Tag: research

  • A Home for Homeless DEI Strategies and Research

    A Home for Homeless DEI Strategies and Research

    The journal Dear Higher Ed aims to provide a space for discussions about DEI as some campuses disinvest. 

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Liz Leyden and urfinguss/iStock/Getty Images

    Campus DEI officers and researchers who study inequities in higher education say they’re watching decades of their work disappear as colleges respond to federal and state bans on diversity, equity and inclusion policies and programs by scrubbing evidence of their programs, research and milestones from campus websites.

    But two former diversity professionals and an anthropology professor have made it their mission to preserve what they can of their colleagues’ efforts. The group founded a journal, called Dear Higher Ed: Letters from the Social Justice Mountain, to collect insights, experiences, research and best practices from faculty and higher ed staff currently or formerly engaged in DEI work on their campuses.

    The project started with two diversity professionals at Virginia Tech who wanted to document their coworkers’ experiences as potential fodder for a book as state DEI bans proliferated. Menah Pratt and Michele Deramo, who worked in Virginia Tech’s DEI office at the time, invited their colleagues to write letters to higher ed. But they quickly realized they wanted to include voices from other institutions as Pratt met coworkers invested in DEI nationally and internationally on a fellowship with the American Council on Education at the University of Minnesota.

    “What was the impetus for me is, when I came to Tech, I read 2,000 pages of reports,” Pratt said. “There was a historical record of 20 years of work that had been happening at Virginia Tech around diversity,” full of relevant data and best practices. “And then I thought, ‘Wow, these [reports] are gone from public view.’ They’re gone from so many institutions across the country.”

    Pratt wanted to “start capturing some of those voices, those experiences, the strategies, the perspectives” that might otherwise be lost.

    Plans for a book grew into a full-fledged journal, hosted by University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing and affiliated with a nonprofit called Scholarly Platforms for Advancing Research and Knowledge, or SPARK. Pratt and Deramo—who shifted to other roles at Virginia Tech after its DEI office closed last year—edited and released Dear Higher Ed’s first volume in 2024. They later brought on Rhode Island College anthropology professor M. Gabriela Torres, and the three of them put out two more issues last year and an open call for submissions for 2026.

    The journal’s articles range widely. Some are deeply personal narratives, others detail higher ed’s historic inequities or highlight research and pedagogy tools. One piece, framed by an analysis of Beyonce lyrics, discusses the value of Black women’s voices in the academy. A professor emeritus wrote about how he used his Sicilian family background to open up conversations about race and whiteness with students in his classroom. Others expressed pain at how higher ed had retreated from DEI work and their fears for the aftermath.

    “Dear Higher Education, I revere you,” one author wrote, “but I am so mad at you.”

    A ‘Little Ray of Hope’

    The hope is to offer a place where higher ed staff and scholars who care about diversity work can share critiques of higher ed, vent their frustrations, pour over its fraught history and delve into where it needs to improve, Deramo said. But it’s also about “why transformation is possible.”

    “We wanted to get people to try to envision, ‘What’s an alternative? What can higher education be?’” Deramo said.

    Torres hopes the journal reaches academics still interested in these areas of practice and research “that higher ed has divested from and want ideas as to how to continue the work.”

    She argued campuses have poured resources into DEI and, in doing so, “improved the lives of so many students.” Those resources might have dried up, but the work can’t be “abandoned,” she said.

    She also wants to create a home for homeless research as federal agencies and campuses cut funds for projects related to gender and race. Torres researches sexual violence and said she’s increasingly pursued partnerships in Europe and Canada to continue her work.

    Scholars who study anything perceived as DEI-related now feel like “I can’t talk about my research, I can’t talk about my values,” she said. But Dear Higher Ed is meant to be a “space of creativity” and “possibility” where they can freely share their thoughts and findings, and their expertise is prized.

    The editors can personally relate.

    “I am someone whose position was dissolved,” Deramo said. “I was someone whose expertise, whose thought leadership, was set aside. But I’m not going to set it aside.”

    The journal also includes some international voices, Pratt noted, because even if the U.S. has backed away from diversity research and practices, that work is continuing in other places, and scholars can learn from each other across borders.

    The editors recognize that what they’re asking authors to do—write often deeply personal stories about a now lightning-rod issue on a public platform—isn’t easy. With rare exceptions, they prefer authors put their name on their work, if possible.

    Writing for Dear Higher Ed requires “courage” because “if everything is anonymous, then you don’t have anything,” Pratt said. “At some point, you just have to believe that your words out in the world, with your background and all your identities, are more important than the silence.”

    For Pratt, the journal has been “a little ray of hope,” she said.

    “We’re just sitting here silently suffering,” Pratt said. “And I think to have a small little platform that says, ‘this work is not going away,’ or ‘your work is still important,’ or ‘what you did was important,’ … ‘these values still matter’” offers “that little glimmer of hope.”

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  • Week in review: Federal lawmakers reject drastic cuts to scientific research

    Week in review: Federal lawmakers reject drastic cuts to scientific research

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    Most clicked story of the week: 

    Senate lawmakers have rejected the Trump administration’s proposal to vastly reduce federal funding for scientific research. Instead the Senate advanced proposals last week that would provide $188.3 billion for scientific research — 21.3% more than the Trump administration proposed. 

    The Senate passed those bipartisan measures Thursday in a 82-15 vote, sending them to President Donald Trump’s desk. The House passed them in a 397-28 vote earlier in the month. 

