As student visa backlogs continue to plague US embassies around the world and the start of the fall semester looms, a bipartisan group of 14 lawmakers have urged the US state department to resolve issues with Indian student visas.
“As members of Congress who represent research universities, we are concerned by reports from our constituent universities about Indian students who have been unable to obtain visas to continue their education in the United States,” they urged Rubio.
Indian students, the largest group of international students in the US, contribute $9 billion annually to the US economy, added the lawmakers, led by Democratic congresswoman Deborah Ross of North Carolina.
In a letter sent to the State Department on July 24, the group said they had seen “first-hand” how the contributions of Indian students to science and research “keep our nation competitive”.
“We are dismayed at the possibility that many of these bright young individuals may be blocked… from continuing their education and research in the United States,” they continued.
Thirteen of the letter’s 14 signatories are member of the Democratic party, with Nebraska representative Don Bacon the only Republican to join the efforts.
With classes starting in just over a month, thousands of students… are at risk of missing the start of the academic year
The letter follows a near four-week suspension of student visa appointments by the state department that began during the peak season for visa processing, causing continued backlogs that remain nearly one month on from the lifting of the freeze.
Though backlogs are impacting students across the globe, the congresspeople raised particular concerns about delays at Indian embassies, with the Indian mission website still carrying a warning that the scheduling of visa appointments this summer cannot be guaranteed.
The Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) is understood to have taken the matter up with the US Embassy in New Delhi as well as the US State Department, with news of the delays being widely circulated by Indian media.
As previously reported by The PIE News, some Indian education consultancies are expecting 80% declines in student levels going to the US, reporting that students are “refreshing their portal everyday” in search of appointments.
The largest source market to the US, visa issuance to Indian students saw a notable drop this May, falling by 41% compared to the same period in 2025, with stakeholders fearing that June data will reveal a worsening picture as the full impact of the visa pause takes hold.
Across the board, May 2024 data showed a 22% year-on-year reduction in the number of F-1 visas issued. Exchange visitor visas were also down 13%.
Appealing to Rubio, the congresspeople emphasised the integral contributions of Indian students to research universities in the US, as well as the wider value of educational exchange: “vital to encouraging collaboration between our nations”.
Advocacy efforts are also stepping up in the sector, led by the US for Success Coalition, a national alliance of more than 50 organisations spanning business, education and innovation.
“This delay and the resulting backlogs couldn’t have come at a worse time,” said Jill Welch, spokesperson for the coalition.
“With classes starting in just over a month, thousands of students – particularly from high-demand countries like India – are at risk of missing the start of the academic year,” Welch said.
The coalition highlighted the widespread consequences of the visa backlogs. If students are barred from entering the US, it could jeopardise the country’s position as the leading destination for global talent, with ripple effects touching local economies and long-term implications for scientific research.
“When we close doors – intentionally or by bureaucratic delay – we send a clear message to the world: that the US may longer be the destination of choice for the best and brightest,” it said. “That is not just a lost opportunity; it is a strategic risk”.
The alliance has called on the State Department to immediately “surge” resources to process new and returning international student visas and ensure there is interview capacity in high-demand countries.
Referring to Rubio’s new rules around social media vetting, it called on the department to prioritise both security and efficiency, “so that screening processes do not become barriers to opportunity”.
“For every three international students, one US job is created or sustained,” said the coalition, citing their annual economic contribution of nearly $44bn annually.
What’s more, “they are ambassadors of democracy and American values creating allyship between the United States and other countries,” they said, highlighting the value of people-to-people exchanges in ensuring the country’s national security.
The increasingly challenging visa policy landscape is already having an impact on student interest, with young people increasingly turning to other destinations, namely the UK.
Sector leaders are calling for “immediate action” to prevent the worst damages while there is still time before the full extent of declines become clear in September.
Min, a student from Bangladesh, remembers his excitement after learning he had been accepted into a US university. It meant he would be learning from some the world’s leading medical experts in healthcare – learning skills he hopes to use to improve the healthcare system in his home country.
Min, who asked not to use his name due to the enhanced US screening policies, was recently granted a visa and is due to start his freshman year this fall.
The road to get there, however, was not a smooth one. Following the State Department’s three-week worldwide pause on interviews in June, and the implementation of enhanced screening policies, many of Min’s peers had their interview appointments delayed.
It took Min three months to secure his required interview at the embassy for his student visa. He said the software used to schedule the interview kept crashing and the embassy had limited appointment times, checking multiple times a day for openings.
While Min saw his visa approved, several of his friends had their student visas denied at the end of their interview, he said, leading some of them to apply for universities in other countries. Most often, it’s another English-speaking country, since that’s the most common secondary language for Bangladeshi students, he said.
“In recent, years, a lot of my friends have applied to Australia, because for the US, there are more uncertainties,” Min said.
The student visa application process has come into the spotlight recently. That’s because of the Trump administration’s changes to how visa officers review students’ social media activity. Some visa applicants have expressed concerns that the policies could lead to an increase in visa denials.
However, education nonprofits have for years raised alarms about high rates of visa denials and long interview wait times – warning it could hinder the global competitiveness of US higher education.
Visa denials differ for world regions
The US State Department rejected over 650,000 student visa applications worldwide from 2018 through 2022. Students from developing nations in South Asia and Africa have their visas rejected at much higher rates compared to those from wealthier countries.
That’s according to a study that looked at eight years’ data – authored by The Presidents’ Alliance and Shorelight student support company. The report shines a light on experiences of students from Asia and Africa, who struggle with long wait times to schedule visa interviews.
For European students who apply to study in the US, getting denied entry is rare – fewer than 8% in 2023, according to the study. That’s a stark difference from Africa, where 61% of students were denied a visa that year, not including South Africa and some neighbouring countries with very low denial rates. For South Asia, including Nepal, between 36% and 55% students have their visas denied each year.
The world’s population of young, smart minds is exploding out of sub-Saharan Africa
Carly O’Keefe, Monroe Community College, Rochester
Rajika Bhandari, a senior advisor with the Presidents’ Alliance who led the study, said the findings reflect patterns that college administrators have noticed for decades.
“From the campus perspective, these students have been fully vetted and deemed worthy of being offered admission,” said Bhandari, once a US international student herself. “Yet they’re facing this final barrier.”
A visa officer decides whether to grant a student entry after interviewing them at an embassy or consulate. One goal of the interview, lasting several minutes at most, is to assess whether the student is likely to return to their homeland after graduating.
If the student can’t demonstrate strong homeland connections – such as through owning property, having a job lined up after graduation, or strong family ties – it can be grounds for denial. The visa officer will also review documents showing the student’s eligibility to study internationally, including financial statements showing the student can afford college.
Many students, Bhandari said, have expressed concerns to college leaders that they’ve met every requirement but are still denied – leaving them bewildered. Visa officers rarely share the specific reason for the denial with applicants.
“You may go back a second time and be denied yet again because you don’t know what it is that you need to fix,” Bhandari said.
The State Department didn’t directly respond to a request for comment but has said in the past that it’s committed to a fair visa review process. The department said that applications, especially from Africa, have skyrocketed in the past few years and “a commensurate increase in denials is expected.”
According to the department, more visas were issued to African students in 2023 than ever before, with Nigerian students granted the highest share. However, the visa denial rate for African students grew that year by three percentage points, according to the study, while the denial rate for European and South American students dropped.
The State Department doesn’t publish data on visa denials but does disclose how many student visas are issued for each country every month. So far this year, the number of F-1 visas issued for Nigerian students is 23% less compared to this time last year, based on data published through May. For Bangladeshi students, like Min, the number of visas issued is about the same as last year.
Experience with getting a visa denied
Sooraj Sahani, entering his sophomore year at Texas State, knows how confusing and emotional it can be to have a visa denied. He had his visa denied on the first try, before applying again and getting it approved three weeks before the start of freshman year in fall of 2024.
In his village in the plains of Nepal, Sahani fed his fascination for physics by taking online classes from some of the world’s top experts. He aspired to be like the professors who mentored him virtually through the World Science Scholars program, a nonprofit based in New York City. That’s why Sahani decided he wanted to study at a US university, determined to become a theoretical physics researcher.
When he learned that Texas State was offering him a full undergraduate scholarship, he thought he was on track to fulfil his dream. His scholarship meant the US couldn’t deny his student visa for financial reasons, Sahani said. But he still ran into issues.
When Sahani tried last summer to book a visa interview appointment for the US embassy in Kathmandu, Nepal, all the slots were full for weeks. Instead, he traveled to New Delhi for an interview with a visa officer. Sahani said that, at the end of the roughly one-minute interview, the officer told him he wasn’t eligible for a visa without any explanation.
Students can wait up to nine months for a US visa interview in Dhaka, Bangladesh
US State Department data
“With a very sad face, I had to come back from India. It took me some time to tell myself that, OK, it happens. I’m not giving up,” he said.
After getting his visa denied, Sahani scheduled his second visa interview appointment at the embassy in Kathmandu. To secure a slot, he repeatedly woke up in the middle of the night to check online for appointments.
“I woke up at 2am, 3am, 4am, just to see if there was a visa slot. We have a lot of students applying for the US but we just have one embassy,” he said.
Since releasing its study, the Presidents’ Alliance and other education nonprofits have met with State Department leaders about improving visa processing. The department says it’s made progress in lowering wait times worldwide by hiring more staff and giving visa officers the authority to waive some interviews.
However, some countries still have too few embassies or staff members to keep up with the high number of students, Bhandari said. For the embassy in Dhaka, Bangladesh, it’s currently a nine month wait time for a student visa interview, according to the department’s website.
“Academic loss and economic loss”
Higher education leaders warn that if visa issues persist, they’ll hinder the US’s global competitiveness. In January NAFSA wrote a letter to the incoming Trump administration calling for action to make visa processing times more predictable. The letter also advocates for creating a pathway for international students to become permanent residents after graduation, which, according to Bhandari, may help to address visa denials.
If students can choose to live and work in the US after graduation, they wouldn’t have to prove their intentions to return to their home country – a source of many denials. In April, Congress introduced the Keep STEM Talent Act with bipartisan support, aiming to create this kind of “dual intent” pathway for international students pursuing science, technology, or maths degrees. Most of the 1.1 million international students who came to the US last academic year chose STEM fields.
The high rate of visa denial for African students is both an academic loss and an economic loss, said Carly O’Keefe, the designated school official for international student enrolment at Monroe Community College in Rochester, NY.
Like many other states, college enrolment in New York has been declining. New York’s comptroller warns that 2025 could mark the start of an “enrolment cliff” – a sharp decline in applications reflecting the steady decline in US births since a historic high in 2007. Several colleges in the state have closed in recent years due to low enrolment.
Meanwhile, Africa’s young population is increasing. By 2050, Nigeria is expected to become the world’s third most populous country, behind only India and China. Africa isn’t just full of college-aged youth, O’Keefe said, but also innovation led by youth. As technology is becoming more available in Africa, the number of youth-led startups is booming.
“The world’s population of young, smart minds is exploding out of sub-Saharan Africa,” she said. “Just think of the brain power and the potential talent in the world.”
Last fall, MCC welcomed about 90 international students, the most since 2018, from 30 countries. However, as with most colleges that host international students, the number enrolled was fewer than the number who planned to come because of visa denials. Colleges across the US, O’Keefe said, are missing out on talent because of the denials.
“We’re potentially missing out on very qualified students enrolling at our colleges and universities across the country that could be doing amazing academic work,” she said.
It is already 93 degrees, but temperatures are rising further outside the Tampa Convention Center—especially for the young man dressed in a dinosaur costume. Also sporting a Tom Brady Tampa Bay Buccaneers jersey, he is loudly debating immigration with another young man in a smart suit on the pavement. Across the street, a handful of protesters face off against a growing number of right-wing influencers with cameras.
