Tag: Resilience

Report Cards, Reshuffles, and Resilience: What Ofsted’s new model could mean for higher education
This blog was kindly authored by Dr. Ismini Vasileiou, Associate Professor at De Montfort University.

The UK Higher Education sector is at a crossroads. With the government’s skills agenda being reshaped, institutions under growing financial pressure, and the first-ever merger between two English universities announced, the landscape is shifting faster than many had anticipated. Into this mix comes Ofsted’s new Report Card for Further Education & Skills (September 2025), which introduces a sharper accountability framework for further education providers.

The report card grades institutions across areas such as Leadership & Governance, Inclusion, Safeguarding, and Contribution to Meeting Skills Needs. At programme level, it assesses Curriculum, Teaching & Training, Achievement, and Participation & Development against a tiered scale ranging from Exceptional to Urgent Improvement.

While this is designed for further education and skills providers, its arrival raises an uncomfortable but necessary question for universities: what if higher education were graded in the same way?

The case for simplicity and transparency

Universities are already subject to layers of oversight through the Office for Students (OfS), the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), the National Student Survey (NSS), and graduate outcomes data. Yet, as I noted in the recent Cyber Workforce of the Future white paper, these mechanisms often appear fragmented to policymakers and incomprehensible to the public.

By contrast, the further education report card is direct. A parent, student, or employer can understand at a glance whether a provider is exceptional, strong, or in urgent need of improvement. Were higher education to adopt a similar model, judgments might cover:
- Leadership & Governance: financial resilience, strategic direction, governance quality.
- Inclusion: widening participation, closing attainment gaps, embedding equity strategies.
- Safeguarding/Wellbeing: provision for student welfare, mental health, harassment and misconduct.
- Skills Contribution: alignment with regional economic needs, national priorities in AI and cybersecurity, and graduate employment outcomes.
At the programme level, Achievement and Participation could map onto retention, progression, and graduate success, offering students and employers a clear view of performance.

Risks and rewards for higher education

Of course, importing a schools-style accountability regime into higher education carries risks. Universities are not homogeneous, and reducing their diverse missions to a traffic-light system risks oversimplification. A specialist arts institution and a research-intensive university might both be rated ‘Needs Attention’ on skills contribution, despite playing very different roles in the national ecosystem.

There is also the danger of gaming the system: universities optimising for ratings rather than long-term innovation. And autonomy, long a cornerstone of higher education, would be at stake.

Yet there are potential rewards. Public trust in higher education has been under strain, with questions over value for money and financial viability dominating the narrative. Transparent, comprehensible reporting could rebuild confidence and demonstrate sector-wide commitment to accountability. It could also strengthen alignment with further education at a time when government is explicitly seeking a joined-up skills system.

A shifting policy landscape

The September 2025 government reshuffle underscores why this debate matters. The resignation of Angela Rayner triggered a wide Cabinet reorganisation, with skills responsibilities moving out of the Department for Education and into a new ‘growth’ portfolio under the Department for Work and Pensions, led by Pat McFadden. This shift signals that some elements of skills policy are now seen primarily through an economic and labour market lens.

For Higher Education, this presents both challenges and opportunities. As argued in Bridging the Skills Divide: Higher Education’s Role in Delivering the UK’s Plan for Change, universities must demonstrate that they are not just centres of academic excellence but engines of workforce development, innovation, and regional growth. A report-card style framework could make these contributions more visible, but only if universities are part of its design.

Structural Change: The Kent–Greenwich merger

The announcement that the Universities of Kent and Greenwich will merge in autumn 2026 to form the London and South East University Group is a watershed moment for the sector. It is the first merger of its kind in England, driven by financial pressures from declining international student enrolments, static domestic fees, and mounting operational costs.

The merged entity will serve around 28,000 undergraduates, retain the identities of both institutions, and be led by Greenwich Vice-Chancellor Professor Jane Harrington. Yet concerns remain. The University and College Union (UCU) has warned that ‘this isn’t a merger; it is a takeover’ and called for urgent reassurance on staff jobs and student provision.

In a system with Ofsted-style ratings, such a merger would be scrutinised not just for its financial logic but also for its impact on governance, inclusion, and skills contribution. A transparent rating system might reassure stakeholders that the merged institution is not only viable but also delivering quality and meeting regional needs.

Building on skills agendas

National initiatives like Skills England, the Digital Skills Partnership, and programmes such as CyberLocal demonstrate how higher education can contribute to workforce resilience at scale. The Ofsted report card reinforces this agenda. Its emphasis on contribution to meeting skills needs aligns directly with the notion that higher education must play a central role in the UK’s skills ecosystem, not only through degree provision but through continuous upskilling, regional collaboration, and adaptive curricula.

Shaping the framework before it shapes us

Ofsted’s further education report card is not just an accountability mechanism; it is a signal of where education policy is heading, toward clarity, comparability, and alignment with skills needs.

For higher education, the choice is stark. Resist the model and risk having it imposed in ways that do not fit the sector’s diversity. Or lead the design, shaping a framework that balances accountability with autonomy, and skills with scholarship.

As Universities confront financial pressures, policy reshuffles, and structural change, one thing is clear: the sector cannot afford to sit this debate out. The real question is not whether Higher Education should be graded, but what kind of grading system we would design if given the chance.
Source link
October 16, 2025
The Possibility of Our Problems: Educating for the Futures Our Students Will Face – Faculty Focus
“Colleges are now closing at a pace of one per week. What happens to the students?” Jon Marcus asked in a recent Hechinger Report piece. It’s not a rhetorical question — and it doesn’t have an easy answer. As educators, we’ve read the headlines, seen the numbers, and felt the pressure. Undergraduate enrollment is down. Student confidence is eroding. The enrollment cliff looms.

But instead of asking when higher education will fail, we might ask: What if this is a market correction — not a collapse? What if the problem isn’t higher education itself, but how we’ve framed its value and how we’ve taught? What if this moment is less an ending and more a beginning?

In the face of uncertainty, it’s tempting to focus on control: measurable learning outcomes, career-ready skills, standardized assessments. But today’s students are entering a competitive job market — and a world defined by accelerating change, emerging technologies, and challenges we haven’t yet named. That means our teaching needs to prepare them what’s likely and for what’s possible — and even what’s unknowable.

Ronald Beghetto’s framework for “educating for unknowable futures” offers a helpful lens. He proposes three levels of preparation:
1. Educating for likely futures: equipping students with foundational skills and durable knowledge.
1. Educating for possible futures: helping students build agency, creativity, and adaptability.
1. Educating for unknowable futures: inviting students to grapple with uncertainty through reflection and imagination.
Each level requires a shift in how we think about learning and a new set of pedagogical commitments.

1. Educating for Likely Futures: Redesigning Assignments Around Students’ Real Lives

Career readiness remains a core concern. But often, our tools for building it are misaligned with students’ actual experiences. Take the classic business case method, for example: many cases center Fortune 500 CEOs or global crises, which can feel abstract or inaccessible to undergraduates, especially first-generation students.

That’s why I now write my own cases: short, specific, and grounded in contexts my students know. In one recent one, I explored a conflict between student-athletes and faculty at a nearby Division III college. For my mostly student-athlete class, this was familiar and therefore grounding. Their analysis shifted. So did their engagement.

Designing assignments that reflect students’ likely futures — their majors, their industries, their regions — signals that their lives are valid sites of learning. It builds relevance. And it reminds them that professional decision-making doesn’t start “out there.” It starts here.

2. Educating for Possible Futures: Using EdTech with Purpose

Students also need to develop adaptive skills: how to think critically, navigate ambiguity, and evaluate tools in evolving environments. EdTech is a perfect place to practice this.

Today’s education market is flooded with tools — over 370 vendors across over 40 market segments, according to Encoura. But quantity isn’t quality. Too often, we adopt tools based on novelty or institutional trends rather than instructional value.

To support students in building discernment, we must model it ourselves. That means asking: Does this tool solve a real problem in my class? Does it deliver on its promises? Does it support learning equitably and sustainably?

In other words, we must shift from passive adopters to intentional evaluators and invite students into that evaluative process. Helping them think about how technology shapes learning (and their own agency within it) equips them for any environment, not just the one we’ve built.

3. Educating for Unknowable Futures: Making Space for Reflection

Preparing students for the truly unknown requires something more radical: making space for performance, yes, but also for reflection.

In a recent MBA course on negotiation and conflict, I made a bold move: I assigned weekly reflection journals — raw, stream-of-consciousness entries that linked course themes to students’ lived experiences. Some students resisted at first. But by the end, many said it changed the way they approached class and life.

Reflection is often treated as an add-on, something optional or “soft.” But it’s essential. It helps students surface assumptions, interrogate choices, and practice metacognition. And in a world where knowledge and skills are constantly evolving, the ability to learn how to learn may be the most durable skill of all.

Possibility Thinking, in Practice

If our current moment is a reckoning, then our response must be one of responsibility. We cannot guarantee our students a particular future. But we can offer them the tools to shape one.

Beghetto calls this “agentic awareness” — a belief in one’s ability to influence outcomes. It’s a curriculum and a posture. And it’s something we can model by how we teach: with creativity, clarity, and curiosity.

So the next time you see another headline about higher ed’s collapse, ask yourself: What if we treated this as a moment to reimagine rather than as a crisis to survive?

