Tag: research
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Judge rules White House unlawfully blocked Harvard’s research grants (PBS News Hour)
Higher Education Inquirer : Judge rules White House unlawfully blocked Harvard’s research grants (PBS News Hour)
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New Research Highlights Both the Importance and Challenges of Student Engagement in K-12 Education
A new study reveals that while there is wide agreement that student engagement plays a vital role in learning, educators continue to face uncertainty about what engagement looks like, how best to measure it, and how to sustain it. Education Insights 2025–2026: Fueling Learning Through Engagementcaptures prevailing attitudes and beliefs on the topic of engagement from 1,398 superintendents, teachers, parents, and students from across the United States. Survey data was collected in May 2025 by Hanover Research on behalf of Discovery Education, the creators of essential PreK-12 learning solutions used in classrooms around the world.
“Discovery Education conducted the Education Insights report to gain a deeper understanding of how engagement is defined, observed, and nurtured in K-12 classrooms nationwide, and we are thankful to the participants who shared their perspectives and insights with us,” said Brian Shaw, Discovery Education’s Chief Executive Officer. “One of the most important findings of this report is that engagement is seen as essential to learning, but is inconsistently defined, observed, and supported in K-12 classrooms. I believe this highlights the need for a more standardized approach to measuring student engagement and connecting it to academic achievement. Discovery Education has embarked on an effort to address those challenges, and we look forward to sharing more as our work progresses.”
Key findings of the Education Insights 2025–2026: Fueling Learning Through Engagement report include:
- Engagement is broadly recognized as a key driver of learning and success. 93% of educators surveyed agreed that student engagement is a critical metric for understanding overall achievement, and 99% of superintendents polled believe student engagement is one of the top predictors of success at school. Finally, 92% of students said that engaging lessons make school more enjoyable.
- But educators disagree on the top indicators of engagement. 72% of teachers rated asking thoughtful questions as the strongest indicator of student engagement. However, 54% of superintendents identified performing well on assessments as a top engagement indicator. This is nearly twice as high as teachers, who rank assessments among the lowest indicators of engagement.
- School leaders and teachers disagree on if their schools have systems for measuring engagement. While 99% of superintendents and 88% of principals said their district has an intentional approach for measuring engagement, only 60% of teachers agreed. Further, nearly 1/3 of teachers said that a lack of clear, shared definitions of student engagement is a top challenge to measuring engagement effectively.
- Educators and students differ on their perceptions of engagement levels. While 63% of students agreed with the statement “Students are highly engaged in school,” only 45% of teachers and 51% of principals surveyed agreed with the same statement.
- Students rate their own engagement much higher than their peers. 70% of elementary students perceived themselves as engaged, but only 42% perceived their peers as engaged. 59% of middle school students perceived themselves engaged in learning, but only 36% perceived their peers as engaged. Finally, 61% of high school students perceived themselves as engaged, but only 39% described their peers as engaged.
- Proximity to learning changes impressions of AI. Two-thirds of students believe AI could help them learn faster, yet fewer than half of teachers report using AI themselves to complete tasks. Only 57% of teachers agreed with the statement “I frequently learn about positive ways students are using AI,” while 87% of principals and 98% of superintendents agree. Likewise, only 53% of teachers agreed with the statement “I am excited about the potential for AI to support teaching and learning,” while 83% of principals and 94% of superintendents agreed.
A complete copy of Education Insights 2025–2026: Fueling Learning Through Engagementcan be downloaded here.
On Wednesday, October 8 at 2:00 PM ET, Discovery Education is hosting a special, town hall-style webinar during which education leaders from across the nation will share their thoughts and insights on this report and its findings. Find more details and register for this event here.
For more information about Discovery Education’s award-winning digital resources and professional learning solutions, visit www.discoveryeducation.com, and stay connected with Discovery Education on social media through LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.
