Tag: Show

  • How commuter students show up in new access and participation plans

    How commuter students show up in new access and participation plans

    When the Office for Students included commuter students in the Equality of Opportunity Risk Register (EORR), it recognised the risk that commuter students may not always get the same experience as their “traditional” residential peers.

    The second wave of access and participation plans (APPs) for 2025–26 to 2028–29 have slowly been published and in the wake of the EORR’s inclusion of commuter students, we’ve got a better sense of the steps providers are taking to make the experience more equitable.

    Taking Universities UK’s member list as the sample and searching variations of the phrase “commuting student” in the currently available wave two APPs, 44 out of 81 APPs (at the time of writing) referred to commuter students in some form.

    Sometimes this was a simple statement of demographics, for example, “over 86 per cent are commuters,” or a statement of intention – “increase… work with commuting and mature students.” Other plans detailed comprehensive work to reduce inequities with various interventions, projects and additional research to undertake.

    Some plans referred to commuters broadly in a literature review but did not link this to their local contexts, and as such were not included in our analysis.

    Definitions

    As part of our ongoing series about commuter students, convened with Susan Kenyon at Canterbury Christ Church University, one challenge when discussing support for commuters is working out if everyone is talking about the same thing.

    The EORR sets out that commuter students referred to students “based on the distance or time [students] take to travel from their accommodation to their place of study” – but it then goes on to note there are many definitions, referencing both time and distance and the fact of not having re-located for university.

    In the absence of a sector-wide definition, providers have had to work this out themselves.

    The majority of plans that referenced a definition identified commuters as students whose home address matches their term time address, who had been recruited locally or still lived in their family home. Some plans used a distance to identify commuters, for example 15+ miles into their main campus base. When using distance as a criteria it opens up the possibility of a commuting student also being a student who has relocated to university but lives further away due to cost and housing pressures.

    As we’ve seen earlier in the series, there are differences in the experience based on those who chose to commute versus those who do so out of necessity.

    St Mary’s University in Twickenham explored using the Office of the National Statistics’ Travel to Work Areas maps to define commuters and setting an average travel time of 15 minutes or more (using public transport) from a term time address. They explicitly noted they had investigated the impact of using different definitions of commuter students when analysing student outcomes which led them to identifying commuters as their sixth risk category.

    When identifying commuters in APPs, ten plans went into detail about the intersecting characteristics of this demographic of students. One provider noted that “commuter students are more likely to be Asian, black or from IMD Q1+2 than non- commuter students” – this is something Kulvinder Singh looked at earlier in the series. There were several links between the association of being a commuter and being from an underrepresented group such as a mature student, carer or from a geographical area of deprivation.

    One provider interrogated whether being a commuting student was a direct factor on student outcome metrics and opted that it, in fact, coincided with other risk factors.

    Mind the gap

    For plans that had identified a risk to the commuter student experience, a brief thematic analysis suggests continuation, completion and student outcomes metrics were most prevalent in the sample followed by cost (and transport costs) and its subsequent impact on belonging.

    A lack of flexible timetabling was highlighted several times as a structural challenge for commuting students and plans honed in on the preciousness of commuters’ time.

    Bridging the gap

    Many universities plan to implement student centric timetables to tackle barriers to engagement and include plans to inform students as early as possible about scheduled classes. Flexible modes of learning, better communication methods and early timetables then further reduces peak-travel commuting costs, easing financial pressures.

    A handful of universities offer pre-arrival events and bursaries, aimed at improving commuter student access. At Manchester Metropolitan University, for example, an introductory module to support students preparing for university was particularly valued by commuting students.

    Interventions also emphasised the importance of space, with providers reviewing physical and virtual facilities, creating dedicated spaces to study and relax and improving the visibility of existing commuter spaces. The University of York’s APP suggested a provision of subsidised accommodation on campus to support commuters to engage in evening and social events.

    Peer mentoring programmes, social prescribing, and the creation of commuter student networks are examples of belonging-based interventions. York St John University’s plan proposed social opportunities each month and drop-ins for commuters to be held as often as weekly on campus.

    Many plans recognised a need to better understand the commuter student population. This often manifested as a commitment to engage or set up working groups and projects. Some providers viewed additional research as a first step toward supporting commuters, while others built on existing work and recognised that ongoing consultation offered the best way to deliver support.

    As many of these plans have started to, counting commuters, recognising their experience is geographical and making them visible is the first step to service design with commuter students in mind. Our series has been exploring ways to support their experience through making space, pedagogy, data, shifting institutional thinking and transport agendas that may inspire providers ready to take the next step.

    This blog is part of our series on commuter students. Click here to see the other articles in the series.

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  • Education Dept.’s Penn Demands Show Shift in Title IX

    Education Dept.’s Penn Demands Show Shift in Title IX

    The Department of Education’s demands that University of Pennsylvania “restore” swimming awards and honors that had been “misappropriated” to trans women athletes and apologize to the cisgender women who had lost to them offer a glimpse into how the second Trump administration could use Title IX to force certain changes at colleges, experts and attorneys say.

    The demands, issued April 28 in the form of a proposed resolution agreement, would resolve a civil rights investigation that found Penn violated Title IX by “permitting males to compete in women’s intercollegiate athletics and to occupy women-only intimate facilities.” The Office for Civil Rights didn’t offer specifics, but officials were likely referring to trans swimmer Lia Thomas, who competed on the university’s women’s team in the 2021–22 academic year.

    Today is the deadline for Penn to either agree to the proposed demands or potentially face consequences. Department officials said they would refer to the case to the Justice Department for possible enforcement—a process that could end with the university losing access to federal funding—if Penn didn’t comply. (Penn has already lost $175 million in federal funding over this issue, though White House officials said that decision was separate from the Office for Civil Rights inquiry.)