That’s resilience, and it’s possibility thinking in action.

Three Small Shifts You Can Make This Semester

Now is the perfect time to start leaning into the possibility of our problems. To do so, try:
1. Redesigning one assignment to reflect your students’ actual career goals or lived experiences. Meeting students where they are will help them better envision where they’re headed.
1. Asking your classroom technology better questions. Push beyond features to real learning outcomes when you choose to invite EdTech into your classroom.
1. Making reflection part of the grade. Don’t treat it as busywork but as weighted, important meaning-making.
Higher education may be facing unprecedented disruption, but disruption doesn’t have to mean decline. In fact, the classroom may be one of the last places where we still have real influence over what comes next. Each lesson we design, each conversation we facilitate, each moment we create for reflection — these are acts of future-building.

Educating for unknowable futures doesn’t mean we need to predict what’s next. It means we help students learn to ask better questions, adapt with confidence, and recognize their own capacity to shape change. And it means we embrace that same mindset ourselves.

The future of higher education won’t be saved by sweeping reforms or silver-bullet technologies. It will be co-created — one thoughtful assignment, one intentional choice, one student at a time. And that work starts not in distant policy meetings, but right here, in our classrooms.

Laura Nicole Miller, DET, is an assistant professor in the Grenon School of Business at Assumption University, where she teaches organizational communication, marketing, and management. A first-generation college graduate and former EdTech executive, she studies how communication practices shape equity, trust, and student success in high-stakes environments.

References

Bauman, D. (2024, February 7). Colleges were already bracing for an ‘enrollment cliff.’ Now there might be a second one. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/colleges-were-already-bracing-for-an-enrollment-cliff-now-there-might-be-a-second-one

Beghetto, R. A. (2023). Broadening horizons of the possible in education. Possibility Studies & Society, 1(4), 414-426. https://doi.org/10.1177/27538699231182014

Binkley, C. (2023, March 10). Why more Americans are skipping college. PBS News. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/why-more-americans-are-skipping-college

Craft, A. (2015). Possibility thinking: From what is to what might be. In R. Wegerif, L. Li, & J. C. Kaufman (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook of research on teaching thinking (pp. 15–26). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315797021

Encoura. (2023). Higher education technology landscape research. https://www.encoura.org/eduventures-research/evolve-your-online-strategy/tech-landscape/

Fry, R., Braga, D., & Parker, K. (2024, May 23). Is college worth it? Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/05/23/is-college-worth-it-2/

Marcus, J. (2024, April 26). Colleges are now closing at a pace of one a week. What happens to the students? The Hechinger Report. https://hechingerreport.org/colleges-are-now-closing-at-a-pace-of-one-a-week-what-happens-to-the-students/

Miller, L. N. (2025). “D-III students deserve better”: strategic communication with college stakeholders. The CASE Journal, 21(3), 493-516. https://doi.org/10.1108/TCJ-06-2024-0184

Miller, L.N. (2025). We need to ask smarter questions of ed tech. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2025/07/30/we-need-ask-smarter-questions-ed-tech-opinion
Source link
October 10, 2025
The Possibility of Our Problems: Educating for the Futures Our Students Will Face – Faculty Focus
“Colleges are now closing at a pace of one per week. What happens to the students?” Jon Marcus asked in a recent Hechinger Report piece. It’s not a rhetorical question — and it doesn’t have an easy answer. As educators, we’ve read the headlines, seen the numbers, and felt the pressure. Undergraduate enrollment is down. Student confidence is eroding. The enrollment cliff looms.

But instead of asking when higher education will fail, we might ask: What if this is a market correction — not a collapse? What if the problem isn’t higher education itself, but how we’ve framed its value and how we’ve taught? What if this moment is less an ending and more a beginning?

In the face of uncertainty, it’s tempting to focus on control: measurable learning outcomes, career-ready skills, standardized assessments. But today’s students are entering a competitive job market — and a world defined by accelerating change, emerging technologies, and challenges we haven’t yet named. That means our teaching needs to prepare them what’s likely and for what’s possible — and even what’s unknowable.

Ronald Beghetto’s framework for “educating for unknowable futures” offers a helpful lens. He proposes three levels of preparation:
1. Educating for likely futures: equipping students with foundational skills and durable knowledge.
1. Educating for possible futures: helping students build agency, creativity, and adaptability.
1. Educating for unknowable futures: inviting students to grapple with uncertainty through reflection and imagination.
Each level requires a shift in how we think about learning and a new set of pedagogical commitments.

1. Educating for Likely Futures: Redesigning Assignments Around Students’ Real Lives

Career readiness remains a core concern. But often, our tools for building it are misaligned with students’ actual experiences. Take the classic business case method, for example: many cases center Fortune 500 CEOs or global crises, which can feel abstract or inaccessible to undergraduates, especially first-generation students.

That’s why I now write my own cases: short, specific, and grounded in contexts my students know. In one recent one, I explored a conflict between student-athletes and faculty at a nearby Division III college. For my mostly student-athlete class, this was familiar and therefore grounding. Their analysis shifted. So did their engagement.

Designing assignments that reflect students’ likely futures — their majors, their industries, their regions — signals that their lives are valid sites of learning. It builds relevance. And it reminds them that professional decision-making doesn’t start “out there.” It starts here.

2. Educating for Possible Futures: Using EdTech with Purpose

Students also need to develop adaptive skills: how to think critically, navigate ambiguity, and evaluate tools in evolving environments. EdTech is a perfect place to practice this.

Today’s education market is flooded with tools — over 370 vendors across over 40 market segments, according to Encoura. But quantity isn’t quality. Too often, we adopt tools based on novelty or institutional trends rather than instructional value.

To support students in building discernment, we must model it ourselves. That means asking: Does this tool solve a real problem in my class? Does it deliver on its promises? Does it support learning equitably and sustainably?

In other words, we must shift from passive adopters to intentional evaluators and invite students into that evaluative process. Helping them think about how technology shapes learning (and their own agency within it) equips them for any environment, not just the one we’ve built.

3. Educating for Unknowable Futures: Making Space for Reflection

Preparing students for the truly unknown requires something more radical: making space for performance, yes, but also for reflection.

In a recent MBA course on negotiation and conflict, I made a bold move: I assigned weekly reflection journals — raw, stream-of-consciousness entries that linked course themes to students’ lived experiences. Some students resisted at first. But by the end, many said it changed the way they approached class and life.

Reflection is often treated as an add-on, something optional or “soft.” But it’s essential. It helps students surface assumptions, interrogate choices, and practice metacognition. And in a world where knowledge and skills are constantly evolving, the ability to learn how to learn may be the most durable skill of all.

Possibility Thinking, in Practice

If our current moment is a reckoning, then our response must be one of responsibility. We cannot guarantee our students a particular future. But we can offer them the tools to shape one.

Beghetto calls this “agentic awareness” — a belief in one’s ability to influence outcomes. It’s a curriculum and a posture. And it’s something we can model by how we teach: with creativity, clarity, and curiosity.

So the next time you see another headline about higher ed’s collapse, ask yourself: What if we treated this as a moment to reimagine rather than as a crisis to survive?

That’s resilience, and it’s possibility thinking in action.

Three Small Shifts You Can Make This Semester

Now is the perfect time to start leaning into the possibility of our problems. To do so, try:
1. Redesigning one assignment to reflect your students’ actual career goals or lived experiences. Meeting students where they are will help them better envision where they’re headed.
1. Asking your classroom technology better questions. Push beyond features to real learning outcomes when you choose to invite EdTech into your classroom.
1. Making reflection part of the grade. Don’t treat it as busywork but as weighted, important meaning-making.
Higher education may be facing unprecedented disruption, but disruption doesn’t have to mean decline. In fact, the classroom may be one of the last places where we still have real influence over what comes next. Each lesson we design, each conversation we facilitate, each moment we create for reflection — these are acts of future-building.

Educating for unknowable futures doesn’t mean we need to predict what’s next. It means we help students learn to ask better questions, adapt with confidence, and recognize their own capacity to shape change. And it means we embrace that same mindset ourselves.

The future of higher education won’t be saved by sweeping reforms or silver-bullet technologies. It will be co-created — one thoughtful assignment, one intentional choice, one student at a time. And that work starts not in distant policy meetings, but right here, in our classrooms.

Laura Nicole Miller, DET, is an assistant professor in the Grenon School of Business at Assumption University, where she teaches organizational communication, marketing, and management. A first-generation college graduate and former EdTech executive, she studies how communication practices shape equity, trust, and student success in high-stakes environments.