    Number of the week: 5.9% 

    The decline in graduate international students enrolled in U.S. colleges in fall 2025 compared to the year before, according to final figures from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. However, enrollment ticked up 1% overall, thanks to a 1.2% increase in undergraduate students. 

    The latest on mergers, closures and financial distress: 

    • The California College of the Arts, a 120-year-old institution, announced that it will close at the end of the 2026-27 academic year and hand over its campus to Nashville-based Vanderbilt University. Despite a major fundraising push, CCA President David Howse said the arts college’s “tuition-driven business model is not sustainable.”

    • Oregon’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission recently passed a report that in part advises all of Oregon’s public colleges to collaborate and craft plans for “targeted institutional integration.”. Those plans could range from two colleges sharing programs to fully merging, according to the report. 

    • Hampshire College, a private nonprofit in Massachusetts that narrowly avoided closing five years ago, is once again in potential financial trouble. According to its latest audit, the institution could shutter if it can’t refinance its debt. 

    ‘A year of catastrophe’ for higher ed: 

    PEN America, a free expression group, found that 21 bills across 15 states were enacted in 2025 that censor higher education. “For higher education in America, 2025 was a year of catastrophe,” researchers wrote in a report summarizing the findings. 

    The researchers found the laws were a “result of a relentless, years-old campaign to exert ideological control over college and university campuses.” Although the conservative-led push began before President Donald Trump’s second term, researchers noted the campaign was “greatly exacerbated” by his administration. 

    Now, over 50% of college students are studying in states with at least one law on the books that censors higher education. “This is a staggering figure that should give us all pause,” they wrote.

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  • The Karateka vs the Sumo Wrestler: what REF 2029 means for research leadership in UK universities

    The Karateka vs the Sumo Wrestler: what REF 2029 means for research leadership in UK universities

    This blog was kindly authored by Dr Antonios Kelarakis, Reader in Polymers and Nanomaterials, University of Lancashire

    UK universities increasingly reward size, visibility and institutional influence. Yet many of the discoveries that underpin scientific progress come from researchers whose work is slow, specialist and largely invisible – the academic karateka, whose precision contrasts sharply with the highly visible, institution-shaping sumo wrestler. With reforms to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) for 2029 confirmed in December 2025, there is now an opportunity to rebalance what we value in research leadership and to better align institutional incentives with how knowledge is actually produced.

    In today’s academic world, two very different research styles are stepping onto the mat.

    The karateka is defined by focus and precision. They dedicate themselves to mastering a single research field, refining a theory, improving a method or laying the foundations for a new diagnostic or experimental technique. Every publication is carefully considered, every contribution is incremental but cumulative. Their ambition is depth rather than scale, and they aim to reach previously inaccessible insights. These researchers often form the invisible engine of scientific progress. Their work may attract little attention beyond specialist communities, yet its influence is long-lasting and foundational.

    The sumo wrestler, by contrast, plays a broader game. Their strength lies in size, coordination and visibility. They lead large research groups, oversee multiple interdisciplinary projects and accumulate titles, affiliations and advisory roles. Their calendars are filled with conferences, policy briefings and media engagement. They shape research agendas as much as individual ideas and act as the public face of modern academia. While the karateka advances knowledge through precision, the sumo wrestler moves institutions through mass and momentum.

    A shifting balance of power

    For much of scientific history, the karateka was the primary driver of discovery. The laws of physics, advances in chemistry and the development of new materials and analytical techniques have typically emerged from decades of focused work by scholars deeply embedded in a single domain.

    In recent years, however, the balance in UK academia has tilted. Universities increasingly reward visibility, scale, collaboration and institutional contribution – metrics that naturally favour the sumo wrestler. Funding requirements emphasise partnerships, pathways to impact and the management of large consortia. Universities respond rationally by supporting researchers who can deliver coordination, profile and strategic alignment.

    The karateka, meanwhile, often struggles to justify slow, methodical work in systems dominated by short-term indicators. Their contributions are essential, but they are not always easily captured by institutional performance metrics or institutional narratives.

    Why REF matters now

    The REF has always been a powerful signal of what universities should value. Decisions taken as part of the REF 2029 reforms strengthen the emphasis on research culture, long-term contribution and the environments that sustain excellence, alongside continued recognition of impact.

    Under the revised framework, assessment is weighted across three elements: Contribution to Knowledge and Understanding (55%), Engagement and Impact (25%) and Strategy, People and Research Environment (20%), assessed at both disciplinary and institutional levels. This represents a clear shift from REF 2021, where the role of environment was more limited.

    This change matters. By strengthening the role of research environment and contribution, REF 2029 creates an opening for universities to recognise how excellence is actually sustained; through deep expertise, stable methods, supportive cultures and long-term institutional investment. Research outputs remain central, but they no longer crowd out other forms of contribution to the same extent.

    Karateka-style scholarship has often struggled to fit neatly into REF narratives. Breakthroughs take time, develop incrementally and may not translate into demonstrable impact within a single cycle. Yet many celebrated impact case studies ultimately rest on foundational research generated by specialist researchers whose work is less visible and harder to narrate.

    From critique to policy

    The reforms give universities greater scope and responsibility to act differently. REF 2029 does not dictate outcomes, but it reshapes the conditions under which institutions define excellence.

    In practical terms, universities can now use the framework to reaffirm the value of:

    • deep, specialist expertise, even when audiences are narrow
    • long-term, foundational inquiry that underpins later impact
    • precision scholarship that strengthens methods and disciplines
    • small, focused teams that are often more intellectually productive than large consortia

    REF 2029 offers a chance to rebalance the contest without lowering the bar for excellence. Protecting space for karateka-style research is not a retreat from impact; it is a precondition for it. When depth is preserved, leadership has something genuinely worth amplifying: impact that endures rather than merely dazzles.