    Penn is among several colleges and K-12 schools, including San José State University, facing investigations over policies related to trans athletes, but Penn is the first college to be the target of such public demands. Experts say the speed of the investigation, OCR’s unusual demands and the fact that Penn was in compliance with Title IX at the time Thomas competed there reflect a shift toward a more aggressive use of Title IX to further President Donald Trump’s anti-trans agenda.

    The crazy part of all of this is they may be asking Penn to discriminate in doing so, because the Trump administration has its interpretation, but that’s not definitive.”

    —Brett Sokolow, former president of the Association of Title IX Administrators

    Opposing Interpretations

    The administration’s forceful attack on institutions that have been home to high-profile trans women athletes fits with its overall playbook, which includes using any tools at its disposal to advance Trump’s agenda.

    In the case of trans athletes’ participation in athletics, the weapon of choice is Title IX, the 52-year-old law passed to guarantee women equal opportunity to education, which has since been interpreted as a broad tool to address sex-based discrimination and harassment on campus.

    In recent years, though, the relationship between trans students’ rights and Title IX has become complicated. Those on the left argue that the nature of Title IX is to protect students from gender-based discrimination, and that includes discrimination against trans and nonbinary individuals. (Such protections were included in the Biden administration’s short-lived Title IX regulations.) But those on the right argue that allowing trans women to participate women’s sports and to use women’s bathrooms and locker rooms violates the rights of their cisgender teammates—a perspective the Trump administration squarely aligns with.

    “The previous administration trampled the rights of American women and girls—and ignored the indignities to which they were subjected in bathrooms and locker rooms—to promote a radical transgender ideology,” Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement when the Penn investigation was first announced.

    For those in the former camp, Trump’s demands of Penn are just another example of the president using any means possible to erode trans people’s rights.

    “The news out of Penn, to me, was just another example of the way they are, unfortunately, using [Title IX] as a battering ram to beat down safe and inclusive school environments for trans students,” said Emma Grasso Levine, senior manager of Title IX policy and programs at Advocates for Youth, a youth sexual health and LGBTQ+ equality advocacy organization.

    Conservative organizations, though, have applauded the proposed resolution agreement, with the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group that has repeatedly sued to prevent trans women from playing on women’s sports teams and using women’s locker rooms and bathrooms, calling it “another step in the right direction to restore fairness and safety in women’s sports.”

    An Aggressive Tack

    Since taking office in January, Trump has rolled back trans students’ rights, including signing an executive order banning trans student athletes from playing on the teams that align with their gender. That order prompted the Penn investigation, but at the time that Thomas was competing, trans women who met certain requirements related to hormone therapy—as Thomas did—were permitted by the NCAA and governmental regulations to compete on women’s teams.

    The NCAA has since changed that rule. But despite the NCAA’s stance and the executive order, current Title IX regulations do not disallow trans women from playing women’s sports. In fact, the regulations are the exact same set of rules, passed by the first Trump administration in 2020, that were in place when Thomas swam for Penn. This raises the question, experts say, of whether Penn should be penalized under Title IX despite the fact that the institution was following those regulations to the best of its ability.

    “That’s the interesting challenge, and probably where Penn will hang its hat if it fights this: ‘There was an interpretation of Title IX in place at the time that Penn followed. And there’s an interpretation of Title IX that’s different now. How is it fair to impose today’s interpretation of Title IX on a previous time period?’” said Brett Sokolow, former president of the Association of Title IX Administrators and chair of the crisis management consulting and law firm TNG Consulting.

    This is just one element of the aggressive tack the Trump administration appears to be taking against institutions that allowed trans women to play women’s sports. Multiple experts also pointed out the quick, almost dizzying timeline of OCR’s investigation into Penn.

    Timeline of Penn Investigation

    Feb. 5: Trump signs executive order prohibiting trans athletes from playing on teams that match their gender identity.

    Feb. 6: Trump launches investigation into Penn. NCAA ends policy allowing trans athletes to play on teams that match their gender identity.

    March 19: Trump administration pauses $175 million in federal funds to Penn.

    April 28: OCR says Penn violated Title IX and must “restore” swimming honors given to trans women.

    Ordinarily, investigations can take years to conclude—something that has often been a pain point for victims’ rights advocates, who argue that those timelines can seriously impede victims’ ability to complete their studies.

    But OCR launched this investigation within a month of Trump entering office—and just two days after he signed the EO related to trans athletes—and resolved it less than three months later.

    It’s also unusual for OCR to target a specific student with a resolution agreement, Sokolow said; most such agreements are stripped of names and identifying details. Although Thomas is not named in the department’s press release, it does call out her sport, swimming, and there have been no other out trans athletes at Penn.

    “It’s very indicative of this administration—and concerning—that they’re targeting one person and demonizing them,” he said.

    Experts also say the demands marks a sharp contrast from how OCR has resolved such cases in the past. Levine said that the requirements in resolution agreements are meant to “meaningfully impact a culture of sex-based harassment,” but she feels that OCR’s demands wouldn’t do that—if such a culture even exists at Penn.

    Title IX ‘Pendulum Swing’

    If Penn fights the demands, the case could put the war between those who seek to protect trans athletes from discrimination and those who want to see them excised from their sports teams to the test. And until courts settle the question, students and institutions will be in limbo.

    “The crazy part of all of this is they may be asking Penn to discriminate in doing so, because the Trump administration has its interpretation, but that’s not definitive,” Sokolow said. “It does not have the force of law. If a court were to rule on this that Lia Thomas had rightfully won whatever competition the Trump administration is concerned about, any move to force to Penn to remove those victories could be discriminatory against a person who’s trans.”