References

Bauman, D. (2024, February 7). Colleges were already bracing for an ‘enrollment cliff.’ Now there might be a second one. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/colleges-were-already-bracing-for-an-enrollment-cliff-now-there-might-be-a-second-one

Beghetto, R. A. (2023). Broadening horizons of the possible in education. Possibility Studies & Society, 1(4), 414-426. https://doi.org/10.1177/27538699231182014

Binkley, C. (2023, March 10). Why more Americans are skipping college. PBS News. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/why-more-americans-are-skipping-college

Craft, A. (2015). Possibility thinking: From what is to what might be. In R. Wegerif, L. Li, & J. C. Kaufman (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook of research on teaching thinking (pp. 15–26). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315797021

Encoura. (2023). Higher education technology landscape research. https://www.encoura.org/eduventures-research/evolve-your-online-strategy/tech-landscape/

Fry, R., Braga, D., & Parker, K. (2024, May 23). Is college worth it? Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/05/23/is-college-worth-it-2/

Marcus, J. (2024, April 26). Colleges are now closing at a pace of one a week. What happens to the students? The Hechinger Report. https://hechingerreport.org/colleges-are-now-closing-at-a-pace-of-one-a-week-what-happens-to-the-students/

Miller, L. N. (2025). “D-III students deserve better”: strategic communication with college stakeholders. The CASE Journal, 21(3), 493-516. https://doi.org/10.1108/TCJ-06-2024-0184

Miller, L.N. (2025). We need to ask smarter questions of ed tech. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2025/07/30/we-need-ask-smarter-questions-ed-tech-opinion
Source link
October 10, 2025
Resilience in Healthcare: A New Approach to Combatting Burnout
Burnout among nurses is reaching significant levels, making self-care, boundaries, and mental health support essential for sustaining a healthy workforce.

Valerie J. Fuller, Ph.D., D.N.P.

President, American Association of Nurse Practitioners

If I had a dollar for every time someone answered “stressed” when I asked how they’re doing, I’d have a full jar. And as nurses, we’d probably add our own dollars to it. While we are working tirelessly for our patients, it’s important to recognize we are not immune to the stressors around us and must share strategies to help each other and our patients.

Nurse practitioners and nurses enter health care with a passion to make patients’ lives better. Between work deadlines, family responsibilities, health concerns and the constant buzz of phones , the stress of our everyday lives can be compounding. It’s incumbent upon all of us to recognize that managing stress is an important component to our overall health and well-being. Drawing on our experience and clinical education, we know the value of recognition and understand how to best manage stress to prevent burnout.

Know the signs

Stress can also sneak up: tension, poor sleep, irritability, fatigue, appetite changes, headaches, or loss of joy.

What you can do

Even in the middle of a packed day, there are things you can do to promote wellbeing and prevent burnout:
1. Take time for yourself — Whether it’s 10 minutes of quiet, a walk, or your favorite show, it counts.
2. Set boundaries — Set realistic expectations and boundaries with work, with family and even with yourself.
3. Schedule time for joy —Add it to your calendar like any other appointment.
4. Ask for help —Getting support doesn’t mean you’re failing. It’s a path to better health.
5. Rest — Real, uninterrupted rest is vital to your health.
When to reach out

As healthcare providers and industry leaders, we need to apply our knowledge to ensure the provider workforce is better supported to prevent burnout. While stress is a part of life, it shouldn’t take over your life. Let’s stop glorifying burnout and start normalizing rest, boundaries and asking for what we need.

The future of healthcare depends on a healthy, supported workforce. By addressing burnout with compassion and strategy, we are ensuring that NPs remain exactly where patients need us: present, focused and ready to provide the very best care.
Source link
September 12, 2025
Cost-smart campuses: Building financial resilience through strategic buying
Across higher ed, the financial squeeze is tightening. Between shrinking enrollment and uncertain funding, colleges and universities are scrambling to deliver value with far less cash. Every purchase, from lab beakers to toner cartridges, now faces intense scrutiny. After all, one way to uncover excess spending is to identify blind spots and inefficiencies in how organizations buy.

That drive for savings puts procurement teams squarely in the hot seat. Seven in ten procurement leaders rank cost management as their most critical capability today and for the years ahead, according to Economist Impact. Yet decentralized purchasing, patchwork systems, and limited spend visibility continue to drain institutional resources.

Savvy institutions are flipping that script, moving from reactive penny-pinching to proactive value creation by consolidating spend, leveraging supplier partnerships, and centralizing purchasing oversight.

From reactive buying to proactive value creation

Financial uncertainty now dominates the higher ed landscape. To navigate it successfully, universities must shift from tactical price checks to total-value management, leveraging lessons from other industries that have successfully implemented AI-powered automations to boost efficiencies and cut costs, University Business reports. It’s the difference between playing defense and offense—both matter, but one drives wins.

This strategic transformation requires three foundational moves: gaining real-time visibility into campuswide spending patterns, establishing centralized oversight without bureaucratic friction, and building supplier relationships that deliver value beyond the initial purchase price.

“Reducing spend is important, but increasing value matters more,” shares Rosie Grigsby, senior sales manager for higher education at Amazon Business. “When you’re looking at things only from a price perspective, you’re missing out on other value aspects like quality, lifecycle, support, training, and more,” she explains. “When thinking about total value, I’m thinking about how a supplier is enhancing student experiences while giving university employees time back through efficiencies.”

To make that possible, procurement leaders would be wise to prioritize the visibility problem: You can’t optimize what you can’t see. Gaining visibility into campuswide spending starts with breaking down the silos that keep procurement teams in the dark.

Visibility and control: Centralizing spend without adding bureaucracy

Imagine navigating unfamiliar terrain with a GPS that only shows you one street at a time. When departments buy in silos, institutions lose their ability to see the bigger picture, eroding spend leverage, killing negotiating power, and complicating compliance. Each isolated purchase decision chips away at potential savings and strategic control.

Consider the cascading impact: With fragmented purchasing, universities could be paying different prices for the same product across departments, missing significant volume discounts, and discovering duplicate software licenses only during audits. Worse yet, audits could reveal policy violations that were invisible until it was too late.

Unsurprisingly, research by the IBM Center for the Business of Government shows that centralized procurement correlates with higher savings, efficiencies, and compliance. Even so, many procurement leaders struggle with organization-wide visibility.

The solution isn’t building a bureaucratic fortress around every purchase decision. Rather, modern procurement solutions maintain centralized control while giving end users the flexibility they need, eliminating the process bottlenecks that drive departments to work around procurement entirely.

Solutions could be lying dormant in tools you already own. “Universities often underutilize e-procurement systems and automations they already have licenses for,” Grigsby notes. “Electronic catalogs, automated approval workflows, single sign-ons (SSOs), analytics—tools like these cut time from sourcing to receiving while enhancing compliance and reducing errors.” What once took days of spreadsheet analysis can now happen automatically, freeing teams to focus on strategy, not data entry.

Building strategic supplier relationships

Too many institutions treat suppliers as vendors, not partners. Transactional supplier relationships are short-term and price-focused: you buy something, and you’re done. Strategic supplier relationships, on the other hand, are ongoing partnerships built on trust and alignment with the university’s mission.

“Without strong supplier relationships, you’re missing out on partners who help you anticipate needs, drive innovation, and uncover creative solutions,” Grigsby explains. “True partners embrace your university’s mission as their own and work to maintain or increase service levels through collaborative, strategic sourcing.”

These partnerships prove especially valuable during budget crunches, Grigsby adds, citing the ongoing collaboration between procurement teams and Amazon Business account executives as an example. “Our higher ed clients often leverage the know-how, experience, and ideas we’ve gleaned from working with their peers across the nation,” she explains. “Whether they’re pursuing sustainability goals or 100% automation in procurement, we help them identify ideal partners or find solutions that have worked well for other institutions facing similar challenges.”

Real results at Emory University

Emory University faced the classic procurement challenge: fragmented purchasing and spend visibility. By adopting a centralized purchasing approach through Amazon Business, procurement leaders reclaimed oversight, optimized workflows for users across the organization, and uncovered dramatic savings.

Guided buying and integrated search features brought the intuitive Amazon Business shopping experience right into Emory’s purchasing system. These integrations drove adherence to procurement policies while giving users flexibility to conduct price comparisons and complete purchases directly within Emory’s existing system. Plus, buyers enjoyed savings through Business Prime shipping and tax exemption on eligible purchases.

The payoff was significant, averaging thousands of dollars in savings each month. “Pretty hefty savings,” as one administrator put it.

Roadmap to resilience

As institutions rework purchasing strategies to boost value and savings, how can procurement teams position themselves as problem solvers instead of gatekeepers? Grigsby recommends three essential practices:
- Proactive collaboration: Low collaboration with non-procurement buyers increases rogue buying risk, yet leaders currently rate collaboration as the least essential skill in procurement, according to Economist Impact. “When procurement reaches out to departments early to understand their pain points, especially in times of budget stress, they can engage, identify alternatives, and help internal customers reach their goals without being a blocker,” Grigsby advises.
- Streamlined processes: Efficient procurement automates mundane tasks like recurring orders, approval workflows, and spend analysis while centralizing oversight. “Customers want to source, reconcile, and receive products easily so they can focus on mission-critical tasks,” Grigsby points out.
- Broadcast successes: Procurement wins often go unnoticed despite their organizational impact. Share those wins—whether through newsletters, internal communications channels, or dashboards showing how much departments saved—to foster trust and collaboration.
Looking ahead, the financial pressures facing higher education make procurement transformation a necessity, not a luxury. Modern, cost-conscious procurement isn’t about saying no; it’s about finding better ways to say yes.

▷ Learn how Amazon Business can help accelerate your procurement goals: business.amazon.com/education
Source link
September 8, 2025
Promoting and Sustaining a Growth Mindset in Online Classrooms – Faculty Focus

Educators have sought to understand why some students persist in overcoming challenges, while others do not. We present an exploration of growth mindset initiatives as factors that promote persistence and student success in online courses. This exploratory review focuses on the relevant literature, includes practical suggestions for classroom applications in online courses, and indicates avenues for future research.