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  • Senate advances bills rejecting Trump’s efforts to slash research funding

    Senate advances bills rejecting Trump’s efforts to slash research funding

    Dive Brief:

    • Senate lawmakers have engineered bipartisan fiscal 2026 spending proposals that would largely maintain scientific funding, defying the Trump administration’s calls for massive cuts to research. 
    • Budget bills released by Senate committees in recent days would provide $188.3 billion in total scientific research funding — 21.3% more than requested by the White House, according to an analysis published last week by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
    • However, legislators’ proposed research funding levels would still fall 3.6% below fiscal 2025 spending. The full Senate voted on Monday to advance the bills, teeing up a final vote. Congress needs to pass a budget by Jan. 30 to avoid another shutdown.

    Dive Insight:

    Since retaking office last year, President Donald Trump and his administration have pushed to downsize and disrupt the country’s longstanding system of scientific research, which for decades has relied on a financial partnership between the federal government and scientists, many of them attached to universities. 

    Headed into 2026, the Trump administration proposed broad-based cuts to the research. In all, it asked for $155.2 billion for scientific research — a 21% drop from fiscal 2025 levels — according to AAAS. 

    That figure obscures the depth of some agencies’ requested cuts. For example, the National Science Foundation under Trump asked Congress for a $3.9 billion budget — well under half its 2025 funding levels. Instead, the Senate’s appropriations committee on Thursday released an $8.8 billion budget for the NSF to “sustain U.S. leadership in scientific discovery.” 

    The Senate’s NSF proposal included investments in quantum information, artificial intelligence, regional innovation, and “critical” research facilities. 

    The Trump-appointed head of the National Institutes of Health requested $27.9 billion, a nearly 40% decrease from 2025’s $46 billion. The agency said the shrunken budget aimed to “maximize the impact of NIH research by streamlining processes and more efficiently providing funding.” 

    The Senate Appropriations committee rejected the administration’s proposal, instead advancing a $48.7 billion budget for NIH, according to Sen. Patty Murray’s office. Murray is the top-ranking Democrat on the committee.

    “The bill rejects the Trump administration’s harmful efforts to defund and dismantle critical work that HHS oversees — maintaining important funding for programs across HHS that touch the lives of nearly every American, while providing targeted increases to important bipartisan priorities,” Murray’s office said in a bill summary.

    While overall, Senate plans fall short of fiscal 2025 scientific research spending, its proposed $44.9 billion budget for basic research — which explores fundamental principles of nature and science — would tick up by 2.4% compared to last year, according to AAAS. 

    The provisional budget bill set to expire at the end of this month was a stopgap that ended the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history.

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  • Are we reducing research security risk, or just shifting it around?

    Are we reducing research security risk, or just shifting it around?

    In an era of heightened geopolitical tension, research security has shot to the top of policy agendas worldwide. Governments and institutions are implementing new measures intended to safeguard sensitive science against threats like espionage, theft, and undue foreign influence.

    The Flagship EU Conference on Research Security, held recently in Brussels, underscored the urgency: for the first time, the European Union announced plans to anchor research security in EU law via a forthcoming European Research Area. It also confirmed proposals for a range of new support measures including a European Centre of Expertise, an international collaboration due diligence platform, and a common resilience testing methodology.

    Yet amid these proactive steps lurks a critical question: are current research security frameworks genuinely reducing risk, or merely redistributing it across borders? There is growing evidence that without careful coordination, well-intentioned safeguards in one country can simply deflect threats to less-regulated arenas. In its recent note on “Research Security as a Shared Responsibility”, conference co-organiser CESAER noted the need to build resilience in Europe through “collective responsibility and trust.” It emphasised that “making a level playing field across the continent” is essential. But why should the level playing field stop there?

    The waterbed effect

    Across the world – and even within Europe – research security frameworks vary wildly. This fragmentation is more than just a bureaucratic quirk; it can actively undermine the intention to reduce risk. If one institution or country imposes rigorous security checks, a hostile actor can simply target a more permissive collaborator elsewhere, bypassing the tightest gate by entering through an unlocked side door.

    Research managers from across European countries and beyond recently voiced a clear message through the “Stronger Cooperation, Safer Collaboration” project: divergent national approaches are creating duplication, confusion, and vulnerability in research security. Some nations have strict regulatory frameworks; others rely on informal guidelines and self-regulation, and some have yet to implement any framework at all. This disharmony forces collaborating institutions to navigate a patchwork of rules. Crucially, it creates a race to the bottom: “The first to act loses out,” as one research manager put it, meaning institutions that impose tougher controls risk losing collaborations or talent that underpin their institutions impact and financial resilience. Conversely, overly open environments risk becoming safe havens for those trying to evade stricter jurisdictions, leading to longer term losses through knowledge leakage from the same global collaborative projects.

    This dynamic has played out in anecdotal reports: one trusted research manager at a research-intensive university in the UK shared that they had experienced a recent case in which a PhD candidate who had unsuccessfully appealed an Academic Technology Approval Scheme (ATAS) refusal told their UK institution not to worry, as they had received an offer from elsewhere in Europe. Colleagues elsewhere in the UK and in Denmark confirmed similar experiences – Denmark and the UK being two countries now taking a firm line on vetting international research ties.

