AI isn’t the only reason new graduates can’t get a job, but it is changing the job market they’re entering. Economic uncertainty and a surplus of college graduates are contributing far more to high unemployment among young degree holders than job-thieving robots.
A recent Federal Reserve analysis showed that the unemployment gap between high school and college graduates has been narrowing since the 2008 recession and now sits at around 2.5 percentage points, down from an average of five percentage points from roughly the 1980s to early 2000s. The National Association of Colleges and Employers’ 2026 Job Outlook Survey found that employers expect hiring for the Class of 2026 to remain flat. Next year’s job market likely won’t improve for college graduates.
But even though huge corporations like Amazon, Target and Klarna say they are laying off tens of thousands of employees because of AI, they do not represent the majority of employers. Like the rest of us, most companies are still figuring out AI. In the NACE survey, nearly 59 percent of employers said they are not planning to or are unsure whether they’ll augment entry-level jobs with AI, and just 25 percent said they’re currently discussing it.
Meanwhile, in a recent Substack post, economist and CUNY Graduate Center professor Paul Krugman argued it’s too soon for AI to have such a drastic impact on unemployment for college-educated workers; instead, he blamed the crummy job market on tariffs, uncertainty in the economy and even DOGE cuts flooding the job market with laid-off, educated federal workers.
These market challenges coincide with intensifying pressure from the federal government and the general public for colleges to show that their degrees are valuable. Just this week, the Department of Education rolled out a new feature in the Free Application for Federal Student Aid alerting students if the institutions they’ve applied to produce graduates who earn less than people with just high school degrees.
While the state of the economy is out of higher education’s control, institutions should heed employer calls for graduates with real-world experience. Career-ready students will be able to adapt to the evolving world of work and see that their degrees are worth the investment. The most promising response is for colleges to embrace experiential learning.
A survey of employers released this week by the American Association of Colleges and Universities showed that college graduates who are proficient in applying knowledge to the real world and who understand teamwork are the most likely to be hired. Students agree: They cited paid internships and building stronger connections with employers as the top things colleges can do to help them get career-ready.
Focusing on work-based learning will achieve two things: get students the real-world experience employers demand and set them up for long-term economic success. The college premium may be eroding, but it persists. And while high school graduates might be getting jobs more quickly than recent college graduates, those with degrees stay employed longer once they do find jobs.
Regional economies will benefit from graduates with real-world experience, too. Students who participate in internships or apprenticeships are more likely to find local jobs after they graduate. Studies even show that underemployed graduates, those working jobs that don’t require a college degree, land in roles with higher intrinsic value—think less physical labor, more respectful treatment and better opportunities for skill development.
Some institutions are further along than others. A program at Harvey Mudd College pairs undergraduates early in their degrees with alumni around the country for summer job shadows. Others target career support to individual student groups, such as neurodiverse students and veterans. Virginia recently announced a partnership with Handshake to provide each student at a public institution at least one form of work-based learning in an effort to keep talent in the state. And the Delaware Workforce Development Board gave the University of Delaware’s Lerner College of Business and Economics a grant to create a yearlong co-op program with businesses across the state, partly to “keep homegrown talent here in Delaware,” the chair of the board said.
The economic forces impacting the job market aren’t going away, and neither is AI’s transformational influence on how work gets done. The solution for colleges is simple: Students need real-world experience and employers are explicit about wanting to hire graduates who have it. Colleges must start building employer relationships and embedding experiential learning into the curriculum now. The institutions that get it right will be the ones whose graduates never question the value of their degree.
Sara Custer is editor in chief at inside Higher Ed.
Nearly 9,000 children across 16 states and Puerto Rico remained locked out of Head Start programming as of Friday evening, according to the National Head Start Association, despite the federal government’s reopening on Wednesday night.
For some programs, the promise of incoming funding will be enough to restart operations. But many won’t be able to open their doors until they receive their federal dollars, which could take up to two weeks, said Tommy Sheridan, deputy director at the NHSA.
Sheridan said the Trump administration understands the urgency and is “moving as fast as they possibly can.”
That said, this interruption had an opportunity cost, and it’s led to instability for families and providers, he said, adding that the shutdown caused staff to focus on issues they “should not be worried about,” such as fundraising and contingency planning.
“They’re going to be working as hard as they can, but they’re going to be doing it with half the capacity,” said Katie Hamm, former deputy assistant secretary for early childhood development under President Joe Biden.
And even once the funding comes through, closed centers will need to go through a series of logistical hurdles, including reaching out to families who may have found alternative child care arrangements and calling back furloughed staff, some of whom have found employment elsewhere.
“Head Start is not a light switch,” Hamm said. “You can’t just turn it back on.”
This interruption has also further eroded trust between grantees and the federal government that was already shaky, she added.
The Administration for Children and Families did not respond to a request for comment on when programs can anticipate communication from the office or their funding.
Since Nov. 1, approximately 65,000 kids and their families — close to 10% of all of those served by Head Start — have been at risk of losing their seats because their programs had not received their awarded funding during the longest government shutdown in history. The early care and education program delivers a range of resources to low-income families including medical screenings, parenting courses and connections to community resources for job, food and housing assistance.