Online college courses have surged post-COVID-19, but attrition rates remain high. Research highlights resilience, course design, institutional support, and faculty interaction as key factors in student persistence. Yang, Baldwin, and Snelson (2017) found that personal goals, community, family support, and time management were crucial for graduate students, while first-year students had different needs. Despite challenges, universities continue expanding online programs. Building a sense of community and supporting a positive mindset can help students manage stress and persist. Colleges are encouraged to integrate mindset and coping strategies into curricula to support online learners’ success.

This review examines how a growth mindset helps students persist despite challenges. Practical strategies are discussed to support students in managing stress and completing online classes. Research highlights the role of mindset, grit, and resilience in achieving long-term goals, though further study is needed. A growth mindset acts as a protective factor during stressful times, fostering confidence and adaptability. Crum et al. (2017) found that viewing stress as enhancing, not debilitating, improves positive affect and cognitive flexibility.

Literature

Selecting credible sources requires considering peer-review status, impact factor, publication date, and current trends. This exploratory review examined scholarly articles for accuracy, credibility, and methodological soundness, using databases like PubMed, Google Scholar, ABI Inform, and EBSCO. Including related works provides context, helping readers understand the connection between a growth mindset and college student persistence.

Mindset

Students with a growth mindset believe intelligence can improve through effort rather than innate talent (Dweck 2000, 2017; Hudig et al. 2022; Tirri and Kujala 2016; Yeager and Walton 2011). Dweck (2006) established a clear link between mindset and achievement, emphasizing that a growth mindset requires support from educators to develop necessary skills. Faculty can enhance motivation by reinforcing mastery, normalizing struggles, and providing resources (Dweck and Leggett 1988; Dweck 2017).

A fixed mindset is the belief that intelligence is unchangeable, leading to feelings of inadequacy and limited problem-solving abilities (Jegathesan et al. 2016; King 2017; Lee et al. 2018; O’Keefe et al. 2018). Karwowski (2014) found that a fixed mindset correlates with lower problem-solving skills. According to Yeager et al. (2019, 364), “the brain is like a muscle that grows stronger and smarter when it undergoes rigorous learning experiences.” This provides a relevant picture of the importance of a growth mindset.

Theoretical

A growth mindset, linked to student persistence, enables learners to set realistic goals and overcome challenges, viewing intelligence as malleable through effort rather than innate talent (Dweck 2006). This mindset encourages risk-taking and learning from mistakes rather than fearing failure. Research shows that resilience, grit, and a growth mindset positively impact learning (Calo et al. 2019). Fostering a growth mindset in college supports persistence by promoting adaptive, exploratory behaviors. A growth mindset can be a protective factor that enables college students to succeed during their educational journeys.

Authors’ Perspectives & Practical Classroom Applications

This exploration was an attempt to determine how growth mindset can help students persist in college online classes. Online classroom implications are significant. Regardless of what traits students bring to the classroom, instructors have an opportunity to facilitate and promote a growth mindset in their interactions with students. By focusing on opportunities to embrace change, normalize struggles, foster growth, and improve processes, instructors can help students to feel motivated, empowered, and able to overcome obstacles.

Instructors should provide resources such as tips on approaching tasks or advice about searching for solutions when stuck. This helps foster independence by teaching problem-solving skills that can be applied more broadly throughout life’s challenges and generalized outside of academia. Additionally, open communication between students and instructors allows for questions and comments without judgment. Students feel safe expressing themselves, leading to greater understanding and acceptance that struggle is part of the growth process, fostering a culture of belonging and inclusion in the classroom. Online instructors must be mindful as they compose feedback to promote a sense of purpose and potential growth.

Instructors promote growth mindset by helping students find meaningful value in what they are doing. They can encourage students to overcome obstacles and be resourceful. Ultimately, instructors can steer students away from the tendency to accept a fixed mindset and be willing to embrace challenges as opportunities to expand student thinking and accept that difficulties are part of learning. Instructors should emphasize that mistakes are necessary to achieve success. Sharing personal struggles and stories allows students to see that everyone has challenges in college, even their instructors. Acknowledging setbacks as opportunities instead of focusing on forms of perceived punishment reinforces the idea that effort will ultimately pay off with tangible results down the line, even if it does not happen immediately.

Recommendations for Future Research

Future research should examine other variables to determine the impact of creating a growth mindset culture in the classroom. Exploring how faculty mindsets mediate students’ success has been demonstrated in middle school (Schmidt et al. 2015). Haimovitz and Dweck concluded, “We also know little about how children themselves may affect socializers’ theories and behaviors. Examining these bidirectional processes will benefit our understanding of how a culture of growth can be developed and sustained” (2017, 1856). Little is known about the bidirectional processes of online instructors with their adult students.

Conclusions and Limitations

Since this review was exploratory, the findings were not generalized. The existing research may not represent all college students; that was not the goal. However, scholarly, primary, peer-reviewed studies were carefully selected for methodological soundness, validity, strength, and currency. Although research on growth mindset has been studied across domains and countries, few studies have included faculty mindsets. Another limitation is the lack of statistical strength.

Another limitation of this review is that past research may or may not apply to future students. Recent developments regarding COVID-19 and how it may have impacted students in online college education are just beginning to appear in scholarly databases. Many students who prefer traditional classrooms may opt to enroll in online programs because they view such programs as safer, healthier alternatives. Researchers need to learn how this change in a student’s sense of “normal” impacts the mindset of future students, at least for the foreseeable future.

Instructors forced into online education may have brought new ideas and/or confusion that could impact how online students were taught. It can be argued that there is limited or no research that has studied the impacts on students when the instructor and the students find themselves in an unexpected situation, like the unexpected worldwide pandemic.

Technology has allowed online education to grow and expand in ways that were not expected 20 years ago. Students start college with great expectations, and many of those expectations have been changed by the reality of college in an online environment. This exploratory review has presented some considerations for instructors to encourage students to develop and sustain a growth mindset and remain in their academic program. This may provide ways to help students grow as individuals while addressing the multiple demands of work and family since the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

Dora C.D. Finamore joined Purdue University Global in 2004 and currently serves as a full-time instructor in the School and Business and Information Technology. She has 25 years’ experience in private practice as a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor. Dora earned her EdD in Counseling Psychology from the University of Sarasota and has been a professor of Business and Psychology for 21 years. She serves as a contributing editor for Journal of Education and Learning. Dora’s current research interests are in the areas of motivation, learning strategies, LGBTQ+ cultures, belonging, resilience, and growth and fixed mindset in business and education.

E. Valerie Hewitt joined Purdue University Global, in 2007 and currently is an adjunct instructor in the School of Business and Information Technology. She has over 30 years’ combined online and traditional classroom teaching experience. Valerie holds a Master’s Degree in Education from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, and a Master’s Degree in Higher Education with a secondary in psychology from Kaplan University. Her current research interests are in the areas of the retention of first-year online students and early engagement strategies.

Loretta “Laurie” A. Millam joined Purdue University Global in 2002 and currently serves as a Department Chair in the School of Business and Management. She has over 25 years’ combined experience in education. Prior to entering the education field, Loretta worked in Business Management for over 11 years. Loretta holds an MBA from St. Ambrose University and an EdS from Northcentral University. Loretta’s current research interests are in the areas of first-term student retention and early engagement learning strategies.

Michelle M. Reinhardt joined Purdue University Global as a full-time instructor in 2003 and currently serves as a course lead and faculty mentor in the school of Business and Information Technology. Michelle has over 25 years of combined online and traditional classroom teaching experience. She has designed courses, served on various college and university committees, and conducted online faculty workshops as well. Michelle holds a Master’s Degree in Communication Arts/English from Western Colorado University. Her current research interests are in the areas of entrepreneurship, motivation, and student learning and engagement.

Linda S. Watson joined Purdue University Global in 2006 and currently teaches First Term Experience classes in the School of Business and Information Technology. Linda has an MBA from Baker College with a double major in Leadership Studies and Human Resource Management. Her current research interests include the areas of student success and engagement, particularly for first-term students.

References

Calo, Marlena, Casey Peiris, Lucy Chipchase, Felicity Blackstock, and Belinda Judd. 2019. “Grit, Resilience and Mindset in Health Students.” The Clinical Teacher 16(4), 317-322. https://doi.org/10.1111/tct.13056.

Crum, Alia J., Modupe Akinola, Ashley Martin, and Sean Fath. 2017. “The Role of Stress Mindset in Shaping Cognitive, Emotional, and Physiological Responses to Challenging and Threatening Stress.” Anxiety, Stress, & Coping 30 (4): 379–95. doi:10.1080/10615806.2016.1275585.

Dweck, Carol S. 2000. “Self-theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development.” Psychology Press.

Dweck, Carol S. 2006. “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.” Random House.

Dweck, Carol S. 2017. “From Needs to Goals and Representations: Foundations for a Unified Theory of Motivation, Personality, and Development.” Psychological Review 124(6), 689–719. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000082.

Dweck, Carol S., and Ellen L. Leggett. 1988. “A Social-cognitive Approach to Motivation and Personality.” Psychological Review 95(2), 256–273. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.95.2.256.

Haimovitz, Kyla., and Carol S. Dweck. 2017. “The Origins of Children’s Growth and Fixed Mindsets: New Research and a New Proposal.” Child Development 88(6), 1849–1859. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12955.

