Tag: Rise

  • The Rise of Degree Apprenticeships

    The Rise of Degree Apprenticeships

    Degree apprenticeships, programs that let students earn a college degree while gaining paid work experience, are a fast-growing model in education and workforce development. But new research from the think tank New America finds access to them remains limited and uneven.

    A report released this month by New America’s Center on Education & Labor found that about 350 institutions nationwide offered nearly 600 degree apprenticeship programs integrated with associate, bachelor’s or master’s degrees, preparing students for 91 different occupations.

    Among institutions that offer them, degree apprenticeships are concentrated in a small number of fields, with K–12 teaching and registered nursing accounting for the largest share.

    Ivy Love, a senior policy analyst at New America, said degree apprenticeships are especially valuable for states facing teacher or nurse shortages.

    “These are two rapidly growing professional areas for degree apprenticeships,” Love said. “There is an opportunity to make these paths into these professions more accessible.”

    Degree apprenticeships combine paid work experience, on-the-job training, employer-aligned classroom instruction and recognized credentials with an associate, bachelor’s or master’s degree. Learners participate in work-based learning while completing coursework—known as related technical instruction—at a college or university that aligns with what they are learning on the job.

    These programs are emerging at a moment of growing skepticism about the value of a college degree. In New America’s Varying Degrees 2025 survey, just 52 percent of adults—a slim majority—said a postsecondary credential is the minimum level of education they believe a close family member needs to ensure financial security.

    At the same time, New America found that earning a postsecondary degree remains the surest path to economic stability and family-supporting wages. In 2024, households with two adults needed to earn more than $100,000 a year to support two children—a level of pay that typically requires at least an associate degree, the report said.

    Lancy Downs, a senior policy analyst at New America, said one story that stood out in the report came from an administrator at an Alabama community college where more than half the students attend part-time. The administrator explained that this is because school is optional, but work is not.

    “We see [degree apprenticeships] as an effective way to upskill people into higher-paying jobs with more upward mobility,” Downs said. “They also help bring more people into professions well suited for this model, allowing students to earn a paycheck, attend school and take on minimal debt at the same time.”

    The findings: The report found that programs that prepare K–12 teachers made up 156 of the nearly 600 degree apprenticeships identified, while registered nursing programs accounted for 51. Other positions represented include electro-mechanical and mechatronics technologists and technicians, electricians, and industrial engineering technologists and technicians.

    With the exception of teaching, most degree apprenticeship opportunities are concentrated at the associate-degree level. Two-thirds of the programs awarded associate degrees, 29 percent awarded bachelor’s degrees and 4 percent awarded master’s degrees, according to the report. Most associate-level credentials were associate of applied science degrees.

    Love said occupational requirements are the main factor driving these patterns: Careers in teaching typically require a bachelor’s degree, while nursing careers can be started with an associate degree.

    “Community colleges have been really involved in degree apprenticeships, many of them for quite some time,” Love said. She noted that although some universities offer degree apprenticeships as well, community colleges’ “workforce orientation” gives them more familiarity with the model, and two-year institutions are more likely to have close connections to employers in technical fields.

    The report also found that rural and small-town colleges are disproportionately represented among institutions offering teacher apprenticeships, suggesting degree apprenticeships in teaching are shaped by local workforce needs.

    Downs said she suspects the prevalence of the “grow-your-own” model in teacher training explains this pattern.

    “It’s possible that the prevalence of those already in teaching contributed to the overrepresentation in many rural communities,” Downs said.

    The implications: Downs said degree apprenticeships’ small program size, reliance on public funding and other structural factors must be addressed for programs to succeed.

    “We don’t really fund degree apprenticeships the same way we fund K–12 schools or even higher education,” Downs said, noting that most funding comes from “one-off” federal grants.

    “More funding is needed to get [degree apprenticeship] programs up and off the ground and figure out how to run them sustainably,” she said.

    Beyond funding, Downs said the programs also need to be thoughtfully designed to meet the needs of the students they serve.

    “If you can get credit for what you’re learning on the job, you don’t have to sit in a classroom to learn the same thing again. It makes the programs more efficient for learners and employers, which we support,” Downs said.

    Love said the degree apprenticeship model allows students to combine the benefits of work and education in a single pathway.

    “This is a ‘yes, and’ strategy,” Love said. “Through [degree apprenticeship] programs, we hope to learn more in the coming years about how they open pathways to important professions while giving people another option that brings the best of both worlds together.”

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  • Thomas Paine’s rise and fall

    Thomas Paine’s rise and fall

    Thomas Paine arrived in America in 1774 with little to
    his name and a long record of personal failure behind him. Within a
    year, he wrote Common Sense, one of the most influential political
    pamphlets in history, helping to ignite the American Revolution and
    catapulting Paine into the American history hall of fame.

    But by the end of his life, he was widely reviled,
    politically isolated, and personally abandoned. Once celebrated as
    the voice of liberty, he died an outcast, mourned by only six
    people at his funeral.