About Discovery Education
Discovery Education is the worldwide edtech leader whose state-of-the-art, PreK-12, digital solutions help educators engage all students and support higher academic achievement. Through award-winning multimedia content, instructional supports, and innovative classroom tools that are effective, engaging, and easy to use, Discovery Education helps educators deliver powerful learning experiences. Discovery Education serves approximately 4.5 million educators and 45 million students worldwide, and its resources are accessed in over 100 countries and territories. Through partnerships with districts, states, and trusted organizations, Discovery Education empowers teachers with essential edtech solutions that inspire curiosity, build confidence, and accelerate learning. Learn more at www.discoveryeducation.com.Latest posts by eSchool News Contributor (see all) -
China, Iran high-risk countries for research – Campus Review
Foreign Minister Penny Wong has accepted 23 recommendations to streamline a scheme to prevent foreign interference. Picture: Martin Ollman
Australia will “sharpen” efforts to crack down on university research deals being exploited for foreign interference or espionage by drawing up a list of “high risk” institutions to avoid arrangements with.
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LGBTQ+ Rural Teens Find More Support Online Than in Their Communities – The 74
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New research has found that rural LGBTQ+ teens experience significant challenges in their communities and turn to the internet for support.
The research from Hopelab and the Born This Way Foundation looked at what more than 1,200 LGBTQ+ teens faced and compared the experiences of those in rural communities with those of teens in suburban and urban communities. The research found that rural teens are more likely to give and receive support through their online communities and friends than via their in-person relationships.
“The rural young people we’re seeing were reporting having a lot less support in their homes, in their communities, and their schools,” Mike Parent, a principal researcher at Hopelab, said in an interview with the Daily Yonder. “They weren’t doing too well in terms of feeling supported in the places they were living, though they were feeling supported online.”
However, the research found that rural LGBTQ+ teens had the same sense of pride in who they were as suburban and urban teens.
“The parallel, interesting finding was that we didn’t see differences in their internal sense of pride, which you might kind of expect if they feel all less supported,” he said. “What was surprising, in a very good way, was that indication of resilience or being able to feel a strong sense of their internal selves despite this kind of harsh environment they might be in.”
Researchers recruited young people between the ages of 15 and 24 who identified as LGBTQ+ through targeted ads on social media. After surveying the respondents during August and September of last year, the researchers also followed up some of the surveys with interviews, Parent said.
According to the study, rural teens were more likely than their urban and suburban counterparts to find support online. Of the rural respondents, 56% of rural young people reported receiving support from others online several times a month compared to 51% of urban and suburban respondents, and 76% reported giving support online, compared to 70% of urban and suburban respondents.
Conversely, only 28% of rural respondents reported feeling supported by their schools, compared to 49% of urban and suburban respondents, the study found, and 13% of rural respondents felt supported by their communities, compared to 35% of urban and suburban respondents.
Rural LGBTQ+ young people are significantly more likely to suffer mental health issues because of the lack of support where they live, researchers said. Rural LGBTQ+ young people were more likely to meet the threshold for depression (57% compared to 45%), and more likely to report less flourishing than their suburban/urban counterparts (43% to 52%).
The study found that those LGBTQ+ young people who received support from those they lived with, regardless of where they live, are more likely to report flourishing (50% compared to 35%) and less likely to meet the threshold for depression (52% compared to 63%).
One respondent said the impact of lack of support impacted every aspect of their lives.
“Not being able to be who you truly are around the people that you love most or the communities that you’re in is going to make somebody depressed or give them mental issues,” they said in survey interviews, according to Hopelab. “Because if you can’t be who you are around the people that you love most and people who surround you, you’re not gonna be able to feel the best about your well-being.”
Respondents said connecting with those online communities saved their lives.
“Throughout my entire life, I have been bullied relentlessly. However, when I’m online, I find that it is easier to make friends… I met my best friend through role play [games],” one teen told researchers. “Without it, I wouldn’t be here today. So, in the long run, it’s the friendships I’ve made online that have kept me alive all these years.”
Having support in rural areas, especially, can provide rural LGBTQ+ teens with a feeling of belonging, researchers said.
“Our findings highlight the urgent need for safe, affirming in-person spaces and the importance of including young people in shaping the solutions,” Claudia-Santi F. Fernandes, vice president of research and evaluation at Born This Way Foundation, said in a statement. “If we want to improve outcomes, especially for LGBTQ+ young people in rural communities, their voices–and scientific evidence–must guide the work.”