Hudig, Job, Ad W. A. Scheepers, Michaéla C. Schippers, and Guus Smeets. 2022. “Motivational Mindsets, Mindset Churn and Academic Performance: The Role of a Goal-setting Intervention and Purpose in Life.” Current Psychology 42 (27): 23349–68. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03462-8.

Jegathesan, Mithila, Yaffa M. Vitberg, and Martin V. Pusic. 2016. “A Survey of Mindset Theories of Intelligence and Medical Error Self-reporting among Pediatric House Staff and Faculty.” BMC Medical Education 16, 58. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-016-0574-8.

Karwowski, Maciej. 2014. “Creative Mindsets: Measurement, Correlates, Consequences.” Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 8(1), 62–70. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0034898.

King, Ronnel B. 2017. “A Fixed Mindset Leads to Negative Affect: The Relations between Implicit Theories of Intelligence and Subjective Well-being.” Zeitschrift Für Psychologie 225(2), 137–145. https://doi.org/10.1027/2151-2604/a000290.

Lee, C. Christopher, Jacqueline Trahan, Peter Maltby, Venessa Hemraj, and Heidi Hughes. 2018. “Mindset, Job Satisfaction and Employee Engagement at Workplace: Preliminary Results.” Proceedings for the Northeast Region Decision Sciences Institute (NEDSI) 640–659. https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=32621573-85d0-36bf-9aaa-7caf0d256b8b.

O’Keefe, Paul A., Carol Dweck, and Greg Walton. (2018). “Having a Growth Mindset makes it Easier to Develop New Interests.” Harvard Business Review Digital Articles 8–13. https://hbr.org/2018/09/having-a-growth-mindset-makes-it-easier-to-develop-new-interests

Schmidt, Jennifer A., Lee Shumow, and Hayal Kackar-Cam. 2015. “Exploring Teacher Effects for Mindset Intervention Outcomes in Seventh-Grade Science Classes.” Middle Grades Research Journal 10 (2): 17–32. https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=4d677331-010f-3bc1-8e5b-78d2973d7bc5.

Tirri, Kirsi and Teija Kujala. 2016. ”Students’ Mindsets for Learning and their Neural Underpinnings.” Psychology 7(9), 1231-1239. https://doi.org/10.4236/psych.2016.79125.

Yang, Dazhi, Sally Baldwin, and Chareen Snelson. 2017. “Persistence Factors Revealed: Students’ Reflections on Completing a Fully Online Program.” Distance Education 38 (1): 23–36. doi:10.1080/01587919.2017.1299561.

Yeager, David S., Paul Hanselman, Gregory M. Walton, et al. 2019. “A National Experiment Reveals where a Growth Mindset Improves Achievement.” Nature 573, 364–369. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1466-y.

Yeager, David S., and Gregory M. Walton. (2011). “Social-psychological Interventions in Education: They’re not Magic.” Review of Educational Research 81(2), 267–301.

Source link

August 8, 2025
Promoting and Sustaining a Growth Mindset in Online Classrooms – Faculty Focus

Educators have sought to understand why some students persist in overcoming challenges, while others do not. We present an exploration of growth mindset initiatives as factors that promote persistence and student success in online courses. This exploratory review focuses on the relevant literature, includes practical suggestions for classroom applications in online courses, and indicates avenues for future research.

Online college courses have surged post-COVID-19, but attrition rates remain high. Research highlights resilience, course design, institutional support, and faculty interaction as key factors in student persistence. Yang, Baldwin, and Snelson (2017) found that personal goals, community, family support, and time management were crucial for graduate students, while first-year students had different needs. Despite challenges, universities continue expanding online programs. Building a sense of community and supporting a positive mindset can help students manage stress and persist. Colleges are encouraged to integrate mindset and coping strategies into curricula to support online learners’ success.

This review examines how a growth mindset helps students persist despite challenges. Practical strategies are discussed to support students in managing stress and completing online classes. Research highlights the role of mindset, grit, and resilience in achieving long-term goals, though further study is needed. A growth mindset acts as a protective factor during stressful times, fostering confidence and adaptability. Crum et al. (2017) found that viewing stress as enhancing, not debilitating, improves positive affect and cognitive flexibility.

Literature

Selecting credible sources requires considering peer-review status, impact factor, publication date, and current trends. This exploratory review examined scholarly articles for accuracy, credibility, and methodological soundness, using databases like PubMed, Google Scholar, ABI Inform, and EBSCO. Including related works provides context, helping readers understand the connection between a growth mindset and college student persistence.

Mindset

Students with a growth mindset believe intelligence can improve through effort rather than innate talent (Dweck 2000, 2017; Hudig et al. 2022; Tirri and Kujala 2016; Yeager and Walton 2011). Dweck (2006) established a clear link between mindset and achievement, emphasizing that a growth mindset requires support from educators to develop necessary skills. Faculty can enhance motivation by reinforcing mastery, normalizing struggles, and providing resources (Dweck and Leggett 1988; Dweck 2017).

A fixed mindset is the belief that intelligence is unchangeable, leading to feelings of inadequacy and limited problem-solving abilities (Jegathesan et al. 2016; King 2017; Lee et al. 2018; O’Keefe et al. 2018). Karwowski (2014) found that a fixed mindset correlates with lower problem-solving skills. According to Yeager et al. (2019, 364), “the brain is like a muscle that grows stronger and smarter when it undergoes rigorous learning experiences.” This provides a relevant picture of the importance of a growth mindset.

Theoretical

A growth mindset, linked to student persistence, enables learners to set realistic goals and overcome challenges, viewing intelligence as malleable through effort rather than innate talent (Dweck 2006). This mindset encourages risk-taking and learning from mistakes rather than fearing failure. Research shows that resilience, grit, and a growth mindset positively impact learning (Calo et al. 2019). Fostering a growth mindset in college supports persistence by promoting adaptive, exploratory behaviors. A growth mindset can be a protective factor that enables college students to succeed during their educational journeys.

Authors’ Perspectives & Practical Classroom Applications

This exploration was an attempt to determine how growth mindset can help students persist in college online classes. Online classroom implications are significant. Regardless of what traits students bring to the classroom, instructors have an opportunity to facilitate and promote a growth mindset in their interactions with students. By focusing on opportunities to embrace change, normalize struggles, foster growth, and improve processes, instructors can help students to feel motivated, empowered, and able to overcome obstacles.

Instructors should provide resources such as tips on approaching tasks or advice about searching for solutions when stuck. This helps foster independence by teaching problem-solving skills that can be applied more broadly throughout life’s challenges and generalized outside of academia. Additionally, open communication between students and instructors allows for questions and comments without judgment. Students feel safe expressing themselves, leading to greater understanding and acceptance that struggle is part of the growth process, fostering a culture of belonging and inclusion in the classroom. Online instructors must be mindful as they compose feedback to promote a sense of purpose and potential growth.

Instructors promote growth mindset by helping students find meaningful value in what they are doing. They can encourage students to overcome obstacles and be resourceful. Ultimately, instructors can steer students away from the tendency to accept a fixed mindset and be willing to embrace challenges as opportunities to expand student thinking and accept that difficulties are part of learning. Instructors should emphasize that mistakes are necessary to achieve success. Sharing personal struggles and stories allows students to see that everyone has challenges in college, even their instructors. Acknowledging setbacks as opportunities instead of focusing on forms of perceived punishment reinforces the idea that effort will ultimately pay off with tangible results down the line, even if it does not happen immediately.

Recommendations for Future Research

Future research should examine other variables to determine the impact of creating a growth mindset culture in the classroom. Exploring how faculty mindsets mediate students’ success has been demonstrated in middle school (Schmidt et al. 2015). Haimovitz and Dweck concluded, “We also know little about how children themselves may affect socializers’ theories and behaviors. Examining these bidirectional processes will benefit our understanding of how a culture of growth can be developed and sustained” (2017, 1856). Little is known about the bidirectional processes of online instructors with their adult students.

Conclusions and Limitations

Since this review was exploratory, the findings were not generalized. The existing research may not represent all college students; that was not the goal. However, scholarly, primary, peer-reviewed studies were carefully selected for methodological soundness, validity, strength, and currency. Although research on growth mindset has been studied across domains and countries, few studies have included faculty mindsets. Another limitation is the lack of statistical strength.

Another limitation of this review is that past research may or may not apply to future students. Recent developments regarding COVID-19 and how it may have impacted students in online college education are just beginning to appear in scholarly databases. Many students who prefer traditional classrooms may opt to enroll in online programs because they view such programs as safer, healthier alternatives. Researchers need to learn how this change in a student’s sense of “normal” impacts the mindset of future students, at least for the foreseeable future.

Instructors forced into online education may have brought new ideas and/or confusion that could impact how online students were taught. It can be argued that there is limited or no research that has studied the impacts on students when the instructor and the students find themselves in an unexpected situation, like the unexpected worldwide pandemic.

Technology has allowed online education to grow and expand in ways that were not expected 20 years ago. Students start college with great expectations, and many of those expectations have been changed by the reality of college in an online environment. This exploratory review has presented some considerations for instructors to encourage students to develop and sustain a growth mindset and remain in their academic program. This may provide ways to help students grow as individuals while addressing the multiple demands of work and family since the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

Dora C.D. Finamore joined Purdue University Global in 2004 and currently serves as a full-time instructor in the School and Business and Information Technology. She has 25 years’ experience in private practice as a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor. Dora earned her EdD in Counseling Psychology from the University of Sarasota and has been a professor of Business and Psychology for 21 years. She serves as a contributing editor for Journal of Education and Learning. Dora’s current research interests are in the areas of motivation, learning strategies, LGBTQ+ cultures, belonging, resilience, and growth and fixed mindset in business and education.