    Lia Thomas, a swimmer at University of Pennsylvania, left, and Riley Gaines of the University of Kentucky tied for fifth place in the 200 freestyle at the NCAA swimming championships in March 2022.

    Icon Sportswire/Contributor/Getty Images

    Patricia Hamill, co-chair of the Title IX and campus discipline practice at Clark Hill, a Washington law firm, told Inside Higher Ed via email that the case “highlights the pendulum swing of Title IX in its enforcement and interpretation as well as in the government priorities over the last decade. Institutions are continuously being challenged on how to best to handle these very difficult situations on ground that continues to shift both because of Administration changes but also because of societal changes.”

    Penn had not publicly commented on the proposed resolution agreement as of Wednesday evening. When news broke that the government was suspending its federal funds, Penn officials stressed in a statement that its “athletic programs have always operated within the framework provided by the federal government, the NCAA and our conference.”

    Title IX experts expect that if the university does challenge the proposed agreement in court, it will focus on that very argument—that when Thomas was competing on Penn’s swim team, the university was, in fact, complying with NCAA rules and the department’s guidance.

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  • AI Is Changing How Students Search: Will Your Website Show Up?

    AI Is Changing How Students Search: Will Your Website Show Up?

    AI is no longer a distant disruption. It’s already influencing how prospective students and families search, navigate, and make decisions on higher education websites. As teams responsible for delivering seamless digital experiences, we need to understand the behavioral shifts underway and how to respond strategically.

    Across the institutions we support, we’re seeing early but consistent signals: users expect smarter, faster, and more personalized interactions. These changes are subtle in some places and dramatic in others. But they’re accelerating.

    How AI is changing search behavior

    AI tools like Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE), ChatGPT, and other large language models are changing how people expect to interact with information. According to a 2023 Pew Research study, 58% of U.S. adults are aware of ChatGPT, and younger audiences are among the most active users. Meanwhile, Google continues testing SGE, which presents AI-generated summaries above traditional search results.

    Students are learning to type full, natural language questions — and they expect precise, context-aware responses in return. This behavior is now showing up in on-site search patterns.

    Across higher ed websites, here are a few things we’re noticing:

    • A rise in long-form, conversational search queries, especially within internal site search tools
    • Increased use of search bars over menu navigation (particularly on mobile). A recent E-Expectations Trend report found that half of high school students use the site search to navigate a website.
    • Across the higher ed websites we support, we see stronger performance on pages that are tailored to high-intent topics like cost, admissions, and outcomes. A recent analysis of over 200 higher ed sites found that 53% of engaged sessions come from organic search — highlighting the importance of content that’s built for both SEO and AI-driven discovery.
    • Additionally, research indicates that 80% of high school juniors and seniors consider an institution’s website the most influential resource when exploring schools. This highlights the critical role of personalized and relevant content in engaging prospective students effectively.
    • These findings emphasize the necessity for higher education institutions to develop and maintain website content that is specifically tailored to the needs and questions of their target audiences to enhance engagement and support enrollment goals.
    • Parents and adult learners demonstrate similar behavior as they vet institutions with a clearer sense of goals and outcomes.

    Ready for a Smarter Way Forward?

    Higher ed is hard — but you don’t have to figure it out alone. We can help you transform challenges into opportunities.

    We still need to get the fundamentals right

    It’s important to say: AI-driven search doesn’t eliminate the need for strong site structure. Navigation menus, clear page hierarchy, and thoughtful content design still matter — a lot. Most users move fluidly between browsing and searching. What’s changing is the expectation for speed, relevance, and control.

    To meet this moment, higher ed websites should focus on:

    • Modernizing internal search tools to move beyond keyword matching and support relevance-based or semantic search with tools like Vertex AI in full-site search tools or even program finders.
    • Designing content around user intent, not just institutional priorities. Emphasize topics that students are searching for — like affordability, flexibility, and outcomes — rather than internal program structures or catalog-style descriptions.
    • Making calls to action easy to find and easy to act on (especially for first-time visitors.) We help partners optimize for conversion with AB testing for placement, messaging, and functionality that best resonates with your audience.
    • Better leveraging personalized and dynamic content to deliver tailored experiences based on user behavior, location, or stage in the journey. For instance, high-intent pages like “How to Apply” can be leveraged to serve personalized content blocks based on the visitor’s context. A returning user who previously viewed graduate programs might see a prompt to schedule a call with a graduate admissions counselor. A visitor browsing from New York in the evening hours could be shown a message about flexible online options for working professionals. These dynamic cues guide prospective students forward in their journey without overhauling the entire site.

    Why this isn’t a one-time fix

    This is not a single redesign or one-time upgrade. Optimizing your site for how people actually use it needs to be a continuous process.

    This should include the following:

    • Reviewing analytics and user behavior regularly
    • Conducting search query audits to identify gaps
    • A/B testing calls to action and user pathways
    • Collecting both qualitative and quantitative research to understand different audience needs

    Higher ed website performance is directly tied to enrollment growth. According to a 2024 survey conducted by UPCEA and Collegis Education to better understand the perspectives of post-baccalaureate students, 62% of respondents said not being able to easily find basic program information on the institution’s website would cause them to disengage.

    The survey focuses on program preferences, delivery methods, and expectations during the inquiry and application processes and offered insights into how these preferences vary by age and degree level.