Parent said the survey respondents stressed the importance of having safe spaces for LGBTQ+ young people to gather in their own communities.
“I think most of the participants recognize that you can’t do a lot to change your family if they’re not supportive,” he said. “What they were saying was that finding ways for schools to be supportive and for communities to be supportive in terms of physical spaces (that allowed them) to express themselves safely (and) having places where they can gather and feel safe, uh, were really important to them.”
Hopelab seeks to address mental health in young people through evidence-based innovation, according to its organizers. The Born This Way Foundation was co-founded by Lady Gaga and her mother, West Virginia native Cynthia Bisset Germanotta.
The organization is focused on ending bullying and building up communities, while using research, programming, grants, and partnerships to engage young people and connect them to mental health resources, according to the foundation’s website.
This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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Making PD meaningful in today’s classrooms
Key points:
As a classroom teacher and district leader with over 26 years of experience, I’ve attended countless professional development (PD) sessions. Some were transformative, others forgettable. But one thing has remained constant: the need for PD that inspires, equips, and connects educators. Research shows that effective PD focuses on instructional practice and connects to both classroom materials and real- world contexts.
I began my teaching career in 1999 through an alternative certification program, eager to learn and grow. That enthusiasm hasn’t waned–I still consider myself a lifelong learner. But over time, I realized that not all PD is created equal. Too often, sessions felt like a checkbox exercise, with educators asking, “Why do I have to be here?” instead of “How can I grow from this?”
Here are some of my favorite PD resources and experiences:
edWeb
edWeb is free to join, and once you’re in, you can dive into as many sessions as you want. The service offers a live calendar of events or on-demand webinars covering a range of topics. Plus, the webinars come with CE certificates, which are approved for teacher re-licensure in states like New York, Massachusetts, Texas, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Utah, and Nevada.
You can go deeper into the state-specific options with an interactive map. I also love the community aspect of the platform, as you can connect with peers and learn from experts on so many topics for all preK-12 educators.
Career Connect
This summer, I attended the Discovery Education Summer of Learning Series at the BMW facility in Spartanburg, South Carolina, for a day-long professional learning event focused on workforce readiness and preparing students for evolving career landscapes. It was an energizing day being surrounded by passionate educators. One standout resource we dove into more deeply is Career Connect by Discovery Education. Career Connect is within Discovery Education Experience and is available to all educators in South Carolina by the Department of Education.This is quickly becoming a priority tool in our district. With early access in the spring, we’ve integrated it across grade levels–from elementary STEM classrooms to our Career Center. The platform offers students live interactions with professionals in various fields, making career exploration both engaging and real. I witnessed this firsthand during a virtual visit with an engineer from Charlotte, N.C., whose insights captivated our students and sparked meaningful conversations about future possibilities.
Professional Development Hub
The ASCD + ISTE professional learning hub offers sessions on innovative approaches and tools to design and implement standards-aligned curriculum. Each session is led by educators, authors, researchers, and practitioners who are experts in professional learning. Schools and districts receive a needs assessment, so you know the learning is tailored to what educators really need and want.Tips for Meaningful PD
With over 26 years of experience as a classroom teacher and district leader, I have participated in my fair share of professional learning opportunities. I like to joke that my career began in the late 1900s, but professional development sessions from those first few years of teaching now do feel like they were from a century ago compared to the possibilities presented to teachers and leaders today.Over these decades I’ve seen a lot of good, and bad, sessions. Here are my top tips to make PD actually engaging:
- Choose PD that aligns with your goals. Seek out sessions that connect directly to your teaching practice or leadership role.
- Engage with a community. Learning alongside passionate educators makes a huge difference. The Summer of Learning event reminded me how energizing it is to be surrounded by people who lift you up.
- Explore tech tools that extend learning. Platforms like Career Connect and others aren’t just add-ons–they’re gateways to deeper engagement and real-world relevance.
Professional development should be a “want to,” not a “have to.” To get there, though, the PD needs to be thoughtfully designed and purpose-driven. These resources above reignited my passion for learning and reminded me of the power of connection–between educators, students, and the world beyond the classroom.