At the peak of the Head Start closures, roughly 10,000 kids across 22 programs lost access to services, according to Sheridan. A number of the remaining programs were able to stay open through private donations, loans, alternative funding streams and staff’s willingness to go without pay.
Valerie Williams, who runs a Head Start program with two facilities in Appalachian Ohio, was excited to tell parents that classrooms would be reopening soon. Her centers have been closed since Nov. 3, impacting 177 kids and 45 staff, many of whom already live paycheck to paycheck, she said.
Valerie Williams runs two Head Start centers in Appalachian Ohio, serving 177 kids. (Valerie Williams)
A number of families were doubly impacted, losing access to Head Start’s resources as well as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP, simultaneously. In the days leading up to the closure, Williams and her staff prepared families as best they could, sharing information about resources for food, assistance for utilities and heating and guidance on child care options.
On Thursday, Williams wrote to parents via an online portal that she hopes to restart the normal school schedule sometime next week. The post was quickly flooded with comments.
“This is super exciting!!” wrote one parent. “Best news in a long time. Carter has been asking every day. Hope to see u guys very soon.”
“Yayyy,” wrote another. “The kids miss you guys so much!”
Valerie Williams, who runs a Head Start program in Appalachian Ohio, was excited to tell parents that classrooms would be reopening soon. (Valerie Williams)
Still, Williams knows reopening won’t be seamless. Along with program leaders across the country, she’ll need to call back furloughed staff, place food orders and handle a number of other operational challenges.
And despite the excitement, the transition back may also prove tricky for some kids.
“I do think that it will feel like starting school again for a lot of our classrooms,” Williams said. “They’ve been out for two weeks … You’re going to work on separation anxiety issues, you’re going to have to get into that routine again and the structure of a classroom environment. So I think that will be a big issue for a lot of our teachers.”
As of Friday afternoon, Williams was still awaiting communication from the federal Office of Head Start with information about the anticipated timeline for next steps.
“As soon as we get that notice of award, [I want to] start our staff and kids back immediately,” she said. “The very next day.”
Now that the shutdown has ended, what’s next for Head Start?
Funding for Head Start is complex. Some 80% comes from federal grants that are released to local providers on a staggered schedule throughout the year. This year, grant recipients with funding deadlines on the first of October and November were left scrambling, as the federal shutdown dragged on.
The government began to resume operations late Wednesday night after President Donald Trump signed a bill, funding most federal agencies through Jan. 30 and allowing programs that didn’t receive their funding on time, including Head Start, to use forthcoming dollars to backpay expenses incurred over the past month and a half.
Here’s what Hamm predicts will happen next: The Office of Head Start will recall all staffto resume, including those who were furloughed during the shutdown. The employees will review grant applications, a process which now requires them to flag any language that might be reflective of diversity, equity and inclusion practices. Next, money will be sent along to the remaining regional offices, and eventually dispersed to individual grantees. The NHSA is hopeful that this process will be completed by Thanksgiving for all grantees.
There are two things the federal government can do to help centers open faster, according to Hamm. First, they could waive a typical protocol that leads to a period of seven days between when a member of Congress is notified that their state will be receiving funding and when the funding actually goes out, Hamm explained.
Officials could also notify grantees, in writing, about how much money they’ll get and when it’s expected to come through, so they can begin planning.
Unlike SNAP, which received guaranteed funding through the budget year, money for Head Start remains uncertain beyond Jan. 30. While the fear of another shutdown has caused “quite a bit of worry” among the Head Start community, Sheridan said it would likely lead to fewer program disruptions, since it wouldn’t fall at the start of the fiscal year.
Tommy Sheridan, deputy director of the National Head Start Association. (Tommy Sheridan)
To prevent similar chaos moving forward, Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin introduced a bill in the final days of the shutdown that would guarantee uninterrupted service for fiscal year 2026.
“The 750,000 children and their families who use Head Start shouldn’t pay the price for Washington dysfunction,” Baldwin, the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, wrote in a statement to The 74.
Multiple funding threats and deep staffing cuts by the Trump administration over the past year have plunged programs across the country into uncertainty. In the wake of that recent upheaval, a leadership change is also underway. The acting director of the Office of Head Start, Tala Hooban, accepted a new role within the Office of Administration for Children and Families and will be replaced by political appointee Laurie Todd-Smith, according to an email statement from ACF. Todd-Smith currently leads the Office of Early Childhood Development, which oversees the Office of Head Start.
Sheridan described this move as anticipated and not particularly concerning, though others were less sure. Joel Ryan, the executive director of the Washington State Association of Head Start, noted that Hooban was a longtime civil servant and strong supporter of the Head Start program. Without her, he fears “there’s nobody internally with any kind of power that will push back,” on future threats to the program.
Another worry plaguing providers: current funding for Head Start has remained stagnant since the end of 2024, meaning that through at least Jan. 30, programs will be operating under the same budget amid rising costs across the board.