Inside the building, political strategist Steve Bannon is denouncing billionaire Elon Musk as “evil” while filming a live TV broadcast. Thousands of young college students cheer when border czar Tom Homan threatens to beat up a heckler in the crowd. And a YouTuber leads the audience in a mass “Trump dance party” to the tune of YMCA.
Welcome to the Student Action Summit 2025. Organized by youth activist organization Turning Point USA (TPUSA), the three-day annual conference is billed as the premier event for conservative college students to debate ideas, network and hear from top Republicans. They include Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump Jr. and, of course, Charlie Kirk, who founded the movement as an 18-year-old college dropout.
More than 5,000 people attended this year’s event in Florida, held July 11–13, and Times Higher Education was there to learn what matters to college conservatives today, what issues are dividing this branch of the MAGA movement, and whether this youthful “red wave” can reshape U.S. electoral politics.
As a countdown clock ticks down to zero, a DJ pumps up the well-dressed young crowd—advised to style themselves after Donald Trump’s permanently besuited youngest son Barron—with Rednex’s Cotton Eye Joe and The Killers’ Mr. Brightside. Along with the big hitters, students also hear from Happy Gilmore actor Rob Schneider, founder of the Dark Web marketplace Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht, and fitness trainer Jillian Michaels across an eclectic and often bizarre three days.
Kirk’s fingerprints are all over the summit. Owing to the slightly chaotic nature of the schedule, he is often timetabled to appear in two places at the same time—particularly tricky given that, as the podcaster Dan Nunn puts it, “Charlie can’t even walk around: he’s like a rock star.”
He kicks off the summit on the vast East Hall stage by hitting some issues that Republicans of all ages can agree on—namely, religion and immigration. The 31-year-old activist and podcaster praises the audience for helping reverse decades of declining church attendance (many of them attend a service in the Convention Center on Sunday morning) and for helping TPUSA fight the “spiritual sickness throughout the West.” Talks are regularly interrupted by football-style chants of “Christ is King” or “God is great.”
Kirk also gets loud acclaim when he says that no foreigner should be allowed to own a home or get a job before a U.S. citizen, and draws an even bigger cheer when he mentions President Trump’s plans for mass deportation of illegal migrants. Even legal migration comes under fire over the convention weekend, and Homan, the former chief of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is treated like a rock star, his frequent mentions of buzz phrases such as “send them home” chanted back to him from the floor.
Abortion is mentioned on stage, as one might expect. Riley Gaines, a former college swimmer who became an activist after finishing tied for fifth in a race with a trans woman, praised Trump as the most pro-life president in modern history. And the issue is brought up repeatedly in interviews with THE—often by young men.
Many speakers are also very keen to stress the importance of reproduction and “traditional” families. Michael Knowles, a political commentator and YouTuber, calls falling birth rates in the U.S. an “existential crisis.” He welcomes the “trad wife” trend on social media—right-wing women promoting their role as stay-at-home moms—and praises young women for rejecting the corporate rat race, “to the horror of the feminists.” A middle-aged audience member, who gets a massive round of applause when he reveals he has 12 children, wants to help convince the college generation of the “beauty of big families.”
Kirk also ploughs that furrow. He tells the audience that the real threat to the U.S. is not racism or environmentalism, but low birth rate. And he tells those listening online what they are missing out on by not being there in person. “If you want to find your future husband or wife … you should be here in Tampa, Florida, because there’s a lot of eligible bachelors and bachelorettes here.”
Equally, however, conservative attitudes to dating and sex are evident. Brandon Tatum, a former college football player, police officer and now online activist, advises against “hooking up with people and doing all this crazy stuff.” Brett Cooper, a child actor turned online activist, warns delegates not to party too much or waste time playing video games. And comedian Russell Brand, currently awaiting trial in the U.K. for rape, sexual assault and indecent assault (he has pleaded not guilty), also praises family values and religion while denouncing pornography and claiming that Jesus was opposed to bad government. During his strange 20-minute speech-cum-rap in front of one of the largest audiences of the weekend, Brand explains how he turned to God following a life of crack and heroin addiction, a “pursuit of carnality” and an “all-you-can-eat buffet” of hedonism.
Source: Patrick Jack
Russell Brand (center) at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit 2025
Away from the main hall lies the exhibition floor. Here, students can take selfies with political consultant Roger Stone—pardoned by Trump in 2020 after being convicted of lying to Congress, obstruction of justice and witness tampering relating to a Congressional inquiry into Russian attempts to boost Trump’s 2016 election campaign. They can also pick up free copies of a book on the “untold story behind the Vatican’s rising influence in America,” challenge their friends to a pull-up contest or play cornhole.
You can also buy just about anything—provided it has some red, white and blue on it. There’s a stall to “Make Coffee Great Again,” “Trump 2028” hats are on sale for $30 (£23), and there are even cool pads to keep your head cool under them—as well as vibration plates for “advanced whole-body vibration therapy.”
Attendees can also hear from a wide range of fringe groups. A “Blexit” stall promotes “free thinking and empowerment” at historically black colleges and universities and is dedicated to bringing “traditional American principles to urban communities.” Wilbur Sims, strategic manager of student movement at Blexit, said, “We’re trying to educate people …and get away from a victimhood mentality within the black community.”
A surprisingly large number of families, many with young children, mingle with the students, as do some retirees. Steve, a 75-year-old lifelong Republican from Florida, hopes that TPUSA can help ensure the Democrats never get back into power. But there are a few signs of a divide between the younger and older generations.
Guns, which receive very few mentions from the stage, are one. Gun ownership has, for generations, been a mainstay of right-wing identity, but two lonely young men at the National Rifle Association stall express concern that their classmates are not interested in the Second Amendment (the right to bear arms).
The other dividing line is Israel. The most prominent stall on the exhibition floor is that of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), featuring hundreds of Israeli flags. Some college students nearby pose for pictures with a giant cardboard cut-out of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but when Michele Bachmann, a former member of Congress and board member of the IFCJ, begins to discuss the “unprecedented” amount of antisemitism on college campuses, the hall empties out. And during a debate on day three, Dave Smith, a comedian and regular guest on the popular Joe Rogan podcast, warns of the “tremendous” influence of Israel in U.S. politics. And in the wake of the U.S. attack on Iran during Israel’s recent 12-day assault on the country, Smith elicits cheers when he criticizes “neoconservatives” for starting foreign wars—in contravention of the isolationism typically adopted by “America First” advocates. One young man and woman express their skepticism of the U.S.–Israel alliance and are convinced that convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad agent.
Epstein may have died by suicide in 2019, but his presence is keenly felt at the convention. The event occurs amid the MAGA backlash to attorney general Pam Bondi’s comment that the sex trafficker’s “client list”—which, according to Musk, includes Donald Trump, but which right-wing figures are convinced contains prominent Hollywood stars and Democratic politicians—does not, in fact, exist. Despite saying that homes and jobs are more important, Kirk admits the Epstein issue still matters. And in conversation with him, journalist Megyn Kelly calls it a “scandal of the right’s making.” When she asks the audience how many of them think it is an important story, everyone puts their hand up.
Hours later, media personality Tucker Carlson devotes almost his entire 30-minute speech to the issue, while Bannon sees it as symptomatic of the problems with the “deep state.” Even former college athletes Gaines and Tatum devote considerable time to talking about Epstein—with vocal prompting from the crowd.
The TPUSA president at the University of Alabama believes the issue is so important for this crowd because Bondi’s decision not to publish any of the Justice Department’s files on Epstein fits in with their skeptical worldview and their concern that they are being “lied to,” he said.
That sense also permeates the MAGA view of COVID-19. Bannon is cheered when he claims the pandemic originated from a “Chinese Communist Party bioweapon dropped in Wuhan.” There are frequent references over the weekend to the supposedly nefarious “mask mandates,” cancelled proms and young adults’ lost years—for which Kirk calls for a national apology.
“Nobody likes being lied to, and [young people] lived through COVID in a way that adults did not,” according to Nunn, host of the America First and the constitutionalist Nunn Report podcast. “They got their social lives shut down, they got their schools shut down, and then they found out it was all bullshit.” Since they blamed the Democrats for that, he believes that universities became less efficient “leftist breeding grounds” when that cohort arrived on campus.
Chase, a student from Florida, says COVID was a big factor in pushing his generation to the right. “So many people were lied to during that period of time and it definitely brought to light the corruption in the Democratic Party,” he tells THE. TPUSA is important because it helps students learn that they cannot trust mainstream media and must “seek out your own truth.”
The pandemic is clearly still an issue for Owen, a student in Michigan, where Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer was caught breaking public health protocols at a restaurant in 2021. “I don’t really think that what the left was pushing made rational sense to the youth vote at the time, and it still doesn’t make sense now,” he said. “It’s just the hypocrisy of it all—you’re telling me not to leave my house, yet you’re going out and having parties without wearing masks closer than six feet.” Source: Patrick Jack
A striking omission from the stages of a conference targeted at students is higher education itself—despite the fact that Trump’s crackdown on prominent universities’ funding and autonomy has previously been cheered by many figures on the right. When prompted, however, delegates express universal scorn for universities.
John Paul Leon, TPUSA chapter president at University of California, Berkeley, tells THE he is becoming increasingly worried by academia’s left-wing consensus and “moral superiority,” particularly around “discriminatory” diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) measures. David Goodwin, president of the Association of Classical Christian Schools and co-author of Battle for the American Mind with defense secretary Pete Hegseth, says higher education is a “mess”; and while institutions should be free to do whatever they want, he believes that they should expect to forgo government funds if they choose to defy the administration’s policies in areas such as DEI or choice of research topics. And Owen, who attends a private college, welcomes Trump’s attacks on universities because they are “indoctrinating students with wrong ideas.” International students, particularly “military-age males,” should be sent home, he adds.
Carol Swain, a retired professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University and one of the few academics at the event, also welcomes Trump’s fight with Harvard because universities have “lost sight of the original purpose” of the sector, which was to educate minds by exposing individuals to divergent viewpoints. “Now the Ivy League has lost some of its allure, I believe there’s an opportunity for some state colleges and universities and some universities that were considered less prestigious to rise just by doing what the Ivy League hasn’t done, which is educate and create an environment where you have free speech, are following the Constitution, creating opportunities, [and] not practicing discrimination,” she said.
As for the effects of research funding cuts on the academic strength of the U.S., Swain says most papers in recent decades have been “garbage.” The “people that have pushed the beliefs that minorities have been discriminated against … lowered the standards in certain fields, and the emphasis on lived experience as opposed to research and data … has hurt academic research.”
But Jennifer Burns, director of academics at Turning Point Education, does not believe universities are solely to blame, claiming that grade schools are failing to prepare students properly: “If you’re building a house and your foundation is sinking and cracking, then the frame of the house is going to be cracked. It’s not the fault of the carpenters who put up the beams, it’s the cement layers. [Students] are not trained in how to think, so they’re going into college at the whim of a radical college professor and they’re soaking that up.”
TPUSA advocates for a “classical Christian education,” and some attendees propose private, conservative Christian liberal arts colleges such as Hillsdale in Michigan, or New Saint Andrews in Idaho, as exemplars of what higher education should be. Lennox Kalifungwa, digital engagement officer at New Saint Andrews, expresses the view that “the only true education is a Christian education because Christianity has the exclusive when it comes to truth and freedom.”
“Woke” students and academics, meanwhile, are a reoccurring punching bag on the convention floor—particularly those with a specific hair color. Kirk, who rose to fame through viral videos debating with left-wing students, calls them “purple-haired jihadis,” Homan bemoans “people with purple hair and nose rings,” Tatum deplores “liberal non-binaries” and Trump Jr. condemns “raging libtards.”