    The pattern highlights a potential unintended consequence: was the risk eliminated, or was it shifted to another institution? It raises the question as to whether early inward-facing approaches have inadvertently created a “waterbed effect”: press down on risk in one place, and it pops up elsewhere, undermining the overall goal of a safer global research environment.

    Shifting risk to the Global South

    The “risk transfer” phenomenon in research security isn’t just a North Atlantic or European problem. It can play out globally, often to the detriment of researchers in the Global South. Many high-income countries (such as the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and some EU states) have ramped up protections for their own institutions. This includes stricter export controls on sensitive technologies, visa vetting of foreign researchers, requirements for disclosure of overseas ties, and due diligence on international partners. But those seeking access to advanced research can respond by targeting less fortified partners in countries where such measures are not yet in place or enforced.

    This dynamic means that Global South collaborators sometimes become passive recipients of risk. I spoke with Dr Palesa Natasha Mothapo, Director of Research Support and Management of Nelson Mandela University and an alumnus of the Women Advance Research Security Fellowship, who has led initiatives to engage institutions in South Africa and beyond on research security. She noted that South Africa has a thriving research and innovation ecosystem with highly sensitive research, but discussions on research security remain at a very early stage. Even so, Mothapo noted that institutions in South Africa generally benefit from greater financial security due to national investment and infrastructure and colleagues from elsewhere in the Global South feel even more exposed to the risks.

    When working with international funders, institutions are often forced to accept onerous funding terms and conditions set by wealthier partners and conditions which aim to shift responsibility and liability downward. Those terms and conditions have often not been formulated fully considering the local context or capacity. For example, a major research funding agreement from a US or European sponsor might require the African or Asian sub-grantee to comply with strict cybersecurity protocols, international export-controls or vetting of staff. Lacking an equal say in drafting these terms, the partner institution does its best to comply, effectively shouldering the security burden – but it may not have the inhouse experts, resources or infrastructure that its counterparts are able to rely on. But if something goes wrong, who bears the blame or consequences? If our actions only result in shifting the blame but fail to mitigate the likelihood or consequences, they have failed altogether. This inequity can erode trust and perpetuate harm.

    To counteract this erosion, changes in terms and conditions need to accompanied by the capacity strengthening, partnership and co-creation that accounts for what each collaborator values and seeks to protect. In the last three years, I have worked with researchers, research managers, innovation professionals and policy makers from over 50 different countries on capacity strengthening in research security. While the contexts vary greatly, there are still commonalities in the challenges we face and significant opportunity for cooperation and knowledge exchange. Raising standards everywhere is not a zero-sum game but creates a more stable, level playing field for all. This is the solution to truly reduce risk globally, instead of shifting it around.

    Towards harmonisation and mutual support

    If current research security measures risk shifting problems around, what is the remedy? The experts and stakeholders convened in Europe and elsewhere seem to converge on a key principle: harmonisation and capacity-building. Rather than each country acting in isolation (or worse, in competition) on research security, there’s a call for joint action to raise the floor globally and key actions have begun in this direction.

    There is also a growing recognition that culture change is as important as policy change. The concept of research security is relatively new in academia’s culture of openness. We need to foster a culture where security is seen not as a hindrance or a nationalist agenda, but as a shared duty to protect the integrity of science. That means those implementing security must do so in a way that is transparent and respects values like academic freedom and open science.

    To return to our original question: are we actually reducing risk or just shifting it elsewhere? At present, the answer is: a bit of both. The flurry of research security policies in recent years has plugged many gaps that were previously exploitable. Major economies are certainly harder targets for espionage and IP theft than they were a decade ago, thanks to these efforts.

    However, as protections evolve so do threats and tactics and there is little room for complacency. Some of those same efforts have diverted actors to take different approaches, including in some cases exporting the risk to less prepared quarters, or creating new frictions in the research enterprise. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and right now the “chain” of global science has some weak links open to exploitation. The good news is that the solution is within reach through international cooperation.

    We reduce research security risk only when we reduce it for everyone. If instead we simply push the risk around, it will eventually circle back and hit us from behind. The current trends – increased awareness, dialogue, and alignment – give reason for optimism. The UK government has indicated that international capacity strengthening will form part of their anticipated research security strategy.

    The next few years will be critical in translating these insights into practice. If we succeed, we will be on track to celebrate a genuinely safer, more collaborative global research environment – one where risk is tackled collectively, not passed like a hot potato.

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  • Temple Research Lab Improves Student Athlete Support

    Temple Research Lab Improves Student Athlete Support

    As the landscape of college athletics continues to shift, Temple University is experimenting with a new initiative that embeds academic research into the day-to-day operations of its athletics department.

    Launched last month, the Athletic Innovation, Research and Education Lab formalizes a partnership between the School of Sport, Tourism and Hospitality Management (STHM) and Temple Athletics.

    The AIRE Lab functions as both a research center and a practical hub, aiming to improve program management and student athletes’ development through evidence-based solutions.

    Jonathan Howe, an assistant professor at STHM and AIRE Lab co-director, said supporting the student-athlete experience is especially important at an institution like Temple University, which has fewer resources for name, image and likeness and revenue sharing than larger schools.

    “We’re able to engage in research and leverage university resources in a way that the athletics department may not traditionally be able to do,” Howe said.

    Elizabeth Taylor, an associate professor at STHM and AIRE Lab co-director, emphasized the importance of data-driven decision-making.

    “The folks who work in student athlete development may not have the capacity to do their full-time jobs while also staying up-to-date on the literature or evaluating the impact and effectiveness of the programs they offer,” Taylor said.