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HHS Ends Minority Biomedical Research Support Program
The Health and Human Services Department has terminated the Minority Biomedical Research Support program, which provided colleges and universities grants to increase the number of minority faculty, students and investigators conducting biomedical research.
In a notice published Monday in the Federal Register, HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the cancellation is to comply with two anti–diversity, equity and inclusion executive orders President Trump signed in January on his first two days back in office, plus the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision banning affirmative action in college admissions decisions. The change is effective Sept. 25.
“The MBRS program prioritizes racial classifications in awarding federal funding,” including by relying on “‘minority student enrollment’ to determine applicant eligibility,” Kennedy wrote. And, though the Supreme Court ruling focused on university admissions, Kennedy wrote that “the principles identified in Students for Fair Admissions also apply to the federal government and require repeal of the MBRS program.”
STAT reported the move earlier. Rochelle Newman, a University of Maryland psychologist who used the grant to pay undergraduate researchers and train them, told STAT that “cutting of these programs means that an entire generation of students will end up being lost to science.”
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Catapult Learning is Awarded Tutoring Program Design Badge from Stanford University’s National Student Support Accelerator
Organization recognized for excellence in high-impact tutoring design and student achievement gains
PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 25, 2025 – Catapult Learning, a division of FullBloom that provides academic intervention programs for students and professional development solutions for teachers in K-12 schools, today announced it earned the Tutoring Program Design Badge from the National Student Support Accelerator (NSSA) at Stanford University. The designation, valid for three years, recognizes tutoring providers that demonstrate high-quality, research-aligned program design.
The recognition comes at a time when the need for high-impact tutoring (HIT) has never been greater. As schools nationwide work to close learning gaps that widened during the COVID-19 pandemic and accelerate recovery, Catapult Learning stands out for its nearly 50-year legacy of delivering effective academic support to students who need it most.
“Catapult Learning is honored to receive this prestigious national recognition from the NSSA at Stanford University,” said Rob Klapper, president at Catapult Learning. “We are excited to be recognized for our high-impact tutoring program design and will continue to uphold the highest standards of excellence as we support learners across the country.”
Each year, Catapult Learning’s programs support more than 150,000+ students with nearly four million in-person tutoring sessions, in partnership with 2,100 schools and districts nationwide. Its tutors, many of whom hold four-year degrees, are highly trained professionals who are supported with ongoing coaching and professional development.
Recent data from Catapult Learning’s HIT programs show strong academic gains across both math and reading subject areas:
- 8 out of every 10 math students increased their pre/post score
- 9 out of every 10 reading students increased their pre/post score
These results come from programs that have also earned a Tier 2 evidence designation under the Every Student Succeeds Act, affirming their alignment with rigorous research standards.
The Badge was awarded following a rigorous, evidence-based review conducted by an independent panel of education experts. The NSSA evaluated multiple components of Catapult Learning’s program – including instructional design, tutor training and support, and the use of data to inform instruction – against its Tutoring Quality Standards.
“This designation underscores the strength and intentionality behind our high-impact tutoring model,” said Devon Wible, vice president of teaching and learning at Catapult Learning. “This achievement reflects our deep commitment to providing high-quality, research-based tutoring that drives meaningful outcomes for learners.”
Tutoring is available in person, virtually, or in hybrid formats, and can be scheduled before, during, or after school, including weekends. Sessions are held a minimum of three times per week, with flexible options tailored to the needs of each school or district. Catapult Learning provides all necessary materials for both students and tutors.
To learn more about Catapult Learning’s high-impact tutoring offerings, visit: https://catapultlearning.com/high-impact-tutoring/.
About Catapult Learning
Catapult Learning, a division of FullBloom, provides academic intervention programs for students and professional development solutions for teachers in K-12 schools, executed by a team of experienced coaches. Our professional development services strengthen the capacity of teachers and leaders to raise and sustain student achievement. Our academic intervention programs support struggling learners with instruction tailored to the unique needs of each student. Across the country, Catapult Learning partners with 500+ school districts to produce positive outcomes that promote academic and professional growth. Catapult Learning is accredited by Cognia and has earned its 2022 System of Distinction honor.