    How does one man become the voice of the American
    Revolution and end up forgotten? To explore Paine’s complicated
    legacy, we are joined by Richard Bell, professor of history at the
    University of Maryland and author of
    The American Revolution and the Fate of the World    .

    Timestamps:

    00:00 Intro

    02:41 Thomas Paine’s early life

    10:32 Paine’s arrival in America

    20:02 What did Paine argue in Common Sense?

    25:11 Why Common Sense was so revolutionary

    36:31 The American Crisis and the Revolutionary
    War

    41:35 Why Paine returned to London and wrote The
    Rights of Man

    49:19 Exile from Britain, imprisonment in France, and
    writing The Age of Reason

    01:01:27 Why America turned its back on Paine

    01:12:09 Paine’s final days

    01:18:50 How should we understand Paine’s legacy
    today?

    01:26:58 Outro

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  • The Rise of the Agentic AI University in 2026

    The Rise of the Agentic AI University in 2026

    In a very active and highly competitive environment, AI has grown at breakneck speed. As with so many technologies, business and industry have moved far faster than academe to embrace the cost savings, capability expanding and wholly innovative aspects of AI. Fraught with our own industry-specific challenges such as enrollment downturns, sharp drops in perceived value, the striking “math cliff” in higher ed and a rapidly changing regulatory policy shift in state and federal administration, our field has been cast into a sea of pressing priorities for changes.

    This year is likely to be the one where we begin to implement institutionwide AI-powered solutions to help us move forward with agility and effectiveness in adapting to the changing environment. As Aviva Legatt writes in Forbes’ “7 Decisions That Will Define AI in Higher Education in 2026”,

    “Over the past year, the shift from AI as a tool to AI as institutional infrastructure has become unmistakable. Students have already integrated AI into daily academic workflows, vendors are pushing enterprise deployments, federal and accreditation expectations are rising and labor-market volatility is forcing colleges to rethink how learning connects to opportunity. At the same time, agentic AI is moving from experimentation to execution, reshaping how advising, enrollment, learning support and operations can be delivered. In 2026, these threads converge: institutions that operationalize AI will widen their performance gap, while those that don’t will inherit a shadow system they can’t control.”

    Most Popular

    Yet, where these changes will take place within the field, how these changes will impact our higher education workforce and the extent to which we can change in time to meet our market demand by producing knowledgeable and skilled employees for the economy at large remains in question. For those of us in early and midcareer positions, pressing questions arise: “Will I still have a job? How will my position description change? Will I be prepared? What should I do now to ensure I remain a valuable asset to my university?” It is my purpose in this brief column to identify some of the areas in which changes seem most likely to take place in this new year.

    To date, we have made significant progress in developing chatbot-hosted, transactional generative AI in which the user inputs questions and answers to the bot. One of the many high-quality examples is the Khan Academy’s Khanmigo. These have been effective in hosting tutors, study apps, curricular design and much more.

    The use of generative AI continues to expand in new ways. Meanwhile, the development of AI agents is driving the expansion and efficiency of AI. In the agentic AI models, we have tools that are capable of reasoned assessment of what is needed to accomplish a goal, aligning a series of stacked tasks and completing those tasks without direct supervision in an efficient way, much like a human assistant would perform a series of tasks to achieve desired outcomes. For example, this often includes data collection, analysis of the data, identifying and implementing ways in which to accomplish the goals, documenting the findings, and finding better ways to accomplish the outcomes.

    This opens the possibility that portions of individual position descriptions can be offloaded from humans and integrated into agentic AI duties. This results in fewer overall employees; lower indirect costs such as insurance, vacation and sick leave; and a more cost-efficient operation. Beginning now, institutions are moving from scattered pilots to governed, agentic workflows that will define the next decade of ensuring student success and operational efficiency.

    I asked my virtual digital assistant, Gemini 3 Deep Research, on Dec. 28 to suggest some of the implementations we will most likely see broadly implemented to address the student lifecycle. Gemini suggested that the work will be “personalized, proactive and persistent.” Gemini 3 Thinking mode predicted we will see a wide range of implementations in 2026, including:

    1. The 24/7 Digital Concierge (Recruitment): Beyond simple FAQs, agents now manage the entire “nurturing funnel,” handling complex credit transfer evaluations and scheduling campus tours via multichannel SMS and web interfaces. Source: 2026 Higher Education Digital Marketing Trends (EducationDynamics)
    2. Socratic Tutors for Every Learner: AI tutors that don’t just give answers but engage in Socratic dialogue, scaffolding difficult concepts and generating infinite practice problems based on real-time course performance. Source: AI Tutors and the Human Data Workforce 2026 Guide (HeroHunt)
    3. Mental Health First Responders: AI agents serving as low-barrier triage points, offering immediate coping strategies for anxiety and seamlessly escalating high-risk cases to human counselors. Source: How AI Chatbots Are Transforming Student Services (Boundless Learning)
    4. Predictive Intervention for Gatekeeper Courses: Using “behavioral trace data” from LMS platforms to identify students struggling in high-risk introductory courses (e.g., College Algebra, Gen Chem) before the first midterm. Source: Predictive Analytics in Higher Ed: Promises and Challenges (AIR)
    5. Admissions Document Verification Agents: Autonomous systems that verify international credentials, flag missing forms and check for eligibility in milliseconds, reducing the time to decision from weeks to minutes. Source: AI Agents for Universities: Automating Admissions (Supervity)