Such critiques are also usually tied up with anti-trans and anti-gay language. Trump Jr., a long-time ally of Kirk, whose daughter, Kai, is a college-level golfer at the University of Miami, proudly boasts of having been anti-trans since 2017 and sees it as being a “losing issue” for the Democrats. One student tells THE that drag queens reading children stories cause “horrible developmental issues” and contribute to rising suicide rates. Knowles celebrates the Trump-imposed end of the “preposterous ideology” of trans people, calling it “deader than disco,” the cancellation of LGBTQ+ pride parades due to lack of attendance and pop musician Jojo Siwa’s announcement that she no longer identifies as a lesbian. “Nature is healing,” he says with a laugh.
A lone protester who interrupts Homan is called a “loser,” a “moron,” an “asshole” and someone who “sits down when he pees”—to huge chants of “U-S-A.” Homan, who says he “wake[s] up like a kid in a candy shop every day” as border czar, offers to fight the man before his speech is over.
Outside are a few more dissenters. A handful of middle-aged Floridians, who fear TPUSA is “indoctrinating the youth,” hold a sign that says “MAGA—Movement Against Genuine Academics”—perhaps in reference to Kirk’s creation of the Professor Watchlist, which lists scholars who “discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda.” They are soon joined by a rag-tag group of a few dozen young students, some dressed as characters from the dystopian TV show TheHandmaid’s Tale and others wearing the Guy Fawkes masks popularized by the hacker collective Anonymous. Vicky Tong, spokesperson for the Tampa Bay Students for a Democratic Society, says they want to show that not everyone in Florida supports the “sexist, homophobic, anti-trans, anti-immigrant” agenda of TPUSA.
Back inside the hall, speakers emphasize that while right-wingers are in the majority here, they are “outnumbered” on campus. Many express fear of being accused of sexual harassment or being cancelled for using the wrong pronoun. Kirk calls them “warriors” and praises them for putting up with threats and intimidation. “What they’re doing is one of the hardest things to do in the United States of America. They are deciding to be less popular on campus,” he says.
Source: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Charlie Kirk speaks at Donald Trump’s inauguration on 20 January 2025
Some of the big names can sympathize. Trump Jr. used to attend “every cool person party” in New York before his father became involved in politics and the invites dried up. “These people that I thought were friends for decades, they don’t call any more.” He encourages students to “feed off the hate,” while Kelly urges them not to be “sheep” and follow along with what their left-wing professors say just to get good grades. “Don’t call yourself a feminist because your teacher will give you pats on the head. Stand up for what you really believe in, and that’s how we spread the good word,” she said.
Fox News host Greg Gutfeld, who has come under fire for attempting to “reclaim” the word “Nazi,” complains that “left-wingers were the cool kids” when he was young. And that sense of not fitting in on campus is clearly a big reason that some of the attendees are here—many of them thanks to a TPUSA stipend (the organization is largely funded by donations). Leon, who studies in the “belly of the [progressive] beast” at Berkeley and went viral for a video where he confronts a liberal student, says he is called a fascist daily, but at TPUSA “you can find life-long friends, your forever friends, or maybe you can find your wife too.” Dylan Seiter, president of TPUSA at Texas A&M University, told students during a breakout session that “the libs want to drag us down to their level and make us seem like we’re some nasty, hateful people, but in reality, we’re not. And it’s our duty and our jobs to prove them wrong.”
Indeed, some delegates confess that they are only here to hang out and socialize, and nearby bars such as Harpoon Harry’s Crab House are packed with older students before the day’s events are even over. But this social element is not just for fun, it is also for networking. As Kirk puts it: “Marriages will happen this weekend. Lifetime friendships will happen this weekend. Careers will start this weekend.” And as well as selling “I survived college without becoming a liberal” T-shirts, the TPUSA Alumni Association is consciously attempting to replicate the college networks of Ivy League schools to help get MAGA graduates into top jobs. TPUSA also tries to persuade students to work on the “front lines” of the culture war. One recruitment video urges young people not to become doctors or lawyers, but to get a job with “real impact.”
Many speakers are convinced that they are already having an impact, crediting a “red wave” of students with delivering Trump’s landslide victory in 2024, a “shot heard around the world.” Bannon thanks them for being “the hardest core of the hardcore” and the “tip of the tip of the spear” in “winning” the 2016 and 2020 elections as well.
“This is the greatest generational realignment since Woodstock,” says Kirk. “We have never seen a generation move so quickly and so fast, and you guys are making all the liberals confused.” Accordingly, Republican Party luminaries show up in force. Michael Whatley, chair of the Republican National Committee, shakes hands on the exhibition floor and multiple members of Trump’s top team—including director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and homeland security secretary Kristi Noem—deliver speeches. However, these politicians generate far less buzz than social media stars such as Gaines and Cooper.
Still, Kirk warns that Washington is taking right-wing students for granted and “messing up” a once-in-a-generation opportunity to deliver a “death blow” to the Democratic Party by failing to fully deliver on their promises—such as by publishing the Epstein list. And Swain agreed. “If these [elected] officials compromise and they prove themselves to be no different than the politicians they replaced, it’s going to be harder for [young] people to stay enthusiastic,” he said.
As one attendee puts it, conservative students have been “lurking in the shadows” for decades. Kirk has successfully dragged them out into the sunlight. The challenge he and Trump now face is one that will be familiar to the “radical left”— keeping momentum, holding the various factions together in the face of political realities, and delivering on their promises.
Imagine studying in a Wales where every student understands their rights and responsibilities.
Where module feedback drives real change, where student representatives have time, resources and power to make a difference, and where complaints drive learning, not defensiveness.
Where every student contributes to their community in some way – and where decisions can’t be made about students without students.
When the Tertiary Education and Research (Wales) Act 2022 was being drafted, the inclusion of a mandatory Learner Engagement Code was important – Wales resolved to put into primary legislation what England had buried in the B Conditions and Scotland had largely left to institutional discretion.
Section 125 now requires the Commission to prepare and publish a code about learner involvement in decision-making that’s not optional, or best practice – it’s law.
This year the newly formed commission (MEDR) has been informally consulting on it – but it’s now been so long since the original debates that there’s a danger everyone helping to develop the thing will forget what it was supposed to do.
Nobody will benefit from something that emerges as something weak or vague. The opportunity is for Wales to lead the way with some crunchy “comply or explain” provisions for universities in Wales that reflect the fact that this has been put in primary legislation.
The cost of getting it wrong
We know what happens when learner engagement is treated as an afterthought. In England, providers often silence critique on reputational grounds – the Office for Students’ (OfS) free speech guidance had to explicitly state that students have the right to publicly criticise their institutions. Imagine needing regulatory clarification that criticism is allowed in a democracy.
Meanwhile, Scottish institutions celebrate their “partnership” approach while student representatives struggle to influence decisions that matter. Sparqs frameworks look good on paper, but without regulatory teeth, they rely on institutional goodwill. And goodwill, as any student rep will tell you, tends to evaporate when difficult decisions need making.
When module evaluation becomes a tick-box exercise rather than genuine dialogue, problems fester. When student reps are excluded from decisions about their own education, drop-out rates climb. When complaints are buried rather than learned from, the same issues affect cohort after cohort.
I’ve seen a lot of it over the years. The disabled student who gave up trying to get adjustments implemented because every lecturer claimed the central service’s plans were “merely advisory”. The international PGT student who couldn’t complain about teaching quality because they feared visa implications. The part-time student who couldn’t access support services because everything was designed around full-time, on-campus students.
The student facing disciplinary proceedings who wasn’t allowed an advocate and faced a panel with no student members – in contrast to the support available to staff in similar situations.
These aren’t edge cases – they’re systematic failures that a robust Code could prevent. Wales has a genuine opportunity to do something different – to create a Code with teeth that makes learner engagement mandatory, measurable and meaningful.
Learning from what works
The most effective student engagement systems require common features. They’re comprehensive, covering everything from module evaluation to strategic planning, and are backed by resources, ensuring student representatives aren’t expected to volunteer countless hours without support. And crucially, they have consequences when institutions fail to comply.
The key is moving from “should” to “must”, with a comply or explain mechanism that has genuine bite.
Here’s how it could work. The Code would set out clear standards – not aspirations but requirements. Providers would either have to comply with the standards or publicly explain why they’ve chosen an alternative approach that delivers equivalent or better outcomes.
But – and this is crucial – explanations wouldn’t be allowed to be boilerplate excuses. They would need to be evidence-based, time-limited, and subject to scrutiny.
The Commission would assess compliance annually, not through tick-box returns but through triangulated evidence – student surveys, complaint patterns, representation effectiveness metrics, and crucially, the views of student representatives themselves.
Where providers persistently fail to meet standards without adequate justification, consequences would follow – from improvement notices to conditions on funding.
There would be an expectation of an annually agreed student partnership agreement – setting out both processes and priority actions – and an expectation that students’ unions would produce an annual report on the experiences of students at that provider.
This isn’t about micromanaging institutions – it’s about establishing minimum standards while allowing flexibility in how they’re met. A small FE provider might implement representation differently than a large university, but both must demonstrate their approach delivers genuine student voice in decision-making.
Student rights and democratic education
The Code should first establish that students are both consumers with enforceable rights and partners in their education. This dual recognition ends the sterile debate about whether students are one or the other. It means providers must respect consumer rights (quality, promises kept, redress) while creating genuine partnership structures.
Knowing your rights matters. Following Poland’s model, all students should receive comprehensive training on their rights and responsibilities within 14 days of starting. That shouldn’t be an optional freshers’ week session – it should be mandatory education covering consumer rights, representation opportunities, complaints procedures, support services, and collective responsibilities.
Crucially, the training should be developed and delivered by the SU. There should be written materials in (both) plain language(s), recorded sessions for those who can’t attend, annual refreshers, and staff trained to respect and uphold these rights. When every graduate understands both their rights and responsibilities, Wales will transform not just higher education but society.
Protected status and academic adjustments
Following Portugal’s model, student representatives should get protected status. That means academic adjustments for representative duties, just as providers must accommodate pregnancy or disability. No student should face the choice between failing their degree or fulfilling their democratic mandate.
Representatives should get justified absences for all activities – not just formal meetings but preparation, consultation, and training. Assessments should be rescheduled without penalty, deadlines adjusted based on representative workload, and attendance requirements modified. Reps should get protection from any form of academic discrimination.
The Finnish model adds another layer – ideally, student representatives in governance should receive academic credit or remuneration (or both). Learning through representation is learning – about negotiation, governance, and strategic thinking. They are skills that matter in any career.
Module evaluation as universal engagement
The Estonian approach shows what’s possible when feedback becomes embedded in academic culture. Making evaluation mandatory for module completion ensures universal participation. But it must be meaningful – published results, documented actions, closed feedback loops. Every student becomes a partner in quality enhancement, not just the engaged few.
Wales should adopt Estonia’s three-part structure – teaching quality, student engagement, and learning outcomes. This recognises that educational success requires both good teaching and student effort. No more blaming students for poor outcomes while ignoring teaching failures, and no more student satisfaction surveys that ignore whether students are actually engaging with their learning.
Results should be published within modules – not buried in committee papers but visible where students choose modules. Previous evaluation results, actions taken, ongoing improvements – all should be required to be transparent. Future students should be able to see what they’re signing up for, and current students should see their feedback matters.
Comprehensive scope of engagement
Sweden’s clarity is instructive – students must be represented “when decisions or preparations are made that have bearing on their courses or programmes or the situation of students.” There’s no weasel words about “where appropriate” or “when practicable” – if it affects students, students must be involved.