E. Valerie Hewitt joined Purdue University Global, in 2007 and currently is an adjunct instructor in the School of Business and Information Technology. She has over 30 years’ combined online and traditional classroom teaching experience. Valerie holds a Master’s Degree in Education from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, and a Master’s Degree in Higher Education with a secondary in psychology from Kaplan University. Her current research interests are in the areas of the retention of first-year online students and early engagement strategies.

Loretta “Laurie” A. Millam joined Purdue University Global in 2002 and currently serves as a Department Chair in the School of Business and Management. She has over 25 years’ combined experience in education. Prior to entering the education field, Loretta worked in Business Management for over 11 years. Loretta holds an MBA from St. Ambrose University and an EdS from Northcentral University. Loretta’s current research interests are in the areas of first-term student retention and early engagement learning strategies.

Michelle M. Reinhardt joined Purdue University Global as a full-time instructor in 2003 and currently serves as a course lead and faculty mentor in the school of Business and Information Technology. Michelle has over 25 years of combined online and traditional classroom teaching experience. She has designed courses, served on various college and university committees, and conducted online faculty workshops as well. Michelle holds a Master’s Degree in Communication Arts/English from Western Colorado University. Her current research interests are in the areas of entrepreneurship, motivation, and student learning and engagement.

Linda S. Watson joined Purdue University Global in 2006 and currently teaches First Term Experience classes in the School of Business and Information Technology. Linda has an MBA from Baker College with a double major in Leadership Studies and Human Resource Management. Her current research interests include the areas of student success and engagement, particularly for first-term students.

References

Calo, Marlena, Casey Peiris, Lucy Chipchase, Felicity Blackstock, and Belinda Judd. 2019. “Grit, Resilience and Mindset in Health Students.” The Clinical Teacher 16(4), 317-322. https://doi.org/10.1111/tct.13056.

Crum, Alia J., Modupe Akinola, Ashley Martin, and Sean Fath. 2017. “The Role of Stress Mindset in Shaping Cognitive, Emotional, and Physiological Responses to Challenging and Threatening Stress.” Anxiety, Stress, & Coping 30 (4): 379–95. doi:10.1080/10615806.2016.1275585.

Dweck, Carol S. 2000. “Self-theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development.” Psychology Press.

Dweck, Carol S. 2006. “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.” Random House.

Dweck, Carol S. 2017. “From Needs to Goals and Representations: Foundations for a Unified Theory of Motivation, Personality, and Development.” Psychological Review 124(6), 689–719. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000082.

Dweck, Carol S., and Ellen L. Leggett. 1988. “A Social-cognitive Approach to Motivation and Personality.” Psychological Review 95(2), 256–273. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.95.2.256.

Haimovitz, Kyla., and Carol S. Dweck. 2017. “The Origins of Children’s Growth and Fixed Mindsets: New Research and a New Proposal.” Child Development 88(6), 1849–1859. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12955.

Hudig, Job, Ad W. A. Scheepers, Michaéla C. Schippers, and Guus Smeets. 2022. “Motivational Mindsets, Mindset Churn and Academic Performance: The Role of a Goal-setting Intervention and Purpose in Life.” Current Psychology 42 (27): 23349–68. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03462-8.

Jegathesan, Mithila, Yaffa M. Vitberg, and Martin V. Pusic. 2016. “A Survey of Mindset Theories of Intelligence and Medical Error Self-reporting among Pediatric House Staff and Faculty.” BMC Medical Education 16, 58. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-016-0574-8.

Karwowski, Maciej. 2014. “Creative Mindsets: Measurement, Correlates, Consequences.” Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 8(1), 62–70. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0034898.

King, Ronnel B. 2017. “A Fixed Mindset Leads to Negative Affect: The Relations between Implicit Theories of Intelligence and Subjective Well-being.” Zeitschrift Für Psychologie 225(2), 137–145. https://doi.org/10.1027/2151-2604/a000290.

Lee, C. Christopher, Jacqueline Trahan, Peter Maltby, Venessa Hemraj, and Heidi Hughes. 2018. “Mindset, Job Satisfaction and Employee Engagement at Workplace: Preliminary Results.” Proceedings for the Northeast Region Decision Sciences Institute (NEDSI) 640–659. https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=32621573-85d0-36bf-9aaa-7caf0d256b8b.

O’Keefe, Paul A., Carol Dweck, and Greg Walton. (2018). “Having a Growth Mindset makes it Easier to Develop New Interests.” Harvard Business Review Digital Articles 8–13. https://hbr.org/2018/09/having-a-growth-mindset-makes-it-easier-to-develop-new-interests

Schmidt, Jennifer A., Lee Shumow, and Hayal Kackar-Cam. 2015. “Exploring Teacher Effects for Mindset Intervention Outcomes in Seventh-Grade Science Classes.” Middle Grades Research Journal 10 (2): 17–32. https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=4d677331-010f-3bc1-8e5b-78d2973d7bc5.

Tirri, Kirsi and Teija Kujala. 2016. ”Students’ Mindsets for Learning and their Neural Underpinnings.” Psychology 7(9), 1231-1239. https://doi.org/10.4236/psych.2016.79125.

Yang, Dazhi, Sally Baldwin, and Chareen Snelson. 2017. “Persistence Factors Revealed: Students’ Reflections on Completing a Fully Online Program.” Distance Education 38 (1): 23–36. doi:10.1080/01587919.2017.1299561.

Yeager, David S., Paul Hanselman, Gregory M. Walton, et al. 2019. “A National Experiment Reveals where a Growth Mindset Improves Achievement.” Nature 573, 364–369. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1466-y.

Yeager, David S., and Gregory M. Walton. (2011). “Social-psychological Interventions in Education: They’re not Magic.” Review of Educational Research 81(2), 267–301.

Source link

August 8, 2025
The Resilience of First-Generation Students

First-generation students face a host of barriers when they go to college. Terms commonly used in higher ed, like “registrar,” “provost” or “credit hours,” can be mystifying. They’re confronted with a hidden curriculum, a set of unspoken expectations for how to succeed. And they don’t always know whom to turn to for help.

But a new book, the first of three volumes on first-generation students, argues that these challenges, while important to study, offer an incomplete picture of who these students are.

The book, How First-Generation Students Navigate Higher Education Through an Embrace of their Multiple Identities (Routledge, 2025), explores in a series of essays how different identities, including class and race, affect the first-generation student experience and how these students bring unique strengths and assets to the classroom. It also offers guidance to different types of institutions about how to support first-generation students better and highlights colleges and universities that have modeled successful reforms and programs. Some of the essays are research-focused and written by scholars, while others are personal narratives authored by first-generation college graduates.

Co-editor Matt Daily, assistant vice president and dean of students at Idaho State University, spoke with Inside Higher Ed about why he’s working to change the discourse around first-generation students, alongside his co-editors, University of Portland professors SimonMary Asese Aihiokhai and Layla Garrigues. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: A theme throughout this book is the idea that too often first-generation students are studied through a deficit-focused lens that emphasizes their challenges rather than their strengths. Why was it important to you to shift that approach?

A: For a long time, when we’ve talked about first-gen, we’ve come in thinking that they need something, that they are lacking something, and I think for the last five years or so, that narrative has really shifted. It’s shifted from “What are they lacking?” to “What are they contributing?”

As we were doing a lot of research, as we were having a lot of conversations, while that’s something that we’re talking about at our respective institutions and starting to do more across the United States and beyond, it’s still something that we have to keep reminding ourselves is important—to really focus on the assets or the strengths that students bring.

And so, we thought that when we were dreaming up this project—and that’s a fun story, too, about how it came to be—we thought it really needs to be based in the strengths. And it would be so nice for practitioners, scholars, students, that they could find that the real theme and the real foundation and the real thread through it is the strengths of first-gen students, and what it is that they’re really bringing to these college campuses.

Q: What are some of the strengths and assets of first-generation students that you think are too often overlooked?

A: There’s really no one-size-fits-all for first-gen. Each first-gen student is as unique as the experience itself. I think that’s actually one trap we fall into: We really have to take each case as they come in and create that space.

In the introduction, I mention how Tara Yosso talks about her “community cultural wealth” model and cultural capital and talks about this idea of [ties to] family and culture [as] strengths. I think those are strengths that are really important. Laura Rendón also talks about—what Yosso was saying and building on it—this idea of ganas or perseverance, which is that ability to really develop inner strength and becoming self-reliant and determined to succeed.

There’s something about first-gen students where they are just so gritty. They really stick with it, and they are so inspiring. I love the way that they’re able to sort of exist in multiple worlds. I could have my college world, my peers, but also a lot of first-gen students work, so I can have that world, and then my family, and then maybe I’m from a different country. Really understanding how to exist in all those different worlds and being able to do that successfully, I think that is an incredible strength.

My biggest criticism of first-gen students is that they are too humble. They don’t think that their story is worthy enough to share. They don’t think it has worth, and I think they’re dismissive [of themselves], and that is my biggest criticism. Because for the amount of different first-gen students we have, there are an equal amount of stories that come with them. We need to encourage them to really share those and know that they have worth.