    Gemini 3 Thinking mode continued with examples of back-office efficiencies that AI will provide to universities that are early adopters of an agentic AI approach:

    1. Automated University Accounting: AI agents that handle invoice processing, general ledger coding and “smart” expense management, ensuring policy compliance without manual entry. Source: 5 Use Cases for AI Agents in Finance (Centric Consulting)
    2. Grant Management and Writing Assistants: Agents that scan federal databases (Grants.gov) to match faculty research with funding, draft initial narratives and manage postaward financial reporting. Source: AI Grant Management: Driving Efficiency (Fluxx AI)
    3. Dynamic Enrollment Marketing Agents: “Search everywhere optimization” (GEO/AEO) tools that ensure the university appears in AI-generated best-of lists and voice-search results on platforms like TikTok and Reddit. Source: Transitioning to the Agentic University 2026–27 (UPCEA)
    4. Procurement and Spend Analysis: Agents that continuously monitor contract compliance and supplier health, identifying hidden savings that can be reallocated to student scholarships. Source: How AI Agents Change Procurement Work in 2026 (Suplari)
    5. Regulatory Reporting and Audit Agents: Systems that autogenerate audit-ready reports for state and federal compliance, reducing the administrative burden on institutional research offices. Source: FINRA 2026 Oversight Report: The Reckoning for Autonomous AI (Snell & Wilmer)
    6. HR and Benefits Support: 24/7 staff-facing agents that answer complex questions about leave policies, payroll and benefits, freeing HR staff for strategic culture-building work. Source: Agentic AI: Top Tech Trend of 2025/2026 (Gartner/EAB)
    7. The “AI-First” Curriculum Redesign: Moving beyond academic integrity to “AI fluency” as a graduation standard, where agents help faculty redesign assessments to focus on process rather than product. Source: 2026 Predictions for AI in Higher Education (Packback)

    Of course, there will be many comparable efficiencies implemented in other areas of universities. These are examples that demonstrate the cost and time efficiencies that can be realized through thoughtful implementation of agentic AI. In the Nov. 12 issue of this column, “Transitioning to the Agentic University 2026–27,” I detail an approach to begin the administrative agentic AI transition.

    Although there is less mention publicly about direct instruction by AI, this is inevitable in coming years. Most likely AI-led instruction will begin in noncredit offerings, but ultimately no teaching task will be out of reach. It will come at a significantly lower cost, greater personalization and instant updating with every new development in the field as it happens.  How can we best prepare our colleagues in higher education for the changes that are coming this year and each successive year?

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  • AI use is on the rise, but is guidance keeping pace?

    AI use is on the rise, but is guidance keeping pace?

    Key points:

    The rapid rise of generative AI has turned classrooms into a real-time experiment in technology use. Students are using AI to complete assignments, while teachers are leveraging it to design lessons, streamline grading, and manage administrative tasks.

    According to new national survey data from RAND, AI use among both students and educators has grown sharply–by more than 15 percentage points in just the past one to two years. Yet, training and policy have not kept pace. Schools and districts are still developing professional development, student guidance, and clear usage policies to manage this shift.

    As a result, educators, students, and parents are navigating both opportunities and concerns. Students worry about being falsely accused of cheating, and many families fear that increased reliance on AI could undermine students’ critical thinking skills.

    Key findings:

    During the 2024-2025 school year, AI saw rapid growth.

    AI use in schools surged during the 2024-2025 academic year. By 2025, more than half of students (54 percent) and core subject teachers (53 percent) were using AI for schoolwork or instruction–up more than 15 points from just a year or two earlier. High school students were the most frequent users, and AI adoption among teachers climbed steadily from elementary to high school.

    While students and parents express significant concern about the potential downsides of AI, school district leaders are far less worried.

    Sixty-one percent of parents, 48 percent of middle school students, and 55 percent of high school students believe that increased use of AI could harm students’ critical-thinking skills, compared with just 22 percent of district leaders. Additionally, half of students said they worry about being falsely accused of using AI to cheat.

    Training and policy development have not kept pace with AI use in schools.

    By spring 2025, only 35 percent of district leaders said their schools provide students with training on how to use AI. Meanwhile, more than 80 percent of students reported that their teachers had not explicitly taught them how to use AI for schoolwork. Policy guidance also remains limited–just 45 percent of principals said their schools or districts have policies on AI use, and only 34 percent of teachers reported policies specifically addressing academic integrity and AI.

    The report offers recommendations around AI use and guidance:

    As AI technology continues to evolve, trusted sources–particularly state education agencies–should provide consistent, regularly updated guidance on effective AI policies and training. This guidance should help educators and students understand how to use AI as a complement to learning, not a replacement for it.

