Tag: Rethinking

  • Phones, devices, and the limits of control: Rethinking school device policies

    Phones, devices, and the limits of control: Rethinking school device policies

    Key points:

    By now, it’s no secret that phones are a problem in classrooms. A growing body of research and an even louder chorus of educators point to the same conclusion: students are distracted, they’re disengaged, and their learning is suffering. What’s less clear is how to solve this issue. 

    Of late, school districts across the country are drawing firmer lines. From Portland, Maine to Conroe, Texas and Springdale, Arkansas, administrators are implementing “bell-to-bell” phone bans, prohibiting access from the first bell to the last. Many are turning to physical tools like pouches and smart lockers, which lock away devices for the duration of the day, to enforce these rules. The logic is straightforward: take the phones away, and you eliminate the distraction.

    In many ways, it works. Schools report fewer behavioral issues, more focused classrooms, and an overall sense of calm returning to hallways once buzzing with digital noise. But as these policies scale, the limitations are becoming more apparent.

    But students, as always, find ways around the rules. They’ll bring second phones to school or slip their device in undetected–and more. Teachers, already stretched thin, are now tasked with enforcement, turning minor infractions into disciplinary incidents. 

    Some parents and students are also pushing back, arguing that all-day bans are too rigid, especially when phones serve as lifelines for communication, medical needs, or even digital learning. In Middletown, Connecticut, students reportedly became emotional just days after a new ban took effect, citing the abrupt change in routine and lack of trust.

    The bigger question is this: Are we trying to eliminate phones, or are we trying to teach responsible use?

    That distinction matters. While it’s clear that phone misuse is widespread and the intent behind bans is to restore focus and reduce anxiety, blanket prohibitions risk sending the wrong message. Instead of fostering digital maturity, they can suggest that young people are incapable of self-regulation. And in doing so, they may sidestep an important opportunity: using school as a place to practice responsible tech habits, not just prohibit them.

    This is especially critical given the scope of the problem. A recent study by Fluid Focus found that students spend five to six hours a day on their phones during school hours. Two-thirds said it had a negative impact on their academic performance. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 77 percent of school leaders believe phones hurt learning. The data is hard to ignore.

    But managing distraction isn’t just about removal. It’s also about design. Schools that treat device policy as an infrastructure issue, rather than a disciplinary one, are beginning to implement more structured approaches. 

    Some are turning to smart locker systems that provide centralized, secure phone storage while offering greater flexibility: configurable access windows, charging capabilities, and even low admin options to help keep teachers teaching. These systems don’t “solve” the phone problem, but they do help schools move beyond the extremes of all-or-nothing.

    And let’s not forget equity. Not all students come to school with the same tech, support systems, or charging access. A punitive model that assumes all students have smartphones (or can afford to lose access to them) risks deepening existing divides. Structured storage systems can help level the playing field, offering secure and consistent access to tech tools without relying on personal privilege or penalizing students for systemic gaps.

    That said, infrastructure alone isn’t the answer. Any solution needs to be accompanied by clear communication, transparent expectations, and intentional alignment with school culture. Schools must engage students, parents, and teachers in conversations about what responsible phone use actually looks like and must be willing to revise policies based on feedback. Too often, well-meaning bans are rolled out with minimal explanation, creating confusion and resistance that undermine their effectiveness.

    Nor should we idealize “focus” as the only metric of success. Mental health, autonomy, connection, and trust all play a role in creating school environments where students thrive. If students feel overly surveilled or infantilized, they’re unlikely to engage meaningfully with the values behind the policy. The goal should not be control for its own sake, it should be cultivating habits that carry into life beyond the classroom.

    The ubiquity of smartphones is undeniable. While phones are here to stay, the classroom represents one of the few environments where young people can learn how to use them wisely, or not at all. That makes schools not just sites of instruction, but laboratories for digital maturity.

    The danger isn’t that we’ll do too little. It’s that we’ll settle for solutions that are too simplistic or too focused on optics, instead of focusing  not on outcomes.

    We need more than bans. We need balance. That means moving past reactionary policies and toward systems that respect both the realities of modern life and the capacity of young people to grow. It means crafting strategies that support teachers without overburdening them, that protect focus without sacrificing fairness, and that reflect not just what we’re trying to prevent, but what we hope to build.

    The real goal shouldn’t be to simply get phones out of kids’ hands. It should be to help them learn when to put them down on their own.

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  • Rethinking Pathways for Students in Rural Communities

    Rethinking Pathways for Students in Rural Communities

    In rural parts of the U.S., 36 percent of jobs that pay enough for an individual to be self-sufficient require at least a bachelor’s degree, yet only 25 percent of rural workers hold such degrees. Many rural communities do not have a university or four-year college nearby. As a result, students in these communities are likely to start their educational journey to a bachelor’s at a community college. Of the nearly 1,000 community colleges nationwide, more than a quarter are in rural areas and many others are designated as rural-serving.

    The paths to a bachelor’s degree for rural students are not as straightforward as they are for students in urban or suburban areas with higher concentrations of four-year institutions. For rural community college students, there are four primary routes to earning a bachelor’s degree. As described below, the first three, more conventional, paths do not always work well. But there is also a fourth path—the community college bachelor’s degree program. While still relatively rare, this path is growing in popularity because, when well designed, it is effective in enabling place-bound students to earn bachelor’s degrees and secure good jobs in their communities.

    Path 1: Transfer to a Four-Year University

    The first path is to transfer to a four-year college and either become a residential student there or commute a long distance to get back and forth to campus from home. Laramie County Community College, where one of us is president, has worked with the University of Wyoming, the state’s only university, located in Laramie, to develop guaranteed transfer pathways to UW bachelor’s programs in major fields of economic importance to the region and state.

    But only a minority of LCCC students—mostly younger students who have financial support from their families—can realistically afford to become full-time residential students at UW. Most community college students have jobs and families they can’t leave for several months a year, even if they could afford room and board in addition to tuition (which few can). Commuting to UW is difficult even for LCCC students who live in relatively nearby Cheyenne, almost an hour’s drive from Laramie on a road that crosses the highest point on the Continental Divide and is often closed in the winter. For LCCC students who live in outlying areas and for students at other Wyoming community colleges, commuting to UW is not realistic.

    Path 2: Pursue a Bachelor’s Degree Online

    Theoretically, this should be an effective option for rural, place-bound community college students. In reality, this avenue is not feasible for the many rural students who live in “digital deserts” or face “last-mile” barriers to broadband access.

    Even when internet access is not a problem, many students struggle to complete online programs. Only a quarter of community college students who transfer to online universities complete a bachelor’s degree within four years of transferring. This compares to 57 percent of community college starters who transfer to a public four-year institution. In general, undergraduates who take all their courses online are less likely to succeed than those who take just some courses online. And online success rates are especially low for low-income students, those from other underserved groups or those who face other challenges typical in rural areas, such as limited access to transportation and childcare.

    Path 3: Complete a Bachelor’s Degree Through a Community College–Based University Center

    The third path is for students to take upper-division coursework through a university center arrangement, where the four-year university has a physical presence on the community college campus. These arrangements vary in design but typically involve university faculty teaching courses on the community college campus. While reasonable in concept, university centers are often challenging to operate. Beyond common issues of ownership, oversight and authority associated with programs run by two separate institutions, in rural colleges, such programs also often do not enroll enough students to make it worth the investment by the university and thus are difficult to sustain, financially and politically.

    A Fourth Path: The Community College Bachelor’s Degree

    That leaves community college bachelor’s degree programs, which are often the best option for rural students. Research indicates that these programs not only provide effective access to bachelor’s programs for older working students with families and others who are place-bound but also enable these students to secure good jobs.

    Some question whether community colleges should offer bachelor’s degrees, arguing that they duplicate university offerings and represent a form of mission creep. But community college bachelor’s degrees tend to be unlike conventional bachelor’s degrees from universities. First, they are explicitly designed as applied credentials to meet specific regional workforce needs. In the best cases, community college bachelor’s degrees are reverse-engineered collaboratively with employers to meet these needs.

    Second, they are also often designed to help the many applied associate degree graduates of community colleges find a more effective path to completing a bachelor’s degree, in which their applied coursework is built upon, not disregarded. Finally, they are delivered at home so that graduates of community colleges who are tied to their local area can advance into family-supporting jobs. They are offered through institutions that most students are already familiar with and by people with whom students already have relationships.

    For example, LCCC offers a bachelor’s of applied science in health-care administration, with accelerated eight-week courses, offered at convenient times and through a combination of online and in-person modalities. The program is designed to provide the many working health-care clinicians with applied associate degrees (e.g., nurses, sonographers, radiology techs, etc.) a path to management jobs. This program was developed collaboratively with numerous health-care employers to address the strong demand for talent in health-care administration and provide their employees with a viable path to a bachelor’s degree, without requiring them to start over or relocate to another community.

    The number of bachelor’s degrees awarded by community colleges nationally is still small: fewer than 17,000 annually, compared to more than 1.3 million awarded by public universities. Still, policymakers in a growing number of states are recognizing that rural community colleges are well positioned to meet the needs of students and employers for workforce bachelor’s programs not available from other providers. Currently, community colleges in 24 states are authorized to offer bachelor’s degrees in particular fields, yet the majority (nearly 80 percent) of these colleges are located in just seven states. Thus, there is plenty of room to grow. Bachelor’s programs offered by rural community colleges provide a model for what we hope is becoming a national movement to rethink bachelor’s education for the large number of place-bound students who must work and care for their families but need a bachelor’s degree to advance in their careers.