Q: Going off of that, you interspersed scholarly research with student narratives in this essay collection. Why was it important to you to include both perspectives?

A: That was really intentional. I think that the student voice gets ignored if we’re just talking about theory. If we’re going to talk about students, we need to hear their voice, right? It needs to be expressed, and we need to really have that authentic perspective. And so that was something we talked about early on in the project … especially in the last chapter, where we wanted to have students themselves or recent graduates share.

And I think that there’s equally as much value in terms of the research as to what the students are expressing, as they’re sort of in the moment, so to speak. I think [it’s important] even just coaching students that their voice matters … that you can go up and talk to senior administrators … and there’s value in that. I think that was one thing we were really hoping with this anthology was that maybe a graduate student or an undergraduate student could read that and feel inspired and go, “Oh, you know, this is something I could see myself doing,” and really get that spark, too. Gosh, if that happened, I would be over the moon.

Q: The book also emphasizes taking an intersectional approach to serving first-generation students. What does that mean to you? And what do you think we miss when we don’t factor in these students’ other identities?

A: I think that’s just so important. And I have to kind of acknowledge my own positionality. I’m a white male. And I am not first-gen. I will never understand a lot of these identities because I don’t identify that way. And so that’s something that’s been a part of my own journey. That was why it was so important with Simon, myself and Layla—we’re just a diverse collection. And then when you get to the other contributors, they do identify in a variety of different ways.

But that being said, identity is so important to the cultural richness of our college campuses. When I talk to college students, we talk about their gender identity, and sometimes that can be fluid; we talk about their racial or ethnic identity. We talk about their sexual identity, even their academic identity—meaning, what does it mean when I go from high school to college? Does that academic identity come into question when I experience different levels of success? But I think a lot of those identities we talk about, they’re visible. A lot of those identities we can see.

First-gen is not one of them. And that’s what’s interesting about being first-gen is you will never see physically if someone is first-gen. And so, it’s sort of this hidden identity. In a lot of my experiences working with first-gen students, I almost feel that I’ve outed them. When I explain to them, “Hey, I think you’re first-generation based on the information you’ve given me,” there’s a variety of different reactions, because it’s sort of a later-emerging identity. It’s not maybe one that’s discussed when a student is in elementary school, [with someone telling them], “Hey, you’re going to be a first-generation college student.” And so, I think what’s interesting is when you talk about this identity with other first-gen students, it’s one of many that intersect. But I think the timing of the intersection is so different for every first-gen student, if that makes sense.

In my previous role in Portland, when I would reach out to say, “I think you’re a first-gen student,” a lot of students would say, “No, I don’t want to be a first-gen student,” because they would think me identifying them in that way is something that’s negative. And part of that was really [making] that shift and going, “I am identifying you based on your mom and dad’s educational history or parent or guardian, and you might be first-gen—and that is so beautiful. Let’s celebrate that.”

I can be first-gen and a male or first-gen and African American male or I can be first-gen and a student athlete. What do those identities mean? Just being able to share what that identity means is so important for why a student is in college.

And I think that they forget that even as they graduate and go on to whatever’s next after college, to share that they’re first-gen is something that graduate schools, employers, what have you—they really value that.

It’s been programmed for so long that this is such a deficit. We’re working really hard at institutions to say, “Yeah, share that out—because of those qualities we talked about, this makes you a valuable part of this community.”

Q: I thought it was interesting that multiple chapters described how first-generation students can feel isolated from campus life, but also that campus life made them feel isolated from their home lives and families. How do you see the role of family and community for first-generation students’ success, and how do you think higher ed institutions can better account for that?

A: We assume that for first-gen students, when they go to college, that their families are behind it 100 percent, and that is not always the case. I think a lot of times the person that’s the most in favor of them going to college is themselves. And there’s a lot of, you know, “Why don’t you just work at the store?” The argument to convince others to go to college sometimes falls on the first-gen student, and we forget that. And so that kind of carries on through the experience, [family] going, “Why do you need to go to these programs?” or “Why do you need to go abroad?” It’s sort of having to be the explainer and the decoder for college life, and that is a lot for one student.

And so, I think that there is some push and pull with families sometimes, because the family wants to be supportive, but they don’t know how to be supportive strategically. In talking to a lot of families, I’ve coached them, saying, “Hey, you can just call your daughter or son and just say, ‘I love you. I support you doing this. I don’t know how I can strategically do that, but I want you to know I support you.’” That type of thing just goes so far.

The thing that’s also interesting, to your point about feeling isolated, we talk about programs and strategies that can really help first-gen students. But also on college campuses, the onus is on the student. You need to go do these things to be successful. And that’s not a first-gen thing, that’s a college thing. And I sort of push back on that. I think it’s on the institution to really create these spaces, to make students feel welcome, that they belong, that they matter, that they feel that they can have some sense of value in these spaces with their peers. And going back to first-gen identity, they’re not going to know who else is first-gen unless we create spaces where the students can find who else among their peer group is. And so, I think you kind of have to shift it a little bit.

They maybe feel isolated from family because we’re asking them to do a lot of things, such as engage with campus community, campus life, but sometimes that might come into conflict with what they’re being asked to do with their families, whether it’s watch my little brother or go to Grandma’s birthday party. That happened one time where a student really had to negotiate why they had to be on campus that first weekend of school for a lot of the programming [when] they were going to miss Grandma’s birthday. It really puts them in this code-switching situation where they feel isolated because they don’t feel anyone really gets what they’re going through.

Q: The book also offers a lot of concrete advice on how to better structure services and support for first-generation students and ensure they’re engaged and able to take advantage of opportunities like internships and study abroad. What do you think are some of the practical action steps you want to see higher ed leaders take away after reading this book?

A: I think high-impact practices are so important.

We talk so much about what student success means—what does it mean to have a sense of belonging, that type of thing—but I think one thing we really don’t talk a lot about is, other than the degree that the students are seeking, what is it that we really want them to take away from the college experience? What type of skills? Do we want them to think critically? Do we want them to be really engaged with the community? I think that we need to be really intentional on our college campuses about talking about what we want the students to take away, besides the degree. That can really help them in their next step. And I hope that maybe this book can talk a little bit about that. Can we really reimagine what we’re trying to do rather than just be very transactional about the degree?

I hope that they realize that it’s important to invest in this, that we need to invest in sustainable programs. Because I think a lot of times, what you have happen is different leaders or champions of first-gen work will leave institutions and then these initiatives really fizzle out. So, how can we think strategically that it’s not about the person, it’s about the program and initiatives. I think some of the things we talk about in here are almost a love letter to higher education institutions to say, “Look, this population is worth investing in, and it’s not just a one-size-fits-all, but if we can all adopt something that’s really creative and sustainable, all these students across the United States and even globally can benefit.”

Source link

August 6, 2025
College business officers survey finds risks, resilience

The latest Inside Higher Ed/Hanover Research Survey of College and University Chief Business Officers, released today, reveals concerns about near-term uncertainty and financial sustainability—buoyed by confidence in the longer-term outlook.

One of the most significant findings is that federal policy uncertainty has created difficulties in conducting basic financial planning as the Trump administration has introduced a flurry of changes impacting federal funding for higher education, international students, how students pay for college and more.

That uncertainty, experts noted, has had a palpable effect on the sector.

“Chief business officers like certainty, whether it’s certainty about revenue streams or potential costs,” said Kara Freeman, president and CEO of the National Association of College and University Business Officers. “And right now they just are not getting it and that leads to anxiety.”

The annual Survey of College and University Chief Business Officers, now in its 15th year, offers insights from financial leaders at 169 institutions in 2025, both public and private nonprofits. Responses were gathered in April and May.

Amid the uncertainty, about three in five CBOs (58 percent) rate their institution’s financial health as good or excellent, with differences by institution type.

Pressure Tests

In last year’s survey, 56 percent of CBOs expected that their institution would be in better financial shape a year later. That number fell to 43 percent in this year’s survey, which asked the same question.

CBOs who believe their institution will be worse off financially next year cited concerns about the federal policy/funding environment for the sector (82 percent), potential increases to nonlabor operating costs (67 percent), rising labor costs (67 percent) and general economic concerns (62 percent).

More on the Survey

On Wednesday, Aug. 20 at 2 p.m. E.T., Inside Higher Ed will present a free webcast to discuss the results of the survey, with experts who can answer your most pressing questions about higher education finance—including how to plan effectively amid the current financial and policy uncertainty. Please register here.

The 2025 Survey of College and University Chief Business Officers was made possible by support from Strata Decision Technology and CollegeVine.

Inside Higher Ed’s 15th annual Survey of College and University Chief Business Officers was conducted by Hanover Research. The survey included chief business officers, mostly from public and private nonprofit institutions, for a margin of error of 7 percent. The response rate was 7 percent. A copy of the free report can be downloaded here.

Larry Ladd, a subject matter specialist at AGB Consulting, noted that colleges are taking a number of measures to protect themselves in the short term, such as delaying building projects, freezing hiring and/or travel, and pulling other levers to protect themselves this coming fall.

“You’re seeing colleges do everything they can to preserve their liquidity,” Ladd said. “The biggest reason to do that of course is that they don’t know what their fall enrollment will be.”