    She added that the goal is to “connect with people on campus who are already doing this work and share resources instead of recreating the wheel or paying someone from outside the university.”

    State of play: The launch of the AIRE Lab comes amid rapid changes in college athletics, including the rise of NIL compensation, evolving transfer rules and ongoing debates over athlete eligibility and governance. Taylor and Howe said these shifts have increased the need for institutions to understand how policy, culture and organizational decisions affect student athletes.

    “The additional opportunities through NIL and revenue-sharing create more time demands on student athletes,” Taylor said, noting that potential brand deals can complicate efforts to balance practices and competitions with classes, extracurriculars and internships.

    “What the research shows us is that they’re already strapped for time and what comes with that is stress, anxiety and mental health challenges,” she added.

    Transfer rules can further complicate the student athlete experience, particularly for athletes arriving from other institutions, Howe said. “Navigating the academic setting is a lot for athletes who may be transferring in or may have a lucrative NIL deal, so academics may be put on the back burner,” he said.

    To bridge the gap between research and daily operations, the athletics department appointed two staff members as lab practitioners to help translate research into practice.

    “Everything is changing by the second, and student athletes are having to navigate these changes,” Howe said. “So how can we provide a system that identifies the most beneficial programming to help athletes be as successful as possible in their professional pursuits once they leave campus?”

    In practice: One of the lab’s first initiatives was a cooking demonstration held at Temple University’s public health school. The session was designed to help student athletes learn how to prepare simple, nutritious meals.

    Taylor said the goal was to encourage student athletes to make practical, healthy choices and develop skills they can use outside of structured team meals.

    “The idea behind the cooking demonstration came from a research article on the experiences of college athletes, and one of the things that the athletes talked about is how so much of their life is planned out for them,” said Taylor. She added that while what student athletes eat and how they work out is often prescribed, they aren’t necessarily taught why they’re eating certain foods or doing specific workouts in the weight room.

    “It was a great experience for them to learn more about cooking safely and making healthy meals,” she added, noting that over 20 student athletes participated in the session.

    What’s next: Looking ahead, Howe said he hopes the lab will serve as a model for other institutions seeking to better integrate research, student athlete well-being and athletics administration.

    “We want to continue leveraging institutional, federal and state resources to provide athletes with opportunities they normally wouldn’t get, especially at a time when higher education budgets are being cut,” Howe said.

    “For me, the AIRE Lab allows us to break down some of the long-standing barriers we’ve had at the higher education level. Just because the budget is cut doesn’t mean we have to eliminate programs,” he said.

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  • New HEPI Policy Note: Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Advance Translational Research

    New HEPI Policy Note: Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Advance Translational Research

    Author:
    Rose Stephenson and Lan Murdock

    Published:

    A new report by HEPI and Taylor & Francis explores the potential of AI to advance translational research and accelerate the journey from scientific discovery to real-world application. 

    Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Advance Translational Research (HEPI Policy Note 67), authored by Rose Stephenson, Director of Policy and Strategy at HEPI, and Lan Murdock, Senior Corporate Communications Manager at Taylor & Francis, draws on discussions at a roundtable of higher education leaders, researchers, AI innovators and funders, as well as a range of research case studies, to evaluate the future role of AI in translational research. 

    The report finds that AI has the potential to strengthen the UK’s translational research system, but that realising these benefits will require careful implementation, appropriate governance and sustained investment. 

    You can find the press release and read the full report here.

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  • NIH cap on indirect research costs struck down on appeal

    NIH cap on indirect research costs struck down on appeal

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    Dive Brief:

    • A federal appeals court ruled on Monday that the National Institutes of Health cannot cap research overhead funding across the board, upholding an April lower court decision that spelled relief for beleaguered universities.
    • The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously concluded that NIH violated statutory law and the agency’s own regulatory procedures when it issued a policy capping reimbursement rates for indirect research costs at 15% for current and new grants.
    • The ruling is the latest blow to the Trump administration’s attempts to have multiple federal agencies cap indirect cost reimbursement rates at 15%. NIH on Tuesday declined to comment on the ruling or say if it planned to appeal.

    Dive Insight:

    When NIH issued the contested guidance in early February, it said it expected the move to save $4 billion — money that it planned to funnel toward financing direct research costs for institutions. 

    The move — widely panned in the academic community and elsewhere — broke with long-standing procedure of negotiating reimbursement rates with individual research institutions. For many large research universities, those rates top 50% and help pay for things like information technology, utilities, administrative support, and building and running laboratories. 

    These negotiations, built into NIH’s regulations, were also codified by Congress during the first Trump administration. Legislators passed an addition to an appropriations bill that advocates and judges have said specifically bars NIH from drawing up a universal reimbursement rate rather than negotiating individually with grantees. 

    NIH’s new policy drew multiple lawsuits, with high stakes looming while the legal battle played out. As one researcher at the University of Alabama at Birmingham put it, the cap would “cripple research infrastructure at hundreds of US institutions, and threatens to end our global superiority in scientific research.” 

    In court documents, scores of universities have described in detail how NIH’s 15% indirect cost cap would imperil their medical research operations and workforces, as well as the country’s ability as a whole to advance biomedical science — historically one of the U.S.’s major economic strengths. A February New York Times analysis found the policy could cost some of the top research universities over $100 million a year in funding. 

    As federal appellate Judge Kermit Lipez, a Clinton appointee, noted in this week’s ruling, NIH research has led to major medical breakthroughs and lowered death rates from conditions such as heart attacks and strokes. 