    Joe Schaffer is president of Laramie County Community College. Davis Jenkins is a senior research scholar and Hana Lahr is assistant director of research and director of applied learning at the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College.

    Ascendium Education Group provided funding for this work.

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  • Weekend Reading: Rethinking the Role of Place in UK Higher Education Policy

    Weekend Reading: Rethinking the Role of Place in UK Higher Education Policy

    • This HEPI guest blog was kindly authored by John Goddard OBE, Emeritus Professor of Regional Development Studies at Newcastle University.

    In a HEPI note prompted by a Centre for Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance (SKOPE) conference, Nick Hillman asked: Should the seminal Robbins report inform the forthcoming post-16 strategy? He referenced the point made by Professor Robson of SKOPE about the need ‘to encourage place-based approaches … and replace competition with coordination.’ As Nick points out, the challenge of place and coordination are not new, but as I will argue, these are not being confronted by policymakers right now.

    The Robbins’ report led to new universities being established. But these were in county towns and as we observe in our volume on The University and the City, overlook the growing urban crisis of that period. The Education Reform Act of 1988 severed the link between polytechnics and local government. The Further and Higher Education Act 1992, which allowed polytechnics to apply for university status, had the Government’s desired impact of reducing the unit cost of higher education and moving the UK instantly up the OECD rankings in terms of participation in higher education. But it also signalled a further disconnection with cities. The creation of new universities in the 1970s to meet a 50% participation rate was also unplanned in geographical terms. So, unlike many countries, the UK has not had a plan for the geography of higher let alone further education.

    Indeed, UK higher education policy and practice has ignored the lessons of history as well as being geographically blind. It has not been sensitive to the different local contexts where universities operate and the evolution of these institutions and places through time.

    It is important to remember that locally endowed proto-universities like Newcastle, Sheffield and Birmingham supported late 19th-century urban industrialisation and the health of the workforce. They also played a role in building local soft infrastructure, including facilitating discourse around the role of science and the arts in business and society. This was also a time in which new municipal government structures were being formed. In short, universities helped build the local state and create what the British Academy now calls social and cultural infrastructure, in which universities play a key role

    These founding principles became embedded in the DNA of some institutions. For example, in 1943, the Earl Grey Memorial lecturer in King’s College Newcastle noted,

    Ideal Universities… should be an organic part of regional existence in its public aspects, and a pervading influence in its private life. …Universities to be thus integrated in the community, must be sensitive to what is going on in the realm of business and industry, of practical local affairs, of social adaptation and development, as well as in the realm of speculative thought and abstract research.

    In the later 20th century, most so-called redbrick universities turned their back on place as the central state took on direct funding of higher education and research and did not prioritise the local role of universities. But this was challenged by the Royal Commission on the Future of Higher Education in 1997, chaired by Lord Dearing. He noted that: ‘As part of the compact we envisage between HE and society, each institution should be clear about its mission in relation to local communities and regions.’ For him, this ‘compact’ was wide-ranging, had a strong local dimension and was one where the university’s contribution to ‘the economy’ could not be separated from the wider society in which it was embedded.

    Many of Dearing’s ideas were subsequently incorporated into the work of Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) that were established in 1989 to promote economic development and regeneration, improve business competitiveness, and reduce regional disparities. This included investment, (matched by European regional funds ) into university-related research and cultural facilities. These capital and recurrent investments contributed to ‘place making’ and university links with business and the arts. For example, the former Newcastle brewery site was purchased by Newcastle University, Newcastle City Council and RDA, which they named ‘Science Central’. The partnership was incorporated as Newcastle Science City Ltd., a company limited by guarantee with its own CEO and independent board. The organisation’s portfolio included:

    Support for business, facilitating the creation of new enterprises drawing on the scientific capabilities of the region’s universities and work with local schools and communities, particularly focussed on promoting science education in deprived areas.

    The initiatives recognised the role that universities could play in their places by building ‘quadruple helix partnerships’ between universities, business, local and central government and the community and voluntary sectors.

    But from 2008, with the onset of public austerity, a focus on national competitiveness and a rolling back of the boundaries of the state, we saw the abolition of the RDAs in 2012, the creation of Local Enterprise Partnerships with more limited powers and resources and a cutting back on non-statutory local government activities, notably for economic development. My 2009 NESTA provocation Reinventing the Civic University was a reminder that universities had to go back to their roots and challenge broader geo-political trends, including globalisation and the creation of university research excellence hierarchies that mirrored city hierarchies.

    Marketisation was subsequently embedded into law in the 2017 Higher Education Act. This abolished the Higher Education Funding Council for England and its network of regional consultants working with formal university associations. The act unleashed competition regulated via the Office for Students (OfS) and supported by an enhanced discipline-based research excellence funding scheme. Both were place blind. Some of us raised the possibility of the financial collapse of universities in less prosperous places where they were so-called ‘anchor institutions’

    It was a recognition of this place blindness that contributed to the case for the establishment of the Civic University Commission, chaired by the late Lord Kerslake. The Commission argued that the public – nationally and locally – needed to understand better the specific benefits that universities can bring in response to the question: ‘We have a university here, but what is it doing for us? Institutions that were ultimately publicly funded needed to be locally accountable given our place-based system of governance – parliamentary constituencies and local authorities.

    For the Commission, accountability meant something different from a top-down compliance regime. Rather, sensitive and voluntary commitments made between a diverse set of actors to one another, whose collective powers and resources could impact local economic and social deficiencies

    The Commission therefore proposed that universities wishing to play a civic role should prepare Civic University Agreements, co-created and signed by other key partners and embracing local accountability. Strategic analysis to shape agreements should lead to a financial plan that brings together locally the many top-down and geographically blind funding streams that universities receive from across Whitehall – for quality research, for health and wellbeing, for business support, for higher-level skills and for culture.

    Some of these national funds now need to be ring-fenced to help universities work with partners to meet local needs and opportunities, including building capacity for collaborative working within an area. As the Secretary of State for Education has suggested in her letter to VCs, this might include a slice of core formulaic Quality Research (QR) funding. Such processes would be preferable to the ad-hoc interventions that have hitherto failed to establish long-term trust between universities and the community. At the same time, a place dimension could be included in the regulation of the domestic student marketplace. This could all form part of a compact or contract between universities and the state which enshrined a responsibility to serve the local public good.

    Going forward, I would argue that the coincidence of multiple crises across the world has far-reaching implications that universities cannot ignore. Indeed, if they do not step up to the plate and assert their civic role as anchor institutions in their places, their very existence may be at stake. The issues are well set out in this Learning Planet Institute Manifesto for the Planetary Mission of the University.

    Reading this Manifesto should help policy makers and institutional leaders in the UK recognise that the current financial crisis facing universities is an outward and visible sign of deeper threats, not least those arising from popularism and being fanned by Donald Trump. And popularism has its roots in the experience of people in left behind places.

    Therefore, Government support for the role of universities in their communities is not only beneficial to them but also to society at large. To respect institutional autonomy, this requires the right incentives (sticks and carrots). For example, universities throughout England could be required to support the Government’s plans for devolution as part of the compact I suggest. Questions to be answered by the Departments for Education; for Housing, Communities and Local Government and for Science, Innovation and Technology working TOGETHER could include:

    • What structures need to be put in place inside and outside of universities to facilitate joint working between universities and Mayoral Combined Authorities (MCAs)?
    • How should universities be included in upcoming Devolution Deals?
    • How might these differ between MCAs at different stages of development and different levels of prosperity?
    • How should universities link their work with business, with the community and the priorities of MCAs for inclusive growth and with the Industrial Strategy White paper?
    • How should Combined Authorities work with different universities and colleges in their area to meet skills gaps?
    • How can areas without MCAs work with universities to deliver equivalent outcomes?

    In summary, universities must recognise that they are part of the problem identified by populism, but can contribute to solutions through purposive local actions supported by the government.

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  • Rethinking Exams in the Age of AI: Should We Abandon Them Completely?

    Rethinking Exams in the Age of AI: Should We Abandon Them Completely?

    • By Dr Andrew Woon, Senior Lecturer in Strategic Management at Queen Mary, University of London.

    In recent years, universities around the world have been moving away from traditional exams in an effort to improve assessment practices, address equity concerns and adapt to the evolving educational landscape.

    Top institutions such as Oxford and Cambridge are also shifting towards more inclusive forms of assessment to reduce awarding gaps. This raises the question: Do inclusive assessments omit certain opportunities for students’ learning and development?

    Critics argue that exams often measure test-taking ability rather than genuine understanding and may fail to assess all students’ knowledge and skills accurately. Others contend that exams do little to prepare students for their future careers.

    As a result, universities are adopting a range of assessment methods to support student learning and ensure inclusivity. These approaches aim to recognise a broader range of skills and attributes essential for future success.

    I believe the key argument for retaining exams is not that they are more ‘secure’, but that their true value lies in ensuring students, especially those in high-stakes professions like Medicine and Education, could develop a deep, internalised understanding of their subject matter.