    District and school leaders should clearly define what constitutes responsible AI use versus academic dishonesty and communicate these expectations to both teachers and students. In the near term, educators and students urgently need clarity on what qualifies as cheating with AI.

    Elementary schools should also be included in this effort. Nearly half of elementary teachers are already experimenting with AI, and these early years are when students build foundational skills and habits. Providing age-appropriate, coherent instruction about AI at this stage can reduce misuse and confusion as students progress through school and as AI capabilities expand.

    Ultimately, district leaders should develop comprehensive AI policies and training programs that equip teachers and students to use AI productively and ethically across grade levels.

    Laura Ascione
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  • Cost of DfE’s school insurance scheme to rise 7.4%

    Cost of DfE’s school insurance scheme to rise 7.4%

    Risk protection arrangement costs have risen by 61 per cent since 2020

    Risk protection arrangement costs have risen by 61 per cent since 2020


    The Department for Education has confirmed costs for its school insurance programme will rise again by 7.4 per cent this year, with the scheme now costing 60 per cent more than in 2020.

    The risk protection arrangement (RPA), first set up in 2014, provides state schools an alternative to commercial insurance.

    It covers risks such as material damage, personal accident and employers’ liability, with government covering the losses.

    Now, the DfE has confirmed the amount it charges will rise from £27 to £29 per pupil from April 2026. This 7.4 per cent increase is far above the current rate of inflation, around 3.5 per cent.

    It said costs were reviewed annually “to ensure breadth of cover and value for money are balanced”.

    While the DfE first charged £25 per pupil for schools in 2014, prices were lowered to £18 per pupil in 2019-20.

    Prices have since increased year on year, with a 61 per cent change from 2020 to 2026.

    Around 12,400 schools were signed up to the RPA in January 2025. The DfE opened the scheme to LA-maintained schools in 2020.

    It was originally launched to reduce the public cost of protecting academies against risk.

    While schools may join at any time of the year, multi-academy trusts can join in a phased manner, where some academies may still have commercial insurance contracts in place.

    The DfE has been approached for comment.

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  • Outbound Indian university enrolments fall after three-year rise

    Outbound Indian university enrolments fall after three-year rise

    Of the 1.882 million Indian students studying abroad, over 1.254 million are pursuing higher education at international universities and tertiary institutions, while 628,305 are enrolled at the school level.

    While overall 2025 numbers hit an all-time high due to the inclusion of school-level students, higher education enrolments fell by 76,000 this year, ending a three-year surge. Over 750,000 Indian students studied at international universities in 2022, rising to 930,000 in 2023 and peaking at 1.33 million in 2024.

    Despite Canada’s clampdown on international students, with 74% of Indian study permit applications rejected in August 2025, up from 32% in the same month in 2023, the North American country still hosts the largest number of Indian students in universities and tertiary institutions globally, at 427,085 students.

    In the US, despite a 44% drop in study visas for Indian students in August 2025 compared to last year, India remains the largest source country, accounting for over 31% of all international students, with over 255,000 Indian students, according to MEA data.

    MEA data also showed that the number of Indian higher education students in key countries, as of 2025: the UK (173,190), Australia (138,579), Germany (59,000), Russia (27,000), Kyrgyzstan (16,500), and Georgia (16,000).

    Policy changes in major study destinations are impacting Indian students’ decisions. While Canada plans to cut international study permits by over 50% in 2026, the US continues a hostile stance against international students with nine in 10 students fearing for their visas, and postgraduate enrolments are falling across UK universities, with English institutions facing a potential losses under the new £925-per-international student levy.

    Other destinations show mixed trends: Australia has seen a rise in Indian students but remains cautious about fraud and agent misuse, with the recent education reforms bill aiming to address these concerns, while New Zealand has recorded increasing number of study visa applications from India as of October 2025.

    “The growth in mobility patterns in the years following the pandemic were driven by the pent-up demand and welcoming post-graduation work and immigration pathways and policies in destinations such as Canada,” Rahul Choudaha, professor and COO at the University of Aberdeen, Mumbai campus told The PIE News.

    “However, in 2025, the immigration policies became restrictive in all key destinations starting with the US.”

    The decline in Indian students pursuing higher education abroad also follows a sharp fall in study abroad remittances from India between April and August 2025, lowest in eight years, the peak period for such transfers.

    Moreover, according to a recent analysis highlighted by Choudaha, the annual cost of studying in the US has risen by Rs 10 lakh (GDP £8,200-£8,300) for Indian students over the past five years, with currency devaluation and tuition hikes pushing the overall cost of studying abroad up 10–12% in 2025.

    Higher investment outlay along with dimmer chances of recovering that investment has made Indian students nervous and cautious about studying abroad in 2025
    Rahul Choudaha, University of Aberdeen Mumbai campus

    “Higher investment outlay along with dimmer chances of recovering that investment has made Indian students nervous and cautious about studying abroad in 2025,” stated Choudaha.

