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In February 2022, then Secretary of State for Education Nadhim Zahawi told Parliament the Johnson government’s decision on post-qualification admissions.

Clear as a welcome school bell, he stated “we will not be reforming the admissions system to a system of PQA at this time”.

But who says that we don’t already have PQA?

Admissions reform by stealth

The “Decline My Place” button introduced by UCAS instead of Adjustment basically introduced PQA anyway. The only reason we haven’t noticed is that we were not, then, very focused on undergraduate home numbers. How things change.

Let’s think about JCQ results day 2025. Let’s say I work at an institution in the Russell Group with good recruitment opportunities for UG home and some uncertainties (I enjoy understatement) about postgraduate international numbers. And let’s say I decide to make hundreds more spaces available than previously planned earlier in the cycle.

But let’s also say that my colleagues further north, west and east do the same. I have a wonderfully smooth confirmation, accepting lots of well qualified and soon-to-be happy young people. I arrive on results day less stressed and tired than usual which is just as well because all hell breaks loose.

From 8:00am until 1:00pm I am frantically confirming Clearing places and, I’m hitting refresh on our numbers forecast every 5 minutes. My blood pressure is rising as is my cake consumption (the renewable energy of choice for any self-respecting Admissions Office). I am desperately trying to work out if our gains are ahead of our losses.

That’s because hundreds (more?) of our nurtured, valued and cultivated unconditional firm offer-holders have hit a button at UCAS and declined their place to go elsewhere. On top of this, for the first time in 2025, some who are still conditional have released themselves too. Fine, I hear you say – If you haven’t processed a decision you deserve to lose the student. But several of these students are still awaiting results (excluded from the requirement that Decline My Place is only for those with a complete set of Level 3 results).

You may well ask where the problem is here.

A better offer

Well, these particular students are from schools and colleges where we have a partnership. Several have been on long-term aspiration-raising enrichment programmes with us for over two years. We have invested all we can in their (everyone must have one) journey. It’s just that they’ve had “a better offer”.

This may be an offer from an institution in London where “our” student has been offered a big financial incentive, and which grew its Clearing intake from zero to 200 in two years. An offer from a delightful campus in the Midlands where “our” student will be very happy and which would not have been an option when only 45 Clearing places were available – but now there are 500. An offer from an exciting and vibrant institution in the north which can take “our” student for Economics – a real surprise as spaces are not often available for a subject like that, but then this university grew its Clearing intake from 200 to 885 over the last two cycles.

These are all real examples from last year. Companies may well have to say that past performance is no guarantee of future results, but we wouldn’t select on the basis of predicted grades if it wasn’t to some degree – now would we?

Personally I have always been in favour of PQA in theory. It is just that the jeopardy I enjoy about admissions doesn’t quite extend to the levels of uncertainty I predict for the few days after 14 August 2025. I wonder how many members of the UCAS Board and how many vice chancellors realise that there is, in a theoretical model that may very well be tested this summer, every possibility that every single firm accept that we have all secured, conditional or unconditional, melts on or before Results Day.

They can all, with absolutely no controls (apart from a quick call to UCAS if you are still conditional) decline their place and go to the pub to celebrate “trading up”. If that isn’t PQA what is? I need another cake.

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The University of Southern Queensland (UniSQ) will shed 259 jobs to plug a multi-million dollar budget hole despite all other Queensland universities reporting a 2024 surplus.

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Seattle, Wash.– As thousands of university students graduate each year, many find themselves
facing an unexpected challenge: career uncertainty. Despite earning degrees, a large portion of
graduates report feeling unprepared to enter the workforce. Post-college career expert Laurie
Nilo-Klug is tackling this issue head-on, providing students with the tools they need to build
confidence and thrive in their careers.

Ms. Nilo-Klug, an Adjunct Professor at Seattle University and the founder of Post College
Journey, has dedicated her work to helping students transition from college to the professional
world. Through her programs, Laurie has empowered students to take control of their career
paths, addressing common issues such as imposter syndrome, skill uncertainty, and job market
navigation.

After implementing her career confidence-building tools in the classroom, Laurie observed a
remarkable 60% increase in student confidence levels. “Many students leave college with
impressive degrees but lack the self-assurance to effectively launch their careers.