In previous years, the program’s grant recipients typically got a cost-of-living adjustment, such as the 2.35% bump ($275 million) for fiscal year 2024. In May, a group of almost 200 members of Congress signed a letter to a House Appropriations subcommittee, requesting an adjustment of 3.2% for 2026. A recent statement from NHSA suggested that instead, the proposed Senate bill for next year includes a jump of just 0.6%, or $77 million.
“If we don’t see a funding increase in line with inflation, that means that Head Start will be facing a cut of that degree,” said Sheridan. “It’s just kind of a quiet cut, or a silent cut.”
“I think what will end up happening,” said Ryan, “is you’ll end up seeing a massive reduction in the number of kids being served.”
Did you use this article in your work?
We’d love to hear how The 74’s reporting is helping educators, researchers, and policymakers. Tell us how
This story was produced in partnership with Teen Vogue and reprinted with permission.
Christopher Cade wants to be president someday. His inspiration largely comes from family members, who have been involved in local politics and activism since long before he was born. But policies from the Trump administration and the Ohio Legislature are complicating his college experience — and his plans to become a politician.
Cade is a student at Ohio State University double-majoring in public policy analysis and political science with a focus on American political theory. He recalls his maternal grandmother, Maude Hill — who had a large hand in raising him — talking to him about her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. She also worked at Columbus, Ohio-based affordable housing development nonprofit, Homeport, and has gone to Capitol Hill to speak with the state delegation multiple times. His dad is the senior vice president of the housing choice voucher program at the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, and his older brother has a degree in political science and is interested in social justice advocacy work, Cade said. Last fall, his first on campus, Cade began applying to opportunities to bolster his resume for a future career in politics.
The now 19-year-old secured an internship with the U.S. Department of Transportation and a work-study job on campus in the university’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion. But the federal opportunity was scrapped when the Trump administration imposed a hiring freeze and budget cuts. His campus job ended when the university announced it would “sunset” the diversity office in response to federal and state anti-diversity, equity and inclusion orders and actions, according to Cade.
Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education.
The work-study position was with the university’s Bell National Resource Center on the African American Male, which was founded to support Black men to stay in college. It’s a cause he was excited about.
“I would help order food or speak with students or do interviews,” said Cade. “I developed a good 20 different programs for the next year.”
In February, when the university announced it was closing the office, “I was like, ‘Well, so six months of work just for no reason,’” he said.
OSU President Ted Carter released a statement on Feb. 27 saying the closure of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion was a response to both state and federal actions regarding DEI in public education. The move eliminated 17 staff positions, not including student roles, the university said. Programming and services provided by the Office of Student Life’s Center for Belonging and Social Change were also scrapped.
The change came before the Trump administration’s initial deadline for complying with a memo that threatened to cut funding for public colleges and universities, as well as K-12 schools, that offer DEI programs and initiatives. In March, the administration announced that OSU was one of roughly 50 universities under federal investigation for allegedly discriminating against white and Asian students in graduate admissions. Additionally, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed legislation in March banning DEI programs in the state’s public colleges and universities. The legislation went into effect in June.
Before the DEI office closed, Cade said, “I felt so heard and seen.” He’d attended a private, predominantly white, Catholic high school, he said. “It was not a place that supported me culturally and helped me understand more about who I am and my Blackness,” he recalled. At the university, though, “the programming we had throughout the year [was] about how to change the narrative on who a Black man is and what it means when you go out here and interact with people.
“And then for them to close down all these programs, that essentially told me that I wasn’t cared about.”
After the February announcement, students pushed back, organizing protests and a sit-in at the student union. But eventually, those efforts quieted.
Cade says students felt like there was a “cloud of darkness” hanging over them. But he also thought of his Office of Diversity and Inclusion coworkers, some of whom had spent decades working there, helping students. In particular he thought of his former colleague Chila Thomas, who celebrated her fifth anniversary last year as the executive director of the Young Scholars Program. That program, which helps low-income aspiring first-generation college students get to and through college, was one of several of the office’s programs that will continue. The day after Carter’s announcement, she and others in the office spent time giving students space to talk through their feelings, despite the uncertainties surrounding their own employment, Cade said.
Since the university crackdown on DEI, Cade said he’s experienced more discomfort on campus, even outright racism. He says he was approached by a white person who said, “I’m so glad they’re getting rid of DEI” and spit on his shoe and used a racial slur.
“I don’t know how that could ever be acceptable to anyone, but that was [when] a flip switched in my head,” Cade said. “I couldn’t sit down and be sad and silent. I had to stand up and make change.”
In March, he traveled with other students to Washington, D.C., as part of the Undergraduate Student Government’s Governmental Relations Committee. They met with Ohio Rep. Troy Balderson and an aide, along with staffers from the offices of fellow Ohio lawmakers Sen. Bernie Moreno and Rep. Joyce Beatty, to discuss college affordability, DEI policies and the federal hiring freeze. Cade says he described how he was affected by the U.S. Department of Transportation canceling his internship.