In the Netherlands, where decisions are made by individuals, not committees, information must be provided and consultation must occur at least 14 days in advance. And written explanations should be required when student recommendations aren’t followed – because accountability matters in managerial decisions.
Beyond academic structures, students should be represented on professional service boards, IT committees, estates planning groups, marketing focus groups. Decisions about campus facilities or digital systems affect students as much as curriculum design – yet these areas often lack any student voice.
The digital environment deserves special attention. Student representatives should be involved in decisions about learning platforms, assessment systems and communication tools – not after implementation but during planning. Because digital accessibility and usability directly impact educational success.
Consent not consultation
Wales could be bold. Following the Dutch model, some decisions should require student consent, not just consultation. The Code could distinguish clearly between:
Matters requiring consent (cannot proceed without student agreement):
Matters requiring consultation (mandatory input but not binding):
Budget allocations affecting student services
Campus development plans
Strategic planning
Staff appointments affecting students
Marketing and recruitment strategies
Matters governed by a council of staff and students:
Student accommodation
Student employment
Student services and mental health
Harassment and sexual misconduct policy
Matters delegated to the students’ union
Student engagement and representation
Student activities and volunteering
This isn’t radical – it’s a recognition that students are genuine partners. No other stakeholder group would accept purely advisory input on regulations governing their activities. Why should students?
From course reps to citizens
Another area where Wales could be genuinely radical would take Wales’ vision of students as citizens by going beyond traditional representation structures – broadening “engagement” beyond academic quality.
The European model of subject-level associations – common from Helsinki to Heidelberg – shows what’s possible. These aren’t just academic societies but genuine communities combining social activities, career development, representation, and civic engagement. They create belonging at the discipline level where students actually identify.
In Tallinn, departmental student bodies aren’t sideshows but partners in departmental culture. They organise orientation, run mentoring, coordinate with employers, feed into curriculum development – and crucially, they’re funded and recognised as essential, not optional extras.
In some countries there’s even a “duty of contribution” where students volunteer to help run the institution. Green officers, peer mentors, student ambassadors – multiple routes to engagement beyond traditional representation. Not everyone wants to be a course rep. But everyone can contribute something.
Even if we’re just talking about student clubs and societies, Wales should mandate that providers support and fund these diverse engagement routes.
Every student should serve somehow during their studies – it’s citizenship education in practice. Some will be traditional representatives, others will mentor new students, run sustainability initiatives, organise cultural events, support community engagement. All develop democratic skills. All should share responsibility for their community.
Taking part
Some countries maintain a tripartite principle for major bodies – equal representation of students, academic staff, and professional staff – to recognise that universities are communities, not hierarchies. Maybe that’s asking too much – but even with a minimum of two students in the room, representation means nothing without support.
Some countries require that student reps receive all documentation at least five days in advance, training on context and background, briefings on complex issues, and support to participate fully – you can’t contribute if you don’t understand what’s being discussed.
When new committees or working groups are established, there should be active consideration of student membership with default presumption of inclusion. Decisions and justifications should be communicated to student representatives, and there should be annual reviews of representation effectiveness with evidence-based changes.
Some countries transform meetings from tokenistic to meaningful. Materials distributed five working days in advance means no ambushing student representatives with complex papers. Everything in accessible language, translated where needed, should be a standard too.
The Swedish innovation of publishing all decisions and rationales builds accountability. Rather than being buried in minutes, decisions get actively communicated. Students can see what’s decided in their name and why – democracy requires transparency. And committees should pick up minimum student membership levels with voting rights, and there should never (ever) be just one student in a room.
Funded independence
Latvia mandates that SUs receive at least 0.5 per cent of institutional income, and minimums were agreed as part of the Australian Universities Accord. This isn’t generous – it’s the minimum needed for effective representation. The Welsh Code should set a minimum as a % of income, or fees – ensuring student bodies have resources to train representatives, gather evidence, and hold institutions accountable.
Funding should come with independence safeguards. There should be no conditions that compromise advocacy, no reductions for challenging decisions, and protected status even when (especially when) relationships become difficult. Written agreements should protect core funding even during institutional financial difficulties.
Beyond core funding, providers should be required to supply facilities, administrative support, IT access, and time for representatives. The split between guaranteed core funding for democratic functions and negotiated funding for service delivery would protect both representation and student services.
Complaints as learning and conduct
Complaints are a really important part of student engagement – and so the OIA’s Good Practice Framework, which learns from them, should be mandatory, not optional. A proper system treats complaints as valuable intelligence, not irritations to be managed.
Wales should then go further, automatically converting failed appeals containing service complaints into formal complaints. When patterns emerge, compensation should go to all affected students, not just those who complained. And every provider should be required to publish on what it’s learned from complaints over the past year, and what it’s doing about it – with sign off from the SU.
The Swedish model’s restrictions on disciplinary proceedings protect students from institutional overreach. Proceedings are only allowed for academic misconduct, disruption of teaching, disruption of operations and harassment. And students are given full procedural rights – including representation, disclosure and presence during evidence.
Wales should go further. Every student facing disciplinary proceedings should have the right to independent support, and any panel should include student members who are properly trained and supported. Peer judgement matters in community standards.
And neither disciplinary nor funding processes should ever be used to silence criticism, punish protest, retaliate for complaints or discourage collective action. The free speech protections in OfS’ guidance should be baseline – students’ right to criticise their institution is absolute, whether individually or collectively.
Disability rights are student rights
Every year, countless disabled students arrive with hope and ambition, only to find themselves trapped in a Kafkaesque system of “support” that demands disclosure, documentation, negotiation, repetition, and often – silence. If Wales is to lead, then it should be unflinching in acknowledging the daily indignities that disabled students face – and bold in tackling the systemic failures that allow them to persist.
Adjustments, when granted, are inconsistently implemented, and advocacy, if it exists at all, is fractured and under-resourced. In many departments, reasonable adjustments are still treated as optional extras. Central services write the plans, but academic departments dispute their legitimacy, claiming subject expertise trumps legal obligation. Students are asked to justify, to prove, to persuade – again and again. And often in public – as if their access needs were a debate.
Disabled students can’t be expected to fight these battles alone. Wales should require institutions to facilitate advocacy, embedded close to academic departments, co-located with SUs where possible, and independent enough to challenge unlawful behaviour when necessary. Not every rep can be an expert in disability law. But every student should have access to someone who is.
The law is clear – providers have an anticipatory duty. That means planning ahead for the barriers Disabled students face, not waiting until they fall. But few providers conduct serious, evidence-based assessments of their disabled student population by type of impairment, by subject area, by mode of study. Without that, how can anyone claim to be meeting the duty? Wales could also set the tone nationally with a mandatory bank of questions in the NSS that probes access, implementation, and inclusion.
Wales’ code should mandate that providers move beyond warm words to hard strategy – analysing disability data with student input, mapping gaps, and resourcing change. Every provider should be required to publish a Disability Access Strategy – co-designed with students, informed by evidence, and backed with budget. And implementation should be monitored – not through passive complaints, but active auditing. Where there are failures, there should be automatic remedies – and if patterns persist, the Commission must intervene.
And briefing all students on disabled students’ rights would help too. If every student understood what disabled students are legally entitled to, fewer adjustments would be denied, more peers would offer solidarity, and institutions would face pressure from all sides to comply with the law. Education here is empowerment – for disabled and non-disabled students alike.
Wales could lead
If all of that feels like a lot, that’s because it is.
But that’s why it was put in primary legislation – to show what’s possible when you take student engagement seriously, to create structures that outlast changes in institutional leadership or political climate, and to graduate citizens who understand democracy because they’ve practiced it.
We do have a number of concerns about regulatory over-reach that can be found in several of the pillars. For example, in the Learner Engagement pillar, the demand for investment of resources and support for learner engagement could be deemed to be a breach of institutional autonomy, particularly in light of this being married to ‘continuous improvement’ – if this ends up being a metric on which the sector is judged, it could be particularly contentious in tight financial circumstances.
Good grief. It really isn’t a breach of institutional autonomy for students to expect that a little slice of their fees (whether paid by them or not) will be allocated to their active engagement and will be under their control. As Welsh Government put it during the passage of the Bill:
There is already some excellent learner engagement within the sector, but the prize now is to ensure this is the norm across all types of provisions and for all learners.
Welsh Government talks about civic mission, distinctive Welsh values, and education for citizenship – in universities, the Code is where rhetoric can meet reality.
Fine words should become firm requirements, and partnership can stop being what institutions do to students and become what students and institutions do together.
I know which Wales I’d rather study in. The question now is whether MEDR has the courage to mandate it.
An estimated one in five college students has dependents, and research shows that parenting students are more likely to experience basic needs insecurity in their pursuit of a degree. A 2024 survey by Trellis Strategies found that 6 percent of student parents self-identified as unhoused and 17 percent indicated some level of housing insecurity since they started college or during the 12 months leading up to the survey.
A recent brief from New America and Princeton Eviction Lab tied the threat of eviction to negative student outcomes; student parents who face eviction are 23 percent less likely to complete a bachelor’s degree compared to their housing secure peers, and more likely to have lower quality of life, including higher mortality rates and lower earnings years later.
In the most recent episode of Voices of Student Success, host Ashley Mowreader speaks with Edward Conroy, senior policy manager on higher education policy at New America, and Nick Graetz, assistant professor at the University of Minnesota in the department of sociology and the Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation, about how threats of eviction uniquely impact parents and the implications for generational education goals.
An edited version of the podcast appears below.
Inside Higher Ed: Just to get us started, can we get the 30,000-foot view? What is this brief? What were some of your findings? What did you all learn?
Eddy Conroy, New America’s senior policy manager in the education policy program.
Conroy: The overall goal here was to be able to look at parenting students—of which we know there are about 3 million in the country; it’s one in five undergrad students and another million grad students—if they’re threatened with an eviction, we thought it was pretty likely that’s going to have harmful effects on their chances of completing college. So wanted to see, what does that look like? How does that impact whether they graduate, whether they stay in college? What does it do to their income afterwards? What does it do to a bunch of different things that are pretty important when it comes to success in higher education? We’ll get more into detail, but we learned it was worse than perhaps either Nick or I thought the findings were going to be—and we didn’t think they were going to be great: The threat of eviction has just devastating consequences for parenting students’ chance of success in higher ed.
Nick Graetz, assistant professor at the University of Minnesota in the department of sociology and the Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation.
Graetz: Just a little background on how we got here from the data perspective. This is part of a larger collaboration that began with the U.S. Census Bureau maybe four years ago, with the goal of linking eviction records to other census administrative data to really understand who’s affected by eviction, because the records themselves only include names and addresses, not even things like age, race, sex, in terms of the actual data collected in court.
One of our first big findings from that linkage was just the extent to which households with kids are at higher risk of eviction. Across the board, we find [eviction] filing rates are twice as high for groups that have kids. This work with Eddy and New America was a partnership to try to dig into different groups that have children—so, specifically, parenting students—and see what’s going on there.
Inside Higher Ed: Something that I thought was interesting about this research—and I know this has to do with how evictions are filed, and the actual application of the eviction as well—but even the threat of an eviction had such a detrimental effect on completion rates.
We talk a lot in higher ed about housing insecurity and students’ basic needs, and how, if they don’t have $500, they might not be able to persist, or they are at higher risk of stopping out. I wonder if we can talk about that dynamic of, maybe the student isn’t experiencing literal homelessness, but even the threat of eviction can totally jeopardize or derail their educational pursuit.