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Mental health screeners help ID hidden needs, research finds
Key points:
A new DESSA screener to be released for the Fall ‘25 school year–designed to be paired with a strength-based student self-report assessment–accurately predicted well-being levels in 70 percent of students, a study finds.
According to findings from Riverside Insights, creator of research-backed assessments, researchers found that even students with strong social-emotional skills often struggle with significant mental health concerns, challenging the assumption that resilience alone indicates student well-being. The study, which examined outcomes in 254 middle school students across the United States, suggests that combining risk and resilience screening can enable identification of students who would otherwise be missed by traditional approaches.
“This research validates what school mental health professionals have been telling us for years–that traditional screening approaches miss too many students,” said Dr. Evelyn Johnson, VP of Research & Development at Riverside Insights. “When educators and counselors can utilize a dual approach to identify risk factors, they can pinpoint concerns and engage earlier, in and in a targeted way, before concerns become major crises.”
The study, which offered evidence of, for example, social skills deficits among students with no identifiable or emotional behavioral concerns, provides the first empirical evidence that consideration of both risk and resilience can enhance the predictive benefits of screening, when compared to strengths-based screening alone.
In the years following COVID, many educators noted a feeling that something was “off” with students, despite DESSA assessments indicating that things were fine.
“We heard this feedback from lots of different customers, and it really got our team thinking–we’re clearly missing something, even though the assessment of social-emotional skills is critically important and there’s evidence to show the links to better academic outcomes and better emotional well-being outcomes,” Johnson said. “And yet, we’re not tapping something that needs to be tapped.”
For a long time, if a person displayed no outward or obvious mental health struggles, they were thought to be mentally healthy. In investigating the various theories and frameworks guiding mental health issues, Riverside Insight’s team dug into Dr. Shannon Suldo‘s work, which centers around the dual factor model.
“What the dual factor approach really suggests is that the absence of problems is not necessarily equivalent to good mental health–there really are these two factors, dual factors, we talk about them in terms of risk and resilience–that really give you a much more complete picture of how a student is doing,” Johnson said.
“The efficacy associated with this dual-factor approach is encouraging, and has big implications for practitioners struggling to identify risk with limited resources,” said Jim Bowler, general manager of the Classroom Division at Riverside Insights. “Schools told us they needed a way to identify students who might be struggling beneath the surface. The DESSA SEIR ensures no student falls through the cracks by providing the complete picture educators need for truly preventive mental health support.”
The launch comes as mental health concerns among students reach crisis levels. More than 1 in 5 students considered attempting suicide in 2023, while 60 percent of youth with major depression receive no mental health treatment. With school psychologist-to-student ratios at 1:1065 (recommended 1:500) and counselor ratios at 1:376 (recommended 1:250), schools need preventive solutions that work within existing resources.
The DESSA SEIR will be available for the 2025-2026 school year.
This press release originally appeared online.
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NIH Director Orders Review of All Current, Planned Research
NIH director Jay Bhattacharya said that among other priorities, the agency will focus on artificial intelligence and “ensuring evidence-based health care for children and teenagers identifying as transgender.”
Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
The National Institutes of Health’s director ordered employees to “conduct an individualized review of all current and planned research activities,” including active grants and funding opportunity announcements, according to images of a document provided to Inside Higher Ed. The review comes amid concerns that the NIH won’t distribute all of its allocated grant money by the time the federal fiscal year ends Sept. 30, meaning those dollars will return to the U.S. Treasury.
The document images, provided by a source who wished to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation, show that NIH director Jay Bhattacharya sent the memo Friday and that the review is effective immediately. According to the memo, “relevant NIH personnel” must review grants, funding opportunity announcements, contracts, contract solicitations, applications for new and competing renewal awards, intramural research and research training programs, cooperative agreements, and “other transactions.”
Science reported earlier on the review.
The order is part of a larger memo in which Bhattacharya outlined “select agency priorities” and said projects that don’t align with these priorities may be “restricted, paused, not renewed, or terminated.” The focuses are, among other things, artificial intelligence, “furthering our understanding of autism” and “ensuring evidence-based health care for children and teenagers identifying as transgender.”