In Carter’s announcement, he stated that all student employees would be “offered alternative jobs at the university,” but Cade said during a meeting with Office of Diversity and Inclusion student employees, an OSU dean clarified that they would have to apply for new opportunities. With the policy changes meaning there were fewer work-study roles and more students in need of jobs, Cade saw the market as increasingly competitive, and he began to job hunt elsewhere. This summer he secured work with the Ohio Department of Transportation as a communications and policy intern. In October he began an intake assistant role in the Office of Civil Rights Compliance at the university. (Ohio State Director of Media and PR Chris Booker told Teen Vogue that the school could not comment on the experiences of individual students but that “all student employees and graduate associates impacted by these program changes were offered the opportunity to pursue transitioning into alternative positions at the university, as well as support in navigating that change.”)
Although he was drawn to OSU for the John Glenn College of Public Affairs’ master’s program, Cade says he might have reconsidered schools had he known that the university would bend to lawmakers’ anti-DEI efforts. While he’s concerned about how education-related legislation and policies may continue to affect his college experience, he worries most about some of his peers. College is already so hard to navigate for so many young people, said Cade. “And this is just another thing that says, ‘Oh yeah, this isn’t for me.’”
This story was published in partnership with Teen Vogue.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Jarche informs us that when we narrate our work, we don’t experience knowledge transfer, but what we do get is greater understanding. Our individual, self-directed learning is difficult to codify, he explains, and is more focused on relationships and expertise. When we narrate our work, focusing on decisions and processes, we make that work more visible to others. This means we can experiment and share knowledge, learning together in real time. The results of this thinking together results in enterprise curation, where we can more easily codify knowledge and experience the results of our earlier efforts.
The value of social bookmarks are hard to see, at first. However, over time, especially when combined with the use of feed aggregators and readers, we eventually get to witness the power of PKM as a discipline. I’ve been using Raindrop.io bookmarks for years, now, and enjoy having shareable bookmarks (which I can surface, when a situation encourages that practice), yet most of my collections are private. One that is now public is my growing collection of AI articles, in both an RSS feed and just a browsable page.
I do find myself cringing a bit as I save items there, knowing that I certainly don’t endorse each link I save and the topic of AI is so controversial and polarizing. I’ve got everything up there from the world as we know it is crumbling to its core to fun hacks to use AI to build you a rocket ship to the moon (or load your dishwasher) or some such thing.
Jarche states that our emphasis when we narrate our work should be on making our thinking accessible, but to avoid disrupting people with what we choose to share. He writes:
The key is to narrate your work so it is shareable, but to use discernment in sharing with others. Also, to be good at narrating your work, you have to practice.
One practice Jarche mentions under his tips and links section is to keep a journal. While I’ve not been good at this practice since my teenage years long ago, I did find many of these 6 Ways Keeping a Journal Can Help Your Career compelling. In Episode 425 of Teaching in Higher Ed, I share Viji Sathy’s and Kelly Hogan’s suggestion to keep a “Starfish” folder. There are variations of the beloved story of the starfish, including this Tale of the Starfish page from the Starfish Foundation with a powerful video describing the power in making a difference for a single starfish, even if we can’t rescue them all.
I have kept up with digital encouragement folders for years now, both on my email accounts, as well as in my file directories (across my personal and professional domains). While not a journal, exactly, these stories and words can bring me encouragement during difficult times.
I’ve been paying for the Day One Journal App for years now, though entirely languish in my practice of journaling. I would switch over to Obsidian, which has the benefit of future proofing any notes I take using Obsidian, since they are just text files sitting wherever I want them to be (as in if the app went away, the text files are still there and readable).
However, Day One brings together all the TV and movies that I’ve watched, all my social media posts and images, and all the videos I’ve favorited on YouTube. I use Sequel to track what I want to watch, which then optionally integrates with the free Trakt service, which allows for an IFTTT rule to add an entry to Day One each time I mark something as watched in Sequel. In case you’re wondering about how I accomplish this, I found these two automations on IFTTT and never had to change a thing.
Perhaps someday I’ll go down a rabbit trail of trying to figure out a longer-term, non-subscription based model for collecting all those memories across all those different services and not locking myself into DayOne. For now, I’m enjoying revisiting this glimpse of these two upside down kind of people from 2017….
…and then having this song from Jack Johnson start playing on the soundtrack of my mind for what I’m sure will last at least a few hours.
Major accreditors are following through on their plans to bring new quality checks to the short-term credentialing landscape.
After years of preparation, the Higher Learning Commission is launching a new process to evaluate and endorse short-term credential providers this week, according to a Tuesday announcement from the HLC. The accreditor will be accepting applications for its first cohort of endorsed providers through Jan. 23.
Higher Learning Commission president Barbara Gellman-Danley said in the announcement that HLC’s goal is “to expand the nation’s pool of valuable, HLC endorsed providers, thereby increasing pathways for students to gain the qualifications they need to get ahead and succeed.”
The New England Commission of Higher Education also announced its inaugural cohort of eight recognized noncredit program providers last week, including higher ed institutions and external organizations.
“We know that there are increasing numbers of students enrolled in non-credit programs,” Michaele Whelan, chairperson of NECHE, said in a news release. “There has also been a growing need for quality assurance in this space. NECHE has taken the bold step to address this need and we are excited to expand our work into this area.”