    “Universities also need to do more in terms of providing career success and scholarships to students to make ease the barrier of upfront costs and its recovery through employability.”

    The rise of destinations such as Germany, Russia, Kyrgyzstan and Georgia signals a shift towards lower-cost, quality STEM and medical education beyond the “big four”, including Indian private and public universities which are serving over 46.5 million higher education students as of 2025.

    “Indian universities are more active than ever before in stepping up their recruitment efforts from the home market,” stated Jasminder Khanna, co-founder, Gresham Global.

    “Be it recruitments fairs, conferences or even retreats for local feeders, prominent Indian universities are quite at par with the foreign universities in upping their visibility.”

    With branch campuses of over 15 international universities, mainly from the US and UK, expected to open in India by the end of 2026, and the system projected to serve over 560,000 Indian students by 2040, Choudaha sees the next three years as crucial for these campuses in absorbing inbound demand amid increasingly restrictive policies.

    “The aspirations to gain global learning remain strong while affordability has become a big challenge,” stated Choudaha.

    “With over fifteen campuses offering degrees in fall 2026 intake means that a segment of Indian students will consider these options and over time not only the number of campuses will increase but also the program portfolios offered by these campuses.”

    Moreover, with 97% of Indian students seeking education that leads directly to jobs, according to research commissioned by City St George’s, University of London and conducted by Arlington Research, crackdowns on post-study work options across major destinations are raising concerns, as lobbying to end Optional Practical Training (OPT) in the US heats up and the UK is already set to cut its Graduate Route visa from two years to 18 months from January 2027.

    With “shrinking entry-level jobs and unstable economies marginally slowing the outflow” of students, stakeholders need to think of solutions that address both the study-abroad process and outcomes, Khanna said, to ensure Indian and international students continue to pursue education abroad in huge numbers.

    “Reassuring feeders and stakeholders on economic stabilities, local safety, access to meaningful jobs and multi-cultural environments on campuses will bring back some of the lost confidence since the pandemic,” stated Khanna.

    “Students and parents also need to understand that recent student visa policy changes worldwide are intended to make traditional study destinations more meaningful, with a stronger focus on quality — and these changes should be welcomed.”

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  • The Housing Crisis and the Rise of the Educated Underclass

    The Housing Crisis and the Rise of the Educated Underclass

    The latest data from the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) makes clear that the housing crisis is not just about poverty — it is about the shrinking distance between the working poor and the working-educated. The gap between wages and rent has widened so dramatically that even college-educated workers, adjunct faculty, nonprofit staff, social workers, and early-career professionals are drowning in housing costs.

    The Housing Wage and the Broken Promise of Higher Ed

    According to NLIHC’s Out of Reach 2025 report, a full-time worker in the U.S. needs to earn $33.63 an hour to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment and $28.17 an hour for a one-bedroom. That’s far higher than what many degree-holders earn, especially those in education, public service, healthcare support, and the nonprofit sector.

    The academic workforce itself is emblematic of the problem: adjunct instructors with master’s degrees — sometimes PhDs — often earn poverty-level wages. Yet the rents they face are no different from those of skilled professionals in high-paying industries.

    Higher education promised mobility; instead, it delivered a generation of renters one missed paycheck away from eviction.

    An Educated Underclass Renting in Perpetuity

    NLIHC’s data shows a national shortage of affordable housing: only 35 affordable and available homes exist for every 100 extremely low-income renters. While this crisis hits the lowest-income Americans hardest, it also drags down millions of educated workers who now compete for the same shrinking stock of affordable units.

    This convergence — between the working poor and the working educated — reflects a structural breakdown:

    • New graduates carry student debt while starting in low-wage jobs.

    • Millennial and Gen Z workers face rents that have grown far faster than wages.

    • Former middle-class professionals, displaced by automation and recession, re-enter the workforce at lower wages that no longer match their credentials.

    • Public-sector and nonprofit workers do “mission-driven” work but cannot afford to live in the communities they serve.

    Increasingly, higher education is not a safeguard against housing insecurity — it is a gateway into it.

    The Spiral: Student Debt, Rent Burden, and Delayed Adulthood

    The educated underclass faces a double bind:

    High rents prevent saving, while student debt prevents mobility.

    NLIHC data shows that renters who are cost-burdened (spending more than 30% of income on housing) or severely cost-burdened (over 50%) are forced to cut spending on essentials. For many degree-holders, this means:

    • Delaying or abandoning homeownership

    • Working multiple jobs to cover rent

    • Moving back in with parents

    • Delaying marriage and child-rearing

    • Relocating constantly in search of slightly cheaper housing

    This is not “adulting” — it’s economic triage.

    The educated underclass is increasingly indistinguishable from the broader working class in terms of economic vulnerability, yet still burdened by expectations that their degrees should have delivered them stability.

    When Housing Costs Undermine Higher Education Itself

    The affordability crisis is reshaping entire higher education ecosystems:

    • Students struggle to find housing close to campus, leading to long commutes, couch surfing, or dropping out.

