universities need policies. Panels need guidance. And the sector will need shared infrastructure that levels the field rather than widening existing gaps.

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  • Faith-Based Colleges Swept Up in Higher Ed Policy Changes

    Faith-Based Colleges Swept Up in Higher Ed Policy Changes

    Leaders of faith-based colleges and universities have spoken out on a slew of political issues in recent months, sometimes standing alongside secular universities and at other times differentiating themselves and defending their unique standing and missions.

    The Council for Christian Colleges and Universities and the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities signed on to an October statement from the American Council on Education opposing the administration’s higher education compact, for example. Over the summer, CCCU also came out with a statement on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that echoed those of secular associations and institutions, expressing concern that “it ultimately falls short in supporting student access and success.”

    ACE’s Commission on Faith-Based Colleges and Universities was among the higher ed groups that lobbied hard against Pell Grant cuts, later dropped from the bill. At the same time, the University of Notre Dame and other faith-based institutions fought for an exemption for religious institutions from the higher education endowment tax, ultimately left out of the legislation’s final version.

    Like their secular peers, faith-based colleges and universities have been buffeted by the rapid-fire policy changes roiling higher ed this year. Some leaders of religious colleges say their institutions are enjoying renewed support that they hope sets a precedent for future policymakers across party lines. At the same time, some advocates fear religious colleges—and their missions—are suffering collateral damage in Trump’s war against highly selective universities, and they’re making careful decisions about when and how to speak out.

    “I knew change would be coming,” said David Hoag, president of CCCU, “but I never expected the pace to be this fast.”

    Raising Concerns

    Under any administration, CCCU’s job is to “make it possible for our institutions to achieve their missions,” Hoag said. But some recent policy changes pose an obstacle to that.

    Christian colleges—which tend to be small, enrolling about 2,500 students on average—can’t afford to join Trump’s proposed compact for higher ed, he said. He believes some of the compact’s demands, such as freezing tuition for five years, are a tall order with campus expenses on the rise. He also opposes the compact’s standardized test mandate when so many Christian colleges offer broad access, and he’s concerned by the possibility that government could have some control over curriculum, though he said the compact was unclear on that score.

    “On the curriculum side, most of our institutions are conservative. We have a solid Christian mission,” Hoag said. “I’m fine with civics being a part of some of the work that we do, but it, to me, starts to … step over academic freedom.”

    Christian colleges are also balking at the new $100,000 fee for H-1B visas, which these institutions use to bring in visiting professors from other countries.

    “Our institutions can’t afford anything like that,” Hoag said. Such a fee might be more easily affordable for tech or other industries that use H-1B visas to hire foreign employees, he said, “but for nonprofit colleges and Christian colleges, that’s a big financial burden.”

    He’s also alarmed by some of the provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, including the requirement that programs prove students will earn more than high school graduates in order to access federal loans. Hoag worries that won’t bode well for institutions where a significant portion of students go into ministry, social work or other public service jobs that don’t necessarily pay high wages. He said the end of the Grad PLUS program is also poised to hurt Christian colleges; graduate students borrowed about $460 million annually to attend CCCU institutions, he said. Now he expects many will struggle to pay. Caps on loans for professional school students are also going to affect those earning master’s degrees in divinity.

    Donna Carroll, president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, said Catholic institutions are hardly “immune” to the challenges rocking the rest of higher ed. She said her nonpartisan organization has decided to speak up on a particular set of policy issues, including financial aid and supports for low-income students, autonomy for faith-based institutions, and immigration policy and access for international students. For example, the association signed on to a statement by U.S. bishops condemning “indiscriminate mass deportation” as an “affront to God-given human dignity.”

    “There are some issues and situations where there is consensus and a unity across Catholic institutions,” Carroll said. “There are other situations where different institutions have different perspectives.”

    In a similar vein, Clark G. Gilbert, commissioner of the church educational system for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and chair of the Commission on Faith-Based Colleges and Universities, said members of his coalition had mixed views on parts of the bill involving federal loans—he’d like to see colleges drop their prices—but they collectively pushed hard against proposed cuts to Pell Grants, which didn’t make it into the legislation.

    “We’re concerned about first-generation and low-income students. That’s not a partisan issue,” Gilbert said.

    ‘Not Like Some of These Ivies’

    A mounting frustration for some faith-based institution leaders is the blowback their campuses face from Trump administration policies targeting expensive, highly selective private universities, even though they view their missions as distinct.

    Hoag pointed out that, while some Christian colleges are pricier, the average tuition costs about $30,600 per year, not including room and board, and the average tuition discount rate is about 52 percent.

    “Christian schools are very affordable, and we’re not like some of these Ivies that have tuition from $80,000 to $100,000 a year,” Hoag said. Yet “I do feel that they’re … putting everybody in the same category.”

    Some faith-based institutions, led by the University of Notre Dame, sought to distinguish themselves from other higher ed institutions when they pushed for a religious exemption from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s endowment tax.

    Gilbert said Brigham Young University joined that effort because university leaders viewed the situation as a religious freedom issue.

    “We feel like there are public goods of faith-based schools that are often ignored,” such as research from faith-based perspectives, he said. “Without the internal funding at these schools, it wouldn’t happen. We feel like there is a religious liberty issue at stake there.”

    “I’m sure secular schools would feel their unique missions need that protection, too—that’s not my job to write and defend that,” he added.

    Gilbert said he feels a particular need to advocate on behalf of religious colleges, compared to higher ed as a whole, because he believes faith-based institutions are too often maligned. He said such institutions are doing research on topics ignored by their secular counterparts—like how family structures affect intergenerational poverty or how faith and religious community resources affect health outcomes—but these projects struggle to get federal funding or recognition from secular peers. He also stressed that these institutions provide a campus climate religious students can’t find elsewhere.

    “Many Jewish students do not feel safe at Columbia and at Harvard and at UCLA. Many LDS students do not feel welcome in certain programs,” he said. “Faith-based schools do feel like they need to preserve their rights.” He emphasized that doesn’t mean he wants to see any university lose out on cancer research funding, for example, but “faith-based scholars are doing things that no one else is doing, and why isn’t that getting the attention, the funding and the support, regardless of who the administration is?”

    Despite their policy disagreements, some leaders of faith-based institutions believe the Trump administration is offering them a warmer reception than they’ve perhaps received in the past. The president issued an executive order in February founding a task force on eradicating “anti-Christian bias” within government. In May, Trump’s Education Department also rescinded a $37.7 million fine levied by the Biden administration on Grand Canyon University, a private Christian institution, for allegedly misleading doctoral students about its cost. And the Trump administration recently partnered with Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian campus in Michigan, on a series of videos for the country’s 250th anniversary. The president of Yeshiva University, Rabbi Ari Berman, gave the benediction at Trump’s inauguration.

    Amid renewed outreach to faith-based institutions under Trump, Gilbert said he’s trying to walk a fine line, advocating for more attention and resources for faith-based institutions’ research but doing so in a way that remains apolitical.

    “We don’t care about party politics. We care about the American family. We care about alleviating poverty,” he said. “We’re going to continue to help shine a light on the contributions these schools make in the current climate, but not so overboard that when things may change, and they will, that we can’t make the same arguments using the same principles with a different administration.”

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