UK universities are under mounting financial pressure. Join HEPI and King’s College London Policy Institute on 11 November 2025 at 1pm for a webinar on how universities balance relatively stable but underfunded income streams against higher-margin but volatile sources. Register now. We look forward to seeing you there.
This blog was kindly authored by Philip Bakstad, Diversity and Inclusion Manager at Liverpool John Moores University.
Chris’s mum died soon after his birth and his dad was out of the picture. He was brought up by his Nan, living with her in her council house. Chris’s Nan passed away while Chris was doing his foundation year at Liverpool John Moores University. The council wanted the house back. Still grieving for his Nan, Chris was at risk of becoming homeless and dropping out of university.
Stories like Chris’ are not uncommon, yet they are at risk of being overlooked as university staff across the country gear up for the return of students each September. More on Chris later…
The start of the academic year is both an exciting and hectic time for students and staff on university campuses across the country. For care-experienced and estranged students (CEES), this time of year often comes with a unique set of anxieties and challenges, as they not only navigate the usual issues around meeting new friends, understanding timetables and deciding which Freshers events to attend, but also transition into new living set-ups which will often now be their permanent home while studying at their new university.
A diversity of experience
The terms ‘care-experienced’ and ‘estranged’ encapsulate a broad range of lived experiences of students who have faced particular challenges related to their family circumstances while growing up. This can include having previously lived in a formal foster care arrangement with a Local Authority; being raised by another family member in kinship care or becoming estranged from their parents after the age of 16.
Much has been done across the sector over the past two decades to address the under-representation of care-experienced and estranged students in higher education, but there remains a great deal of inconsistency. Young people who meet the formal definition of a ‘Care Leaver’ are eligible for a level of statutory support but this varies by Local Authority. For students who do not meet this legal definition but have experience of care or have faced other family disruption, there remains no national benchmark for what key support should be offered by all institutions across the higher education sector.
Organisations such as NNECL, the Unite Foundation and the much-missed charity StandAlone have been invaluable partners as universities have developed Access and Participation Plans and specific interventions to not only improve the number of care experienced and estranged students accessing higher education, but also ensure that each care-experienced or estranged student receives a holistic support package, tailored to their individual needs.
A home for success
A key element of most institutions’ offer will be the provision of extended tenancies or ‘all year round’ accommodation. This recognises that many care-experienced and estranged students will be making their new accommodation their permanent base once the academic year begins. While this is now broadly accepted as best practice across the sector, many students still face difficulties in providing a guarantor or raising the funds for a deposit to secure the accommodation that will best suit their needs.
At Liverpool John Moores University, we have long operated a ‘Guarantor Waiver’ scheme as part of our partnership arrangements with our accommodation providers in the city, ensuring that no care-experienced or estranged student should be excluded from accessing accommodation at this key transition point in their lives. The Unite Foundation, led by students on their scholarship programme, are now campaigning for all universities to provide similar support.
The following case studies provide some insight into the experiences of care experienced and estranged students and highlight the importance of accommodation as an invaluable support during their degree studies. Some details have been changed to protect anonymity.
Case study 1 – growing up in kinship care
Chris had been raised by his grandmother since an early age. During his Foundation Year at LJMU his grandmother sadly passed away and he contacted the Student Advice team for support as he would no longer be able to return home to their council house at the end of the academic year. Chris’ mother had passed away shortly after his birth and he had no contact with his biological father so he was at immediate risk of becoming homeless over the summer period.
In the first instance, our accommodation partnership meant the university was able to reassure Chris that he would be able to extend his tenancy over the summer. At the same time, LJMU provided academic and wellbeing support to ensure his studies weren’t adversely impacted.
Chris’ key worry was having a stable home for the duration of his studies. He was very clear that living in halls worked for him as he had built up good relationships with the staff there. Moving into private accommodation and the logistical issues that posed caused him a great deal of anxiety.
The university signposted him towards the Unite Foundation Scholarship and his application was a success. Chris lived in a Unite Students property, with his rent and bills covered by the Scholarship, for the duration of his studies at LJMU.
As he navigated this complex period in his life, knowing that his university accommodation was guaranteed for three years was an anchor for Chris. He graduated with a 2:1 and is currently working in the IT sector.
Case study 2 – becoming estranged at 18
Alice became estranged from her mother aged 18, following a breakdown in the relationship between her and her mother’s new partner. She was asked to leave the family home and slept on friends’ sofas before her college became aware of her circumstances. She then moved into a young person’s foyer – a supported living space for young people who would otherwise experience homelessness.
Alice’s Foyer Support Worker contacted LJMU as she was unable to provide a deposit or guarantor to secure her accommodation and had questions about how to apply for student finance as an independent student. Our partnership agreement enables LJMU to request that partner accommodation providers waive the need for a guarantor for care experienced and estranged students, so the university was able to quickly provide reassurance that the absence of a guarantor and deposit would not be a barrier to Alice booking her chosen accommodation.
Upon arriving at LJMU, Alice met other estranged students at a social meet-up and chose to live in an LJMU partner hall with three other students for years 2 and 3 of their studies. While their family circumstances were all different, this sense of community and peer support was invaluable to Alice and her flatmates. She is now a high school teacher and keeps support staff at LJMU updated on new developments in her life.