    “In short, the public-health benefits of NIH-funded research are enormous,” Lipez wrote.

    In March, a district court judge ruled the new policy illegal and issued a preliminary injunction against it, followed by a permanent injunction in April. Despite the setbacks, the Trump administration has tried instituting identical caps at other agencies — namely, the U.S. departments of Energy and Defense, and the National Science Foundation. Federal judges so far have blocked those moves as well.

    Several of those opposing NIH’s cap, which included a coalition of state attorneys general, lauded this week’s ruling. 

    “The Trump Administration wanted to eviscerate funding for medical research that helps develop new cures and treatments for diseases like cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement Monday. “We’re starting the new year by building on our previous successes and securing yet another important victory against the Trump Administration.”

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  • What school leaders need to know

    What school leaders need to know

    Key points:

    Special education is at a breaking point. Across the country, more children than ever are being referred for evaluations to determine whether they qualify for special education services. But there aren’t enough school psychologists or specialists on staff to help schools meet the demand, leaving some families with lengthy wait times for answers and children missing critical support. 

    The growing gap between need and capacity has inspired districts to get creative. One of the most debated solutions? Remote psychoeducational testing, or conducting evaluations virtually rather than face-to-face. 

    Can a remote evaluation accurately capture what a child needs? Will the results hold up if challenged in a legal dispute? Is remote assessment equivalent to in-person? 

    As a school psychologist and educational consultant, I hear these questions every week. And now, thanks to research and data released this summer, I can answer with confidence: Remote psychoeducational testing can produce equivalent results to traditional in-person assessment. 

    What the research shows

    In July 2025, a large-scale national study compared in-person and remote administration of the Woodcock-Johnson V Tests of Cognitive Abilities and Achievement (WJ V), the latest version of one of the most widely-used and comprehensive assessment systems for evaluating students’ intellectual abilities, academic achievement, and oral language skills. Using a matched case-control design with 300 participants and 44 licensed school psychologists from across the U.S., the study found no statistically or practically significant difference in student scores between in-person and remote formats. 

    In other words: When conducted with fidelity, remote WJ V testing produces equivalent results to traditional in-person assessment.

    This study builds on nearly a decade of prior research that also found score equivalency for remote administrations of the most widely used evaluations including WJ IV COG and ACH, RIAS-2, and WISC-V assessments, respectively. 

    The findings of the newest study are as important as they are urgent. They show remote testing isn’t just a novelty–it’s a practical, scalable solution that is rooted in evidence. 

    Why it matters now

    School psychology has been facing a workforce shortage for over a decade. A 2014 national study predicted this crunch, and today districts are relying on contracting agencies and remote service providers to stay afloat. At the same time, referrals for evaluations are climbing, driven by pandemic-related learning loss, growing behavioral challenges, and increased awareness of neurodiversity. 

    The result: More children and families waiting longer for answers, while school psychologists are facing mounting caseloads and experiencing burnout. 

    Remote testing offers a way out of this cycle and embraces changes. It allows districts to bring in licensed psychologists from outside their area, without relocating staff or asking families to travel. It helps schools move through backlogs more efficiently, ensuring students get the services they need sooner. And it gives on-site staff space to do the broader preventative work that too often gets sidelined. Additionally, it offers a way to support those students who are choosing alternate educational settings, such as virtual schools. 

    Addressing the concerns

    Skepticism remains, and that’s healthy. Leaders wonder: Will a hearing officer accept remote scores in a due process case? Are students disadvantaged by the digital format? Can we trust the results to guide placement and services?

    These are valid questions, but research shows that when remote testing is done right, the results are valid and reliable. 

    Key phrase: Done right. Remote assessment isn’t just a Zoom call with a stopwatch. In the most recent study, the setup included specific safeguards:

    • Touchscreen laptops with screens 13” or larger; 
    • A secure platform with embedded digital materials;
    • Dual cameras to capture the student’s face and workspace;
    • A guided proctor in-room with the student; and
    • Standardized examiner and proctor training protocols.

    This carefully structured environment replicates traditional testing conditions as closely as possible. All four of the existing equivalency studies utilized the Presence Platform, as it already meets with established criteria.

    When those fidelity conditions are met, the results hold up. Findings showed p-values above .05 and effect sizes below .03 across all tested subtests, indicating statistical equivalence. This means schools can confidently use WJ V scores from remote testing, provided the setup adheres to best practices.

    What district leaders can do

    For remote testing to succeed, schools need to take a thoughtful, structured approach. Here are three steps districts can take now.

    1. Vet providers carefully. Ask about their platform, equipment, training, and how they align with published research standards. 
    2. Clarify device requirements. Ensure schools have the right technology in place before testing begins.
    3. Build clear policies. Set district-wide expectations for how remote testing should be conducted so everyone–staff and contractors alike–are on the same page. 

    A path forward

    Remote assessment won’t solve every challenge in special education, but it can close one critical gap: timely, accurate evaluations. For students in rural districts, schools with unfilled psychologist positions, virtual school settings, or families tired of waiting for answers, it can be a lifeline.

    The research is clear. Remote psychoeducational testing works when we treat it with the same care and rigor as in-person assessment. The opportunity now is to use this tool strategically–not as a last resort, but as part of a smarter, more sustainable approach to serving students. 

    At its best, remote testing is not a compromise; it’s a path toward expanded access and stronger support for the students who need it most.