    Take Medicine, for example. We wouldn’t want to be treated by a doctor who relies on ChatGPT to make clinical decisions. While AI can assist with diagnostics and offer suggestions, it lacks the human ability to assess a patient holistically, considering subtle symptoms, emotional cues and contextual factors. These are skills that must be trained, practiced and tested rigorously.

    This is why accounting professional bodies such as ACCA and ICAEW continue to use exams as a primary assessment method, as they provide a standardised and objective measure of knowledge and skills. Exams help ensure that future professionals are not just good at looking up answers, but are also able to think critically, connect the dots, and make informed decisions independently.

    Moreover, the purpose of exams extends beyond evaluating academic knowledge; they also help students identify their weaknesses and develop critical skills. While in-person exams can be stressful and inflexible, they offer benefits beyond knowledge testing. They cultivate vital skills such as time management, organisation and resilience under pressure, key competencies for both interpersonal growth and employability.

    Many students shy away from exams because they struggle to perform well in a high-pressure, time-constrained environment with limited support. This may indicate a need to develop key competencies, such as time management and stress regulation, rather than suggesting that exams are inherently flawed.

    Traditionally, students were trained to master literacy skills — to read, write, and think critically. While exams may miss opportunities to develop other important skills such as teamwork, communication and leadership, removing exams altogether may also reduce opportunities for students to improve their academic literacy. Writing, in particular, requires a good understanding of content and the ability to think critically, skills that are often cultivated through exam preparation and performance.

    One of the most common arguments against exams is that they are not authentic and offer limited opportunities for skill development. According to Newman et al. (1998), assessment is considered authentic when it evaluates products or performances that hold meaning or value beyond mere academic success. Similarly, Wiggins (1989) defines authentic assessment as involving tasks that represent real-world challenges within a given discipline. These tasks are designed to mirror complexity, requiring depth over breadth.

    Clearly, a well-designed exam can be authentic when it provides opportunities for meaningful skill development. For example, incorporating case studies into exams allows students to engage in deeper learning, apply knowledge to real-world contexts, and strengthen academic literacy at the same time.

    After all, traditional exams, when thoughtfully designed, can play a valuable role in developing traditional literacy skills, including reading, writing and critical thinking, which remain essential in the age of AI.

    As AI tools increasingly streamline reading and writing tasks across the education system, reinforcing these foundational skills becomes even more important. Promoting reading and writing through assessment can help combat aliteracy — a growing issue where students are capable of reading but choose not to, often due to the influence of social media and digital distractions.

    I believe exams offer a rare opportunity and space for students to engage in undivided intellectual immersion, because exams create structured, distraction-free environments that demand focused engagement. They encourage deep reading, critical analysis and articulation without reliance on external assistance. Over time, such training can help counter aliteracy by reinforcing the value and interest of independent intellectual engagement.

    I embrace new technologies and innovative forms of assessment, but that doesn’t mean we should completely abandon traditional exams. Exams can and should coexist with other assessment methods, including those supported by AI, to enrich student learning. The purpose of assessment goes beyond assigning grades or preparing students for their first job; it is about equipping them for life in all its dimensions.

    While technologies will continue to evolve, essential skills such as reading, writing, and critical thinking will remain foundational. Therefore, students must be literate to effectively process information and use AI intelligently.

    Importantly, every assessment method has its advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, educators need to take a holistic approach to assessment design and policymaking. For example, using low-stakes, open-book exams can help reduce student stress while still supporting skill development. Additionally, providing tailored support for students with ADHD during exams can enhance their learning experience and ensure they are not placed at a disadvantage.

    Lastly, I hope this opinion piece encourages fellow colleagues to reflect before the new academic year begins. Rather than simply jumping on the AI bandwagon, we must remember the critical role we play in safeguarding our students’ futures. Our responsibility is to equip them with the life skills they need to thrive in an ever-evolving world.

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  • Rethinking our approach to maths anxiety

    Rethinking our approach to maths anxiety

    As higher education professionals, we encounter a wide spectrum of emotional responses to mathematics and statistics.

    This could vary from mild apprehension to teary outbursts, and often, it can also lead to complete avoidance of the subjects, despite their value in achieving success both in university and after.

    Behaviours such as procrastination can hinder student learning, and as such, it is imperative that students are taught to challenge these feelings.

    An analogy that we have used is fear of spiders – we may be likely to avoid places that house spiders, and in the same way, students may procrastinate or completely avoid maths-related tasks due to their “discomfort”.

    Additionally, cultural attitudes, gender, and past educational experiences can all influence how someone responds to mathematics.

    The term “maths anxiety” is commonly used to describe any negative emotion related to mathematics. However, when viewing it from a psychological viewpoint, we argue that there needs to be a distinction made between clinical anxiety and general apprehension.

    Most of us would feel worried if we were taking an exam that included mathematics or statistics – it is normal to feel some level of worry about being tested, and we can learn to manage this.

    Clinical anxiety, on the other hand, is more extreme, and significantly impairs the ability to manage daily tasks – it requires psychological support. By conflating these experiences, we run the risk of over-medicalising a typical reaction to potentially challenging material, and we might miss opportunities to provide appropriate support, or to help students to self-regulate their emotions.

    Various approaches have proven successful in our practices for dealing with worries.

    What works

    We’ve found that opening up the conversation about anxiety early on – creating a safe space where students can explore what it is, when it shows up, and how it affects them. With each new group, we try to start this discussion as soon as possible, framing it in broad terms to keep it inclusive and non-threatening. Students often respond well when asked to think about situations that make them feel nervous – things like sitting an exam, taking a driving test, or speaking in public.

    From there, we invite them to notice the physical and emotional effects anxiety has on them. Common responses include sweating, shortness of breath, feeling jittery or nauseous, difficulty concentrating, or an urge to get away. These are usually sensations they’ve experienced before, even if they haven’t named them. When we approach it this way – shared, grounded in real life, and without judgement—it tends to normalise the conversation. We’re always conscious of the potential for some students to feel overwhelmed by the topic, so we stay attuned and pause when needed, signposting to further support if things get too heavy.

    Asking students what they already do when they feel anxious helps too. Giving everyone a chance to reflect and share helps surface the small strategies – breathing deeply, taking a walk, positive self-talk – that they may not realise they’re using. It affirms that they do have tools, and that managing nerves is something within their control.

    Simply asking students how they feel about using maths or statistics in their studies can also help. More often than not, a few will admit to feeling nervous – or even anxious – which opens the door to normalising those feelings. From there, we can connect the strategies they already use in other situations to the challenges they face with maths, helping them build a toolkit they can draw on when the pressure mounts.

    Some strategies that students find helpful include mindful breathing, visualising a calming place, or even splashing cold water on the face to reset. Others involve filtering out negative messages that chip away at confidence, re-framing self-talk to be specific and encouraging – like swapping “I can’t do maths” for “I’ve learned before, I can learn again” – and, crucially, building skills and confidence through steady learning and practice.

    There may, however, be cases where a student’s anxiety is not assuaged by employing these techniques, and a level of clinical anxiety may be suspected, requiring further support from counsellors or other professionals. In these cases, ensuring the students are guided, even taken, to access the relevant support services is key. This may lead to requests for reasonable adjustments as well as prescribed treatments, thus enabling the student to face the challenge and hopefully emerge successfully on the other side.

    Prizes for all

    Of course, these are all interventions that are useful for students who are struggling with worries about maths – but there are also things we can do to support all of our students. Some students will be struggling quietly; some will have other learning differences that might impact on their ability to learn maths, such as ADHD.

    One approach we might consider is Universal Design for Learning, where we make learning accessible for all our diverse students, regardless of the specific issues that they might experience, or whether they tell us about those issues. Giving students choice in how they complete their assessments, allowing them access to resources or notes (open book) during test situations, and not imposing tight timescales on assessments can be one way to support students to achieve their best. Taking this approach also removes some of the administrative work involved in working out reasonable adjustments!

    Sometimes there are professional requirements that mean that such adjustments are not possible (for example, calculating doses in nursing where achieving 100% is a requirement), but often it can be helpful to consider what we are assessing. Do we need to assess a student’s ability to solve a maths problem from memory and under time pressure, or do we want to know that they can solve a problem they may encounter in a typical graduate role when they might be able to search how to approach it?

    Authentic assessment can be a useful tool for making maths learning and assessment less scary and more accessible.

    Differentiating between a regular level of apprehension and clinical anxiety will help us to be better placed to implement strategies to support students and staff in succeeding on their mathematical or statistical journey. This can begin at the curriculum design and development stage, extending beyond our work with individual students.

    Supportive relationships between learning development tutors, students and teaching staff enable us to implement tailored strategies for minimising maths anxiety. By working together, we can reframe maths learning to be seen as an opportunity for growth, and not something to fear.

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  • Weekend Reading: Rethinking the Cost of Higher Education – A Lecture Revisited

    Weekend Reading: Rethinking the Cost of Higher Education – A Lecture Revisited

    • This lecture was originally delivered by the Rt Hon John Denham MP, former Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills in Gordon Brown’s Government. He gave this lecture from Opposition in January 2014. More than eleven years later, we revisit his lecture to consider what lessons it holds for today’s higher education sector.