In conclusion
There is so much to be excited about at the start of each academic year. Meeting new students and supporting them to step into independence is a privilege for both academic and Professional Service staff at universities across the country. It is an important milestone in every young person’s life but, for care experienced and estranged students, can be an even more pivotal moment of change and uncertainty. While I’ve only touched on the importance of accommodation in providing stability in this blog, it’s worth reflecting on the fact that not every student moving into university accommodation will be doing so with the support (and ‘Bank of’) Mum and Dad and that, for this group of students, we need to continue to go the extra mile to ensure they are able to get in and get on in higher education.
If viewed in a positive light instead of as a lack of understanding or a fault, it can become a catalyst for enquiry, supporting students with their research and knowledge building skills.
What does “I don’t know” mean?
Picture yourself as a student who has been asked a direct question during a lecture.
This was a position I found myself in on several occasions during my own undergraduate science degree course. Sometimes I would know the answer and be able to respond confidently – relieved. On other occasions, perhaps not coming up with the answer immediately, I would default to “I don’t know”.
Many academics recall a particular lecturer who motivated them to succeed. For me, this lecturer emerged as a mentor during my own MSc in chemistry. He used to hold challenging tutorials, if I asked a difficult question, there was nowhere to go. I simply had to stay with the moment and work through the question.
I didn’t realise it at the time, but this helped me find a starting point for figuring out things I didn’t understand and embracing the discomfort that comes with not understanding something…yet!
More questions
Why do we ask students questions? Questions can be posed to the entire room, known as open questioning. This type of question can work well at the beginning of a session or when we want to offer choice in terms of who wishes to answer a question. We can also ask objective, subjective or speculative questions.
Or we can pose direct questions to specific, individual, students. Their use may seem like quite an intense approach but can offer benefits. Directed questions can create a “high pressure, high stakes” atmosphere, it is often one that is more memorable for the individual involved and allows the lecturer to assess whether that individual understands the topic at hand. It presents a mechanism for the student to check their understanding and to build resilience by answering under pressure.
It can also act as a gateway to Socratic questioning, which can allow the student or wider attending group to explore the topic being studied in more depth and with greater thought.
Working as a lecturer in both further education (with BTEC students) and higher education institutions, I have gained experience with how to support students through these moments and how to make the questioning process less daunting.
It is easy to take “I don’t know” at face value, believing that a student really does not know the answer to a given question. However, “I don’t know” could be a default answer for something completely different.
“I don’t know” could mean: “I need time to think about that”, “I didn’t hear what you asked”, “I don’t want to answer in front of…”, “I don’t like being put on the spot”, “I’m not interested”, “I’m not sure if the answer I’m thinking of is correct” or even… “I don’t know”.
How we respond is something to think about.
Conversational, not confrontational
As universities (across the UK and globally) embrace active collaborative learning approaches, the traditional lecture has sometimes come to be viewed as didactic in a negative sense.
Interactive lectures can act as a “half-way house” between traditional lectures and active collaborative learning sessions. Effective questioning strategy can make them more engaging. When lectures are interactive, open, directed and Socratic questioning can be sprinkled in using a non-confrontational approach, such that the questions become part of the conversation and are no longer perceived as an unwelcome assessment of knowledge.
The important thing is how the lecturer approaches this; an effective application being one where students can feel comfortable answering the questions posed. Importantly, asking the correct questions, will help students to leap from where they currently are, with a project for example, to what they could potentially explore next, or to what their results could possibly mean. “How do you think that process happens?”, “What do you think about that?” or “What would it mean if you got the opposite result?”, are a few examples of questions we could ask to encourage a student to dig deeper.
Using questions to frame conversations can create this exploratory environment where an initial not knowing can lead to the confidence to learn more about the topic being studied, moving further into Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development.
Enjoy the silence
Whether in a large lecture theatre, an active collaborative learning room, a small workshop session or an online session, questions can be posed and time given for the answers to come.
As lecturers posing questions to students, we need to remember to give students time to answer the question or to think about a possible answer. It is common to only allow a few seconds before jumping back in to prompt the student, to bounce the question to someone else or even for us to answer it yourself.
Building in thinking time can make the difference. Feeling even stranger in a silent, online environment, it’s important to allow the silence and discomfort to fill the space and wait for an answer – any answer – even “I don’t know” to break through! Then, there is something to work with.
Turning the heat up – or down
As lecturing academics, we also have the responsibility to turn down the heat if we can see that a questioning experience is becoming too intense for a given student or group of students. Questioning should be challenging but not traumatic – know when to pull back.
Having knowledge of your students is the best way of managing this as one can be aware of a student’s profile, background and temperament or how much they enjoy engaging with an interactive questioning approach. For some students, it may not be effective to pose directed questions, particularly in front of a large audience. Think “How will this student respond if I ask them a directed question?” “Will it help them develop their understanding and build resilience, or will it be too much for them?”
