Tag: Student

  • UK, Australia and Russia top Indian student deportations: MEA data

    UK, Australia and Russia top Indian student deportations: MEA data

    As per government data, the UK recorded the highest number of Indian student deportations over the past five years, with 170 cases, followed by Australia (114), Russia (82), the US (45), Georgia (17), Ukraine (13), Finland (5), China (4), Egypt (2) and Austria (1).

    In a written response in the Rajya Sabha, India’s upper house of parliament, Singh outlined several factors behind immigration authorities’ decisions across countries, most of which related to “violations of visa norms and non-compliance with host country regulations by Indian students”.

    “Entry of Indian students had been denied by foreign immigration authorities on account of their carrying incomplete or inappropriate admission documents of their universities, failing to complete the administrative procedures required for enrolment in the universities, or for being unable to answer basic questions about their chosen field of study in foreign academic institutions,” Singh said, adding that common grounds for deportation included breaches of student visa conditions, such as unauthorised work, illegal business activities, or violations of host-country laws and regulations.

    “Students have also faced deportation by foreign governments for failing to maintain the requisite financial bank balance in countries where they had been studying, for not paying university fees or for being unable to demonstrate adequate financial capacity to support their stay and studies, for having insufficient attendance in classes or for complete withdrawal from the registered academic programs or universities, etc.”

    The data also showed two countries denying entry to Indian students, with the US turning away 62 students over the past year and Kyrgyzstan denying entry to 11 during the same period.

    Embassy officials also visit universities and educational institutions in their jurisdictions to interact with Indian students and student associations and to assess any issue concerning the credibility or quality of courses being pursued
    Kirti Vardhan Singh, MEA

    Just this year, the US revoked visas and terminated the legal status of thousands of international students, with two high-profile deportation cases involving Indian students over their alleged pro-Palestinian advocacy amid the Israel–Gaza war also making headlines. Moreover, between January and May 2025, nearly 1,100 Indians were deported from the North American country due to their “illegal status”.

    While the UK has stepped up action against international students breaching visa rules, with the Home Office now directly warning students via text and email about overstaying, Canada has long faced issues with Indian students entering on fraudulent documents, with dozens investigated for using fake college acceptance letters in 2023.

    High numbers frrom Australia also indicate the impact of the country’s crackdown on cases of fraud and agent misuse, especially from certain states in India, with countries like Russia seeing their universities expel Indian students after “failing to meet curriculum requirements”.

    When asked in parliament about steps to protect Indian students from misleading foreign courses and avoid deportations, Singh said the government gives the issue “high priority” and maintains regular contact with students abroad.

    “Embassy officials also visit universities and educational institutions in their jurisdictions to interact with Indian students and student associations and to assess any issue concerning the credibility or quality of courses being pursued.

    “Several Indian missions also issue formal advisories for Indian students under their jurisdiction aimed towards protecting their interests, welfare and safety in foreign lands,” stated Singh.

    While over 1.8 million Indian students are studying abroad in 2025, MEA data shows that 1.254 million are pursuing higher education and a drop in university-level enrolments abroad from India after three years of growth.

    The US and Canada still remain the countries with the largest number of Indian students, followed by the UK, Australia, Germany, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, and Georgia.

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  • What we lose when AI replaces teachers

    What we lose when AI replaces teachers

    eSchool News is counting down the 10 most-read stories of 2025. Story #8 focuses on the debate around teachers vs. AI.

    Key points:

    A colleague of ours recently attended an AI training where the opening slide featured a list of all the ways AI can revolutionize our classrooms. Grading was listed at the top. Sure, AI can grade papers in mere seconds, but should it?

    As one of our students, Jane, stated: “It has a rubric and can quantify it. It has benchmarks. But that is not what actually goes into writing.” Our students recognize that AI cannot replace the empathy and deep understanding that recognizes the growth, effort, and development of their voice. What concerns us most about grading our students’ written work with AI is the transformation of their audience from human to robot.

    If we teach our students throughout their writing lives that what the grading robot says matters most, then we are teaching them that their audience doesn’t matter. As Wyatt, another student, put it: “If you can use AI to grade me, I can use AI to write.” NCTE, in its position statements for Generative AI, reminds us that writing is a human act, not a mechanical one. Reducing it to automated scores undermines its value and teaches students, like Wyatt and Jane, that the only time we write is for a grade. That is a future of teaching writing we hope to never see.