    At the RSA in 2014,  I tried to address the mounting challenges facing the higher education sector:  a system with stressed finances, eye-watering fees,  educationally not fit for purpose in some parts, and in which limited public funds were written off while incentivising the provision of a monochrome one-size fits all teen-focussed education.  The National Accounting rules which framed much of the technical financial analysis have now changed.

    Overseas student fees held the crisis away much longer than I expected, albeit at the cost of financial and reputational vulnerability, but it’s with us now. I’d argue that today, ministers face much the same issues that I discussed.  

    The lecture is clearly a provocation, not a plan, but its key tenets are valid. It is better to use what money you have to teach students and reshape the sector today than write off unjustifiable debts in the future. Ministers should have the courage to incentivise a greater diversity of provision, options for cheaper study, different ways of working and closer relations with employers. Unless a lot more money is to be found, some of these questions can’t be ducked.

    John Denham, March 2025

    RSA Lecture – The Cost of Higher Education

    Good evening.

    Thank you to Matthew for hosting the meeting, Alison for agreeing to respond, and you for coming. You may not agree with me tonight. But if I don’t challenge at least some current assumptions about how we fund and deliver higher education I shall have failed.

    I want to change the terms of the debate, not present a detailed plan for university education.

    What’s the problem?

    But I suppose the first question is, why bother? Isn’t everything going very well?

    UCAS figures show the largest ever number of admissions last September, there’s further progress, in widening participation, and even a small increase in free school meal students going to the 35 most selective universities.

    And the Chancellor is apparently so flush with money he can lift the cap on student numbers, funding an extra 60,000 a year.

    I’m sure researchers and the UCU will say it’s no bed of roses, but cash from new fees means university life has been a lot more congenial than life in local government or the NHS for the past three years.

    The private cost is eye-watering but haven’t the high fees been accepted by parents and students?

    The problem, of course, is that the whole system of university finance for English students is sliding slowly but surely off a cliff.

    •  The £9000 fee is declining in real value
    • Capital spending has been slashed, pushing more universities further into debt driven investment
    •  The science budget will have fallen by 20% in real terms by 2016 – undoing the huge impact of Labour’s ten year investment
    •  The system runs so hot that a small misjudgement about student numbers creates a huge hole in the BIS budget. So we have ministers arguing about whether to cut research or support for poorer students
    •  The NAO have highlighted the black hole of unrecoverable loans, including those to EU students
    •  The cost of debt cancellation– the so-called Resource Account Budgeting or RAB charge – is rising steadily.
    •  The Chancellor’s new expansion – apparently based on the same accounting principles as Merdle’s Bank – has many questions about its sustainability.

    Across universities you hear the same story. ‘We might get through the next few years. But it can’t go on like this for long’.

    We already have the world’s most expensive public university system yet most proposals for change are variations on the theme of asking graduates to pay even more.

    But that’s not the end of the bad news.

    Quality and relevance

    English universities have huge strengths, of course. Our international research reputation is outstanding; we remain a magnet for international students; there is much excellence in our teaching.

    But concerns about what parts of higher education deliver simply won’t go away. Despite improvements, many employers remain deeply critical of the employability of too many graduates. One quote is not evidence, but it’s not hard to find ones like this one:

    ‘Despite our best efforts we have come to the decision that we would prefer to be understaffed than hire poor-quality applicants,’ said Bryan Urbick, founder and CEO of the Consumer Knowledge Centre. ‘As the economy rebalances, we will need more highly-skilled employees, particularly for young people with science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) degrees, but businesses are struggling to recruit good graduates from the UK.’

    And

    ‘Strong overall performance on higher skills participation must not be allowed to mask the skills shortages already impacting upon key sectors of the economy, which point to a mismatch between supply and demand’ said Katja Hall, Policy Director at the CBI.

    47% of new graduates, and a third of those who graduated five years ago, don’t work in graduate jobs. They’re in debt and its not the reason many went to Uni in the first place.

    There’s some big questions here about the links between higher education, the economy and economic growth.

    Social Mobility

    Despite steady progress in widening participation we are still miles away from a genuinely meritocratic, lifelong higher education system. The change in the most selective institutions has been small and there has been a sharp fall in mature student applications and a collapse in part time student numbers. These are the routes which have previously allowed talented individuals to enter higher education later in life.

    Austerity

    And austerity has not gone away.

    £25bn of more cuts, says the Chancellor. Labour may not have signed up to those sums, but every pound will be closely scrutinised.

    As a country, we actually spend too little on higher education. But we can’t even open the case for more until we’ve scrutinised every current pound we spend.

    And that’s not just the public money.

    The cohort of students who started in September 2013 will pay back £7.8bn over the years ahead. You can’t ask people to pay sums like this if you can’t prove it will be well spent.

    Getting more from current spending is not alternative to higher investment. It’s the essential precursor to it.

    My aim tonight

    I will argue that of the £bns taxpayers spend on higher education, hardly anything is spent directly on teaching students.

    I’m going to ask a radical question – what would universities look like if the state actually spent all it could on teaching students things.

    I will argue that we have foolishly turned our backs on modes of higher education which, for the right students, would be more cost-effective and better tailored to the economy’s needs, and do more for real social mobility.

    I’ll ask what a more cost-effective university system would look like.

    I will argue that the £bns that graduates will pay are inflated by all sorts of costs which are not their responsibility, the system lacks transparency and which, despite all the talk of choice, is actually narrowing many of the options students used to enjoy.

    I’ll ask what a fairer, more diverse university system might look like.

    And finally, I will argue that current spending does far too little to foster the real partnerships with employers that would benefit students, business and the wider economy.

    I’ll ask how we could use taxpayers more effectively to boost recovery and growth.

    Taken together, I’ll show how these changes will widen student choice, reduce the costs of higher education and improve social mobility

    I want to change the terms of the debate, not present a detailed plan for university education.

    The independent policymaker faces many obstacles.

    BIS [The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills] doesn’t allow independent access to their higher education finance model so we have to rely on their crude ‘ready reckoner’ published some time ago. An updated version promised before Christmas arrived on Tuesday – too late for today. We have, for example, had to assume a RAB charge of 35%, not the 40% which now seems likely.

    I have drawn heavily on the incomparable Paul Bolton in the House of Commons Library. But I’ve asked Paul to make so many heroic assumptions and approximations that the responsibility for using the figures is mine, not his.

    Higher Education finance

    Let’s take a quick look at the public finance of higher education

    On the government’s figures, by 2015-16 (and ignoring for now the sketchy announcement in the Autumn Statement):

    •  Of the £6.7bn of tax-funded spending, just £700m will be spent directly on teaching grant
    •  Of the rest £4.2bn is spent on debt cancellation (RAB charges)
    •  £330m goes on supporting more disadvantaged students to successfully complete their courses, and £1.5bn goes on maintenance grants to low-income students.

    Taxpayers now spend £6 on debt cancellation for every £1 they spend on teaching students anything.

    Defenders of the current system will say I just don’t understand the system.

    It is fees that pay for teaching costs, they say. And that’s made possible by RAB charges which are a progressive policy which protects graduates from degrees which turn out to be of limited economic value.

    The reality of course is that RAB charges are not so much a progressive policy as a simple recognition of the political reality that you can’t get blood out of a stone.

    According to David Willetts, perhaps 50% of this September’s students will not repay their loans in full.

    Half of all today’s students will pay 9% of all their income above the repayment threshold for the next 30 years and they still won’t clear their debts. And that takes no account of bank loans, credit cards and any other debts that mount up while studying

    We do have to hope that the mind-broadening, growing up, parts of their degree are worth it, because economically it hardly looks a good deal for them, taxpayers or the wider society.

    The RAB charge was 28% under Labour’s fee system, a projected 32% when the new system was introduced, now ministers say it is 40% and many independent experts say it will be higher.

    It’s not just that rising RAB charges are a problem for the government and the public finances.

    Debt write off also forces up everyone’s fees by top-slicing money which could have been spent on teaching, so keeping fees down.

    So it’s equally true to say that every time the RAB charge goes up it means fewer and fewer successful graduates paying off the debts of more and more economically less successful graduates.

    Or to put it another way,’ if your son didn’t go to that unsuitable course at that weak university, my daughter could pay lower fees for her degree at her more prestigious college.’

    That may not be an issue in English politics today, but it will be.

    Ever rising fees will lead more and more students and parents to ask what and who they are paying for.

    I don’t know of any progressive principle which thinks it is a good idea to induce people, generally from lower income backgrounds, to take on huge loans, demand big payments, and then to tell them they don’t have to pay after all. It’s not how progressive parents bring up our children, and the state shouldn’t do it to them either.

    Of course, some people will die, fall ill, devote themselves to their children or do what I did and spend 18 years after graduation working in low paid jobs in the voluntary sector.

    But a sound, progressive, politically sustainable system would have loans sufficiently affordable that the great majority pay them in full. If we want wealthy graduates to pay more we should tax them fairly.

    The economic and political costs of a high fees policy

    If you look at HE funding again, something else may stand out.

    Look at how many elements were the consequence of introducing a high fee market system. They are either economically unavoidable, or politicians had to introduce them to allay public concerns about high fees.

    A high cost of debt cancellation is simply unavoidable, but the repayment threshold also reflects a political calculation.