For such students, weaving in discussion during group or individual activities in a conversational way may be the best approach to gauge their understanding. For larger cohorts, where we may not know the temperament or preference of all students, intuition and experience can be the key, allowing us to pose questions and then decide whether to persist or perhaps back off and move on – potentially returning to discuss the topic with that student later or in a different session.
And it is important to return to the reason we pose questions. Questioning is more than transactional. If used effectively, it can help us to understand what our students are learning and thinking about, and that can generate real discussion. “Do my students understand this topic?”, “Can my students explain what is happening in this experiment?” or “Are they enjoying it?”.
Taking a question path approach, students can also learn to use this process, applying enquiry-based learning as they explore their subjects of study independently
When Starr Dixon heard the Trump administration was floating a proposal last spring to eliminate Head Start, the 27-year-old parent in rural Michigan cried for a week.
The free, federally funded early learning program has been life-changing for her and her young daughter, she said. It provided stability after Dixon, who lives about 100 miles north of Lansing, left a yearslong abusive relationship.
While her 3-year-old daughter has blossomed socially, emotionally and verbally in the program during the last year and a half, Dixon has taken on numerous volunteer positions with Head Start, gaining experience that she can put on her resume after a 7-year gap in employment. She hopes to ultimately apply for a job at Head Start.
“It has just completely transformed my life,” she said.
This year, I talked to people in communities across rural America and learned how Head Start is essential in places where there are few other child care options. Head Start also provides an economic boost for these areas and serves as direct support for parents, many of whom go on to volunteer for or get jobs at their local programs.
Related: Young children have unique needs and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks the issues.
Though my reporting focused on western Ohio, parents in other parts of the country, like Dixon, shared similar stories with me about how critical Head Start is to their lives. But since January, the Trump administration has taken what some call a “death by a thousand cuts” approach to the program, firing federal staff, closing regional offices and offering no increase in spending on Head Start in budget proposals.
All those moves have caused chaos and upheaval. In Alabama, Jennifer Carroll, who oversees 39 Head Start sites run by the Community Action Partnership of North Alabama, told me she is reassuring the families she works with that her program’s funding is stable for at least the rest of the year. Carroll fears that if parents think Head Start funding is in jeopardy, they’ll pull their children out of the program, disrupting their learning.
Another example: Keri Newman Allred is the executive director of Rural Utah Child Development Head Start, which operates Head Start programs spread across 17,000 square miles in central and east Utah. Newman Allred estimates her programs, which employ 91 residents and serve 317 children, can survive for one more year. After that, without more money, they will have to make cuts to the program if they want to give teachers a raise to meet inflation.
While other Head Start programs can supplement operations with private donations, Newman Allred’s programs serve some of the most sparsely populated parts of America, known as “frontier counties,” where there are no deep-pocketed philanthropies. Her programs rely solely on federal funding.
In April, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, abruptly shuttered five of Head Start’s 10 regional offices. Programs in Maine that were without directors or that needed assistance with regulations, finances or federal requirements have been left to go it alone without consistent, daily support.
“The closure of regional offices has all but crippled programs,” said Sue Powers, senior director of strategic initiatives at the Aroostook County Action Program in the rural, northernmost tip of Maine. “No one’s checking in. When you’re operating in a program that is literally in crisis, and you need [regional staff] and do not have them, it’s more than alarming.”
This story about Head Start was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Dr. Zori Paul and Natalie Jeung started a podcast about their geeky passions and mental health. What’s it like to start a podcast with your friend? An academic interview with Jennifer van Alstyne.
JUST LIVE
What’s it like to start a podcast with your friend? Dr. Zori Paul and Natalie Jeung, LCPC, NCC met in their master’s program. Years later, they started a podcast together where two therapists nerd out about their geeky passions and mental health. Video games, movies, and interests they love are a scope for new episodes of the podcast. Zori and Natalie share about their podcasting journey. Not just the process behind getting started, but the emotional and social journey of putting your podcast out there too.
0:00 Meet Zori Paul and Natalie Jeung 2:50 What sparked the idea for having your podcast? 4:31 Social media and video editing for the podcast 6:22 Different methods of doing the podcast 9:24 What’s Therapy on a Tangent about? What Zori and Natalie love to talk about 12:01 Video games, Inside Out, and Miyazaki, and clinical work as therapists 17:50 When is something not quite right for your show? 19:56 Looking back to the start, celebrating 1 year for their show 23:29 Podcasting equipment and skills you’ve grown over time 32:18 What’s it like to share your podcast with people? 39:15 At the heart of their podcast is friendship, trust, and collaboration
A full text transcript will be coming to the blog in the coming week or so. I’ll also be adding English captions to the YouTube video for you too.Thank you! —Jennifer
Therapy on a Tangent Podcast
Hosted by Zori Paul, PhD, LPC, NCC and Natalie Jeung, LCPC, NCC
Bios
Zori Paul, PhD, LPC, NCC
Dr. Zori Paul (she/her) is a Chicago native, licensed professional counselor, counselor educator, and researcher. She is also the co-host of Therapy on a Tangent, a podcast where two therapists nerd out about their geeky passions and mental health. Dr. Paul received her Ph.D. in counseling from the University of Missouri – St. Louis, her M.A. in clinical mental health counseling from Northwestern University, and her B.A. in comparative human development and minor in gender and sexuality studies from the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on the mental health and stressors of individuals with multiple marginalized identities, specifically bisexual+/queer people of color; cross-cultural mentorship in counseling programs; and the ethical use of social media and AI by counselors and other mental health professionals.