    We need to pause when tech companies tout AI as the grader of student writing. This isn’t a question of capability. AI can score essays. It can be calibrated to rubrics. It can, as Jane said, provide students with encouragement and feedback specific to their developing skills. And we have no doubt it has the potential to make a teacher’s grading life easier. But just because we can outsource some educational functions to technology doesn’t mean we should.

    It is bad enough how many students already see their teacher as their only audience. Or worse, when students are writing for teachers who see their written work strictly through the lens of a rubric, their audience is limited to the rubric. Even those options are better than writing for a bot. Instead, let’s question how often our students write to a broader audience of their peers, parents, community, or a panel of judges for a writing contest. We need to reengage with writing as a process and implement AI as a guide or aide rather than a judge with the last word on an essay score.

    Our best foot forward is to put AI in its place. The use of AI in the writing process is better served in the developing stages of writing. AI is excellent as a guide for brainstorming. It can help in a variety of ways when a student is struggling and looking for five alternatives to their current ending or an idea for a metaphor. And if you or your students like AI’s grading feature, they can paste their work into a bot for feedback prior to handing it in as a final draft.

    We need to recognize that there are grave consequences if we let a bot do all the grading. As teachers, we should recognize bot grading for what it is: automated education. We can and should leave the promises of hundreds of essays graded in an hour for the standardized test providers. Our classrooms are alive with people who have stories to tell, arguments to make, and research to conduct. We see our students beyond the raw data of their work. We recognize that the poem our student has written for their sick grandparent might be a little flawed, but it matters a whole lot to the person writing it and to the person they are writing it for. We see the excitement or determination in our students’ eyes when they’ve chosen a research topic that is important to them. They want their cause to be known and understood by others, not processed and graded by a bot.

    The adoption of AI into education should be conducted with caution. Many educators are experimenting with using AI tools in thoughtful and student-centered ways. In a recent article, David Cutler describes his experience using an AI-assisted platform to provide feedback on his students’ essays. While Cutler found the tool surprisingly accurate and helpful, the true value lies in the feedback being used as part of the revision process. As this article reinforces, the role of a teacher is not just to grade, but to support and guide learning. When used intentionally (and we emphasize, as in-process feedback) AI can enhance that learning, but the final word, and the relationship behind it, must still come from a human being.

    When we hand over grading to AI, we risk handing over something much bigger–our students’ belief that their words matter and deserve an audience. Our students don’t write to impress a rubric, they write to be heard. And when we replace the reader with a robot, we risk teaching our students that their voices only matter to the machine. We need to let AI support the writing process, not define the product. Let it offer ideas, not deliver grades. When we use it at the right moments and for the right reasons, it can make us better teachers and help our students grow. But let’s never confuse efficiency with empathy. Or algorithms with understanding.

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  • WEEKEND READING: Student working lives: paid work and access and participation

    WEEKEND READING: Student working lives: paid work and access and participation

    This blog was kindly authored by Martin Lowe, Professor Adrian Wright, Dr Mark Wilding and Mary Lawler from the University of Lancashire, authors of Student Working Lives (HEPI report 195).

    The clearest finding of our recent HEPI report, Student Working Lives, was the growing prevalence of paid work among students and its profound impact on their experiences and outcomes.

    This trend is not confined to disadvantaged groups; it is now a reality for the majority of students, with the Advance HE and HEPI Student Academic Experience Survey revealing how 68% of students now work during term time. Yet, despite its significance, paid work remains largely absent from regulatory frameworks designed to promote equality of opportunity in higher education.

    As the Office for Students (OfS) reviews its approach to access and participation, we argue that paid work should be recognised as a distinct risk on the Equality of Opportunity Risk Register (EORR). Doing so would enable providers to respond more effectively to the challenges students face and ensure that widening participation efforts reflect the realities of modern student life.

    A risk-based future for access and participation

    Since taking office, the Labour Government has placed widening participation as a central pillar of its higher education agenda. From the introduction of the Lifelong Learning Entitlement to the creation of a new Access and Participation Task and Finish Group, ministers have signalled their determination to open doors to learners from non-traditional backgrounds.

    This ambition was reiterated in the recent Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper, which proposed a significant shift in the regulatory approach in England:

    We will reform regulation of access and participation plans, moving away from a uniform approach to one where the Office for Students can be more risk-based.