    The £150m a year National Scholarship Programme which flared and died in just three years was otherwise known as the Save Nick Clegg’s Face fund.

    In one of the largest politically driven programmes, the Office of Fair Access requires universities charging more than £6000 to plough around £700m of their fee income into bursaries, fee remission and the like of little proven benefit. The cost-effective AimHigher scheme was scrapped by the coalition

    The maintenance grant was increased by Labour and again by the Coalition to offset criticism of fees – even though there is little logical connection between the two.

    Received wisdom is that this spending is politically untouchable.

    But we must dare to think differently. Crude politics has created too many bad policies in the past.

    Let’s start by taking the radical step of putting all this money into teaching. And then, put back, working from first principles, the programmes that are really needed.

    Positive feedback

    As you put more money into teaching the cost of fees comes down. As fees fall, RAB charges fall, and the % of debt repaid increases. So you plough these RAB savings back into teaching, fees fall, RAB charges come down, you put the money into teaching and so on. The effect is striking.

    In our model, which also builds in some other changes I’m going to outline, spending on teaching rises from £700m to £4800m – a seven- fold increase. The spending on debt cancellation falls from £4,200m to £2,200m. In other words we have transferred £2bn from debt cancellation into the education of students!

    My first aim was to see what happens if we put all public funding into teaching. It turns out it would nearly halve current fees.

    But I’ve explored other changes which, though they contribute to reducing the cost of fees further, are really there because they are inherently desirable.

    In my view our university system would be stronger if it offered more choice to students who cannot or do not want to spend three years full time studying for a degree; if it gave students more choices of ways to reduce their living costs; if it made it easier for employers to partner universities in the delivery of degrees; and if it freed up other resources for re-investment.

    Cutting fees and debt repayments will ease the burden on graduates. The more immediate problem for most students is surviving while they study.

    Recent NUS research shows a £7000 shortfall per year between student living costs and the maximum income from grants and maintenance loans.

    I don’t want to sound like a party hack but the term ‘cost of living crisis’ comes to mind here.

    There’s just no prospect of finding the sort of public money which could make a significant impact on student incomes. The only way is to give students more choice of less expensive modes of study, whether

    studying more intensively for a less time, mixing part-time and full time education, combining work and study, or studying from home.

    Yet we seem to be going in the opposite direction.

    A one size fits all university system?

    Even the most fervent advocates of Labour’s 50% target would surely be surprised that it has been achieved almost entirely through the most expensive mode of higher education – the three year degree studied away from home.

    Part time education is collapsing. The number of two year honours degrees has barely changed. Labour’s employer backed degrees have been dropped. Fewer mature students are applying.

    Higher education is becoming ever more a one size fits all approach.

    It is almost a rite of passage for young people, defended as much for the so-called ‘student experience’ as the quality of education.

    I wouldn’t knock it; I enjoyed it myself.

    But should our universities be so focussed on this single mode of study?

    No one suggests that Open University graduates do not have real degrees, even though they – by definition – eschew the entire ‘student experience’.

    There is second reason for challenging our ever growing reliance on the three year degree study away from home.

    Of all the OECD countries, the UK has the highest percentage of young graduates. And this was before the fall in mature and part time student applications. Today, 90% of full time English students at university are under 25.

    More than anywhere else in the OECD we have made higher education a one-shot deal, for young people to do as early as possible.

    What on earth have we done?

    Our schools system fails more than most in overcoming inequality and social disadvantage by the age of 18 or 19. Yet on top of this inequitable schools system we have imposed the youngest HE system in the world.

    It is is impossible for all young people to compete fairly in such a system.

    Now, I don’t think we should give up trying to get the Russell Group to take admissions seriously. We should support Alan Milburn’s efforts to open up the professions. We should challenge the abuse of interns.

    But for the foreseeable future, a genuine commitment to social mobility will require the construction of routes for the late developers, those who went to weak schools and those whose parents had low aspirations.

    So as part of my thought experiment I’ve looked at the role of more intensive degrees, studying from home and combining work and study.

    Two year degrees

    Two year degrees exist in both the public and private sector.

    The private University of Buckingham repeatedly tops the National Student Survey for student satisfaction.

    We can’t know the real demand for two year courses – current financial rules make it hard for public universities to introduce them. Research for Kaplan, albeit an interested party, suggests an untapped market and good awareness of the pros and cons of intensive study.

    It certainly looks as though some students could study more intensively.

    David Willetts says that students study 5 hours a week less than in the 1960s. On average, students study for 30 hours a week for 30 weeks of the year.

    The Higher Education Policy Institute and Which study highlighted variations between similar courses in different institutions.

    And according to HEPI, EU students on the Erasmus programme find our courses less intensive than in other European countries.

    I have suggested that 30% of courses – half of them employer co-sponsored – should be taught intensively.

    Suggestions of two year degrees always bring out fears of dumbing down. But given their potential to save money both for students and the taxpayer, knee jerk responses are irresponsible unless soundly evidence based.

    In my model I’ve assumed a two year intensive degree – say 39 weeks of study a year– would cost 20% less to deliver than a three year degree. This is based on both public and private sector charges.

    But I’ve also set out to graduate the same number of students – three two year cohorts every six years rather than two three year cohorts if you like.

    So at any one time, teaching costs are about 7% less than at present, and there are 10% fewer students in the system.

    But I’ve also designed the system so that overall university income remains unchanged.

    So we have fewer students at any one time, lower costs, and the same resources. Better student-staff ratios. Less pressure on facilities. New options for research time and staff sabbaticals

    There is no reason at all why standards should fall.

    The key thing here is the use of intensive periods of study.

    Someone in work could work four intensive half years over a four year period. Someone else might do a couple of part-time years at a local college followed by an intensive full year at another university.

    Intensive study may not be for everyone. It will require commitment and a maturity of approach. In fact, perfect for the somewhat older student with work experience who needs a route into higher education but neither wants nor can afford a leisurely three year degree.

    ‘Studying from home’

    In our model, the public finance effect of more students studying from home is relatively small and not enough to justify taking choice away.

    My real motive in raising this issue is to challenge the lazy assumption that it does not matter if vast numbers of students have to leave home to study a suitable course. If anything, the current competitive regime has forced more universities to trawl a national market, not their more local communities.

    The effect is to impose quite avoidable costs on students which inevitably hit the poorest hardest. A new social divide is opening between those students who can only afford to study from home and those whose family gives them the choice to study away.

    We should give students a real choice to study from home because it is much cheaper and is the only realistic way of bridging the gap between the maintenance system and the real costs of studying.

    I’ve assumed that 60% of students might choose to study from home if they could.

    We can’t make students study from home. Many couldn’t for personal or geographical reasons.

    But we are a densely populated largely urban society with many universities; there is a network of FE/HE colleges already delivering respected degrees; it should be possible to offer the vast majority of students a real, quality, choice of courses within reach of their own homes.

    It is a scandal that, too often, that choice does not exist and universities in the same locality barely talk to each other.

    I’ve no illusions about how challenging this is.

    On the one hand, it would be big cultural shift in the way many young people and their parents see university education.

    On the other, it would be an even bigger cultural challenge to universities.

    It would actually mean – heaven forbid –suggesting that they sit down together at local or sub-regional level; Russell Group members and Million+; Alliance and GuildHE, to actually cooperate and collaborate on the delivery of courses. Real flexibility of study would enable students to study mutually recognised credits at universities within their locality.

    Some may think this is where my thought experiment breaks down completely!

    But shouldn’t we challenge universities to change their insular attitudes?

    Employer sponsored degrees

    Finally let’s look at the end product of all this.

    Of course, university education is not all about getting a job; etc; etc.

    But, you know, for many students the idea of getting a decent job is probably in there somewhere.

    The ONS figures tell us that nearly 50% of new graduates, and a third of those who graduated five years ago, don’t work in graduate jobs. Things have got steadily worse during the recession, but they were not great before the banking crisis.

    The figures don’t prove we are educating too many graduates. They do show that producing more graduates doesn’t automatically increase the demand for graduates – the drivers for that lie in research, development, innovation and the incentives for long term business investment.

    But they probably also tell us that employers are not wrong when they say many graduates lack the employability which would make employers to want them in graduate jobs.

    ‘One way to address this is to develop more partnership-based provision, with greater levels of business involvement in colleges and universities, as well as boosting apprenticeships. But the market in ‘learn-while-you-earn’ models – such as higher apprenticeships and more flexible degree programmes like part-time study – is underdeveloped.’

    CBI Tomorrow’s growth: New routes to higher skills (2013)

    So my final proposal is to subsidise employers to put their employees – current employees or potential students they recruit – through university. I’ve aimed for 50,000 a year – that’s half the total number of intensive two-year degrees.

    I would base this on the workforce development programme I introduced at DIUS [Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills] which after just three years was creating 20,000 places a year with employers paying wages and an average of £3000 towards the course costs. I’m not proposing a rigid system. We already have some companies, like JLR at Warwick, who pay the full fee costs. Others could not pay much at all. It’s the principle that matters.

    Employers and universities would work together to design the right course. Big companies can do it for themselves. Smaller companies will need to work together, but that may be a real strength if employers, perhaps under the umbrella of the Local Economic Partnerships, come together to shape provision in local universities.

    Bringing it together

    I have looked at four changes.