Graetz: Part of it is a data consideration; we’re able to assess with a really high degree of accuracy the point at which we see someone in housing court across the country. It really varies how well we think we can capture the actual judgment rendered in housing court, but we use the threat of eviction, because that itself, based on prior work, has all these huge impacts, even if you’re ultimately able to stay in your home.
Starting at the highest level, the constant stress of making rent or facing eviction is traumatic, especially for parents. There’s this expression, “the rent eats first,” and we know that tenants tend to sacrifice on issues like food and health care when they see budgets tighten. We know that rent-burdened households with children spend 57 percent less on health care, 17 percent less on food, and that’s driven by the threat of eviction; if you fall behind on rent, you need to prioritize that above everything else. It’s really easy to snowball into an eviction filing.
The threat of eviction also compounds all sorts of other problems, especially material financial problems in lots of ways. Landlords file against the same tenants over and over again as a means of coercive rent collection, and we know that those fines and fees associated with just the filings can increase monthly housing costs up to 20 percent, and then also just having the mark of an eviction filing on your record, landlords use all sorts of tools to screen for those. It makes it harder to access new stable housing if you move—which can all have downstream impacts on things like finding a new job, finding new childcare, and so these things all kind of compound and accumulate over time.
Inside Higher Ed: I think navigating that system must also be especially challenging for college students because of that time constraint, and again, student parents, even more so, because we know that there’s such a time poverty when it comes to raising children and having dependents.
But we talk a lot about the hidden curriculum in higher education, and how it’s so hard to navigate even your institution and find everything you need. I can only imagine when you’re dealing with your landlord or housing court or all these other bureaucratic systems that are not always designed to be easy and user-friendly, that definitely compounds the stress and puts added pressure on this population.
Conroy: About 90 percent of people who get taken to eviction court end up losing their case. Regardless of whether you can navigate [the system], your chances of winning are pretty low and there’s all kinds of stuff underlying that. Very few people in eviction court end up with representation. You’re generally talking about folks who are lower income, have less social and cultural capital … if you’re in that situation in the first place, the chances that you have a friend or family member you can call up and say, “Hey, who knows a good lawyer?” or even have the money to pay that person, are really low.
Exactly to your point about time poverty, these things are a challenge for all students. But we know from lots of different pieces of research that parenting students’ pressures on their time are enormous. A vast majority are working full-time. They then have childcare and parenting responsibilities on top of that.
That is a lot—as somebody who is a stepparent—that’s a lot to do, to have a full-time job and take care of your kids and occasionally have a little bit of a life yourself. Then, add in going to college at the same time. Everything that we see from other pieces of research on parenting students’ time constraints, they don’t have enough hours in the day when everything’s going reasonably well. You add in the stress of eviction or housing insecurity, and it is really easy to see how that is incredibly destabilizing immediately and very difficult to fight that kind of thing, because it takes a lot of time to deal with all those things. And you have to show up in court; there are all of these knock-on effects too. You’re showing up for court, that means that you have to take the day off work. You’re in a job that you don’t get days off, so you’ve lost a day of income. Like Nick was saying, these things snowball really quickly.
Graetz: On the point about legal counsel and how tenants aren’t guaranteed representation in housing court. I think that’s one really important intervention at the university level: There are a lot of folks doing really incredible work offering free legal services to students. Those programs were one reason I was thinking, when I was trying to think of how big are these disparities we’re going to find, I was thinking of those programs as a place where tenants with kids in the general rental market don’t have access to that kind of thing, and virtually all of them are unrepresented. That’s another interesting intervention point that we could dig into more. It seems like it’s not a protective enough effect to really stop us from seeing such huge disparities here. But if universities could think about funding and investing in those programs more as a parenting student policy, as a retention policy, I think it could possibly have some really big impacts.
Inside Higher Ed: Absolutely. As we’ve been talking about time poverty, one thing that came to mind is just the things that a student has to do during the 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. time period. Housing court isn’t open until 10 p.m., very rarely are institutions providing legal services after hours. And so, I think one intervention that would be interesting to see is just how expanded resources could also benefit student parents who don’t always have that 9-to-5 hour available when they have to take class and get the kids to child care and deal with their eviction notice, and go to the grocery store, whatever else it might be.
I wonder if we can talk about some of the ways that institutions can have a role in supporting them with housing insecurity.
Conroy: This was the first piece that New America had really done, at this intersection of housing issues and higher education. So, we were deliberately a little careful about what the policy solutions discussion looked like, because there are enough people in the world who will wade into new issue areas that they don’t know and make a bunch of suggestions without really understanding whether they’ve been tried before. So, we wanted to be deliberately careful.
But I think one of the things that is really clear is these are not problems that institutions can solve on their own. So there was a big study that just came out, led by Rashida Crutchfield and a few other people in California, about work on California’s rapid rehousing investments.
California at the state level, had invested, I think, over $30 million in that effort, and it showed really good outcomes. But it helped students at a small handful of universities in California. And when you’re talking about over 2 million students just in the California Community College system alone, $31 million seems like a lot of money. But when you start dividing that by, you know, tens of thousands or potentially hundreds of thousands of students, it’s not very much, very quickly.
One of the really good quotes that came out of that was some senior administrator saying, “We simply can’t solve this at an institutional level by ourselves.” And I think it’s very clear from this data that parenting students have some unique vulnerabilities around housing insecurity and eviction—they’re having to pay more for housing, they need more housing than the average single student without kids, all of these things. Our financial aid system wasn’t designed to really support people with children. And so a big piece of this—and we’re starting to think about that now—is going to be institutions partnering and thinking through, how do we come to the table with our local housing authority? How do we come to the table with our city planning department and advocates for housing?
Because everybody in America, unless you’re pretty well off, is experiencing challenges with housing. This is not an issue that’s unique to students. But in this case, parenting students are uniquely vulnerable to some of the challenges created there, so a lot of the solutions are going to be partnerships. There’s a role to play for emergency aid, for using it strategically to avoid students getting to the point of eviction. There’s a role for improved financial aid and doing a better job of communicating with students that they have these resources. I think, like Nick said, legal services, particularly if you’re an institution with a law school, is a great way to help, if you have a Student Legal Clinic. I think that’s actually a really great piece, but it’s going to be, almost certainly, a lot of partnership work with institutions. You run a food pantry, you can connect students to SNAP, you can do those kinds of things. Housing is a much bigger challenge, and it’s going to require working across different areas, for colleges and universities.
Graetz: Ultimately, the universities investing in some of the emergency assistance stuff and legal services is, I think you can get a really big bang for your buck there, but it’s ultimately a band-aid solution to the broader housing crisis we’re all dealing with. And I think universities can be really powerful, important political actors in those conversations that have to be happening with state government and federal government to ease some of the major housing strain that families are facing.
Conroy: One thing that actually just came to mind is the current administration has said it wants to explore the idea of limiting access to public housing, and especially housing choice vouchers —what’s previously been known as Section Eight housing vouchers—to two years. This isn’t official policy yet, but it’s been floated as an idea.
One of the things we know is that, and as we see in this data, for a parenting student who was threatened with eviction five years post-enrollment, their family income was more than cut in half. If they were not threatened with eviction five years post-enrollment, [they had a] family income of $126,000 a year. That’s really good. That’s solidly middle class, like you’re doing pretty well.
If you were threatened with eviction five years later, your family income was $59,000. That is an enormous difference. But it shows that if we help protect students at this really crucial point where they’re trying to get to a place that they no longer need to rely on any kind of public support, they’re probably going to do pretty well.
Those kinds of policy proposals would make this so much worse, when we know that if you help that student get to the finish line, the chances that they ever have to rely on public housing or other public benefits again, become so much lower.
There are these really sort of backward policies that are penny-pinching to save a few cents now, but in the long run harm people and cost more money, or are just really ill-thought out approaches to public policy and housing policy.
Citing Sources
One study by the Lumina Foundation using 2012 data found that college graduates are 3.5 times less likely to be impoverished and five times less likely to be imprisoned or be in jail compared to non–college graduates. Lifetime government expenditures are 39 percent lower—$82,000 less—for college graduates than for Americans with only a high school degree.
The study also found that the average bachelor’s degree recipient contributes $381,000 more in taxes than they use in government services and programs over their lifetime.
Inside Higher Ed: We could definitely spend some time talking about the administration’s push for more children and encouraging family growth and things like that
We see that student parents are so motivated to complete a degree, and we know adult learners are intrinsically motivated. They are much more likely to have strong goals [and] positive academic outcomes compared to their younger peers, but there are all these external factors that continue to hinder their degree progress. We’ve talked about time poverty, housing insecurity, lack of finances, the need to work, caregiving responsibilities for those who are caught in the [Sandwich] Generation between older parents and younger children or siblings as well. It’s such a complex issue , I wonder if we can just talk a little bit about why it’s so essential to do more than just provide academic support and to surround student parents with basic needs, with legal aid, with some of these other essential elements of being a student parent.
Conroy: Like you said, academic outcomes for parenting students are actually pretty good. They, on average, have similar or even slightly better GPAs than their non-parent peers. But even under the best case scenario, taking eviction and everything else out of it, their chances of completing a bachelor’s degree in six years or an associate’s degree in three years are far lower than their non-parent peers.
It is because of all of these other things that we’re talking about. Everything else being equal, if you take a parenting student and a non-parenting student and drop them in the same environment, the chances that the parenting student is going to get to the finish line are already diminished, unless you figure out other ways to support them.
Priority registration is an enormous thing. I actually was just this week having dinner with a friend whose spouse just finished law school, but was at the same time working full-time. They have a young child, and he said the only way we were able to make this work is because Texas passed requirements that parenting students got priority registration, and his wife had first pick of classes, and that’s a family that has good financial resources.
There are simple things like that; even priority registration for parenting students means they can figure out their work schedule. They can figure out childcare. That can be a big deal by itself, but if colleges figure out how to properly support the groups with the largest challenges, then that all trickles down.
Universal design tells you that that will have good impacts for everybody else, but if colleges don’t do that, given demographic change … I’m not like somebody who thinks the world is going to collapse due to changes in the number of high school graduates, but it is going to have an impact. And we have this enormous pool of people in America who have some college but no degree or want to go back to college. New America just released our Varying Degrees report that we’ve done for years, and it shows, and it has shown again and again, Americans really value higher education. Folks who don’t have higher education are thinking about wanting to come back into it. The way that colleges will be able to smooth out some of those demographic change challenges is really thinking through carefully, how do we support groups like parenting students, where there’s also huge potential upside; if you move the needle 10 percent on your graduation rates for parenting students—because there the rates are so low right now—it has a really massive positive impact on your outcomes as an institution. And that’s important for funding, it’s important for recruitment, all of these things.
Graetz: One point you brought up, Ashley, that I just wanted to build on a little bit, is the potential for really multi-generational impacts of investing in student parents.
One thing we did in this work is think about how that goes both up and down the family tree. With the data linkage we’ve done, we’ve also connected the incomes of the parents of parenting students, so we could think of those as the grandparents of the children these folks are having while they’re enrolled.
And we find that lower grandparent income at the time of parenting students enrolling is associated with much higher risk of eviction. I think the threat of eviction in college while you’re caring for your grandchild, you know that grandparent is going to be affected by that too. Because of some of the statistics you mentioned earlier, about how many parenting students can afford a $500 bill, a big part of that depends on familial wealth and where can you go to draw on that kind of emergency assistance?
We know, of course, there are massive racial disparities in family wealth. So at the point of something like an eviction, that’s going to affect both up and down the family tree. It’s going to affect everybody who might be providing emergency support to that family member, potentially their child or who’s caring for their grandchild. But then it’s also going to affect the child; evictions, especially experienced early in life, have really traumatic long-term effects for children.