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  • School closures are accelerating in rural America. But research on whether they help students is mixed

    School closures are accelerating in rural America. But research on whether they help students is mixed

    by Chris Berdik, The Hechinger Report
    January 5, 2026

    PEACHAM, Vt. — Early on a chilly fall morning in this small Vermont town, Principal Lydia Cochrane watched a gaggle of kids chase one another and a soccer ball around their school recess yard. Between drop-off and first bell, they were free, loud and constantly moving. 

    With only about 60 students in prekindergarten through sixth grade, Peacham Elementary is the sort of school where all the kids know one another and locals regularly respond to calls for supplies and volunteers for field trips and other school activities. Cochrane gestured at the freshly raked wood chips around the swings and climbing structures, one of many tasks Peacham families completed at a recent community workday.

    “With a small school, the families know how crucial it is to support it and ensure it succeeds, and so they show up for it,” said Cochrane. 

    Peacham is also a type of school that’s disappearing nationwide, as education systems grapple with plunging enrollments and rising costs. Amid declining birth rates and growing competition from private-school voucher programs, the number of students in U.S. public schools dropped about 2.5 percent between 2019 and 2023, according to the most recent federal data. Fewer students leads to higher per-pupil spending, because district staffing and other expenses largely remain in place despite enrollment drops, and states are increasingly trying to escape the education budget crunch via school consolidation: In the past three years alone, at least 10 states have considered measures to mandate or incentivize district mergers. 

    These pressures are especially keen in rural areas where the smallest schools predominate and play an outsized role in community life. Vermont, the nation’s most rural state, has lost about 20 percent of its K-12 public school student population in the past two decades. That’s helped push per-pupil costs and property taxes to the breaking point. Early in 2025, the state’s governor and education secretary released a plan to overhaul Vermont education, proposing massive district consolidation as the foundation for sweeping changes in school funding, curricula and academic standards. 

    The Legislature responded with its own comprehensive plan, which passed last summer as Act 73, calling for a minimum of 4,000 students per district, a threshold now met by only 1 of the state’s 119 districts. 

    District mergers are not the same as school closures, but one invariably leads to the other, as they have in Vermont’s other recent waves of district consolidations. The scope of Act 73’s proposals have ignited intense pushback from people fearing the loss of local control over education, even from a majority of the task force created to map options for bigger districts. 

    This month, the state Legislature will consider whether to push forward or completely rethink the process, a debate that will be closely watched by rural education advocates nationwide. Backers of school consolidation maintain that the crises of declining enrollment, falling test scores and tight education budgets demand a bold response and that consolidating schools is necessary to control costs and more equitably distribute resources and opportunities. 

    Opponents say the evidence that widespread school consolidation saves money — or helps students — is mixed at best, and that success depends highly on local context. They want any mergers and closings to be voluntary and done with a clear-eyed accounting of what’s to be gained and lost. 

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

    Vermont’s student-teacher ratio of 11 to 1 is the lowest in the nation, and the state now spends nearly $27,000 per student, second only to New York State. That has triggered spikes in local taxes: In 2024, Vermonters facing double-digit property tax increases subsequently rejected nearly one-third of school budgets when they next went to the polls.

    The school budget revolts led Republican Gov. Phil Scott and his recently appointed education secretary, Zoie Saunders, to propose an education overhaul in January 2025 that would have divided the state into five regional districts serving at least 10,000 kids each. That plan was then superseded by Act 73, which created a redistricting task force of lawmakers and education leaders to map options for the Legislature to consider when it returns to work this month. 

    Saunders argues that school consolidation is key to the broader education transformation that Vermont needs in order to tackle several interconnected challenges, including rising student mental health issues, falling test scores and stubborn achievement gaps. “Many of these issues are hard to solve unless we address our issues around scale and funding,” she said in an interview. “We had to think about reform in a way that was going to focus on funding, quality and governance, because they’re all connected.”

    The state has consolidated schools several times before. Most notably, in 2015, Act 46 triggered several years of mergers — first voluntary, then required — that eliminated dozens of districts and led many small schools to close. 

    Jessica Philippe, a Peacham parent who was on the school board at the time, recalled the worry that the district and its elementary school would be swallowed up. Many of Vermont’s smallest districts, including Peacham, operate only an elementary school and cover the higher grades by paying tuition for students to attend public or certain private schools outside the district. 

    “It seems like this is a cycle we have to go through,” she said. “Every five or 10 years, we have to fight to keep this place, because people from away think, oh, that’s just a few kids we have to disperse.”

    The Peacham school board fended off that threat by showing the state board of education ample data that Peacham Elementary was viable and that there wasn’t much money to be saved from a merger. In fact, the state has never done a full financial analysis of Act 46. At the very least, the mergers failed to stem the spending and tax hikes that triggered Act 73.  

    The only comprehensive accounting of Act 46 was done by a Vermont native, Grace Miller, for her 2024 undergraduate thesis at Yale University where she studied economics and education. In her analysis of 109 districts between 2017 and 2020, she found that mergers did yield some savings, but it was soaked up by new spending such as higher salaries in newly combined districts and higher costs to bus students to and from schools farther away.

    Meanwhile, some of the fastest-growing educational costs in Vermont are arguably outside school and district control, such as skyrocketing health care premiums, which account for about 15 percent of district spending. According to data from KFF (formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation), Vermonters pay the highest “benchmark” health care premiums of any state, nearly $1,300 a month, almost double what they paid just five years ago. The state has also shifted other financial burdens onto districts, such as capital construction costs for schools, which the state hasn’t funded in nearly two decades.