    • We put as much money as possible into teaching.
    •  We use public and private contributions more effectively by encouraging more intensively taught degrees
    • We ensure that more students can minimise the cost of study by providing a genuine choice of quality courses within reach of home, and that there are more routes for older students
    •  And we incentivise new collaboration between employers and universities.

    A brief financial overview

    It may be helpful to run back over the key changes this makes to HE finance

    These tables will repay a longer look when I publish this lecture, but they’ll give some idea of what is going on.

    The approximate financial impact shows how we have switched resources into teaching and away from RAB charges. By putting money from widening participation and maintenance grants into teaching, and by shortening courses, with more students studying at home, and employer backed courses, we make an initial savings of £2.3bn. The second and third round impact on RAB charges releases an additional £1.2bn.

    The next slide shows that we have kept public sector spending on higher education constant – at £6.730bn.

    And the next slide on institutional steady state income shows that the total university income also remains constant – allowing for rounding errors – at £9.430bn.

    Institutional income remains the same even though we have more students on cost-effective intensive courses and fewer students in the system at any one time. That’s why, as I mentioned earlier, student-staff ratios improve and there are resources to invest in teaching quality.

    Not shown almost £700m OFFA tells universities to spend on widening participation. With fees slashed, the case for such central dictation falls away. If you end this requirement, the money available to universities rises to £10.1bn.

    We shouldn’t overstate the case.

    One of the quirks of my model is that, while graduate numbers remain constant in the first few years, overtime they would decline.

    Clearly, we don’t want this to happen. The first call for more investment would be on the spare capacity built into our model and the second on the current OFFA spending. The next model will address this but here is more than enough money in the system to deal with it.

    Investment in widening participation by the most selective universities remains essential. But even so, I believe substantial sums could be freed up for research.

    The model has considerable flexibility.

    If you feel I have pushed for too many intensive courses, aimed for too many home students, been over optimistic about employer contributions, or the student

    Estimated institutional steady state income directly connected to full time English undergraduates: higher loans fully replace grants for low income students, and 15% premium

    premium is too low, then we can draw on these funds to adjust the system or make relatively modest changes to the level of the student entitlement and fees.

    I’ve pushed change as far as I can – partly to show what could be achieved, and partly because, frankly, I think it is essential to free up resources for research if we possibly can.

    We could deliver this system in different ways, but I think we need a fresh start; as clear, transparent and fair as it can be. So let’s make a radical break with both the current system and that left by Labour.

    The student entitlement

    I suggest that every student accepted on an honours degree course attracts a flat rate student entitlement which goes to their university. Flat rate, irrespective of institution, course, length of course or current fee level charged.

    So, you take the £4.7bn we have now allocated to teaching. You top slice, of course, the extra money required to support science, engineering and other high cost courses. And then you divide the rest amongst the students.

    In the simplest form, this produces a student entitlement of £14,800 per student.

    The fee now payable is the difference between the current cost of a degree and the value of the entitlement. It would be financed and paid back as at present.

    The total fee cost of the average three year degree – and remember that in my model the great majority of degrees, 70% – would be three year degrees or longer – the average total would be less than £10,000 – about the levels fees were at when Labour left office.

    And the total fee cost of a full cost university – currently £27k – would fall to about £12,000.

    The total fee cost for a two-year degree would be less than £5000.

    For those on employer sponsored degrees of course, there would be no fees and they would receive a wage as well.

    There are many different routes through this system. But this example – a three year degree studied away from home (so the most expensive option) – show how total debt falls, total payment falls, and the % repaying in full increases.

    The second example is a two-year degree – but again, assuming study away from home, so the most expensive choice – shows an even more marked difference.

    Students get a lot of choice. Money follows the student.

    But it is an entitlement, not a voucher.

    It is high time we set aside the childish fad which said that every public service reform had to be expressed in the banal and vacuous language of consumer capitalism.

    If my proposal were adopted it would be because the people of England had decided to establish an entitlement for their children to go to university, and that’s how it should be described.

    Support for low income students

    Significant fee reductions come from investing in teaching, rather than the political and economic costs of a high fee system.

    But some students from non-traditional backgrounds do need more support to complete their courses successfully. Students from poorer homes do have to live while they study. So we need to ensure these needs are still met.

    I doubt that the OFFA-mandated money has much effect. Bursaries may shift students between institutions, not get them to apply in the first place. Fee remission is simply inequitable in a system of graduate repayments. Much of this money could be better spent either on teaching or on research.

    The needs of students who need extra support are real as Million+ have argued. We could simply retain the current widening participation spending or student opportunity as it is now called.

    But I would rather create an additional student entitlement, a student premium if you like, which would clearly make disadvantaged students financially more attractive to universities. My model builds in a 15% enhancement to the student entitlement.

    My model replaces the student grant with a loan. By doing so we ensure that the low income student has just as much money to live on as at present.

    While their maintenance debt will go up, their fees have fallen dramatically, and it is the total debt – fees and maintenance – which determines how much graduates have to pay back.

    In all the modelling we have done, low-income students will end up owing less money and paying back less money on every single mode of study and length of course. But still have as much to live on while they study.

    This is such a radically different picture to the one we have today – lower fees, lower debt, lower payments, as many graduates, and new money for research and teaching – that you might be forgiven for thinking there is some sleight of hand. Mistakes aside, there isn’t.

    All I have done is ask a few basic questions about using money better.

    What George Osborne should have done

    In the Autumn Statement George Osborne announced that he would put money from the sale of the student loans book into creating 60,000 additional student places. He says it will cost £700m a year.

    There’s too little information to incorporate it into our modelling.

    But all other things being equal, if George had invested £700m in this system, he could have created as many additional graduates, at lower cost, and had money left over to invest in teaching quality or research.

    A few closing thoughts

    I’ve packed a lot into a short lecture, so I want to allow time for Alison’s response and your questions.

    But in closing, let me touch on a few other issues

    Firstly, we have cut private repayments by £2.4bn without reducing university income. I wanted to lower the private cost of a degree.

    But this does also substantially reduce payments by the wealthiest graduates; would that be fair?

    The option is there to introduce a free standing graduate tax. A 1% tax above the threshold would produce £1bn a year after 20 years and £2.5bn in the longer term. It would take time to start as you wouldn’t want anyone to be paying more than the current 9%. But it soon be generating useful funds.

    My model doesn’t depend on it. But it may be part of the longer term answer of generating new, hypothecated income for our universities.

    Second, no one is going to price a part-time degree higher than a full time degree, so part-time degree costs will fall. So we can trigger a renaissance in part time education.

    Thirdly, you would really want to integrate these reforms with higher level apprenticeships and the real problems of taught masters. We can at least see the analogies between higher level apprenticeships and employer co-sponsored degrees, and it’s worth noting that an integrated masters degree, with intensive teaching, would cost students less than a current three year degree.

    Fourth, It won’t be long before the most research intensive universities – come along and ask ‘can we put our fees up now please?’. This is indeed more politically feasible than under the current model.

    But we shouldn’t rush into it. We’ve raised university spending by £700m, largely by reducing obligations on the more expensive universities. So we need to know more about the impact of these reforms on different types of university.

    But, in any case, tough conditions would have to be met. We would need a self-limiting clawback mechanism of the type proposed by Browne; universities would have to take responsibility for any additional fee loans and write-offs; they would have to demonstrate collaboration with other local universities on courses and mutual recognition of credits; and they would have to deliver progress, not aspiration, on widening participation.

    Fifth, I’ve not looked at implementation. But I would note that if we started now we could take advantage of the current demographic decline and reduce the number of three year degrees more than the proportion of students taking them. We could build demand for intensive courses, beginning by ring-fencing money for the growth in employer co-sponsored degrees.

    Several people have already asked whether this is about to become Labour policy.

    I certainly hope Labour will look at this, but I hope others will too.

    The modelling is crude, the assumptions broad, the approximations considerable. It’s not a detailed plan for higher education and it’s in no state to go into anyone’s manifesto!

    We’ve had enough damage done by enthusiastic politicians working on the back of envelopes already.

    Wouldn’t it be good if BIS now took this concept, put it in their more sophisticated models, and informed a genuine public debate? But that would take Ministers who don’t feel personally or ideologically wedded to the current system.

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    Rethinking Your Student Population

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  • Exporting Degrees, Importing Responsibility: Rethinking Careers Support for International Graduates

    Exporting Degrees, Importing Responsibility: Rethinking Careers Support for International Graduates

    By Professor Amanda J. Broderick, Vice-Chancellor & President at the University of East London.

    It wasn’t so long ago that universities across the UK were rallying to preserve the graduate visa route, a vital lifeline for international students and higher education. When the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) concluded there was no significant abuse of the pathway and recognised its immense value, the sector exhaled a collective sigh of relief. Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) underscored this conclusion: 80% of international students leave the UK within five years of arrival.

    But amidst this hard-fought victory, a critical oversight emerged. In our defence of the graduate visa, we inadvertently highlighted the transient nature of international students in the UK, risking the perception of them as only economic contributors rather than showcasing the profound, enduring responsibilities we owe to them as alumni – and their broad value. The reality is, universities have a far greater role to play in empowering international graduates to thrive – not just within the UK, but globally.