Inside Higher Ed: That’s something that I wanted to talk about as well—the value of supporting student parents for the dependents’ sake. In higher education, we want all students to succeed and thrive, but we also know that being a continuing generation student, or having a parent who has a college degree or certificate, boosts your chances of completing a degree. And there’s, like you mentioned Nick, wellbeing and personal life experiences too, that are really tied to having basic needs and being supported as a young child. I wonder if we can talk a little bit about why this is important, not only for the student, but also for future generations and their education.
Graetz: It’s hard to overstate the impacts that something like an eviction can have. In our previous work, looking at who’s affected by eviction the most, the rates are extremely high when you’re zero to five. So that’s because evictions target households with kids. Some of the most likely time of your life to be affected by an eviction is when you’re an infant, basically. And there’s a lot of literature on how this affects school outcomes, how this affects sort of regular developmental milestones. And I think it’s for tons of reasons; there’s the acute, traumatic effect of that eviction and this instability it causes, but then there’s just the downstream material consequences of that experience by the family for years and years later that are going to affect that child.
Conroy: One thing to add on there is, we know that wealth and poverty in America are very sticky. Your chances of moving up in terms of income quintiles and things like that are not great, but higher education is one of the things that really makes it more likely that, if you came from a relatively low-income family, that you’re able to move into a higher income bracket and be more economically secure, all of those things and all of that for lots of reasons.
We don’t have to get into every detail of it, but it has really good consequences for kids. It means that they’re more likely to go to a better-resourced school, they’re more likely to have good food on the table every day, all of these things.
Also, Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce estimates that 70 percent of jobs being created will require some kind of post–high school education moving forward. [It] doesn’t have to be a four-year degree, but there is an ever-decreasing number of jobs that don’t require training of some kind beyond high school. We help parenting students complete college, we know that once you get into a second-generation, third-generation college-going group, you’re not first-gen anymore, your chances of going to and succeeding in college go up because you have a parent to turn to to say, “Hey, you navigated this. How do I do that?”
I see this with people in my family who are one of the only people in their community who went to college and they’re the community resource. It’s mom, dad, uncle, aunt, cousin. “Hey, talk to that person. They went to college; they succeeded. They’ll tell you what to do.” Those are very hard to measure, but the community network effects that happen over time and happen for kids in those families can be enormous.
Inside Higher Ed: We talked a little bit about the lack of policy or practice implications directly named in the research brief that you both wrote. But I wonder if we can talk about the future of this work, or where you hope that the conversation continues to go as we think about supporting student parents in higher education who may be facing eviction or dealing with housing insecurity?
Conroy: A couple of things that we’re working on that I can talk about. Nick and I have also, just in the past two weeks, been sort of figuring out, what can we do now to expand on this?
One is we’re in the middle of trying to develop some work in conjunction with Nick and Eviction Lab, and then New America’s future of Land and Housing Program, to work in a small number of cities, to do some of the things I was talking about earlier in terms of partnerships and what could we do to think really carefully of bringing higher ed experts, institutions, housing advocates, the local public housing authority all together to the table to say, “Housing affordability is a general problem. It’s also a very specific problem for these groups of students. How could we work in collaboration to change some of those things?”
That requires funding and all of those things. But we’re hoping to be able to do that as the “on the ground” piece at the same time as we build greater research evidence. We had seven states in this study, and, I can, Nick can talk better about, what were some of the ideas that we’re now starting to think about for what next stages, in terms of the evidence base, could look like?
Graetz: We’re hoping to expand the coverage across the country of this linkage between all the census administrative records, this and the student records. I think that could give us more scope and general ability to generalize across student parents living in very different housing contexts.
Then there’s just a bunch of other questions opened up by this initial work. Something I’m personally really interested in is the shifting ownership structure of student housing. A lot of times, we focus on trying to learn things by studying tenants, but it’s a lot harder to study landlords and owners and how those shifts can affect those risks being passed on to tenants in terms of things like eviction risk. I think that’s really interesting, especially in the student housing space and just the parts of a city’s housing stock that are primarily serving student populations. And then, we’re also really interested in doing more linkage to understand the relationship between various federal assistance programs and eviction risk among students and parenting students. That’s all, hopefully, stuff we can look forward to over the next year or two.
Conroy: So, if anybody’s listening and have spare million dollars or two …
Inside Higher Ed: I’ll write you a check later this afternoon.
Conroy: I need to look at Inside Higher Ed jobs. I didn’t realize they paid that well.
Inside Higher Ed: Well, you know …
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There are a couple of typical ways to “read” Pamela Gillies’ investigation report into financial oversight and decision making at the University of Dundee.
One is to imagine that the issues in it are fairly unique to that university – that a particular set of people and circumstances were somehow not picked up properly by a governing body apparently oblivious to what was happening below the surface.
Another is to wonder whether, even with a clean bill of “good governance” health, it could happen elsewhere.
One of the things that is fascinating about organisational failure is the way in which governance tends to be picked up as a problem – because it can lead to the conclusion that because organisational failure is not widespread, the governance issues must be local.
If you position governance exclusively as scrutiny, it could of course be the case that the culture of governance is weak across the board – it’s just that most senior teams in universities don’t make the mistakes that were evidently made at Dundee, and thus we’d never know.
After all, nobody questions governance when things are going well, when funding is flowing and when student numbers are on the up. If anything, in that positioning, the danger is in complacency – because governance needs to come into its own to avoid mistakes and catch issues before they become catastrophes.
When Gillies’ report was published, I couldn’t avoid recalling countless conversations I’ve had over the years with student members of governing bodies about everything from the lateness of papers to the culture of decision making.
So to test the waters, I pulled out 14 governance issues from the investigation and put a brief (anonymous) survey out to students’ union officers who are members of their Board, Council or Court.
I can’t claim that 41 responses (captured in the second half of June and the first half of July) are representative of the whole sector, and nor are they representative of the whole of the governing bodies on which respondents have sat.
But there is enough material in there to cause us concern about how universities around the UK are governed.
A culture of control
One issue that Pam Gillies picked up was leadership dominance, where the vice chancellor and chair were found to have “behaved like they have everything under control” while governing bodies failed to provide adequate challenge.
When we asked whether student governors had experienced leadership that “routinely dominates discussions, controls narratives to present overly positive pictures, or makes it difficult for governors to raise concerns,” 68 per cent said they’d experienced this “a lot”. Another 27 per cent said “a little.”
That’s 95 per cent of respondents experiencing some level of what one might generously call “narrative management” by their senior teams.
The comments flesh out what this looks like in practice. One student governor observed:
You are told at the start that your job is to manage the VC and the SMT but they manage the governors. The Chair and the VC behave like they have everything under control. The room just does not seem interested in education or the student experience, more whether it is running as a business.
Another captured the emotional impact:
Whenever I have asked a question or said something even questioning let alone critical about UEG it’s like I have suggested burning down their office. They are allowed to be both over-defensive and over-reassuring rather than treat contributions from me and some of the other more vocal governors as contributions to thinking. It makes the whole thing quite pointless.
It’s not just about dominance – it’s also about active silencing. Gillies found that dissenting voices were marginalised and that “critical challenge was not welcomed.” Our survey bears this out.
When asked about governors being “shut down, spoken over, dismissed as ‘obstructive,’ or otherwise discouraged when trying to challenge decisions,” 51 per cent reported experiencing this “a lot”. Another 37 per cent said “a little”.
The mechanisms are subtle but effective. One respondent noted being warned at the start of their term that the previous student president had not been “constructive” and that to get things done, they needed to be “constructive” instead. The implied threat was clear – play nice or be frozen out.
It was made very clear to me at the start that the previous President had not been ‘constructive’ and that if I wanted to get things done I needed to be ‘constructive’. All year I have felt torn – other governors would regularly ask me at the meal what was ‘really going on’ but I never felt like I could be critical in the actual meeting because of the ‘partnership’. I feel like the VC was under a lot of pressure to perform for the governors, and that makes it impossible to say anything about what you think is going wrong.
Another described the choreography of exclusion:
The power dynamics are fascinating if you’re into that sort of thing. Watch who the Chair makes eye contact with, whose contributions get minuted vs. ‘noted’, who gets interrupted vs. who can ramble for 10 minutes unchecked. I never got the premium treatment – I feel that the Chair needs some feedback on whose thoughts they obviously value.
That isolation extends beyond meetings. Multiple respondents noted deliberate strategies to separate them from support:
One tendency we picked up on a lot was to isolate me from support, I wasn’t allowed to discuss the papers with my CEO or have my CEO in the room. It’s only student on the board. They say that’s for confidentiality, but everyone else in the room is clearly discussing their issues with people who can put everything into a context. I think it should be the law that two students are on the board.
The theatre of governance
Gillies found that important decisions at Dundee were made outside formal governance structures, with a “small inner circle” controlling key outcomes. Our survey question on decision-making transparency suggests this is far from unique.
When asked whether “important decisions are made by a small inner circle before reaching the governing body,” 51 per cent said this happened “a lot”, with another 44 per cent saying “a little”.
The comments reveal how that manifests. One student governor described discovering a shadow governance structure:
I think there’s a huge element of culture at my institution which prevents effective governance but it’s also the structure. There’s a meeting which isn’t included in the governance structure but everything goes to it before it can go anywhere else and it’s restricted to senior managers at the university. If it isn’t approved there, it won’t happen, even if things like rent negotiations have taken place in the ‘proper’ meetings, they can just scrap it and say ‘no, this is what needs to happen’ and then we’re just told. It feels like secret meeting which secretly governs everything and every other meeting is a rubber stamp for decisions made there.
Another put it more bluntly:
The meetings are very odd places, we don’t have any input at all on anything. Everything that comes to the Court is finished, and our job seems to be to politely probe what is in front of us (always once, follow ups frowned upon). Eye-opening but completely pointless.
Gillies highlighted how late papers and missing documentation hampered effective governance at Dundee – the control of information emerges as a critical tool in maintaining this system across the sector. Over half (54 per cent) of respondents in our survey reported experiencing late papers, missing documentation, or “critical updates given verbally rather than in writing” frequently.
But it goes deeper than administrative incompetence. When asked about financial information quality – an area Gillies found particularly problematic at Dundee – 37 per cent said they’d frequently received reports that “were unclear, seemed to obscure the true position, contained unexplained anomalies, or lacked integrated information.”
One respondent shared a particularly telling anecdote:
Training – our old CFO was a dick. He said that he wouldn’t train student members of Council in the finances because we ‘wouldn’t understand it’ which, in my mind, seems like something to a) find out and b) entirely irrelevant to a governor asking to see financial information.
The systematic exclusion of student perspectives from board papers then compounds it:
Many of the budget requests and department updates did not reflect the student experience accurately whether it was missing data from specific feedback routes or lacking in student perspective entirely, it made approvals difficult for me and difficult for the board as I would then be asked for the data and even though I can share some of the issues I know of I cannot represent the entire student body. With only 48hrs notice.
The message seems to be that knowledge is power – and student governors aren’t meant to have it.
Living in fantasy land
Gillies found that Dundee’s governing body had been presented with “overly positive pictures” that obscured institutional reality. Quite striking in our survey is the disconnect between the institution presented in governance meetings and the one students actually experience.
Multiple respondents described sitting through presentations that bore no resemblance to reality:
The university that gets presented isn’t the university I was at as a student.
Another elaborated:
It feels a lot like a fantasy world in there but they really don’t know how the university actually works, and the questions they ask are so weird, like they are desperate for the university to be as good as they imagine it is when there are really a lot of problems with how it runs especially at school level.
This fantasy is then maintained through what we might call the tyranny of positivity. When asked whether they’d felt “pressure to maintain positive messaging even when you have legitimate worries,” 61 per cent said they’d experienced this “a lot”.