Natalie Jeung, LCPC, NCC
Natalie Jeung, LCPC, NCC, is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor. She is the owner of Side Quest Counseling Services, which provides counseling services in Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa. She enjoys doing life with people and destigmatizing gamers and geeks in the mental health space. Her passion for working with video gamers came from her journey as a video gamer and desire to bring inclusive care to those who feel marginalized by society. Her clinical work also includes working with people navigating their different identities, family systems and family of origin issues, parenting, and inner child work. When she is not wearing her therapist hat, she enjoys hanging out with her cat, playing video games, being a foodie, and going on random adventures.
The first words I uttered after successfully defending my dissertation were, “Wow, what a ride. From Head Start to Ph.D.!” Saying them reminded me where it all began: sitting cross-legged with a picture book at the Westside Head Start Center, just a few blocks from my childhood home in Jackson, Mississippi.
I don’t remember every detail from those early years, but I remember the feeling: I was happy at Head Start. I remember the books, the music, the joy. That five-minute bus ride from our house to the Westside Center turned out to be the shortest distance between potential and achievement.
And my story is not unique. Every year, hundreds of thousands of children — kids whose names we may never know, though our futures depend on them — walk through Head Start’s doors. Like me, they find structure, literacy, curiosity and belonging.
For many families, Head Start is the first place outside the home where a child’s potential is nurtured and celebrated. Yet, this program that builds futures and strengthens families is now under threat, and it’s imperative that we protect it.
Years later, while training for high school cross-country meets, I’d run past the park next to the center and pause, flooded with memories. Head Start laid the foundation for everything that followed. It gave me structure, sparked my curiosity and built my early literacy skills. It even fed my short-lived obsession with chocolate milk.
More than that, Head Start made me feel seen and valued.
There’s a clear, unbroken line between the early lessons I learned at Head Start and the doctoral dissertation I defended decades later. Head Start didn’t just teach me my ABCs — it taught me that learning could be joyful, that I was capable and that I belonged in a classroom.
That belief carried me through elementary school, Yale and George Washington University and to a Ph.D. in public policy and public administration. Now, as part of my research at the Urban Institute, I’m working to expand access to high-quality early learning, because I know firsthand what a difference it makes.
Research backs up what my story shows: Investments in Head Start and high-quality early childhood education change lives by improving health and educational achievement in later years, and benefit the economy. Yet today there is growing skepticism about the value of Head Start, reflecting an ongoing reluctance to give early childhood education the respect it deserves.
If Head Start funding is cut, thousands of children — especially from communities like mine in Jackson, where families worked hard but opportunities were limited — could lose access to a program that helps level the playing field. These are the children of young parents and single parents, of working families who may not have many other options but still dare to dream big for their kids.
And that is why I am worried. Funding for Head Start has been under threat. Although President Donald Trump’s proposed fiscal 2026 budget would maintain Head Start funding at its current $12.3 billion, Project 2025, the influential conservative policy document, calls for eliminating the program. The administration recently announced that Head Start would no longer enroll undocumented children, which a group of Democratic attorneys general say will force some programs to close.
I feel compelled to speak out because, for our family, Head Start wasn’t just a preschool — it was the beginning of everything. For me, it meant a future I never could have imagined. For my mother, Head Start meant peace of mind — knowing her son was in a nurturing, educational environment during the critical developmental years. My mother, Nicole, brought character, heart and an unwavering belief in my potential — and Head Start helped carry that forward.
My mother was just 18 when she enrolled me in Head Start. “A young mother with big dreams and limited resources,” she recounted to me recently, adding that she had “showed up to an open house with a baby in my arms and hope in my heart.”
Soon afterward, Mrs. Helen Robinson, who was in charge of the Head Start in Jackson, entered our lives. She visited our home regularly, bringing books, activities and reassurance. A little yellow school bus picked me up each morning.
Head Start didn’t just support me, though. It also supported my mother and gave her tips and confidence. She took me to the library regularly and made sure I was always surrounded by books and learning materials that would challenge and inspire me.
It helped my mother and countless others like her gain insight into child development, early learning and what it means to advocate for their children’s future.
Twenty-five years after those early mornings when I climbed onto the Head Start bus, we both still think about how different our lives might have been without that opportunity. Head Start stood beside us, and that support changed our lives.
As we debate national priorities, we must ask ourselves: Can we afford to dismantle a program that builds futures, strengthens families and delivers proven returns?
My family provides living proof of Head Start’s power.
This isn’t just our story. It is the story of millions of others and could be the story of millions more if we choose to protect and invest in what works.
Travis Reginal holds a doctorate in public policy and public administration and is a graduate of the Head Start program, Yale University and George Washington University. He is a former Urban Institute researcher.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