    A Broader Vision for Graduate Support

    International students arrive with diverse ambitions. Some envision building careers in the UK, while others plan to apply their skills back home. Regardless, the implicit promise of higher education remains the same: their degree must unlock opportunities and enable them to succeed, whether they are in Hyderabad, Atlanta, Cairo or Athens. But how effectively are we fulfilling this promise?

    We are getting better as a sector at having frank conversations about support for international students while at university – HEPI and Uoffer Global’s recent report on integration challenges facing Chinese students by Pippa Ebel is a good example of this. But as these students graduate, their needs evolve.

    Economic growth is the mantra of the UK government, but this will remain a distant dream if we do not focus on global skills as part of the solution. Business and industry are competing internationally for talent and innovation, and as such, global employability and enterprise are an integral part of the education agenda.

    To truly fulfil our responsibilities, universities must look beyond the campus experience and address the evolving, global needs of their international alumni. This involves building a bridge between academic learning and the economic, cultural, and professional landscapes of not only the UK but our alumni’s home countries too.

    UEL’s Global Employability Model

    At the University of East London (UEL), this principle is central to our mission. My recent visit to India for the UEL 2024 India Summit offers a case study in how universities can redefine global graduate support. With over 8,000 Indian students in 2024, UEL’s commitment to fostering long-term success is clear. The Summit – spanning Chennai, Hyderabad, and Vadodara – brought together leaders from academia, government, and industry to explore partnerships that align a UEL education with India’s economic and societal needs.

    A key outcome of the Summit was the launch of the UEL India Industry Advisory Board. This pioneering collaboration between alumni, industry leaders, and academic experts provides strategic direction on UEL’s curriculum development and enterprise initiatives aligned to India’s workforce demands, while also offering alumni robust post-graduation support. Another important engagement took place at T-Works Innovation Centre in Hyderabad, where we worked with international stakeholders on the practical steps UEL can take to bridge the gap between academia and industry. The result: stronger industry ties, better-prepared graduates, and increased support for retaining high-value talent, reducing brain drain and supporting local innovation.

    These efforts are not isolated. UEL has long been engaged in projects that foster international employability, including partnerships with Tamil Nadu’s government, where we hosted a hackathon and work placement initiative for computer science and engineering students. This initiative resulted in work placements for alumni based in Chennai, opening up career pathways in sectors such as robotics and AI.

    UEL’s forward-thinking approach also extends beyond such events – our international employability offer begins during a student’s degree, with Careers in India mentoring panels and an employer webinar series, opportunities for students to connect with industry professionals and gain insights into fields such as business, HR product design, and digital marketing in India. This support does not finish after graduation; our offer to global alumni includes post-graduation employability boosters, lifelong access to career support portals with free resources, and business incubation and acceleration.

    Perhaps most importantly, we also offer a programme of peer-to-peer mentoring, facilitated by our India alumni chapter and bolstered by our Industry Advisory Board, creating a supportive network that fosters continuous learning and career advancement. Unlike many universities, where alumni engagement is viewed primarily through a philanthropic lens, at UEL it is integral to our mission of creating real-world impact. By empowering our international alumni to ‘pay it forward’, we generate a virtuous cycle of mentorship, opportunity, and success. Through our alumni’s success, we amplify the value of a UK degree, not just for the individual, but for their home countries and the global economy too.

    Rethinking Metrics of Success

    Alongside universities’ own work to ensure they support global graduate employability, we must also look to the role of other stakeholders in this endeavour. As policymakers and universities work together to shape the future of higher education, we must advocate for more nuanced metrics to capture the true global success of our graduates. The Graduate Outcomes Survey (GOS), while valuable, is insufficient to capture the global impact of UK higher education. Refined metrics that capture the contributions of international students to both the UK and their home countries could better highlight the profound influence of UK higher education on a global scale. This data is critical not only for refining university strategies but also for safeguarding the UK’s reputation as a global leader in higher education.

    David Willetts’ recent report with the Resolution Foundation also raises issues with the GOS, pointing out that ‘many graduates are on a long and not necessarily straightforward route to a career,’ and that ‘assessing where they are at 15 months is premature’. This is surely even more pertinent for many of our international graduates, whose circumstances may not be accurately captured by a one-size-fits-all survey. Our support for these students must be based on their specific contexts as much as possible – including how we measure success.

    Above all, the responsibility to support international graduates does not end at graduation. The world is changing, and the future workforce demands new skills and global collaboration. By supporting international graduates throughout their careers, we help them not only succeed but also lead the way in shaping the jobs the world needs tomorrow. In partnership with business, government, and stakeholders beyond, we can ensure that our international graduates are equipped to thrive in a rapidly evolving global economy – both for their own success and for the benefit of communities worldwide.

    At UEL, we are committed to this vision. By nurturing a cycle of mentorship and opportunity, we aim to empower our alumni to transform their communities and industries. Their success is our success – and a testament to the enduring value of UK HE. It’s time for the sector to embrace its role as a global enabler, ensuring that every graduate not only thrives but becomes a beacon of the UK’s educational excellence around the world.

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  • Rethinking the value of internationalisation in higher education

    Rethinking the value of internationalisation in higher education

    Yesterday, we published a piece by SOAS Vice-Chancellor Adam Habib and Lord Dr. Michael Hastings, Chair of the SOAS Board of Trustees, on equitable transnational partnerships. In today’s piece, Dana Gamble, Policy Manager (Skills, Innovation and International) at GuildHE and Dr Esther Wilkinson, Director of Innovation and Learning at Royal Agricultural University and Chair of the GuildHE International Network, look again at international partnerships and how institutions can be proactive and productive on the international stage.

    It is not news that the higher education sector’s relationship with international activity is strained, from recruiting students to delivering research and innovation partnerships with institutions overseas. While significant financial pressures have built up through institutional reliance on international student fees, this is far from the only headwind the sector currently faces on international delivery. Recent political motivations and wider geopolitical factors have contributed to policy churn on visa policies and delayed, or scrapped, funding arrangements such as Horizon Europe and the European Regional Development Fund. Ultimately, this landscape has led institutions to prioritise developing short-term partnerships to solve long-term problems. These forces combined are affecting the UK’s global reputation as a competitive destination for education and research.

    Looking back to inform the future

    It is important to reflect and scrutinise how we got here. In a context where the UK has the lowest levels of public spending on tertiary education in the OECD, the UK’s higher education institutions have strategically used international activity to fill financial shortfalls. Whether that might be international student fees to fill deficits in domestic teaching and research income or transnational delivery to increase income without the overheads, these interventions have typically been siloed ventures designed specifically to fill gaps.

    With this approach running out of steam for many, institutions are turning the dial towards focusing on responsible, holistic and trusted partnerships with international institutions that contribute to multiple, mutual aims. This approach, in the long term, should stimulate a steadier international partnership environment that does not rely on quick-fix activity to shoulder the UK’s funding deficits. While many higher education institutions have embraced this type of internationalisation, specialist and vocational institutions often already excel in this area, particularly when creating strong, skills-based, and mutually beneficial partnerships due to their strong links with industry and communities.

    Specialist and vocationally-focused institutions have international reach and relevance

    These institutions often operate in sectors where local and global contexts are deeply intertwined. Whether addressing global environmental challenges, healthcare crises, or creative and technological innovation, a responsible international partnership should consider not only the exchange of knowledge but also the socio-economic and environmental implications of that exchange.

    By focusing on real-world skills and sector-specific expertise, these institutions bring a practical dimension to international collaborations that go beyond traditional learning, innovation and research, offering valuable lessons on how to engage globally to tackle economic and social issues with purpose.

    RAU shows how holistic international collaborations can deliver impact

    The GuildHE member, the Royal Agricultural University (RAU), has a long history of establishing, nurturing and successfully developing long-term strategic partnerships. Agriculture, climate change and food security are global issues that require international collaboration to address critical challenges across rural development, land management and sustainable farming practices.

    RAU has multiple partners including in China, Uzbekistan, the United Arab Emirates (Sharjah) and Ukraine. It is one of the most trusted UK education providers in China and has been awarded the highest accolade by the Chinese Ministry of Education for its provision, the only specialist UK university to have this status in China. In Uzbekistan, RAU is a founding partner of the International Agricultural University, an institution jointly established with the Uzbek Government to ensure students have access to high-quality education to contribute to the economic, social, and cultural development of the country. RAU’s research, training, exchanges, and teaching partnerships with Sumy National Agrarian University in Ukraine have steadily built maturity. The partnership has led various international projects such as the evaluation of the damage to Ukrainian soil due to the current conflict, which has helped ensure the long-term viability of the agricultural economy in the country. RAU has worked to support Sharjah in establishing the University of Al Dhaid, enabling capacity building, development and delivery of education in sustainable agriculture, a feature of RAU’s ability to be flexible and agile due to its size.

    RAU takes particular pride in the breadth and depth of its global relationships, with a synergistic and strategically aligned approach. Through such broad, multifaceted collaborations, RAU provides expertise and knowledge to help develop global agricultural sectors while enriching the educational experience of its students. As demonstrated in this example, vocational and specialist institutions are making particular efforts to establish, maintain and refresh international partnerships for longer-term benefits, focusing on multi-pronged international collaboration, enhancing cross-cultural understanding, and driving global innovation.