    How to prepare for what’s next

    To stay competitive and relevant, institutions need to invest in both smart search experiences and a streamlined digital journey. Here are some high-level recommendations:

    1. Audit your internal search functionality. How are users searching your site, and are they getting the right results?
    2. Map user journeys for key audiences. This includes traditional students, adult learners, and family decision-makers.
    3. Evaluate AI integration options. Tools like Google’s Vertex AI or other semantic search platforms can enhance search accuracy and personalization.
    4. Don’t overlook AEO (answer engine optimization). As AI-powered tools reshape how students discover and evaluate schools, it’s time to think beyond traditional SEO. AEO focuses on structuring content to directly answer the natural-language questions students now ask in tools like ChatGPT and Google’s SGE. We can help you begin integrating AEO into your strategy and content planning, so your institution stays visible in the next wave of search.
    5. Treat optimization as ongoing. Staying competitive in the AI era requires continuous improvements grounded in data, user behavior, and evolving search trends. Ongoing commitment to this initiative is crucial.

    Smarter web experiences start now

    The future of higher ed websites isn’t just about making information accessible. It’s about making it findable, meaningful, and actionable – and being able to act fast and stay committed to this work.

    Institutions that recognize how AI is already reshaping user expectations, and respond with thoughtful, strategic digital experiences, will meet today’s learners where they are and build trust for the long-term.

    We’re paying close attention to these shifts and helping institutions make smart, scalable updates. If you’re rethinking how your website supports recruitment, engagement, or conversion, now is the right time to start. Collegis Education supports institutions with strategic marketing and web solutions designed to meet these evolving needs.

    Let’s talk about how we can work together to future proof your web and digital experiences to best support enrollment growth for years to come. 

    See how your website stacks up — Contact us to request your AI Readiness Assessment. 

    Innovation Starts Here

    Higher ed is evolving — don’t get left behind. Explore how Collegis can help your institution thrive.

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  • Stewardship With Heart: Creative Ways to Show Donors You Care

    Stewardship With Heart: Creative Ways to Show Donors You Care

    What do you get when you add a stewardship crisis, two expert fundraisers, and a whole bunch of Valentine’s Day puns? RNL’s February webinar, of course! Earlier this year, RNL hosted an hour-long conversation featuring Miranda Fagley and Becca Widmer, where they unpacked their strategies for creating meaningful moments through stewardship.

    A tough heart-to-heart: The current state of the world

    With geopolitical conflict running rampant, a rocky economic state, and a rapidly shifting domestic political landscape, it’s no wonder donors are wary of the future. During this tough heart-to-heart, we unpacked the various factors that might make donors hesitate before opening their wallets in 2025, and took a deep-dive into how the state of the world is impacting our donors, and therefore impacting the state of philanthropy as we know it. From generational differences and the more dollars/fewer donors trend we have all experiences to evolving donor expectations, advancement leaders are facing unprecedented challenges as the goal-line seems to move every year.

    The heart of it all: A look at the donor data

    Evolving Donor Expectations: stats from RNL's National Alumni Survey showing 30%​ of donors indicate that being thanked by an organization is important in their decision to give​

    Jumping into the “heart” of our conversation, we went straight to the source—donor expectations gleaned from RNL’s 2025 National Alumni Survey. We noticed a few alarming trends when comparing this donor expectation data with the 2024 Giving USA report, which analyzed giving trends when accounting for inflation across our sector. Total giving declined by 2.1% when adjusting for inflation and, while higher education saw a 6.7% increase in overall giving, even when accounting for inflation, donor numbers across the board were down. There is also an obvious mismatch between donor expectations and reality, as seen in our comparison of RNL’s 2024 Advancement Leaders Speak report with the 2025 National Alumni Survey. Take, for instance, the fact that 66% of donors indicated that understanding the impact of their giving is important to them. This becomes an issue when 43% of advancement leaders reported that their shops have difficulty communicating the impact of specific funds. Storytelling is the name of the game, and it is becoming clear that communicating impact is a key piece of the donor acquisition and retention puzzle.

    The broken hearts club: Under-stewarded donors

    Many advancement shops are unknowingly leaving a trail of broken-hearted donors in the wake of annual campaigns. Why is thoughtful stewardship important?

    1. Connecting donors to your mission and educating them on the impact of their giving is crucial to keeping donors interested in your priorities.
    2. Telling your story through a “thank you” is a great way to differentiate your cause and your need in comparison to other organizations in this increasingly noisy world.
    3. The simple act of reminding donors of your impact is a great way to retain donors and move them through your pipeline. The more you can encourage donors to see themselves in your mission and important work, the more likely you are to get them onboard as true donor-partners.

    On the flip-side, we unpacked that can happen if you don’t steward your donors well, including a shrinking pipeline, excessive spending when you do decide to attempt to reacquire them, and the loss of both short- and long-term revenue. Don’t be a heartbreaker!

    Uncovering donor love languages: Do you know your donors?

    Words of affirmation. Quality time. Acts of service. These are just a few love languages from Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages. Did you know donors have love languages too? It’s our job as mission-centric, donor-focused fundraisers to learn those love languages and lean into them through stewardship, relationship-building, and even solicitation.

    In our exploration of donor love languages, we unpacked the first level- generational differences. Hearts are broken generationally when we do not pay attention to context and communicated need. While not always “the answer,” generational segmentation and a slight shift of message can be a simple way to get to the “heart” of what a majority of your donors want and need from your stewardship outreach. And, as we continue to experience generational shifts and the great wealth transfer, leaning into generational values will become even more important to attracting and retaining donors.

    Another layer of love language exploration comes from you going straight to the source- your individual donors and what their giving history can tell you. We looked at one of RNL’s solutions for further discovering donor love languages, the RNL360, which offers an opportunity to dive into your database. By illustrating historic AND recent trends in giving and interaction, the RNL360 can provide you with a better understanding of giving and retention by donor type, an analysis of consistency and efficacy of your various giving channels (hello, smart investment in tools and campaigns!), and can help establish baseline metrics which can inform goal setting and future fundraising and engagement targets.