My goal is to bridge that gap with actionable strategies that instill confidence and competence,” says Laurie. Laurie explains, “In a recent assignment, I had students choose two career exploration activities, and their selections revealed a strong drive to connect classroom learning with their post-college goals.

Their enthusiasm for hands-on experiences, such as job applications and simulations, highlighted the critical need for practical, real-world learning opportunities. After gathering student feedback and analyzing the data, I found a 60% increase in their career confidence levels. This reinforced my belief that early and direct exposure to career exploration is essential for student success.”

In this activity, students were tasked with selecting two career exploration activities from the
following options:

● Attending a career development event;
● Having an appointment with the career center;
● Joining a student club;
● Doing a career self-assessment
● Applying to a job;
● Or completing a job simulation and then reflecting on what they have learned.

This assignment aimed to show that career development offers many paths, so it’s crucial to
understand why you choose an activity, what you hope to gain, and reflect on what you learn.
Laurie expected students to pick low-effort options like self-assessments or joining a club, given
their frequent concerns about time constraints. Instead, nearly all chose job simulations or
applied for a job, showing a strong preference for hands-on experience.

For media inquiries or to schedule an interview with Laurie Nilo-Klug, please contact:
Marisa Spano
marisa@elkordyglobal.com

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Citizens elect representatives to advocate zealously on their behalf, empowering officials to vote according to their conscience and express themselves freely on controversial topics. That’s why the Maine House of Representatives’ recent actions are so alarming — withdrawing an elected representative’s right to speak or vote on the House floor for refusing to take down a Facebook post.

Three weeks ago, Representative Laurel Libby of Maine’s 64th District posted on Facebook that a high school athlete won first place in girls’ pole vaulting at the Class B state championship after having competed the year before in the boys’ event and finishing in a tie for fifth place.

Libby’s post is constitutionally protected. She was speaking out about the policy in her state, set by the Maine High School Principals Association, that a high school athlete may participate in competitions for the gender with which they identify. Her post was also part of a nationwide debate. Maine Governor Janet Mills and President Trump have publicly sparred over the president’s executive order proposing to cut off education funding if states do not ban transgender athletes from competing in girls’ sports.

But just days after Libby’s post, the Maine House speaker and majority leader demanded she take it down. When she refused, the majority leader introduced a censure resolution — to be heard in the House the next day — because Libby’s post had included photos and the first name of the student, who is a minor. Libby sought to defend herself in the hastily called House vote, but was repeatedly cut off. The censure resolution passed 75-70 on a party-line vote.

If all the censure did was express disapproval of Libby’s actions, that would be one thing.

A state legislative body is entitled to express displeasure with a member’s actions, which by itself does not violate the First Amendment, as the Supreme Court recently ruled.

But in Libby’s case, the Maine House went further, much further. When Libby refused to apologize for her protected speech, the House speaker declared she would be barred from speaking on the House floor or voting on any legislation until she capitulated. Thus, the House majority party has precluded Libby from doing her job and effectively disenfranchised her constituents, end-running Maine constitutional provisions that say a representative cannot be expelled absent a two-thirds vote or recall election.

These actions are a clear example of retaliation based on constitutionally protected speech and amount to removal of an elected representative essentially because the House majority disagrees with her views or how she chose to express them. Sixty-nine years ago the U.S. Supreme Court held that a state legislature could not refuse to seat a duly elected member because of his public statements about the Vietnam War: “The manifest function of the First Amendment in a representative government requires that legislators be given the widest latitude to express their views on issues of policy.”

This is still the law. Under the constitution, the Maine House cannot censor Libby as it has done.

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President Trump posted a message on Truth Social this morning that put social media and college campuses on high alert. He wrote:

Colleges can and should respond to unlawful conduct, but the president does not have unilateral authority to revoke federal funds, even for colleges that allow “illegal” protests.

If a college runs afoul of anti-discrimination laws like Title VI or Title IX, the government may ultimately deny the institution federal funding by taking it to federal court, or via notice to Congress and an administrative hearing. It is not simply a discretionary decision that the president can make.

President Trump also lacks the authority to expel individual students, who are entitled to due process on public college campuses and, almost universally, on private campuses as well.