    • Graduate students and postdocs — essential academic labor — increasingly rely on food aid, emergency grants, and organizing unions just to survive.

    • Colleges in high-cost cities cannot hire or retain staff because employees cannot afford to live nearby.

    • Public institutions face declining enrollment because families see no payoff to degrees that lead to poverty wages and unaffordable housing.

    If higher education cannot provide a pathway out of housing insecurity, its legitimacy — and its future — is in question.

    Toward Real Solutions: Housing as an Educational Issue

    Solving this crisis requires acknowledging a simple truth: housing policy is higher-education policy.

    The educated underclass is not a natural outcome of individual failure; it is the product of a system that overcharges for education and underpays for labor while allowing rents to skyrocket.

    Real solutions would include:

    • Large-scale public investment in deeply affordable housing

    • Expansion of rental assistance and housing vouchers

    • Living-wage laws that reflect real housing costs

    • Student-housing development tied to public colleges

    • Forgiveness of rental debt accumulated during economic shocks

    • Strengthening unions among educators, adjuncts, graduate workers, and other low-paid professionals

    The promise of higher education cannot be realized while a degree-holder earning $20, $25, or even $30 an hour still cannot afford a one-bedroom apartment.

    The Verdict: Housing Is the Fault Line of the New Class Divide

    NLIHC’s data confirms what millions of renters already know: the U.S. housing market punishes workers regardless of education level, and higher education no longer protects against precarity. The educated underclass is not a fringe category — it is becoming the norm.

    Until wages align with housing costs and the housing system is restructured to serve people rather than profit, the divide between those who can afford stability and those who cannot will continue to widen. And higher education, once marketed as the bridge to a better life, will remain yet another broken promise — one rent payment away from collapse.

    Sources

    National Low Income Housing Coalition, Out of Reach 2025

    NLIHC Research and Policy Briefs

    NLIHC Affordable Housing Data and Fact Sheets

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  • NZ warns against exploitation as working hours for int’l students rise

    NZ warns against exploitation as working hours for int’l students rise

    As part of its plan to grow the international education sector — which includes doubling its contribution to $7.2 billion and increasing international enrolments to 119,000 by 2034 — New Zealand has introduced new immigration changes.

    The changes extend in-study work rights to all tertiary students on approved exchange or study abroad programs and clarify that most students who change providers or lower their study level will need a new visa.

    Apart from these, eligible tertiary students in post-school education, such as universities and polytechnics, and secondary students in Years 12-13 can now work up to 25 hours a week. Secondary students will continue to require parental and school approval for in-study work.

    The increased limit applies to all new visas granted from November 3, even if the application was submitted earlier.

    Moreover, students already holding visas with a 20-hour work limit will need to reapply, either through a variation of conditions or by obtaining a new study visa, to access the increased allowance.

    Stakeholders have noted the importance of making sure that the relaxed rules do not result in students being exploited for low-paid or exploitative work.

    The increase to in-study work rights comes at a time when New Zealand has 40,987 study visa holders eligible to work, with 29,790 of those visas expiring on or before 31 March 2026 and 11,197 after.

    The New Zealand government says the change will make the country “more competitive globally” and improve the overall student experience, at a time when international student satisfaction remains strong at 87%.

    “International students make a significant contribution to the economy, with each student spending around $45,000 on average in 2024 – supporting local businesses, tourism, and job creation,” Jeannie Melville, deputy COO for immigration at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, told The PIE News.

    “As part of the International Education Going for Growth Plan, changes were announced to immigration settings to support sustainable growth and enhance New Zealand’s appeal as a study destination. These changes aim to maintain education quality while managing immigration risk.”

    International students have the same minimum employment rights as any other worker, including being paid at least the minimum wage and working within visa conditions
    Jeannie Melville, Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment

    The rise in working hours is a “confidence signal” that will help with living costs and shows that New Zealand is welcoming, according to Frank Xing, director of marketing and operations at Auckland-based Novo Education Consulting.

    But authorities are still expected to keep a close eye on the changes amid past concerns of international students working long hours for below-minimum wages, being denied sick leave, and struggling to find jobs.

    The New Zealand government has taken steps to address workplace exploitation in the past, including launching the multilingual Introduction to Your Employment Rights module to help migrant workers understand their agreements and rights.

    “International students have the same minimum employment rights as any other worker, including being paid at least the minimum wage and working within visa conditions. Exploitation, such as underpayment or forcing excessive hours, is a criminal offence under the Immigration Act and we do act against employers who exploit workers.

    “Immigration New Zealand (INZ) has strengthened protections for migrant workers, including the Worker Protection Act that took effect in January 2024,” Melville said, adding that this allows authorities to issue infringement notices, publish the names of non-compliant employers, and stop them from supporting migrant visa applications for a period.

    “We have also tightened visa settings and improved monitoring to reduce exploitation risks.”