    We can theorize all day about what donor expectations are, but the purest source of truth is looking at donor data and asking donors to tell you what they want and need. That’s where RNL’s Market Research solution comes into play. A complementary component of the RNL360, this additional solution allows you to hear directly from your donors by way of a private, but not anonymous, survey administered by RNL, where you can learn more about your donors’ philanthropic priorities, communication preferences, and sense of connectedness.

    When it comes to effective stewardship and solicitation, knowledge is power.

    Engagement strategies with heart: RNL experts share their takes

    Our two experts shared their take on stewardship and engagement with heart, with overlapping themes of getting personal, telling your story, and taking the time to really listen to what donors are telling you they want to hear from you.

    Miranda’s take

    1. Get specific: steward in ways only YOU can.
    2. “Single” out your society members with a special ‘thank you.’
    3. Take the time to survey your donors- understand what you THINK will resonate and get feedback/confirmation from them.

    Becca’s take

    1. Put gratitude on repeat.
    2. Turn generosity to belonging.
    3. Keep impact front and center.
    4. Asking is omnichannel, so thanking should be too.

    Our main takeaways?

    1. Consider the landscape: context is everything
    2. Take a hard look at donor data:
    3. Understand the “why” behind stewarding annual donors: Tell. Your. Story.
    4. Get to know your donors’ love languages: ask your donors directly
    5. Steward in ways only YOU can: don’t be afraid to get a little wacky

    Want to learn more about the RNL360 and Market Research to uncover your donor love languages and steward more thoughtfully? Connect with an RNL fundraising expert today!

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  • Show Up, Fight Back! Protest in San Diego, April 8, 2025

    Show Up, Fight Back! Protest in San Diego, April 8, 2025

     

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  • The FCC’s show trial against CBS is a political power play

    The FCC’s show trial against CBS is a political power play

    This article originally appeared in Reason on March 14, 2025

    The Federal Communications Commission is conducting an unseemly and unconstitutional spectacle, ostensibly to determine whether CBS violated its policy against “news distortion” by editing a “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Its real purpose is to exercise raw partisan power.

    The FCC already knows CBS did not violate any rules and merely engaged in everyday journalism. And there is nothing to be learned from the over 8,000 comments and counting that have poured into the commission’s inbox. Many simply registered their like or dislike of the network and mainstream media in general, and many others were just unserious quips submitted to troll the regulators.

    But judging the merits of the “news distortion” allegation was never the point. The FCC staff already dismissed the complaint—filed by a partisan activist group—as fatally defective back in January. As outgoing FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel explained, “The FCC should not be the President’s speech police. . . . The FCC should not be journalism’s censor-in-chief.” But one of Brendan Carr’s first acts as the new FCC chair in Donald Trump’s administration was to reinstate the complaint and call for public comments.

    Asking members of the public to “vote” on how they feel about a news organization’s editorial policies or whether they think the network violated FCC rules is both pointless and constitutionally infirm. In 1943, Justice Robert Jackson wrote that the right to free speech and a free press “may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.”

    The FCC’s reanimated proceeding lacks any legitimate regulatory rationale. But its realpolitik purpose is sadly transparent. This fishing expedition is designed to exert maximum political leverage on the CBS network at a time when Trump is engaged in preposterous litigation over the same “60 Minutes” broadcast, claiming CBS’ editing violates a Texas law against fraudulent commercial transactions. Adding to the pressure, Chairman Carr said he will consider the thousands of comments in this proceeding when evaluating whether to approve a merger of Skydance Media and CBS parent company Paramount Global worth billions of dollars.

    There is a name for what the FCC is doing in this proceeding: a show trial. When investigations become a performative exercise designed to further a political purpose, they forfeit any claim to legitimacy. 

    There is nothing here for the FCC to investigate. The complaint alleges that Harris gave a “word salad” response to a question about whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was listening to the Biden administration and that CBS edited it to make her sound more articulate. One part of her responses was aired on “60 Minutes” and another part aired on “Face the Nation.”

    In short, CBS stands accused of committing journalism. Every day, from the smallest newspaper to the largest network, reporters and editors must make sense of and condense the information they collect—including quotes from politicians and other newsmakers—to tell their stories concisely and understandably. That task necessarily requires editing, including selecting what quotes to use. If the cockamamie theory underlying this FCC “investigation” had any merit, every newsroom in America would be a crime scene.

    That’s why the FCC in the past has never defined the editing process as “news distortion.” In fact, the commission made quite clear when it first articulated the news distortion policy in 1969 that “we do not mean the type of situation, frequently encountered, where a person quoted on a news program complains that he very clearly said something else.” It stressed, “We do not sit to review the broadcaster’s news judgment, the quality of his news and public affairs reporting, or his taste.”

    The commission understood that this very narrow approach is required to respect both the First Amendment and the Communications Act, which denies the FCC “the power of censorship.” As the FCC observed, “In this democracy, no Government agency can authenticate the news, or should try to do so.”

    There is a name for what the FCC is doing in this proceeding: a show trial. When investigations become a performative exercise designed to further a political purpose, they forfeit any claim to legitimacy. Show trials are intended to send a message, not just to their unfortunate victims, but to other would-be transgressors.

    FIRE calls out 60 Minutes investigation as ‘political stunt’ in comment to FCC

    News

    FIRE submitted a comment to the Federal Communications Commission about a complaint about a 60 Minutes interview with then Vice President Kamala Harris.


    Read More

    There is a dark and deadly history of such proceedings in authoritarian regimes around the world, ranging from Josef Stalin’s purges of perceived political opponents to China’s trials of “rioters and counterrevolutionaries” after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Though less extreme in nature, during the Red Scare, the House Committee on Un-American Activities similarly staged show hearings where they pressured witnesses to name names while presuming guilt. The stakes of a sham FCC proceeding may differ, but the tactics and perversion of the rule of law are the same. 