Today’s message will cast an impermissible chill on student protests about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Paired with President Trump’s 2019 executive order adopting an unconstitutional definition of anti-Semitism, and his January order threatening to deport international students for engaging in protected expression, students will rationally fear punishment for wholly protected political speech.

As FIRE knows too well from our work defending student and faculty rights under the Obama and Biden administrations, threatening schools with the loss of federal funding will result in a crackdown on lawful speech. Schools will censor first and ask questions later.

Even the most controversial political speech is protected by the First Amendment. As the Supreme Court reminds us, in America, we don’t use the law to punish those with whom we disagree. Instead, “[a]s a Nation we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”

Misconduct or criminality — like true threats, vandalism, or discriminatory harassment, properly defined — is not protected by the First Amendment. In fact, discouraging and punishing such behavior is often vital to ensuring that others are able to peacefully make their voices heard.

However, students who engage in misconduct must still receive due process — whether through a campus or criminal tribunal. This requires fair, consistent application of existing law or policy, in a manner that respects students’ rights.

President Trump needs to stand by his past promise to be a champion for free expression. That means doing so for all views — including those his administration dislikes.

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New York governor Kathy Hochul took an unusual interest in the hiring practices of the City University of New York on Tuesday when she ordered the public system to take down a job posting for a professorship in Palestinian studies at Hunter College.

CUNY quickly complied, and faculty at Hunter are up in arms over what they call a brazen intrusion into academic affairs from a powerful state lawmaker.

The job posting was for “a historically grounded scholar who takes a critical lens to issues pertaining to Palestine including but not limited to: settler colonialism, genocide, human rights, apartheid, migration, climate and infrastructure devastation, health, race, gender, and sexuality.”

“We are open to diverse theoretical and methodological approaches,” the posting continued.

In a statement Tuesday night, Hochul said the posting’s use of the words “settler colonialism,” “genocide” and “apartheid” amounted to antisemitic attacks and ordered CUNY to “immediately remove” the posting.

A few hours later, CUNY complied, and system chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez echoed Hochul’s criticisms of the posting.

“We find this language divisive, polarizing and inappropriate and strongly agree with Governor Hochul’s direction to remove this posting, which we have ensured Hunter College has since done,” he wrote in a statement.

Hochul also directed the university system to launch an investigation at Hunter “to ensure that antisemitic theories are not promoted in the classroom.” Matos Rodríguez appeared to imply the system would follow that order as well, saying, “CUNY will continue working with the Governor and other stakeholders to tackle antisemitism on our campuses.”

A CUNY spokesperson declined to say whether the system would launch a probe into the posting at Hunter but wrote in an email that “each college is responsible for its own faculty job posting.”

Hochul’s order came after pro-Israel activists, including a former CUNY trustee and current professor, publicly voiced concerns about the posting.

“To make a Palestinian Studies course completely about alleged Jewish crimes is akin to courses offered in the Nazi era which ascribed all the world’s crimes to the Jews,” Jeffrey Weisenfeld, who served as a CUNY trustee for 15 years, told The New York Post.

Faculty at Hunter are livid about the decision, according to multiple professors who spoke with Inside Higher Ed both on the record and on background. They say it’s a concerning capitulation to political pressure from an institution they long believed to be staunchly independent.

One longtime Hunter and CUNY Graduate Center professor, who spoke with Inside Higher Ed on the condition of anonymity out of fear for their job, said faculty across the system were “outraged at this craven act by our governor and our chancellor.”

“It shows that [Matos Rodríguez] has no commitment to academic freedom or moral compass that would allow him to stand up at this moment of political repression,” they said.

CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress, the union representing more than 30,000 faculty and staff members across the system’s 25 campuses, wrote a letter to Matos Rodriguez on Wednesday evening condemning the posting removal and calling on leadership to reverse their decision.

“An elected official dictating what topics may be taught at a public college is a line that should not be crossed,” the letter reads. “The ‘divisive concepts’ standard for universities is something devised in Florida that shouldn’t be exported to New York. What’s needed are inclusive ways of teaching, not canceling concepts and areas of study.”

It was unclear Wednesday whether the job posting would be edited and reposted or if the opening would be eliminated. A CUNY spokesperson declined to respond to questions about the job’s future, but the anonymous faculty member said they believed Hunter officials were revising the post, intending to relist it.