    “We need to be focused on those core cost drivers,” said Rebecca Holcombe, a Vermont state representative and member of the redistricting task force, “not because there aren’t small schools that are inefficient and might not make it, but because even if we addressed them, we’d barely touch the real problem.” 

    Holcombe, who was the state’s education secretary when Act 46 passed, believes some school consolidation makes sense for Vermont, but not mandated mergers, especially at the scale proposed by Act 73. She was among the eight of 11 task force members who voted not to include maps of new, bigger district options in their final report in early December.  

    Instead they proposed a 10-year plan to create five regional “cooperative education service areas” where districts would pool resources to coordinate services — such as transportation, special education and professional development — and generate savings through scale. It also proposed that the state offer financial incentives to districts that voluntarily merge, centered on creating or strengthening high schools to serve students from combined districts and beyond. 

    Speaking to reporters, Gov. Scott admonished the task force a few days after its members voted to forward only the shared services plan to the state Legislature without mapping options for consolidating districts. “They didn’t redraw the lines,” he said. “They failed.” 

    When lawmakers reconvene on Jan. 6, it’s unclear how they’ll handle recommendations from a task force that arguably rebuked its founding legislation. They could ignore the task force and create their own maps of 4,000-student districts. They might amend Act 73 to fit the task force’s proposal. 

    Or they might start fresh. 

    Related: A school closure cliff is coming. Black and Hispanic students are likely to bear the brunt

    Seated in her office at Doty Memorial School in Worcester, a small Vermont town north of Montpelier, Principal Gillian Fuqua choked up when explaining her change of heart — from opposing to supporting a plan to close the school she’s overseen since 2019. Doty has about 60 K-6 students this year, and Fuqua slides a paper across her desk showing projections based on town birth records that enrollment could drop to 40 by the fall of 2028. 

    “It’s absolutely heartbreaking to me,” she said. “But we have to think about what we want for our kids, and we’re not in a good place right now.”

    Worcester is one of five towns merged into a single district by Act 46 in 2019. For two years in a row, the district has considered closing Doty, which would require voter approval. Last year, the plan was shelved without a vote after residents protested. But now a vote has been scheduled for February 10. 

    This past fall, when the district restarted consolidation discussions, Fuqua joined the “configuration committee” and dropped her previous opposition to closing the school. It already must combine two grades in classrooms to meet state minimums for class size. Fuqua worried that if classes shrink further, teachers might struggle to foster soft skills such as teamwork, collaborative problem solving and navigating a diversity of opinions. A larger school, she continued, could also support a full-time instrumental music teacher instead of the one-day-a-week instructor that Doty kids get, as well as a full-time librarian. 

    Indeed, there is ample evidence from Vermont and other states that merged schools can expose students to more and varied learning opportunities. A report released in 2024 by the Vermont Agency of Education, based on surveys and superintendent interviews from seven districts that merged early in the Act 46 era, highlighted merged districts saving, adding or restarting school offerings such as literacy intervention services, world languages and after-school extracurricular activities. 

    Nevertheless, education researchers stress that sending students to a bigger school with more resources doesn’t necessarily mean improved academic achievement or well-being. “These students are often experiencing an enormous transition, and there are a whole bunch of factors that can affect that,” said Mara Tieken, an education professor at Bates College who studies school consolidation. 

    School closings tend to be in more disadvantaged areas, for instance, and students there now take longer bus rides that cut into time for studying, sleep and after-school programs. Another variable is whether students from a closed school all transfer to the same new school, or are “starburst” out because no single school can accommodate them all. Tieken said it takes serious planning “to smooth that transition for new students, to create a culture that’s welcoming.”

    Research on student outcomes following school mergers reflects this tangle of factors. Some studies indicate that consolidation improves test scores, especially when students move to higher-performing schools. Others find little academic impact or lower performance in the first years after merging, more missed school days and behavioral issues and longer-term disadvantages in college graduation, employment and earnings as young adults. 

    “The answer to virtually every question about school consolidation is: It depends,” said Jerry Johnson, director of the Rural Education Institute and professor of educational leadership at East Carolina University, who has researched school consolidation for decades. 

    Related: Merger madness? When schools close — forever 

    Whatever might be gained from a merger, many Doty parents (and students) remain opposed. In interviews, several said their tiny school provides something incredibly valuable and increasingly rare: human connection and community. In places like Worcester, a local school is one of the few spaces that regularly brings folks together and serves as a magnet for the young families that sustain small-town life.

    Rosie Close, a fifth grader at Doty, described a tradition of students making and serving  soup at the town’s free “community lunch” held every Wednesday at the town hall. “If they closed Doty,” she said, “that would kind of take away part of the town, too.”

    While some Doty families had deep roots in the area, others moved to town more recently, including Caitlin Howansky, mother of a third grader. Howansky grew up in New York City, where she went to an elementary school with more than 30 kids per class.

    “Nobody outside of that classroom necessarily knew my name or knew me as a whole person. I was just one of the crowd,” she said. 

    By contrast, Howansky said, the teachers at Doty “know every kid’s strengths and weaknesses across the whole building.”

    That doesn’t mean that she and her neighbors are blind to demographic or economic realities, especially when housing, health care and so much else is getting more expensive. Early in December, for instance, Vermonters learned that property taxes would likely be spiking again next year, by nearly 12 percent on average.

    “A lot of people are saying, if we fight this again, are they just going to come back and try again next year?” Howansky said. “And is it fair to the children to live under this constant threat and this constant stress of not knowing?”

    She still thinks the fight against a merger is worth it, but said, “Everyone has to figure out where to draw their individual line.”

    Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at [email protected].

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

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