    Somewhere along the way, the FCC’s current leadership abandoned that basic truth in exchange for political expediency. And in doing so, it is ignoring a unanimous holding from the Supreme Court just last term that threatening legal sanctions and other means of coercion to suppress disfavored speech violates the First Amendment. 

    The commission can begin to recover some dignity only by dropping this show trial immediately.

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  • Games and their cheat codes can show universities how to unlock new purpose

    Games and their cheat codes can show universities how to unlock new purpose

    I was recently browsing Board Game Geek, an online forum for nerds who like tabletop games, and came across a thread entitled “anyone have a use for the University?”

    This contained a complaint about the board game Puerto Rico. In Puerto Rico, although the University is potentially a very powerful card, it’s considered too expensive and therefore not worth players’ investment – and I couldn’t help being struck by a resonance with real life higher education in the UK.

    Following the recent increase in tuition fees, reports of students perceiving university education as a poor investment of time and money have proliferated. As such, understanding and communicating the value of higher education has become an increasingly pressing concern.

    Value and metaphor

    In 2024, over 1,000 papers were published which mention the value of higher education, going over themes like economic gain, professional and academic experience, networking, “cultural capital”, and a sense of the value that higher education institutions offer to society in general. Authors explore how value is perceived differently by applicants, students, graduates, staff and the public, and by different demographic communities within these groups. Undoubtedly, the value of higher education is multifaceted and complex.

    A powerful way of understanding value is through metaphor. When we use a metaphor, we ascribe the value of one thing to another. For instance, universities are beacons of knowledge positions universities as guiding lights, illuminating the path to progress (or something).

    Some common metaphors ascribed to universities include: universities are innovators that drive progress and create new ideas; universities are catalysts for personal and societal transformation; and universities are providers which supply a skilled workforce to deliver economic growth.

    When metaphors are layered together, they become a narrative – a way of conveying greater meaning through interconnected symbols. Games, as a form of interactive storytelling, take this concept even further. They combine metaphors with player agency, allowing players to actively engage with and shape the narrative. In games, players don’t just passively observe metaphors at work; they inhabit and interact with them.

    The player of games

    Because games are dynamic, this means that universities appear in games only when they are actively doing something: acting on the simulation and changing the outcome for the player. Analysing these dynamics leads to some thought-provoking insights into how universities are perceived as acting on the real world, and therefore what value higher education holds in society.

    Our most familiar metaphors for universities are easily recognisable in games. For example, in strategy games such as Age of Empires, universities are innovators which generate “research points” which can be spent to unlock new things. In city-building games like Megapolis, universities are providers that give the player more resources in the form of workers. In Cities: Skylines, universities are catalysts for growth: once a citizen has attended university their home will be upgraded to higher building levels, and they can get better jobs, which in turn levels up their place of employment.

    To return to Puerto Rico: in the normal rules of the board game, players can “construct” a building (such as a factory or warehouse) but cannot use it until the next “mayor phase” is triggered, at which point they can be “staffed”, and its benefits can be used by the player thereafter. The university card grants the player the ability to both “construct” and “staff” new buildings instantly, without waiting. This significantly speeds up the gameplay for the owner of the card.

    When used in this way, the university card changes the mechanics of the game for the player who can use it.

    Puerto Rico is not alone in this. For example, in Struggle for Catan, the university card allows the possessor to buy future cards more easily by swapping one required resource for any other kind. This has such an unbalancing effect that it changes the game from that point onwards. As one Board Game Geek user puts it:

    When I play with my wife we ban the University to keep it a friendly game […] In a four player game everyone just gangs up on whoever gets the University.

    In both of these games, universities are cheat codes: “a secret password […] that makes something unusual happen, for example giving a player unusual abilities or allowing them to advance in the game.”

    Cheat codes are used by players to create exceptions to the standard game rules everyone else must abide by. Universities change the mechanics of the game and enable players to act in a way that would be otherwise impossible.

    Real-life cheat codes

    The idea of students using universities to gain an advantage is not new. When university strategies talk about “transforming students’ lives”, this is generally what they’re referring to. “Educational gain”, “cultural capital”, “graduate attributes”, and “personal development”, are all facets of the same sort of idea.

    However, I’d argue that using the metaphor of a “cheat code” forces us to see students as active players who are using their experiences agentically and strategically, rather than just passively receiving something. When a player uses a cheat code, they generally have an intention in mind. Using the game metaphor reminds us to see students as individual players, who are interested in developing their own palette of cheat codes for their own personal goals.

    If the value of a university experience for students is in developing and testing cheat codes, then we should be intentionally structuring higher education to teach the most effective “hacks”. As Mark Peace has argued on this site in the past, we mustn’t be complacent about the process by which students “catch” transferrable skills. We need to be much more intentional about how we scaffold the development of these cheat codes, and how we work collaboratively with students to identify the skills they want to build and create meaningful ways to help them develop their own toolbox of cheat codes.

    Without this, there is a real danger that we will return to the original scenario of this article, the forum post bemoaning the high-cost, low-return of the university card in Puerto Rico. We must guard against the “university card” being almost unplayable, because it is too expensive, not flexible enough, or too dated. The challenge to institutions is to ensure our provision is more like the university card in Struggle for Catan: truly game-breaking.

    Thinking about universities in terms of game design invites us to rethink the rules we’re playing by and imagine a world where some rules don’t apply. It’s a reminder that the narratives that shape higher education aren’t set in stone. Players have autonomy and can change the direction of the game. This might mean building a toolbox for life with students – and for us, it means taking a wider look at the system we’re part of. What would it look like to recover our agency and, as Edward Venning puts it on HEPI recently, “recover an assertive self-confidence”? For too long, universities have been stuck playing the game instead of changing the rules.