    While this statement attracted less attention than the more headline-grabbing measures on tuition fees and maintenance grants, it represents a potentially transformative change. A risk-based model could allow the OfS to focus on the most pressing barriers to equality of opportunity, provided those risks are accurately identified.

    The existing EORR complements this approach. Having been introduced under the leadership of outgoing Director of Fair Access and Participation at the OfS, John Blake, the register has already been widely welcomed by the sector. By identifying factors that threaten access and success for disadvantaged student groups, it enables providers to design interventions tailored to their own context. Rather than simply seeking to address outcome gaps, the EORR encourages institutions to tackle the underlying causes.

    However, the register is not static. If it is to remain relevant, it must evolve to reflect emerging challenges. One such challenge is the growing necessity of paid work alongside study, a risk that intersects the financial pressures felt by students but extends far beyond them.

    Paid work is more than a financial issue

    The current EORR already identifies ‘Cost Pressures’ as a risk, acknowledging that rising living costs can undermine students’ ability to complete their course or achieve good grades. Yet this framing is too narrow on its own. Paid work is not merely a symptom of financial strain; it’s a complex factor that shapes engagement, attainment, and progression into graduate employment.

    Our research shows that paid work is a necessity for most students, regardless of background, with average hours worked remaining static across each Indices of Deprivation (IMD) quintile. However, its impact is uneven. Students having to work more than 20 hours per week, those employed in particularly demanding sectors and those balancing caring responsibilities may all face challenges due to increased workload. However each should be supported in different ways.

    Figure 1: Likelihood of obtaining a ‘good’ honours degree by work hours

    These patterns matter because they influence both academic performance and participation in enrichment activities that support retention and employability. Paid work is a structural feature of student life that can amplify existing inequalities, but present specific nuances depending on the local context.

    Our analysis highlights how the risks associated with paid work differ across institutions and how regional labour markets shape patterns of student employment. For instance, our survey indicates a higher proportion of students working in health and social care in Lancashire, where the sector represents 15% of total employment. In contrast, Liverpool’s relatively large share of hospitality student workers reflects the sector’s prominence, accounting for around 10% of jobs in the city region. These different contexts can help steer local interventions to reduce risk associated with particular sectors.

    Figure 2: Employment by top four sectors (multiple responses accepted)

    Recognising paid work as a formal risk would help empower institutions to develop context-sensitive strategies. These might include the crediting of paid work within the curriculum, embedding guidance on employment rights within pastoral support, or designing schedules that accommodate students’ working patterns.

    Access and participation – two sides of the same coin

    As the OfS explores separating out the “Access” and “Participation” strands of its regulatory framework – as outlined in their recent quality consultation – paid work should feature prominently in supporting both ambitions. Widening access is not simply about opening the door; it is about ensuring wider groups of students see themselves as being part of that experience. For some mature learners, carers, and those with financial dependencies (who may feel excluded by the traditional delivery model of higher education) the support to balance paid work and study is critical.

    Ignoring this reality risks undermining the very goals of widening participation. Higher education must adapt to the evolving profile of its students, who increasingly diverge from the outdated stereotype of the full-time undergraduate.

    Our recommendation is for the OfS to prioritise paid work as a key aspect of the future of Access and Participation regulation, inserting it as a distinct risk within the Equality of Opportunity Risk Register. Doing so would:

    • signal its importance as a structural factor affecting equality of opportunity;
    • enable targeted interventions that reflect institutional and regional contexts;
    • support innovation in curriculum design, pastoral care, and timetabling;
    • and promote collaboration between universities, employers, and policymakers to improve job quality and flexibility.

    This is not about discouraging students from working. For many, employment provides valuable experience and skills. Instead, it is about recognising that when work becomes a necessity rather than a choice, it can compromise educational outcomes, especially for those already at the margins.

    The OfS has an opportunity to lead the sector in addressing one of the most pressing challenges facing students today. By treating paid work as a formal risk, it can help ensure that access and participation strategies are grounded in the lived realities of learners.

    As we look to the future, one principle should guide the sector: widening participation does not end at the point of entry. It extends throughout the student journey, encompassing the conditions that enable success. Paid work is now not only part of that journey, but a critical factor.