In response to a request for an interview about the review and why it’s needed, the NIH press team sent a public statement from Friday, in which Bhattacharya listed the priorities.
Regarding health care for transgender youth, he said, “There are clearly more promising avenues of research that can be taken to improve the health of these populations than to conduct studies that involve the use of puberty suppression, hormone therapy, or surgical intervention.” He says that “by contrast, research that aims to identify and treat the harms these therapies and procedures have potentially caused … and how to best address the needs of these individuals so that they may live long, healthy lives is more promising.”
Bhattacharya’s letter comes after President Trump, earlier this month, ordered senior appointees at federal agencies to annually review discretionary grants “for consistency with agency priorities.”
Joanne Padrón Carney, chief government relations officer for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said in a statement to Inside Higher Ed that the president’s budget request for fiscal year 2026 already outlined a set priorities for the rest of the current year.
“Switching gears at this stage reinforces confusion, diminishes trust, and increases concerns within the scientific community,” Carney added. “It joins the long list of tactics risking impoundment of congressionally appropriated funds rather than funding biomedical research that is essential for the people’s well-being.”
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The Society for Research into Higher Education in 1995
by Rob Cuthbert
In SRHE News and Blog a series of posts is chronicling, decade by decade, the progress of SRHE since its foundation 60 years ago in 1965. As always, our memories are supported by some music of the times.
1995 was the year of the war in Bosnia and the Srebrenica massacre, the collapse of Barings Bank, and the Oklahoma Bombing. OJ Simpson was found not guilty of murder. US President Bill Clinton visited Ireland. President Nelson Mandela celebrated as South Africa won the Rugby World Cup, Blackburn Rovers won the English Premier League. Cliff Richard was knighted, Blur-v-Oasis fought the battle of Britpop, and Robbie Williams left Take That, causing heartache for millions. John Major was UK Prime Minister and saw off an internal party challenge to be re-elected as leader of the Conservative Party. It would be two years until D-Ream sang ‘Things can only get better’ as the theme tune for the election of New Labour in 1997. Microsoft released Windows 95, and Bill Gates became the world’s richest man. Media, news and communication had not yet been revolutionised by the internet.
Higher education in 1995
Higher education everywhere had been much changed in the preceding decade, not least in the UK, where the binary policy had ultimately proved vulnerable: The Polytechnic Experiment ended in 1992. Lee Harvey, the long-time editor of Quality in Higher Education, and his co-author Berit Askling (Gothenburg) argued that in retrospect:
“The 1990s has been the decade of quality in higher education. There had been mechanisms for ensuring the quality of higher education for decades prior to the 1990s, including the external examiner system in the UK and other Commonwealth countries, the American system of accreditation, and government ministerial control in much of Europe and elsewhere in the world. The 1990s, though, saw a change in the approach to higher education quality.”
In his own retrospective for the European Journal of Education on the previous decade of ‘interesting times’, Guy Neave (Twente) agreed there had been a ‘frenetic pace of adjustment’ but
“Despite all that is said about the drive towards quality, enterprise, efficiency and accountability and despite the attention lavished on devising the mechanics of their operation, this revolution in institutional efficiency has been driven by the political process.”
Europe saw institutional churn with the formation of many new university institutions – over 60 in Russia during 1985-1995 in the era of glasnost, and many others elsewhere, including Dublin City University and University of Limerick in 1989. Dublin Institute of Technology, created in 1992, would spend 24 years just waiting for the chance[1] to become a technological university. 1995 saw the establishment of Aalborg in Denmark and several new Chinese universities including Guangdong University of Technology.
UK HE in 1995
In the UK the HE participation rate had more than doubled between 1970 (8.4%) and 1990 (19.4%) and then it grew even faster, reaching 33% by 2000. At the end of 1994-1995 there were almost 950,000 full-time students in UK HE. Michael Shattock’s 1995 paper ‘British higher education in 2025’ fairly accurately predicted a 55% APR by 2025.