The anonymous professor said they were worried that Hunter president Nancy Cantor, who took on the role last August after leading Rutgers University–Newark for a decade, could face severe scrutiny after the posting.

“We fully support this initiative by our president to make this Palestinian studies cluster hire,” the anonymous professor said. “I’m very worried about Nancy Cantor’s tenure at Hunter. I think this is part of a campaign by the far right to get rid of Félix [Matos Rodríguez], and it would not surprise me in the least if he threw Nancy Cantor under the bus to save his own skin.”

Heba Gowayed, an associate professor of sociology at Hunter, said she was shocked that Hochul had made the job posting a priority, especially as threats to academic freedom and attacks on higher education from Republicans are intensifying.

“This is an unprecedented overstep in authority, but instead of coming from Republicans, it’s coming from a Democrat in one of the bluest states in the country,” she said. “They’re the ones that are supposed to be fighting to protect academic freedom. This is a tremendous abdication of that responsibility.”

‘A Climate of Fear’

The anonymous professor said their colleagues are grappling with contending emotions: rage and fear. There’s a great appetite to speak up, they said, but they also feel it’s more dangerous than ever, even for tenured faculty.

“People are worried across the board,” they said. “That is the kind of climate of fear that this sort of action creates.”

It’s not the first time CUNY has responded to pressure from pro-Israel activist groups in faculty workforce decisions. Since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, CUNY institutions have declined to renew contracts for two vocally pro-Palestinian professors: Danny Shaw at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who says he was the target of a pro-Israel pressure campaign to get him fired after 18 years of teaching, and lecturer Lisa Hofman-Kuroda at Hunter, who was reported for pro-Palestinian social media posts.

Shaw, who is currently suing CUNY for breach of contract, told Inside Higher Ed that the decision to remove the job posting did not surprise him.

“This is McCarthyism 2.0,” he said. “Administrators won’t protect us. It’s been made pretty clear that at the end of the day, it’s either their necks on the chopping block or ours.”

Last spring, when the student-led pro-Palestinian encampment protests spread from Columbia University across town to the City College of New York, CUNY leadership drew criticism for calling the New York Police Department to disperse students. Gowayed said that decision shocked faculty across the system, who took pride in their institution’s progressive reputation and history of academic integrity.

Even then, she said she was “disturbed that they have let it get to this higher level of censoring faculty for a completely legitimate job posting.”

The Palestinian studies position was one of two Hunter planned to hire, and Gowayed said faculty and leadership at Hunter had been supportive of the plans to expand their research and teaching capacity in an area of growing interest.

“Whatever your feelings on Palestine, this is a research area in a widely recognized field of scholarship on genocide and apartheid,” Gowayed said. “These are well-established fields, whether you’re studying the Belgian Congo or Rwanda or Palestine, and the posting wasn’t even saying what approach the faculty should take … The reaction to this posting is so discrepant from the actual academic integrity of the job search.”

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I know I’ve been barking up the tree of “Graduation Rates are inputs, not outputs” for a long time. And I know no one is listening. So I do this, just to show you (without the dependent variable) just how unsurprising they are.

Here are four views of graduation rates at America’s four-year public and private, not-for-profit colleges and universities. And I’ve put them in four views, with several different ways to look at the data.

The first (using the tabs across the top) shows four-, five-, and six-year graduation rates on the left, and “Chance in four” on the right. In other words, since everyone pretty much thinks they’re going to graduate from the college they enroll in as a freshman, what are the chances of graduating in four years, rather than six? There are some surprises there, as you’ll see.

On all the visualizations, you can apply filters to limit the colleges you’re looking at. The scroll bar (to move up or down) is on the right but it’s sometimes hard to see. And the size slider is set to a minimum of 1,000 students, but you can change that; just beware that small colleges often have wonky data, for several reasons.

The second view shows six-year rates by gender.

The third view breaks out six-year rates by ethnicity, comparing African-American, Hispanic, and Asian rates (the shapes) to the rate for White students (on the gray bars).

And the final view breaks out six-year rates by Pell Grant status, then shows the gap between the two on the right. On the gap chart, a negative number shows colleges where Pell graduation rates are higher than non-Pell rates.

Enjoy!

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Admissions reform by stealth

A better offer

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‘A Climate of Fear’