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  • 10 Tips for Creating a Student Centered Classroom

    10 Tips for Creating a Student Centered Classroom

    3. Shift from Autopsy Grading to Continuous Feedback

    Traditional grading often acts as a terminal event that ends the learning process. It is like an autopsy because it tells you what happened to the patient after it is too late to save them. Student centered assessment focuses on providing actionable feedback while the learning is still happening. This approach encourages students to view their work as iterative and values the process of revision over the final grade.

    Chromebook Tip

    Utilize the Private Comments feature in Google Classroom or the Suggestion Mode in Google Docs. Engage in a back and forth dialogue while students are still cognitively wrestling with the work. You might even consider withholding the final score until the student has responded to your feedback or made a revision.

    4. Implement Inquiry Based Challenges

    Rote lectures often answer questions that students have not yet asked. A student centered approach reverses this dynamic by using the Five Es model (Engage, Explore, Explain, Extend, and Evaluate). By starting with a provocation or a driving question you create a need to know that motivates students to seek out answers. This anchors the direct instruction that follows in a meaningful context.

    Chromebook Tip

    Use a Google Form as an Inquiry Log. Before a unit starts have students submit their questions and hypotheses about the topic. As they learn they can return to the form to update their thinking or add new questions. This creates a digital record of the intellectual journey of the student.

    5. Design a Physical and Cultural Ecosystem

    The physical environment of a classroom communicates a lot about the expected behavior. Rows of desks facing the front signal that the teacher is the center of attention while clusters and flexible zones signal that collaboration is valued. Student centered learning struggles to survive in a rigid space so it is important to break up the graveyard formation of rows.

    Chromebook Tip

    Since Chromebooks are portable you should encourage students to move around the room. Designate a quiet zone where headphones are required for independent study and a collaboration zone where screens can be shared for group projects.

    6. Empower Students as Co Teachers

    In a traditional classroom the teacher holds all the responsibility for logistics and troubleshooting. In a student centered room these responsibilities are shared to build agency and community. Giving students real jobs helps them feel that the classroom belongs to them and allows you to focus on instruction rather than management.

    Chromebook Tip

    Create a Cyber Squad or Genius Bar composed of students. Train this small group to be the first line of defense for tech issues (such as formatting images or connecting to wifi). This offloads minor troubleshooting from you and empowers students as experts.

    7. Curate Student Led Portfolios

    Standardized tests only provide a snapshot of student performance on a single day. Portfolios offer a comprehensive view of growth over time and require students to exercise metacognition. When students select their own best work and explain why they chose it they develop a deeper understanding of their own learning process.

    Chromebook Tip

    Have students build Google Sites to house their work. They can embed their best Google Docs, link to video projects, and type reflections for each entry directly on the page.

    Creative Option

    Google Sites has limited design flexibility for headers and buttons. If students want to create a highly visual or branded portfolio header they can design it in Canva and upload the image to their Google Site to add personality and flair.

    8. Collaboratively Create Norms and Social Contracts

    Rules that are imposed from the top down are often followed only when the authority figure is watching. Norms that are co-created by the community are more likely to be internalized and respected. Facilitating a session where students brainstorm desirable behaviors shifts the culture from compliance based discipline to community responsibility.

    Chromebook Tip

    Use a shared Google Doc or Google Slide for the brainstorming phase. This allows all students to type their ideas simultaneously. It ensures introverted students can contribute their ideas about classroom culture anonymously and that every voice is captured.

    Creative Option

    Use Canva Whiteboards to allow students to add sticky notes and connect ideas visually on an infinite canvas.

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  • Not everyone goes home: why inclusive winter planning matters for student success

    Not everyone goes home: why inclusive winter planning matters for student success

    Author:
    Fiona Ellison and Kate Brown

    Published:

    This blog was kindly authored by Fiona Ellison and Kate Brown, Co-Directors, Unite Foundation.

    It is the third blog in HEPI’s series with The Unite Foundation on how to best support care experienced and estranged students. You can find the first blog here and the second blog here.

    Every December, universities flood inboxes with references to “going home” and “family time.” But thousands of students will not go home, because there is no home away from university to go to. For care experienced and estranged students, winter magnifies isolation, financial pressures and risk. This isn’t a welfare sidebar; it’s a retention issue, central to building a sense of belonging for this group of students.

    The Unite Foundation supports All of Us – the UK-wide community for all care experienced and estranged students – where students can find friends who get it and allies to organise with. We know first-hand from students how challenging this time of year can be. That’s why we’re re-issuing our winter guide with practical examples of how you can support care experienced and estranged students this winter.