There had been seismic changes to UK HE in the 1980s and early 1990s. Polytechnic directors had for some years been lobbying for an escape from unduly restrictive local authority bureaucratic controls, under which many institutions had, for example, not even been allowed to hold bank accounts in their own names. Even so, the National Advisory Body for Public Sector HE (NAB), adroitly steered by its chair Christopher Ball (Warden of Keble) and chief executive John Bevan, previously Director of Education for the Inner London Education Authority, had often outmanoeuvred the University Grants Committee (UGC) led by Peter Swinnerton-Dyer (Cambridge). By developing the idea of the ‘teaching unit of resource’ NAB had arguably embarrassed the UGC into an analysis which declared that universities were slightly less expensive for teaching, and the (significant) difference was the amount spent on research – hence determining the initial size of total research funding, then called QR.
Local authorities realised too slowly that controlling large polytechnics as if they were schools was not appropriate. Their attempt to head off reforms was articulated in Management for a Purpose[2], a report on Good Management Practice (GMP) prepared under the auspices of NAB, which aimed to retain local authority strategic control of the institutions which they had, after all, created and developed. It was too little, too late. (I was joint secretary to the GMP group: I guess, now it’s time, for me to give up.) Secretary of State Kenneth Baker’s 1987 White Paper Higher Education: Meeting the Challenge was followed rapidly by the so-called ‘Great Education Reform Bill’, coming onto the statute book as the Education Reform Act 1988. The Act took the polytechnics out of local authorities, recreating them as independent higher education corporations; it dissolved the UGC and NAB and set up the Universities Funding Council (UFC) and the Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council (PCFC). Local authorities were left high and dry and government didn’t think twice, with the inevitable progression to the Further and Higher Education Act 1992. The 1992 Act dissolved PCFC and UFC and set up Higher Education Funding Councils for England (HEFCE) and Wales (HEFCW). It also set up a new Further Education Funding Council (FEFC) for colleges reconstituted as FE corporations and dissolved the Council for National Academic Awards. The Smashing Pumpkins celebrated “the resolute urgency of now”, FE and HE had “come a long way” but Take That sensibly advised “Never forget where you’ve come here from”,
Crucially, the Act allowed polytechnics to take university titles, subject to the approval of the Privy Council, and eventually 40 institutions did so in England, Wales and Scotland. In addition Cranfield was established by Royal Charter in 1993, and the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology became completely autonomous in 1994. The biggest hit in 1995 actually named an HE institution and its course, as Pulp sang: “She studied sculpture at St Martin’s College”. Not its proper name, but Central St Martin’s College of Art and Design would have been tougher for Jarvis Cocker to scan. The College later became part of the University of the Arts, London.
The Conservative government was not finished yet, and the Education Act 1994 established the Teacher Training Agency and allowed students to opt out of students’ unions. Debbie McVitty for Wonkhe looked back on the 1990s through the lens of general election manifestos:
“By the end of the eighties, the higher education sector as we know it today had begun to take shape. The first Research Assessment Exercise had taken place in 1986, primarily so that the University Grants Committee could draw from an evidence base in its decision about where to allocate limited research funding resources. … a new system of quality assessment had been inaugurated in 1990 under the auspices of the Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principals (CVCP) …
Unlike Labour and the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats have quite a lot to say about higher education in the 1992 election, pledging both to grow participation and increase flexibility”
In 1992 the Liberal Democrats also pledged to abolish student loans … but otherwise many of their ideas “would surface in subsequent HE reforms, particularly under New Labour.” Many were optimistic: “Some might say, we will find a brighter day.”
In UK HE, as elsewhere, quality was a prominent theme. David Watson wrote a famous paper for the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) in 2006, Who Killed What in the Quality Wars?, about the 1990s battles involving HE institutions, QAA and HEFCE. Responding to Richard Harrison’s Wonkhe blog about those quality wars on 23 June 2025, Paul Greatrix blogged the next day about
“… the bringing together of the established and public sector strands of UK higher education sector following the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act. Although there was, in principle, a unified HE structure after that point, it took many more years, and a great deal of argument, to establish a joined-up approach to quality assurance. But that settlement did not last and there are still major fractures in the regime …”
It was a time, Greatrix suggested, when two became one (as the Spice Girls did not sing until 1996), but his argument was more Alanis Morrissette: “I wish nothing, but the best for you both. I’m here, to remind you of the mess you left when you went away”.