    According to ex and current international students The PIE spoke with, employers often pushed them to work beyond the weekly hour limit, and while students tried to balance extra hours by reducing them later or carrying them into holiday periods, any overtime during term time was usually unpaid until the breaks.

    Some students also alleged mistreatment or harsh behaviour at their workplaces, though experiences varied by employer.

    Despite these concerns, Melville noted that students can report any instances of exploitation by calling Crime Stoppers on 0800 555 111, which she described as “a confidential and safe way to make a report”.

    According to Xing, the changes in working hours don’t replace core factors like academic fit, career pathways, and post-study visas that drive student applications but they will help international students avoid situations where they can be taken advantage of.

    “Extending legal working hours should also reduce the temptation to accept low-paid, cash-in-hand jobs. Of course, vigilance is still needed,” he said.

    He called for better student education on their employment rights, as well as stronger penalties for employers who break the rules and easier reporting channels for students.

    “It’s early days since the rule took effect – around 10 days – but we’re already seeing more enquiries mentioning ‘25 hours’ alongside programme and city choice, especially as other destinations tighten settings,” Xing added, noting that current international students have also requested help from their Licensed Immigration Advisers to apply for a variation of conditions to move from 20 to 25 hours.

    It’s early days since the rule took effect – around 10 days – but we’re already seeing more enquiries mentioning ‘25 hours’ alongside programme and city choice, especially as other destinations tighten settings
    Frank Xing, Novo Education Consulting

    The increase to 25 hours per week isn’t limited to students. New Zealand has also extended part-time work rights to dependent child visitor visa holders and skilled Migrant Category Interim visa holders.

    The move comes as a record number of New Zealanders leave amid a weakening economy, with relaxed migrant work rules seen as a way to fill workforce gaps and support students’ transition into future employment.

    “In certain professions, like healthcare, the number of hours of relevant work experience is a very important factor – it can directly affect your employability and career progression,” stated Vijeta Kanwar, director of operations, New Zealand Gateway.

    “For example, some job vacancies specify that a candidate must have 100 or even 500 hours of work experience. In that context, gaining five extra hours a week over a year can significantly increase the total experience a student has, enhancing their opportunities when pursuing post-study work.”

    “We’ve seen more enthusiasm from students, especially those looking to gain international work experience. They’re quite excited because, in many professions, the number of hours of work experience you gain, especially if it’s linked to your intended career, has huge importance.”

    Just in June this year, New Zealand announced that degree holders from countries including India, France, Germany, Italy, Sri Lanka, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, and Switzerland can now bypass the qualification assessment process for certain immigration categories.

    Subject to New Zealand’s cabinet discussions, the government is also set to introduce a new short-term work visa for some vocational graduates and streamline visa processes, according to INZ.

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  • The Rise of the Campus Right, Plus What Are Adjuncts For?

    The Rise of the Campus Right, Plus What Are Adjuncts For?

    It’s been a minute since I’ve done a Friday Fragments piece, but now that I’m publishing on Fridays, it seems a shame not to dust it off. So, here goes.

    –

    As a political theorist who works in higher ed administration, I’m embarrassed to admit that it took me until last month to get around to Lauren Lassabe Shepherd’s excellent book Resistance from the Right. In a way, though, the delay helped.

    Lassabe Shepherd outlines the rise of right-wing organizations on college campuses in the U.S. in the 1960s. That’s an unusual choice in its own right; most accounts of the 60s focus on the New Left, and most accounts of the rise of the right don’t focus on higher ed.

    Hearing it now—I listened to it as an audiobook while driving, so I don’t have quotes at the ready—I was struck by several threads. The first was just how thoroughly intentional more established conservative figures were in seeding campus organizations. Students with conservative leanings were funded, groomed, trained and recruited with an efficiency that the leaderless New Left simply didn’t have. Prominent conservatives funded campus newspapers and radio stations that gave up-and-coming young conservatives platforms that their left or liberal counterparts couldn’t rival. The right was playing the long game, and it paid off.

    As a theorist, too, I appreciated Lassabe Shepherd’s attention to the persistent tensions between the “traditionalist” and libertarian streaks within the right. In the context of a military draft, for instance, the two camps disagreed so fundamentally that organizations like Young Americans for Freedom had schisms, effectively banning one side (in their case, the libertarians) from the group entirely.

    The most striking resonance, though, came from listening in 2025, as opposed to when it was published in 2023. The book offers a series of accounts of right-wing groups attacking college presidents and/or trustees for being insufficiently harsh on left-wing student protesters. In the wake of the Gaza protests of the last couple of years, the observation “hit different,” as the young say. And even in the moments when conservative organizations weren’t calling for vengeance, they were actively trying to narrow down colleges’ missions to vocational preparation, preferably with students bearing most of the cost. The idea was to use economic power to enforce political discipline. Lewis Powell himself—later to join the Supreme Court—made the connection explicit. It was a conscious strategy.

    It’s one thing to suspect as much. It’s another to get empirical confirmation.

    Lassabe Shepherd also hosts a terrific podcast, American Campus, that has quickly become a favorite. But I really can’t recommend her book highly enough.