    Why does it matter?

    The – perhaps forgotten – Office for Students’ Equality of Opportunity Risk Register (EORR) identified risks that disproportionately affect under‑represented groups – including care experienced and estranged students – across access, continuation, and progression. These include insufficient academic and personal support, mental health challenges, cost pressures, and lack of suitable accommodation. All of which were shown to be particularly key for care experienced and estranged students – and which ,as we approach the winter period, are even more at the forefront. There are even more reasons:

    Three quick wins

    Your institution’s winter break is a stress test for belonging. When libraries close, halls empty and festive messaging assumes family gatherings care experienced and estranged students can feel invisible. There are three foundational moves that every provider should implement immediately:

    1. Mind your language – Drop “going home for Christmas” and family‑centric messaging; use inclusive language (“winter break,” “happy holidays”) across all channels.
    2. Keep the place alive – Maintain open, warm spaces (library, SU, study hubs) with skeleton staff and programmed activities for residents; publish clear opening hours and what’s on.
    3. Proactively signpost specifics – Put support routes (welfare, counselling, emergency contacts, hardship funds) in email signatures, posters and social media – not buried webpages.

    Everyone’s role

    Supporting care experienced and estranged students during the winter break isn’t just a widening participation problem – activity should run through everyone within the university. Here are a few suggestions of what you could be doing:

    • Academics: Make proactive check-ins part of your routine, ask students where they’ll be during the break and whether they need support. Clearly publish extenuating circumstances routes and deadlines, and consider scheduling optional study drop-ins for those staying on campus.
    • Estates and Library teams: Keep central, warm spaces open on a rota so students have somewhere to study and socialise. Publish opening hours well in advance and ensure signage at entrances makes this information visible.
    • Residence Life: Maintain a skeleton support service throughout the holiday period and actively include care experienced and estranged students in any events planned for international students, making it clear they are welcome.
    • Security: Brief your team on the heightened risks these students may face, such as harassment or stalking, and incorporate welfare checks into your holiday protocols.
    • Students’ Union: Organise inclusive social events to reduce loneliness, advertise them relentlessly across channels, and partner with local food banks or community projects to provide essential support.
    • Welfare, Counselling, and Mental Health services: Keep services running, even at reduced capacity, and promote crisis lines and emergency contacts prominently so students know help is available.
    • Widening Participation and APP leads: Ensure term-time employment opportunities continue into the break, name – a real person – as a designated contact for care experienced and estranged students.

    We need everyone to be proactive with their intentions – could you forward this to three people to encourage them to take action?

    Act now

    • If you’re a senior leader in your institution, how can you fund at least one visible, winter‑specific intervention? It could be a staffed warm hub, hardship vouchers, or a winter get-together.
    • Choose one immediate change and implement it this week. Whether it’s using inclusive language in your emails, ensuring a key space stays open, or adding support details to your signature, small actions make a big difference. Belonging is built through everyday signals of care.
    • Make sure students know about existing sources of communities. Connect peers to All of Us, the  community for care experienced and estranged students. Peer networks reduce isolation and create a sense of solidarity – especially during the winter break when loneliness can peak.

    If you’re working in higher education and want to explore this work more, so you’re not making last minute plans next year – why not join our HE Peer Professionals network – a member curated, termly meeting of fellow professionals.

    When you’re thinking about going ‘home for Christmas’ have you thought about what you can do to support a home for care experienced and estranged students? Find out more about the wider work of the Unite Foundation and how we can support you through our  Blueprint framework – to support your institution in building a safe and stable home for care experienced and estranged students, improving retention and attainment outcomes.  

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  • Trends in higher education student success for 2026

    Trends in higher education student success for 2026

    The higher ed sector underwent rapid change in 2025, as leaders navigated new and evolving federal and state policy, emerging technologies and shifting employer expectations for graduates, all while responding to the diverse and pressing needs of students.

    For practitioners, faculty, staff and administrators looking to impact student success in the new year, Inside Higher Ed identified 26 data points that outline the major trends of 2025 and those to watch out for in 2026.