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  • Jon Stewart Reworks Trump & Elon’s Sweeping DOGE Budget Cuts (The Daily Show)

    Jon Stewart Reworks Trump & Elon’s Sweeping DOGE Budget Cuts (The Daily Show)







    Higher Education Inquirer : Jon Stewart Reworks Trump & Elon’s Sweeping DOGE Budget Cuts (The Daily Show)




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  • Chicago Public Schools Launches Long-Awaited Site to Show How Schools Are Doing – The 74

    Chicago Public Schools Launches Long-Awaited Site to Show How Schools Are Doing – The 74


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    Chicago Public Schools launched new school profiles on its website — a milestone in the district’s five-year push to change how it portrays the quality of its campuses.

    The new school accountability dashboards replace the district’s controversial number ratings for schools, which CPS put on hold and then scrapped during the pandemic. Those ratings had drawn the ire of educators and some community members, who said they unfairly stigmatized campuses that serve students with high needs. The old level ratings had also factored into high-stakes decisions about school closures and staff overhauls.

    Some parents who’ve provided feedback on the shift said families welcome having a one-stop repository of information on school performance again. But they said they’d like to see simpler, more accessible language in information about the metrics the district included to put the numbers into context. And they noted that a busy parent must click repeatedly to get to each metric — only to find out in many cases that these numbers aren’t available yet.

    Bogdana Chkoumbova, the district’s chief education officer, said the new system aimed to strike a balance.

    “We didn’t want this to be just another state report card; we are embracing the complexity of the data,” she said. “If it looked like a one-pager in red and green, that just brings in the trauma.”

    The new profiles went up in mid-December, the day after the window to apply to the district’s selective and magnet programs closed. Chkoumbova said the timing was not intentional. After all, families could find most of the information available on the dashboards so far on schools’ Illinois Report Card profiles.

    For now, the profiles include only a portion of the data they’ll eventually feature — mostly traditional metrics such as test scores, chronic absenteeism, and graduation rates. Later this year, the district is gearing up to add long-anticipated information that gets at students’ experience and well-being — metrics that in some cases officials are still weighing how to best capture.

    Still, CPS leaders say the launch of the new dashboards is an important start. They can be a handy tool as the members of a new, partly elected school board learn about the district and its schools. District officials plan to show off the profiles at the board’s monthly meeting on Thursday.

    “We are transitioning to a completely new way of how we view student success and the district’s role in supporting schools,” said Chkoumbova.

    The dashboards are available here by scrolling to the bottom and looking up a school.

    The new profiles are five years in the making

    Chicago first set out to overhaul how it measures and publicly communicates about school quality in 2019. At that time, school board members called on district officials to do away with the School Quality Rating System, or SQRP, policy, which many considered too focused on metrics that are affected by poverty levels and other demographics of the student body. The district formally adopted a new Continuous Improvement and Data Transparency policy in 2023.

    With input from academics, parents, and others, the district tried to design a more holistic approach, bringing in a wider array of metrics, including some that got at the experience students have on campus — and at whether the district is providing schools the resources they need to improve that experience.

    After years of largely behind-the-scenes work, the new dashboards went live quietly in December, giving principals and other educators a chance to weigh in.

    Claiborne Wade, the father of four CPS students, served on a district committee that provided input on the new accountability system. He said he is a big believer in the district’s efforts to take a more holistic look at school performance.

    “It’s more than test scores and attendance rates and graduation rates,” he said. “Those are important, but so is making sure we have funds for extracurricular activities and parents have a seat at the table.”

    Last week, Wade presented the new dashboards to a group of 10 parents actively involved at DePriest Elementary on the West Side, where he works as a family coordinator as part of the Sustainable Community Schools program. Some liked that the new dashboards offer information about each metric and how to interpret it. But many felt these explanations were too heavy on education jargon and terms such as “alternate assessments.”

    Jaqueline Vargas, the mother of two CPS students and two district graduates, said the site asks parents to do too much navigating — especially given that many metrics are not landing on the dashboard until later this year.

    “You have to click a lot, but when you finally get there, the information isn’t there,” said Vargas, who also served on the district’s Transparency Committee.

    She said she would love to see more information on parent leadership groups and parent engagement more generally, photos of principals, and readily accessible listings of the specialized programs and support services a campus offers. One of her CPS graduates was really interested in cooking while in high school, but the family had no idea that even though their neighborhood high school did not offer a culinary program, two nearby campuses did.

    Hal Woods, chief of policy with the parent advocacy group Kids First Chicago, said the dashboards are clearly a work in progress. The layout can be more user-friendly. The metrics available so far are largely what SQRP offered, though the recently released dashboards do include some new information, such as whether a school has quality curriculums.

    Parents are eager to see the full set of metrics later this year, Woods said — including those that show how schools are providing social and emotional support to students, a task that recent research has shown greatly affects outcomes such as high school graduation.

    The district aims to better measure the student experience

    Like districts across the country, CPS is still grappling with how to measure the student experience on campus more fully, said Elaine Allensworth of the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research. For the past two years, the district has given students a survey called Cultivate, which was developed by Allenworth’s team at the university. But she says the survey was designed to give teachers information about students’ experiences in their classrooms — not as an accountability tool for families and others.

    “There’s a concern that if the survey becomes public, teachers would feel under pressure to make their schools look good and won’t feel as comfortable using it for their own development,” she said.

    The district also explored how to best present another key piece of the student experience: extracurricular activities. The district could likely do more than simply listing the activities a school offers, Allensworth said. The new dashboards show the portion of students who participate in any activities. But are these activities high-quality? Are outside partners chipping in?