    Expanding international partnerships takes work but can pay dividends

    The internationalisation of higher education will always be shaped by global politics; education, work and skills policy; and the financial state of the sector. To reach stable waters through these domestic and global pressures, higher education institutions need to re-focus on their institutional strengths and start becoming proactive internationally. This can only be achieved, however, through supportive government policy that does not continue to discourage the sector from investing in sustainable, long-term and effective partnerships. This predominantly means establishing financial security for the full diversity of the sector to protect the foundation of specialist industries, and the future of the public sector and student choice – both domestically and internationally.

    Additionally, reform is needed to the research and innovation system so it purposefully generates economic and social impact for all sectors, and on all scales. And finally, the development of properly-resourced, effective student and staff exchange programmes is needed to provide equality of opportunity for students at every institution, with intention.

    With this government’s plans to link immigration policy more closely to skills policy and labour market pressures through Skills England, as well as the ambitions of the industrial strategy, higher education needs to be acknowledged as the future of economic growth through its role in the development of the workforce, diffusion of applied research and as leaders of global innovation. With this critical role, a holistic approach to partnerships will be vital to the effective implementation of these new strategies, and in helping to maintain the UK’s reputation as a global leader in learning, innovation and research.

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  • Rethinking the Financial Challenge of English Universities

    Rethinking the Financial Challenge of English Universities

    By Adam Habib, Vice-Chancellor at SOAS University of London, and Lord Dr. Michael Hastings of Scarisbrick CBE, Chair of the Board of Trustees at SOAS.

    The business model of English higher education is broken. We are not sure that this simple fact is sufficiently understood by all stakeholders in higher education. Do not mistake us: we all recognise the serious financial crises that most English universities are confronting. But this is not the same as understanding its causal features and what to do about it. The latest financial report from the Office for Students (OfS), released in mid-November, suggests 72% of English universities will be in deficit by the end of the academic year if they continue as is. It does not suggest much about how to address it. In fact, it does not even ask why the other 28% of universities are not in deficit. Is this because of their historical endowments or their specific student profile, or are they doing something the others are not?

    But the OfS is not the only stakeholder reluctant to ask the hard questions: how we got here and what to do about it. This malady afflicts almost all other stakeholders. Let’s begin with the basics. Almost three decades ago, the British government committed to massifying education and ensuring that at least 50% of their school-leaving population had the privilege of going to university. The challenge was how to pay for it. They introduced fees, first as a small proportion of the actual cost in 2006, and then to cover the entire cost in 2012 (at least for Business degrees, Humanities and the Social Sciences). The popular backlash this generated, especially since almost all universities rushed to implement the maximum permitted fee, led the politicians to subsequently avoid increasing fees in line with inflation. The net effect was that within a few years, the actual cost of university education outstripped the fees.

    The solution followed by most universities was to increase international fees and their intakes of foreign students. To attract more of these students, universities borrowed heavily, built shiny new facilities, expanded their pastoral services and grew their student numbers. This was assisted in part by the removal of student number caps on home students. Costs increased, and to cover these, more income was required, which led to even higher international fees and more foreign students.

    All higher education stakeholders were complicit in this. The Government initially supported this solution because it obviated the need for more government subsidies and enabled foreign currency earnings. Vice-chancellors and higher education executives deluded themselves in thinking that the international postgraduate masters students came to the UK universities because of their institutions’ research reputations, even though survey after survey demonstrated that these students were increasingly attracted by the prospect of employment prospects and the post-study visa. Unions, both academic and professional service ones, acquiesced given that these international fees enabled higher salaries and subsidised greater research time for academics. There was even broader public support as it contained the fees for domestic students.

    Until of course, a new breed of ethnically oriented right-wing politicians mobilised on the chauvinistic instinct of there being too many foreigners in Britain. This first manifested in Brexit, then China and subsequently all foreigner-bashing, and finally visa restrictions on dependents. The net effect was a dramatic fall in applications and enrolment of international students, with the ensuing financial crisis of universities in the UK. A positive spin-off of this state of affairs is that almost all stakeholders now recognise the flimsy fiscal foundation of universities. The negative feature is that it still has not generated an honest reflection and behaviour on the part of all stakeholders or a sufficiently deep deliberation on the business model of higher education in the UK and what to do about it.

    Take, for instance, the stance of government. The Secretary of State for Education announced in the House of Commons on 4 November 2024 the first university fee increase for undergraduate students in eight years. Yet the Chancellor had increased the Employer National insurance a few days before from 13.8 to 15 percent. The net effect is a further loss of £59 million for universities in the UK from the 2025/26 academic year.

    Neither is the debate in universities more imaginative on what to do about the financial crisis and the business model of higher education. University vice-chancellors and Universities UK have recognised the need to revert to greater public funding for higher education, although there is a broad recognition that this is an unlikely solution in the near future given the fiscal crisis of the state. They have suggested through individual vice-chancellor advocacies that universities would require the financial equivalence of £12,000 fees, but again, almost all recognise the political challenge of achieving this during a cost-of-living crisis. The reluctant fallback back? A retreat to international student fees by retracting or reforming the visa restrictions, thereby allowing for further increases in income from foreign students.

    But this is just not a feasible solution for the long term. Higher education in the UK has priced itself out for ordinary international students looking solely for a higher education qualification. The only rationales for postgraduate master’s students accessing UK universities, given their high-cost structure, are either post-study employment or the learning of a specific qualification not available in alternative higher education settings. The former is increasingly becoming politically unfeasible, and the latter is not a sufficiently large market to financially sustain British universities.

    This is in addition to the moral and commercial challenges of this business model. As we have suggested elsewhere, there should be serious objections to this model, which is effectively directed towards sucking out resources from countries far more impoverished than the UK, to essentially cross-subsidise domestic citizens. Moreover, it accelerates the brain drain, weakening institutional capacities and human capabilities in the majoritarian world at precisely the moment when such societies require an enhancement of capabilities to address the local manifestations of transnational challenges like climate change, pandemics, food insecurity and war.

    Where to go from here, then? First, there is an urgent need for an honest conversation led by government without any smoke and mirrors on the fiscal latitude available to it and the consequences thereof for the financing of higher education. Second, there is a need for a thorough reflection on what has fiscally worked, and what has not in the recent past on the management and executive stewardship of universities in the UK. Third, there is a need for an honest discussion in universities on the fiscal viability of excessively small classes and unduly low staff-student ratios, 40% research time for all teaching and research contracts, and the importance of institutional differentiation in mandates and how these should speak to the former two elements. Finally, we need to think through the limits of cross-subsidising from international student fees and what new opportunities are opening up globally for fulfilling our institutional mandates.

    One opportunity, that has not been sufficiently explored by British universities, is how to assist in the education and training of hundreds of millions of young people in the majoritarian world. This is an urgent necessity not only for the economic development of these societies but also for enabling societies across the world to manage the transnational challenges of our time, without which we may not survive as a human species. Obviously, this will not be possible on the existing cost structures or business models of higher education. But partnering with universities in the Global South, involving the joint development of curricula, co-teaching and co-assessment, could bring down cost structures of higher education. This could then feed into more reasonable fees being charged, thereby opening up new higher education markets for British universities. Cost structures could also be reconsidered in relation to scale. The more students there are within a program, limited to pedagogical requirements, the more cost per student is reduced, and the more competitive fees can become. New technologies involving online teaching and global classrooms, many of which were pioneered for our own students during the Covid-19 Pandemic, can make this equitable transnational teaching even more feasible.

    Some forms of transnational teaching are already underway in UK universities. But these often take the form of online learning, overseas campuses and franchise models of higher education, all of which are only directed at obviating the financial challenges of British universities. While we would be reluctant to take rigid positions against these models – they may indeed be relevant in certain contextual circumstances – we do hold that the equitable partnership model identified above holds the pedagogical benefit of enabling learning that is both globally grounded and locally relevant. It also does not pit the financial security of British universities against that of universities of the majoritarian world. Essentially, these equitable teaching partnerships can pioneer one element of a new business model that enhances collaboration and mutual benefit for universities in the UK and the majoritarian world.

    Such a model of higher education could also become part of the soft power arsenal of the UK. Increasingly, government has broached the idea of a global Britain. This would be a Britain recognised as a collaborative partner of other nations, enabling them to achieve their national objectives, while enabling itself to be economically competitive and socially responsive to both its own citizens and its international obligations. An equitable orientation to its higher education system would assist this strategic national agenda.

    We are by no means suggesting that equitable transnational learning should replace all other forms of teaching in UK higher education. This would be unrealistic and, frankly, would violate the responsibility of British universities to be nationally responsive. Instead, we recommend that in the pursuit of a financially sustainable higher education system, a diverse set of income strategies – subsidy, domestic fees, international fees, ODL, executive education and equitable transnational educational partnerships – is required. This final strategy not only opens up a new higher education student market at a different price point but also enables us to square our imperative to be financially sustainable with our commitment to be socially and globally responsive.

    The strategic challenge of managing higher education institutions in the contemporary era is the management of tensions between competing imperatives. It also requires thinking outside the box, innovating and finding new markets, and servicing these at new price points, while continuing to meet the social obligations implicit in the mandate of universities. This is what we believe is sometimes missing from the deliberations on making British universities financially sustainable. The debate can only be enriched and the recommendations made more robust if we are prepared to think beyond what we are comfortable with.

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