The enforcement mechanisms vary. Some are explicit:
They love talking about ‘student voice’ in the abstract but hate it when we actually speak. I raised concerns about library hours during exams and the DVC literally rolled his eyes. Later the Chair pulled me aside and said I should ‘pick my battles more carefully’ and focus on ‘strategic matters’.
Others are more subtle. Multiple respondents described being praised for contributions that never led to change:
I was often praised in the minutes. ‘Thoughtful contribution from the student member.’ But praise without change feels hollow – a polite pat on the head.
This disconnect between fantasy and reality is exacerbated by what several respondents identified as an unhealthy fixation on rankings:
A lot of the meetings were really interested in what I had to say, but the obsession with league tables is bizarre. We spent easily an hour at the last meeting discussing how to game NSS metrics but when I suggested actually fixing the issues students raise – timetabling chaos, inconsistent feedback, broken IT systems – I got blank stares. One governor literally said ‘can’t we just manage student expectations better?’ What’s the point?
Another observed:
There are about sixteen of us in theory but really there are six people who speak at every meeting, and it is always about whether we are beating other universities. I don’t think the governors have any way to judge how well the university is doing other than by thinking about other universities. It is very weird.
This comparative obsession substitutes for genuine evaluation of institutional health – where things become filtered through the lens of institutional positioning rather than student experience.
The survey responses also reveal how regulatory compliance has become another distorting filter. Several respondents noted how the Office for Students has inadvertently created perverse incentives:
It is very weird to me that whenever I’ve talked about student issues they are responded to with things like ‘that would not be an issue for the OfS’, like we are only supposed to worry about the student experience if OfS are doing a visit.
It suggests that governing bodies are more concerned with regulatory perception than addressing underlying problems – a dangerous conflation of compliance with quality.
The impossible position
A particularly Byzantine aspect of student perceptions of governance emerges in the contradictions around representation. Multiple respondents noted being told explicitly that they were “not a representative” of students, only to have governors constantly ask them about student views:
At the start of the year it is drilled into you that you are not a representative, and then at every meeting someone has asked me what students think, what students are saying, how students would react, and so on. It really is ridiculous.
It creates an impossible position – student governors are simultaneously expected to embody the student voice whilst being forbidden from claiming to represent it, and are consulted when convenient but dismissed when challenging.
The tokenism extends to how “the student experience” is conceptualised:
There is a pressure not to rock the boat too much or the SU funding will be under threat. One other thing is that the other governors see ‘the student experience’ as one homogeneous thing. I represent 30,000 students – disabled students, commuters, mature students, international students, care leavers – but I get 5 minutes at the end of every meeting to cover ‘student matters.’ When I highlight different needs across student groups, eyes glaze over.
One response powerfully captured another dimension of the problem:
Too many decisions are made by white upper-middle class men who have no real understanding of student demographics or experiences and the effects that rushed, ill informed decisions can have on the student body.
This homogeneity problem compounds all the others – if governance doesn’t reflect the communities it serves, how can it possibly understand their needs?
Throughout the responses runs a theme of performative partnership that masks fundamental power imbalances. Student governors describe being valued for their “input” on predetermined decisions whilst being told their contributions are “premature” on anything still under genuine consideration:
Two types of agenda items, ones where student input is ‘valued’ (anything they’ve already decided) and those where student input is ‘premature’ (anything they haven’t decided yet). Its never the right time for meaningful student contribution.
The contrast between public and private behaviour is also revealing:
I feel that the UET are like Jekyll and Hyde, they have listened to me outside of the meetings but when I have asked about things during Board meetings they react very defensively. I’m not supposed to be a rep for students but nobody else ever talks about students unless we count recruiting students.
When push comes to shove
Gillies found that committees at Dundee operated as “rubber stamping exercises” rather than providing genuine oversight. Our survey revealed similar patterns, with 46 per cent reporting committees feeling like “rubber stamping exercises.”
Even when committees try to assert themselves, the resistance is telling:
We had an issue with the auditors and the closest I’ve seen us come to blows as a Council was when the exec tried to treat the issue as annoying but closed and move on but Council had to say ‘actually, no, we’d like an audit of our auditors to work out how [confidential] was missed.’
The fundamental problem, as one respondent observed, may be structural:
I honestly think that the huge number of things the council are expected to know about and make decisions on are beyond them. They don’t meet often enough and they really do not understand their responsibilities.
Gillies documented how Dundee’s governance processes were abandoned during crisis periods. Our survey asked about governance during “difficult periods,” and of those who didn’t say “N/A”, 51 per cent reported seeing “normal governance processes abandoned, informal advisory groups bypass committee structures, or key oversight bodies become inactive when they’re most needed.”
It suggests that whatever thin veneer of good governance exists in normal times rapidly dissolves under pressure – precisely when robust governance is most essential:
Student input in governance is at a real risk of just becoming a box ticking exercise as I have sat in meetings where the student experience is discussed by everyone but the students in the room. Once decisions need to be made at speed all thought for student and staff is ignored and it is often because of their own burdensome governance structures that inhibit the agility needed for such a volatile time in HE.”
The human cost
The emotional toll shouldn’t be underestimated. Multiple respondents described feeling “out of place,” “invalidated,” or like they were “betraying everyone” simply by asking questions.
One particularly poignant comment came from a sabbatical officer who left their role early:
It was a really tough experience as I had students relying on me. I wish that I could’ve stayed in my role for longer but the lack of transparency and wish to subdue the view for students contradicted my individual beliefs and leadership style. I was supportive and I wanted students to know what I was doing. This wasn’t always possible.
And the lack of institutional learning is telling:
It is telling that they spent so much time with me at the start but haven’t spent any time with me to get my feedback at the end. I feel that they should do exit interviews to learn about how intimidating the atmosphere can be.
Perhaps most damning is the response to our final question. When asked whether they “feel confident that your governing body would identify and respond appropriately to serious institutional risks,” only 32 per cent expressed confidence.
That means 68 per cent of student governors – governors who usually have the most intimate knowledge of how their institutions actually operate – doubt their governing body’s ability to spot and address serious problems.
One captured the fundamental dysfunction:
If I compare it to being on my union board I think the governors is a joke. If I ask why or how in the union we have a decent conversation. If I do it at governors the atmosphere is like I’ve betrayed everyone. And if I say something isn’t clear that is turned into something I’ve not done or read. We’re not governors. We’re an audience.
Another summed up the experience with clarity:
I feel that the whole thing is engineered to make the vice chancellor and her team to look good rather than gather our input or ideas, I would have side conversations with some of the community governors who shared my view but there just is not any part of any meeting where ‘input’ is welcome.
We’re not governors. We’re an audience
Some of the most problematic critiques came in respondents’ final reflections on what governance actually means in practice:
What frustrates me most is the wasted potential. These are genuinely smart, accomplished people who could transform this place. But they’re trapped in this weird bubble where everything’s fine and any criticism is disloyalty. I know I’m not the only one.
The sense of governance as performance came through repeatedly:
In the January meeting I was invited to do a presentation before the formal meeting on what student life is like and I got a lot of praise from the Chair about how eye-opening it was. But about half of the governors were not there and the PVC-E went off on one about how the university’s surveys contradicted some of the things we were saying. I feel that the whole body just doesn’t have a clue about students or staff and what it is like to be a student in 2025.
One respondent captured the Kafkaesque nature of their experience:
The whole ‘critical friend’ thing is such a con. We’re meant to be critical but every time I challenge something I get ‘well, Council can only advise, we cannot instruct the executive.’ So we’re legally responsible for decisions we can only ‘advise’ on? The Vice Chancellor keeps saying Council is ‘not a court’ whenever we try to hold them accountable. I’ve started asking ‘what CAN Council actually do?’ because honestly I’m not sure anymore.
The broader implications were spelled out starkly:
The big, big, BIG thing for us as student leaders has been ‘what Council is and is not for’. Often, when we’ve brought issues for discussion or ‘airing’ at Council, I have had every variation of ‘Council is not a court’ ‘Council can only advise the exec, it cannot instruct it’ ‘Council is for critical challenge but cannot dictate’ some of which is absolutely at odds with then being legally responsible for the decisions you have only ‘advised on’ and ‘cannot dictate’.
And perhaps most damningly:
As a new Sabbatical officer, I felt extremely out of place with the culture of Court meetings, as if I wasn’t supposed to be or welcome there. It made my input feel invalidated and overlooked. Structurally, important decisions are already decided upon within committees before reaching court.
What next?
It’s important to set what I’ve gathered in context. Student governors have a particular perspective and a specific set of confidence and cultural capital asymmetries that are bound to make being on a body of the “great and good” a difficult experience.
41 responses is not the whole sector (and may not even be from 41 universities), and it was a self-selecting survey. But we should be worried.
Out of the back of the Dundee episode, both Graeme Day and the Scottish Funding Council have committed to exploring ways to strengthen governance to avoid a repeat.
Universities Scotland has committed to collective reflection on Gilles’ findings and the lessons it shares to give “robust assurance” of financial management and good governance to funders, regulators, supporters and all who depend on universities.
It has also said it will “connect” to Universities UK’s work to consider the leadership and governance skills required in the sector in times of transformation and challenge.
As such, the same issue that students see in governing bodies is playing out nationally – there are questions that suggest a loss of autonomy, and reassurance about “performance” designed to retain it.
There is therefore a real danger that the processes will conclude what these sorts of things always conclude – that with the right “skills” and adherence to a given Code, all will be well.
But the experiences from students suggest that neither “getting the right skills” nor calls for better codes will solve the fundamental problems. The issue isn’t just about getting the “right” people around the table or training them better – it’s about reconsidering what we’re asking governance to do.
Vertical or horizontal?
As I noted here and here, the Dutch experience offers an alternative. Following a series of governance scandals in the early 2000s, the Netherlands rejected both excessive state control and unfettered institutional autonomy. Their 2016 Education Governance Strengthening Act created a “third way” – creating multi-level democratic participation from program to institutional level.
Rather than imposing rigid rules, the framework promoted “horizontal dialogue” where students, staff, management, and supervisors engage in ongoing conversations about their university.
A 2021 evaluation found meaningful channels for student and staff input had been created, with improved dialogue quality between stakeholder groups. If there’s enough of them, staff and students have turned out to be better at scrutiny than skilled lay members or someone from the funding council sat in the corner.
It’s also partly about what is discussed. Most boards operate primarily in fiduciary mode (overseeing budgets, ensuring compliance) or strategic mode (setting priorities, deploying resources). While essential, these modes often crowd out what governance scholars call the “generative mode” – critical thinking, questioning assumptions, and framing problems in insightful ways.
Generative governance asks probing questions: “What is our fundamental purpose?” and “How does this decision align with our core values?” It involves scenario planning, delving into root causes rather than symptoms, and actively considering ethical implications beyond legal compliance. And it allows senior staff to participate, rather than perform – a culture that then improves scrutiny in fiduciary mode.
It is where staff, student, and community governors could add most value – yet it’s often where their contributions are most dismissed as inappropriate or “operational.” The standard line that governors should be “concerned with the university rather than as representatives” misses the point that understanding the lived experience of those working and studying there is essential to good governance, and actually improves fiduciary scrutiny.
Put another way, maybe better fiduciary mode scrutiny could have probed more on the Nigerian students focussed business plan at Dundee. But it’s more likely that better generative mode governance could have explained what was starting to happen to the currency in Nigeria, how tough students were funding it to pay their fees, and what families were going through as the Naira went into collapse.
It’s also partly about what we think “effectiveness” means. Universities facing unprecedented challenges – financial pressures, technological disruption, legitimacy crises – need governance capable of navigating complexity, not just ticking out risk registers. They need what the Dutch reforms sought – genuine accountability to the communities they serve, not just reassuring compliance with regulatory requirements.