    Chkoumbova said the district will continue to work on improving the platform. In late February, it will include new data on the growth toward math and reading proficiency on state tests that students make — a metric that Ellensworth said is much more telling about how well a school is doing than the portion of students who meet state standards on these tests.

    Chkoumbova feels CPS is on the right track.

    “We are trailblazers,” she said. “There are very few systems that have taken such an innovative and different approach.”

    Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.


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  • Across All Ages & Demographics, Test Results Show Americans Are Getting Dumber – The 74

    Across All Ages & Demographics, Test Results Show Americans Are Getting Dumber – The 74


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    There’s no way to sugarcoat it: Americans have been getting dumber.

    Across a wide range of national and international tests, grade levels and subject areas, American achievement scores peaked about a decade ago and have been falling ever since. 

    Will the new NAEP scores coming out this week show a halt to those trends? We shall see. But even if those scores indicate a slight rebound off the COVID-era lows, policymakers should seek to understand what caused the previous decade’s decline. 

    There’s a lot of blame to go around, from cellphones and social media to federal accountability policies. But before getting into theories and potential solutions, let’s start with the data.

    Until about a decade ago, student achievement scores were rising. Researchers at Education Next found those gains were broadly shared across racial and economic lines, and achievement gaps were closing. But then something happened, and scores started to fall. Worse, they fell faster for lower-performing students, and achievement gaps started to grow.

    This pattern shows up on test after test. Last year, we looked at eighth grade math scores and found growing achievement gaps in 49 of 50 states, the District of Columbia and 17 out of 20 large cities with sufficient data.

    But it’s not just math, and it’s not just NAEP. The American Enterprise Institute’s Nat Malkus has documented the same trend in reading, history and civics. Tests like NWEA’s MAP Growth and Curriculum Associates’ i-Ready are showing it too. And, as Malkus found in a piece released late last year, this is a uniquely American problem. The U.S. now leads the world in achievement gap growth.

    What’s going on? How can students here get back on track? Malkus addresses these questions in a new report out last week and makes the point that any honest reckoning with the causes and consequences of these trends must account for the timing, scope and magnitude of the changes.

    Theory #1: It’s accountability

    As I argued last year, my top explanation has been the erosion of federal accountability policies. In 2011 and 2012, the Obama administration began issuing waivers to release states from the most onerous requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. Congress made those policies permanent in the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act. That timing fits, and it makes sense that easing up on accountability, especially for low-performing students, led to achievement declines among those same kids.

    However,  there’s one problem with this explanation: American adults appear to be suffering from similar achievement declines. In results that came out late last year, the average scores of Americans ages 16 to 65 fell in both literacy and numeracy on the globally administered Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies. 

    And even among American adults, achievement gaps are growing. The exam’s results are broken down into six performance levels. On the numeracy portion, for example, the share of Americans scoring at the two highest levels rose two points, from 10% to 12%, while the percentage of those at the bottom two levels rose from 29% to 34%. In literacy, the percentage of Americans scoring at the top two levels fell from 14% to 13%, while the lowest two levels rose from 19% to 28%. 

    These results caused Peggy Carr, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, to comment, “There’s a dwindling middle in the United States in terms of skills.” Carr could have made the same comment about K-12 education —  except that these results can’t be explained by school-related causes.

    Theory #2: It’s the phones

    The rise of smartphones and social media, and the decline in reading for pleasure, could be contributing to these achievement declines. Psychologist Jean Twenge pinpointed 2012 as the first year when more than half of Americans owned a smartphone, which is about when achievement scores started to decline. This theory also does a better job of explaining why Americans of all ages are scoring lower on achievement tests.

    But there are some holes in this explanation. For one, why are some of the biggest declines seen in the youngest kids? Are that many 9-year-olds on Facebook or Instagram? Second, why are the lowest performers suffering the largest declines in achievement? Attention deficits induced by phones and screens should affect all students in similar ways, and yet the pattern shows the lowest performers are suffering disproportionately large drops.

    But most fundamentally, why is this mostly a U.S. trend? Smartphones and social media are global phenomena, and yet scores in Australia, England, Italy, Japan and Sweden have all risen over the last decade. A couple of other countries have seen some small declines (like Finland and Denmark), but no one has else seen declines like we’ve had here in the States.

    Other theories: Immigration, school spending or the Common Core

    Other theories floating around have at least some kernels of truth. Immigration trends could explain some portion of the declines, although it’s not clear why those would be affecting scores only now. The Fordham Institute’s Mike Petrilli has partly blamed America’s “lost decade” on economic factors, but school spending has rebounded sharply in recent years without similar gains in achievement. Others, including historian Diane Ravitch and the Pioneer Institute’s Theodor Rebarber, blame the shift to the Common Core state standards, which was happening about the same time. But non-Common Core states suffered similar declines, and scores have also dropped in non-Common Core subjects.

    Note that COVID is not part of my list. It certainly exacerbated achievement declines and reset norms within schools, but achievement scores were already falling well before it hit America’s shores.

    Instead of looking for one culprit, it could be a combination of these factors. It could be that the rise in technology is diminishing Americans’ attention spans and stealing their focus from books and other long-form written content. Meanwhile, schools have been de-emphasizing basic skills, easing up on behavioral expectations and making it easier to pass courses. At the same time, policymakers in too many parts of the country have stopped holding schools accountable for the performance of all students.

    That’s a potent mix of factors that could explain these particular problems. It would be helpful to have more research to pinpoint problems and solutions, but if this diagnosis is correct, it means students, teachers, parents and policymakers all have a role to play in getting achievement scores back on track. 


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