    –

    Thanks to the readers who wrote in with responses to the piece about hiring late-career professionals in technical fields as adjuncts as part of a glide path to retirement. Several readers noted that this was, in fact, the original vision of “adjunct” faculty: people with industry expertise who could offer a real-world complement to theory. Over time, the economic appeal of adjuncts to institutions led to expanding the category far beyond what it was intended to cover.

    There’s truth in that. In a job interview once, a professor asked me what my ideal adjunct percentage was. I replied something like “lower than it usually is now, but not zero.” The role can make sense in some cases. For example, when I was at the County College of Morris, it had a large and well-respected music program. (That’s still true.) Music majors had to have a primary instrument and a secondary one, one of which had to be piano. We could never realistically have a full-time professor for every major instrument. But being close-ish to New York City, we could draw on professional musicians as adjuncts. Given that most professional gigs are at night, daytime sections of lessons were fairly easy to staff. In that specific case, the model worked well. And I’ve seen it work with, say, working attorneys hired to teach a business law class on the side. In those cases, the appeal wasn’t simply cheap labor.

    A few other readers pointed out the need to provide serious pedagogical training for anyone picking up teaching as a late-career shift. (One reader made a distinction between the soon-to-retire and the retired; given the speed of technological change in many fields, folks who’ve been retired for a while may not be up-to-speed in the field anymore.) That’s obviously true, and something that we should be doing anyway. Many community colleges have variations on “centers for teaching and learning” that provide some of that, and some have formal mentoring programs as well. That said, I’ve also worked as an adjunct in places where the formal training consisted of showing me where to pick up my mail and where to get copies made. I hope things are better now, but I suspect the improvements are uneven across the industry.

    –

    Thanks, too, to the folks who wrote in about dual enrollment and its economic impact on community colleges. I was especially struck by a note from a college president I know who mentioned that she’s in the midst of a reduction in force caused by the economic consequences of dual enrollment. That’s rough. Honestly, I would rather have been wrong.

    –

    Some parents bond with their adult children over celebrity gossip, sports fandom or recipes. We do that too, but with a distinctly academic variation.

    The Girl and I recently spent a lovely hour or so rehashing and relishing the midcentury literary tiff between Irving Howe and Ralph Ellison.

    I’ll take it.

    Even better, she has her own distinct perspective on it, which she can back up with citations.

    As an academic Dad, I couldn’t be prouder.

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  • As temperatures rise, math performance drops

    As temperatures rise, math performance drops

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    Dive Brief:

    • Academic performance drops when temperatures rise, according to a study released Thursday by the NWEA. When test-day temperatures clocked over 80 degrees, students had lower math MAP Growth scores, the organization that administers the assessment found. 

    • Extreme heat affects high-poverty students especially. The NWEA study found that high heat negatively impacted math scores up to twice as much for students in high-poverty schools than for those from low-poverty schools.

    • The study recommends educators set testing schedules around weather conditions when possible, create better testing conditions by moving testing to cooler areas and testing during the morning, invest in updated HVAC infrastructure, and ensure that districts’ infrastructure planning takes into account high-poverty communities. 

    Dive Insight:

    In 2020, over half of the nation’s schools (54%) needed to update or replace multiple building systems or features in their schools, according to a report released by the Government Accountability Office. About 41% of public school districts needed to update or replace the HVAC systems in at least half of their schools, according to the report. 

    “If not addressed, such problems can lead to indoor air quality problems and mold, and in some cases caused schools to adjust schedules temporarily,” the GAO report found.

    At the same time, the school year is getting hotter.

    Heat waves impact schools “seemingly everywhere,” according to the Climate Action Campaign, including in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin. In August, for example, schools in Portland, Oregon, closed early in anticipation of a heat wave, according to local reports.

    And by this year, about 2,671 additional school districts were expected to log 32 or more days of weather over 80 degrees —  the heat threshold where cooling systems are typically installed. That number of school districts is a 39% increase since 1970, according to a 2021 project by the Center for Climate Integrity. 

    Such climate changes impact academics, a finding confirmed by the NWEA study released Thursday. 

    It gathered data from nearly 3 million MAP Growth tests administered to students in grades 3-6 across six states between 2022 and 2024. The study found that on days hotter than 101 degrees, students’ math performance was about 0.06 standard deviations below students who tested in 60 degree weather. The difference is about 10% of a 5th grader’s learning during a school year.

    “Our findings show that as temperatures continue to rise, disparities in school facilities, such as having appropriate HVAC systems, can deepen existing inequities and make school infrastructure and building conditions significant issues of educational equity,” said Sofia Postell, research analyst at NWEA, in a Thursday statement.

    The findings expand on previous ones examining heat’s impacts on student achievement. 

    In 2020, a study published by the American Economic Association found that “heat directly disrupts learning time,” and that without air conditioning, a school year hotter by 1 degree reduces that year’s learning by 1%. The same study also found that hot school days disproportionately impact minority students, and even account for about 5% of the racial achievement gap.

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