SRHE and research into higher education in 1995
SRHE’s chairs from 1985-1995 were Gareth Williams, Peter Knight, Susan Weil, John Sizer and Leslie Wagner. The Society’s administrator Rowland Eustace handed over in 1991 to Cynthia Iliffe; Heather Eggins then became Director in 1993. Cynthia Iliffe and Heather Eggins had both worked at CNAA, which facilitated a relocation of the SRHE office from the University of Surrey to CNAA’s base at 334-354 Gray’s Inn Road, London from 1991-1995. From the top floor at Gray’s Inn Road the Society then relocated to attic rooms in 3 Devonshire St, London, shared with the Council for Educational Technology.
In 1993 SRHE made its first Newer Researcher Award, to Heidi Safia Mirza (then at London South Bank). For its 30th anniversary SRHE staged a debate: ‘This House Prefers Higher Education in 1995 to 1965’, proposed by Professor Graeme Davies and Baroness Pauline Perry, and opposed by Dr Peter Knight and Christopher Price. My scant notes of the occasion do not, alas, record the outcome, but say only: “Now politics is dead on the campus. Utilitarianism rules. Nationalisation produces mediocrity. Quangos quell dissent. Arid quality debate. The dull uniformity of 1995. Some students are too poor.”, which rather suggest that the opposers (both fluent and entertaining speakers) had the better of it. Whether the past or the future won, we just had to roll with it. The debate was prefaced by two short papers from Peter Scott (then at Leeds) on ‘The Shape of Higher Education to Come’, and Gareth Williams (Lancaster) on ‘ Higher Education – the Next Thirty Years’.
The debate was followed by a series of seminars presented by the Society’s six (!) distinguished vice-presidents, Christopher Ball, Patrick Coldstream, Malcolm Frazer, Peter Swinnerton-Dyer, Ulrich Teichler and Martin Trow, and then a concluding conference. SRHE was by 1995 perhaps passing its peak of influence on policy and management in UK HE, but was also steadily growing its reach and impact on teaching and learning. The Society staged a summer conference on ‘Changing the Student Experience’, leading to the 1995 annual conference. In those days each Conference was accompanied by an edited book of Precedings: The Student Experience was edited by Suzanne Hazelgrove (Bristol). One of the contributors and conference organisers, Phil Pilkington (Coventry), later reflected on the prominent role of SRHE in focusing attention on the student experience.
Research into higher education was still a small enough field for SRHE to produce a Register of Members’ Research Interests in 1996, including Ron Barnett (UCL) (just getting started after only his first three books), Tony Becher, Ernest Boyer, John Brennan, Sally Brown, Rob Cuthbert, Jurgen Enders, Dennis Farrington, Oliver Fulton, Mary Henkel, Maurice Kogan, Richard Mawditt, Ian McNay, David Palfreyman, Gareth Parry, John Pratt, Peter Scott (in Leeds at the time), Harold Silver, Maria Slowey, Bill Taylor, Paul Trowler, David Watson, Celia Whitchurch, Maggie Woodrow, and Mantz Yorke. SRHE members and friends, “there for you”. But storm clouds were gathering for the Society as it entered the next, financially troubled, decade.
If you’ve read this far I hope you’re enjoying the musical references, or perhaps objecting to them (Rob Gresham, Paul Greatrix, I’m looking at you). There will be two more blogs in this series – feel free to suggest musical connections with HE events in or around 2005 or 2015, just email me at [email protected]. Or if you want to write an alternative history blog, just do it.
Rob Cuthbert is editor of SRHE News and the SRHE Blog, Emeritus Professor of Higher Education Management, University of the West of England and Joint Managing Partner, Practical Academics. Email [email protected]. Twitter/X @RobCuthbert. Bluesky @robcuthbert22.bsky.social.
[1] I know this was from the 1970s, but a parody version revived it in 1995
[2]National Advisory Body (1987) Management for a purpose Report of the Good Management Practice Group London: NAB