Of particular concern, he noted, is the potential for disruption to federal financial aid funds, given mass layoffs at the Education Department, which has raised concerns about disbursement. Just 12 percent of CBOs support the elimination of the department.

Other possible signs of caution: On deferred maintenance, 63 percent of respondents said that their institution was poised to fund less than a quarter of identified needs in the then-current fiscal year. Some 24 percent said their institution was freezing hiring to control costs for students; another 62 percent said their institution would consider doing this.

Despite these challenges, respondents were much more confident in their institution’s five- to 10-year outlooks, with 73 percent believing their college or university will be financially stable over the next five years and 71 percent expressing that same level of confidence over the next decade. For reference, in 2024, 85 percent of CBOs were confident in the five-year outlook, and 73 percent in the 10-year outlook.

Some 11 percent of CBOs say senior administrators at their institution have had serious internal discussions in the last year about merging with another college or university, about the same as last year’s survey. Most of these CBOs indicate such conversations are about proactively ensuring the institution’s financial stability rather than risk of imminent closure.

Another 16 percent of CBOs report serious internal discussions about consolidating some programs or operations with another college or university. Two in five (42 percent) say it’s highly likely that that their college will share administrative functions with another institution within five years. CBOs in the Northeast, with its relative concentration of institutions, are especially likely to say so, at 63 percent.

Beyond the Fog

Ruth Johnston, vice president of NACUBO consulting, said that while business officers may be stressed by the immediate pressures, they are confident in their scenario planning for the future.

“I think we’ll figure it out. Higher ed, even if it’s slow to change, is resilient. So I expect that we’re going to see new, creative solutions that will help bolster higher education,” Johnston said.

That said, just 28 percent of CBOs described themselves as very or extremely confident in their institution’s current business model. Another third expressed moderate confidence.

View online

Top issues for those CBOs with just some or no confidence in their institution’s business model: lack of diverse revenue streams (64 percent of this group), ineffective cost containment and/or operational efficiency (54 percent), and insufficient cash reserves for “rainy days” or strategic investments (50 percent).

Tuition discounting is another standing concern. Among all CBOs, more than half (54 percent) are at least moderately concerned about the financial sustainability of their institution’s tuition discount rate; two in 10 (21 percent) are highly concerned. Similarly, 50 percent of CBOs are at least moderately concerned about the sustainability of their institution’s tuition sticker price increases. In both cases, private nonprofit CBOs are the most concerned, by sector.

Respondents also saw government efforts to influence institutional strategy and policy as an increasing risk to their institutions, with 71 percent registering this as a concern. That number is up slightly from last year’s 65 percent.

CBOs in 2025 were much less concerned about donor efforts to influence institutional strategy, with 16 percent worrying that this amounts to an increasing financial risk to their college or university.

Internally, at least, some 81 percent of CBOs agree that they have sufficient agency influence within their institution to ensure its financial stability. Most also report a strong working relationship with their president, and understanding among trustees of the financial challenges facing their institution.

Survey respondents were notably concerned about federal student aid policies, overwhelmingly picking that as the top federal policy-related risk over the next four years, at 68 percent. Some experts suggest that concerns about other federal policy matters may have been heightened if the survey were administered after the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed earlier this month. It included major changes for higher education as well as cuts to other public programs that could have downstream effects on the sector.

“There are both direct and indirect implications of the bill, some of which have not fully been explored by colleges and universities,” Ladd said. “I think of the Medicaid cuts—even those will have implications for colleges and universities.”

When asked about general financial risks to their institution over the next five years, many CBOs—especially those at publics—flagged state and federal policy changes, along with state and federal funding reductions. Enrollment declines, rising personnel costs and infrastructure and deferred maintenance costs also registered.

As for what would most improve their institution’s financial situation and sustainability, CBOs’ top responses from a list of options were: growing enrollment through targeted recruitment and improved retention programs; optimizing operational efficiency through process improvement and strategic cost management; and—in a more distant choice—forming strategic partnerships with employers, community organizations and/or other educational institutions. Cutting faculty and cutting staff were especially unpopular options.

Asked about value and affordability, CBOs largely agreed that their institution offers good value for what it charges for an undergraduate degree (93 percent) and that its net price is affordable (88 percent). Two in three (65 percent) said their institution has increased institutional financial aid/grants in the last year to address affordability concerns.

The survey also found that CBOs are increasingly using artificial intelligence. Nearly half of respondents—46 percent—indicated that AI helps them make more informed decisions in their role. That number is up from 33 percent in last year’s survey.

Despite that uptick, respondents at most institutions aren’t all-in on artificial intelligence yet. Only 6 percent reported that their college has made a comprehensive, strategic investment in AI. But many are experimenting: 39 percent of CBOs noted that their institution is in the early exploration phase with AI, while another 28 percent are piloting such tools in select departments.

“AI is here to stay,” Johnston said.

Source link

July 22, 2025
Summer 2025 | HESA
So. This is the last blog of the academic year. Service resumes Tuesday, 2 September.

It’s been a long year. I’m pretty tired. How about you?

This was the year it all kind of came crashing down: not just here in Canda, but everywhere else too. It’s too long to go through and my more faithful readers already know the story. It’s not just in Canada. In France, Australia, and the UK, we saw institutions having similar problems: all these fantastic higher education institutions we’ve collectively built and, quite simply, nobody wants to pay for it. Not through public funds, not through private fees. Nobody wants to pay for it.

And then there’s American higher education would probably be going through something similar this year, only a greater catastrophe arrived first. I’ll pass over this in silence.

Here in Canada, the sector is increasingly friendless. Parents and students seem less convinced that universities in particular represent good value. And governments are simply indifferent, not because they dislike universities necessarily, but because they dislike or distrust the knowledge economy universities are built to serve.

Unfortunately, I think it is going to get worse. Not a single government in Canada released a budget this year which took into account the effects of US tariffs. The result? Allegedly healthy federal and provincial balance sheets are going to get pounded this year and next (and the especially unhealthy ones — BC and Quebec in particular — are going to be especially ugly). Deficits as far as they eye can see. As the saying goes, no one is coming to save us.

I have no doubt that community colleges will find ways to get through this, because they have so far through this crisis mostly shown themselves to have the ability to do what it takes to right the ship. They might not look too good after another round or two of cuts, and it’s not impossible that a few rural colleges might disappear or shrink radically because what they get from governments and domestic tuition fees just isn’t enough to properly serve their communities, but on the whole, I think they will be ok.

Universities, on the other hand. Well, that’s a different story.

About a year ago, I said that the biggest change universities were going to have to undergo in this new financial age was shifting from a belief that every problem had a revenue-side solution to one in which every problem has a cost-side solution. Institutions can no longer solve their short-term problems by just recruiting another hundred international students. They actually have to change the way they do business. They have to change processes. They have to think about production functions and work processes in a way they haven’t before. And they have to do it while trying to pivot to new missions that give them more traction with government and the public.

I am here to say that I don’t think it’s going so well.

The message that “there is no one coming to save us” has, thankfully, penetrated fairly deeply in universities. Maybe not quite everywhere (hello, VIU!), but in most places. But what I am not sure has penetrated quite so deeply is the corollary that actual change is necessary. My (admittedly limited) vantage point on the sector is that:
- I still see universities spending inordinate amounts of time trying to come up with new revenue-based solutions. It’s a habit they have a hard time kicking.
- Universities are deeply resistant to doing more than the bare minimum of restructuring to meet immediate financial needs. The idea that deep structural change might be necessary remains pretty much anathema. This bare minimum approach means that when the next round of government cuts come – due to recession, or national re-armament or whatever – they are just going to have to cut again, and again, and again. There is very little sign of anyone trying to get ahead of the curve to make both big cuts and big investments in new areas that will help them survive the turmoil.
- I still hear, distressingly often, senior people in universities utter the worst seven words in all of higher education: “we just gotta tell our story better”. Universities are reluctant to face the possibility that governments and the mass public don’t love them the way they are and that they may need to actually, you know, change.
We need to stop acting like the research university of today – which in Canada is really only a creature of the 1970s or perhaps 1960s — is eternal. Universities can die, and have done so rather frequently across history. Universities are the product of particular configurations of social and economic forces. And now, at the moment when the western world is basically re-considering the entire post-WWII order, the idea that universities are going to be uniquely immune to change is bananas. Past performance — which I think has been pretty good — is not a guarantee of future safety.

I am not saying here that universities shouldn’t fight for their own corner: they should! Often more vigorously than they currently do (see my piece on Bill 33, or on how they need to gear up for a fight with Bay Street over whether temporary residents will be international students or TFWs). But they can’t do it by digging in on the status quo.

And so, I will end the academic year by repeating something I said a few months ago. To survive this coming period, universities are going to need:
1. Ambition. Don’t waste time doing small things.
2. Experimentation. The worst possible thing right now is an addiction to “the way we’ve always done things”
3. Dissemination. No one institution got us into the mess. No one institution is going to get out of it alone, either. Institutions need to commit to sharing the results of their experimentation.
I know every university in Canada can, if it chooses, commit to those three things. I have faith. And I believe that if they do, our university sector will come out as strong or stronger than any system in the world.

But any institution that chooses not to commit to them…well, I think they are going to have some issues in the next three years. Serious ones.

It’s up to us. Rest up this summer. Re-charge. We’re all going to need it in ‘25–’26.
Source link
June 11, 2025