Universities at their best are spaces where different forms of knowledge encounter each other, and where democratic values are modeled and sustained. Their governance should reflect this reality.
As such, we need to ensure we’re solving the right problem. The issue isn’t governors who need better training or institutions that need tighter control. It’s a governance model designed for a different era and different types of organisation, struggling to cope with contemporary complexity while excluding the voices that could help navigate it.
What we do next requires courage to move beyond the false choice between corporatisation and collegial nostalgia. A third way is possible – one that takes seriously both institutional sustainability and democratic participation, that values both expertise and lived experience, that reconciles the university interest with the interests of those who study and work there rather than separating them or elevating one of them, and that governs for the public good rather than just institutional survival.
The students sitting in those boardrooms, feeling like audiences rather than governors, deserve better. So do the staff, the communities universities serve, and democracy itself.
Tennessee is joining the ranks of states with direct admissions programs by launching a pilot this fall that will automatically offer certain high school students spots at the state’s two- and four-year colleges based on their academic records.
The program, led by the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, will pair admissions offers with financial aid information for about half the high school students to test whether that boosts their chances of enrolling.
In a statement Wednesday, THEC Executive Director Steven Gentile cast the initiative as a way to simplify the path to college. “For the first time in the nation, we are pairing direct admissions with personalized financial aid information, so students not only know where they’ve been accepted — they’ll also know how they can afford to go.”
Dive Insight:
The TN Direct Admissions pilot is to launch in November, when roughly 41,000 students from more than 230 randomly selected high schools in the state will receive letters listing which participating colleges have automatically accepted them. Around half of those students will also get information about available state and institutional financial aid tailored to them based on their GPA, test scores or other criteria.
To participate, students will need to complete an application for the Tennessee Promise program by Nov. 1.
Researchers will use the information from the pilot to study how providing this information influences college-going behavior.
They aim to find out whether high school students who receive both financial aid information and direct admissions bids are more likely to attend college than those who just get automatic admissions offers. They will also compare the data against that for students who don’t receive direct admissions letters at all.
“Through this study, we will learn not only about the impact of direct admissions and financial aid on students’ college enrollment, but how students feel about their direct admission experience,” Trisha Ross Anderson, a Harvard University researcher working on the project, said in a Wednesday statement.
The financial aid component — which THEC said in a Wednesday statement is the first of its kind for a direct admissions program — will inform students of their eligibility for institutional grants and scholarships, as well as for state programs such as the Tennessee Promise. That program covers remaining tuition and fees for students at state community or technical colleges after all other grant aid has been applied.
Overall, 53 colleges are participating in the fall pilot. That includes all 13 of the state’s community colleges and its 23 technical colleges, as well as 17 public and private universities.
Tennessee joins several other states that have recently launched direct admissions programs. Earlier this year, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed a bill into law to send high school and community college students direct admissions offers to the state’s universities depending on their academic performance.
And last October, New York launched an effort to guarantee fall 2025 spots to at least one of its public universities for high school students graduating in the top 10% of their class. The nine initial participating colleges included the state’s two flagships, University at Buffalo and Stony Brook University.
Columbia University expelled and suspended multiple students for participating in allegedly disruptive protest activity in spring 2024 and earlier this year it announced on Tuesday.
Officials made the decision on Monday, according to the university statement, saying the action is the “final set of findings” by the University Judicial Board (UJB) related to protests “from that period.”
Sanctions passed down from Columbia relate to a pro-Palestinian protest encampment last spring and a May takeover of a room in the Butler Library, according to the university statement. Columbia responded to that incident by placing 71 students on interim suspension in May.
“The sanctions issued on July 21 by the University Judicial Board were determined by a UJB panel of professors and administrators who worked diligently over the summer to offer an outcome for each individual based on the findings of their case and prior disciplinary outcomes,” Columbia officials wrote in an unsigned statement. “While the University does not release individual disciplinary results of any student, the sanctions from Butler Library include probation, suspensions (ranging from one year to three years), degree revocations, and expulsions.”
Officials added that “disruptions to academic activities” are a violation of university policies.
Though Columbia did not specify how many students were disciplined, the pro-Palestinian student group CU Apartheid Divest alleged that as many as 80 were expelled or suspended. According to CU Apartheid Divest, disciplinary letters sent to suspended students require them to submit apologies in order to return to campus in one to three years.
Student protesters accused officials of punishing students as a concession to the Trump administration, which froze hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research funding due to alleged antisemitism at Columbia tied to pro-Palestinian protests.
“The sanctions are believed to be part of a federal deal Columbia is about to announce,” the group wrote in a social media post.
Earlier this year Columbia agreed to broad demands by the federal government, including overhauling disciplinary processes. However the $400 million in frozen federal funds have not yet been restored despite those concessions.
Multiple media outlets have reported that Columbia is nearing a deal with the Trump administration to resolve complaints of antisemitism on campus. The Wall Street Journal reported that while a potential deal would likely restore federal research funds, it would also cost the university $200 million in a settlement fee.
Columbia did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.
University disciplinary efforts drew a tepid response from the House Education and Workforce Committee which issued a statement from Chairman Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican.
“Columbia has more progress to make before Jewish students can truly feel safe on its campus,” he said. “The Committee’s work has underscored the depth and breadth of antisemitism at Columbia that can’t be ignored. We will continue to investigate antisemitism at Columbia and other universities and develop legislative solutions to address this persistent problem.”
While Columbia reportedly considers a deal with the Trump administration, Ivy League peer Harvard University has started a court battle to regain billions in federal research funding.
It also sued the government for attempting to block it from enrolling international students. A federal court temporarily blocked the Trump administration from choking off Harvard’s international enrollment, and the same federal judge has not yet ruled on the legality of the government’s freezing of Harvard’s grants and contracts.
However, the judge appeared skeptical of the government’s position at Monday’s hearing.
In Kern County, the first rule in counting homeless students is not saying “homeless.”
Instead, school staff use phrases like “struggling with stable housing” or “families in transition.” The approach seems to have worked: More families are sharing their housing status with their children’s schools, which means more students are getting services.
“There’s a lot of stigma attached to the word ‘homeless,’” said Curt Williams, director of homeless and foster youth services for the Kern County Office of Education. “When you remove that word, it all changes.”
Largely as a result of better identification methods, Kern County saw its homeless student population jump 10% last year, to 7,200. Those students received transportation to and from school, free school supplies, tutoring and other services intended to help them stay in school. For the purposes of this data, the definition of homelessness is broader than the state’s point in time count.
The trend is reflected statewide. In the latest state enrollment data released last month, California had 230,443 homeless students — a 9.3% increase from the previous year. Some of the increase is due to the state’s ongoing housing shortage, but most of the increase is because of better identification, advocates and school officials said.
Homeless students face numerous obstacles in school. They have higher rates of discipline and absenteeism, and fare worse academically. Last year, only 16% of homeless students met the state’s math standard, some of the lowest scores of any student group.
“Schools can’t solve homelessness, but they can ensure the students are safe in the classroom and getting the education they need to get out of homelessness,” said Barbara Duffield, executive director of Schoolhouse Connection, a national homeless youth advocacy group. “That starts with identifying the child who’s homeless.”
Challenges of counting homeless students
Under the federal McKinney-Vento Act, schools are required to count their homeless students throughout the school year and ensure they receive services. Homeless students also have the right to stay enrolled in their original school even if they move.
For many years, schools struggled to identify homeless students. Under state law, schools must distribute forms at the beginning of the school year asking families where they live — in their own homes, in motels, doubled-up with other families, in shelters, cars or outdoors.
Some schools were less-than-diligent about collecting the form, or reassuring families understood the importance. Often, homeless families were reluctant to submit the form because they were afraid the school might contact a child welfare agency. Immigrant families sometimes feared the school might notify immigration authorities. And some families didn’t realize that sharing quarters with another family — by far the most common living situation among homeless families – is technically defined as homeless, at least under McKinney-Vento.
A 2021 bill by former Assemblymember Luz Rivas, a Democrat from Arleta in the San Fernando Valley, sought to fix that problem. The bill requires schools to train everyone who works with students — from bus drivers to cafeteria workers to teachers — on how to recognize potential signs of homelessness. That could include families who move frequently or don’t reply to school correspondence.
The bill seems to have helped. Last year, the state identified 21,000 more homeless students than it had the previous year, even as overall enrollment dropped.
Still, that’s probably an undercount, researchers said. The actual homeless student population is probably between 5% and10% of those students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, according to the National Center for Homeless Education. In California, that would be a shortfall of up to 138,713 students.
Influx of funding
Another boost for identifying homeless students came from the American Rescue Plan, the federal COVID-19 relief package. The plan included $800 million for schools to hire counselors or train existing staff to help homeless students. Nearly all schools in California received some money.
About 120 districts in California won grant money through the McKinney-Vento Act, which last year dispersed about $15.9 million in California to pay for things like rides to school, backpacks, staff and other services. Districts are chosen on a competitive basis; not all districts that apply receive funds.
But those funding sources are drying up. Most of the pandemic relief money has already been spent, and President Donald Trump’s recently approved budget does not include McKinney-Vento funding for 2026-27.
The cuts come at a time when advocates expect steep increases in the number of homeless families over the next few years, due in part to national policy changes. Republican budget proposals include cuts to Medicaid, food assistance and other programs aimed at helping low-income families, while the immigration crackdown has left thousands of families afraid to seek assistance. For families living on tight budgets, those cuts could lead to a loss of housing.
And in California, the shortage of affordable housing continues to be a hurdle for low-income families. Even Kern County, which has traditionally been a less pricey option for families, has seen a spike in housing costs as more residents move there from Los Angeles.
Joseph Bishop, an education professor at UCLA and co-author of a recent report on homeless students nationwide, said the loss of government funding will be devastating for homeless students.
“California is the epicenter of the homeless student crisis, and we need targeted, dedicated support,” Bishop said. “Folks should be extremely alarmed right now. Will these kids be getting the education they need and deserve?”
Better food, cleaner bathrooms
In Kern County, identification has only been one part of the effort to help homeless students thrive in school. Schools also try to pair them with tutors and mentors, give them school supplies and laundry tokens, and invite them to join a program called Student Voice Ambassadors. There, students can tour local colleges, learn leadership skills and explore career options.
As part of the program, staff ask students what would make school more enticing — and then make sure the suggestions happen. At one school, students said they’d go to class if the bathrooms were cleaner. So staff improved the bathrooms. At another school, students wanted better food. They got it.
Williams credits the program with reducing absenteeism among homeless students. Two years ago, 45% of Kern County’s homeless students were chronically absent. Last year, the number dropped to 39% – still too high, he said, but a significant improvement.
“Without McKinney-Vento funds, the Student Voice Ambassador program would go away,” Williams said. “How will we keep it going? I don’t know.”
The Biden Administration’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) repayment plan promised to lower monthly student loan payments for millions of Americans. But legal attacks by the same conservative state attorneys general who exploited the courts to block President Biden’s original student debt relief plan resulted in a court injunction that has blocked borrowers from enrolling. Thus, borrowers have been trapped in a year-long, interest-free forbearance while their unprocessed Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) applications wait in limbo.
But now, Trump and Education Secretary McMahon are saddling these borrowers with interest. Last week, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) announced that it will begin restarting student loan interest charges on August 1, 2025, for the nearly 8 MILLION borrowers stuck in this forbearance.
McMahon voluntarily chose to do this—there was no state or federal court order forcing her hand. Read our Executive Director Mike Pierce’s statement on this below:
Source: Patrick Jack
Source: Patrick Jack 
Source: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