    1. 80 percent of college students rate the quality of their education as good or excellent, up 7 percentage points from 2024.
    2. 83 percent of the class of 2023 remained enrolled for two terms and the national persistence rate rose to 77.6 percent, up from 74.8 percent in 2019.
    3. Two-thirds of Americans say a four-year degree isn’t worth the cost because graduates leave without a specific job and with large amounts of debt.
    4. Nearly 10 percent of incoming first-year students speak a first language other than English; of these students, approximately half are U.S. citizens.
    5. One-third of students said they’re thriving, reporting high levels of success in relationships, self-esteem, purpose and optimism.
    6. 15 percent of colleges are using AI for student advising and support; an additional 26 percent use genAI for predictive analytics in student performance and trends.&
    7. 70 percent of Americans believe higher education is “going in the wrong direction” due to high costs, poor preparation for the job market and ineffective development of students’ life skills.
    8. 62 percent of students said they have “very high” or “somewhat high” trust in their college or university; 11 percent rate their trust as “somewhat low” or “very low.”
    9. 23 percent of stop-outs said they won’t re-enroll because they can’t afford upfront costs; 15 percent said they are already too burdened by student debt to re-enroll.
    10. 45 percent of students want colleges to encourage faculty members to limit high-stakes exams to improve their academic success; 40 percent want to see stronger connections between classroom learning and their career goals.
    11. 36 percent of students have not participated in any extracurricular or co-curricular experiences while in college; an additional 39 percent say they’re very involved in at least one activity.
    12. 71 percent of students have experienced financial trouble while enrolled in college, and 68 percent said they ran out of money at least once since the start of the year.
    13. 43 percent of students say they study in the evening, while 18 percent said they study at night.
    14. 84 percent of students say they know when and whether to use generative artificial intelligence to help with their coursework; the majority attributed this knowledge to faculty instruction or syllabi language.
    15. 24 percent of parenting students said they missed at least one day of class in the past semester due to a lack of childcare.
    16. 71 percent of students said it was acceptable to shout down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus; 54 percent believe it’s acceptable to block other students from attending a campus speech.
    17. International enrollment declined 1 percent in fall 2025, with 17 percent fewer new students coming to U.S. campuses this past fall.
    18. As of August, 37 percent of students said federal actions to limit diversity, equity and inclusion have had no real impact on their college experience.
    19. 57 percent of students said cost of living is “a major problem,” for college students today; 55 percent said mental health issues are a major problem, as well.
    20. 49 percent of high school students who didn’t apply for FAFSA said they didn’t believe they qualified for aid.
    21. 59 percent of Americans are in favor of awarding green cards to foreign students who graduate from American universities so they can work in the U.S.
    22. 87 percent of Gen Z said they feel unprepared to succeed at work due to limited guidance, unclear paths to career from school and uncertainty about which skills matter most.
    23. Two-thirds of college presidents are concerned about student mental health and well-being.
    24. Only 44 percent of students say they know some information about post-graduation outcomes for alumni of their college or university; 11 percent say they’re not sure where to find this information.
    25. 67 percent of students said they don’t use AI in their job searches; 29 percent said they avoid it because they have ethical concerns about using the tool.
    26. 94 percent of employers think it’s equally important for colleges to prepare a skilled and educated workforce and to help students become informed citizens.

    Want more data? Subscribe to our weekday newsletter on Student Success here.

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  • How Excessive Phone Use Can Hinder Student Success

    How Excessive Phone Use Can Hinder Student Success

    Many of today’s college students are digital natives, having grown up in a world dominated by cellphones, the internet, social media and rapid technological advancements.

    Coming of age alongside smartphones, however, has been linked to high rates of mental health concerns among Gen Z. A 2024 brief by the National Center for Health Statistics found that half of teenagers between the ages of 12 and 17 spent four or more hours on screens per day, and those teens were more likely to experience anxiety or depression symptoms. In 2025, 32 percent of college students reported moderate or severe levels of anxiety and 37 percent said they experience moderate or severe depression, according to the Healthy Minds Study.

    As a result, more primary and secondary schools are introducing phone-free policies to improve children’s interpersonal skills and mitigate the harms of social media on their developing brains.

    At some colleges and universities, students, faculty and administrators have identified opportunities to encourage healthy device habits and promote student success.

    By the numbers: Students, in large part, are aware of their heavy device use and its potential link to poor academic outcomes.

    A fall 2025 survey by Echelon Insights found that 54 percent of U.S. students say they spend five hours or more on recreational screen time, including scrolling social media, streaming or gaming. Of those students, 18 percent say they spend over six hours on their devices doing non–coursework-related tasks.

    Another 2025 study of smartphone use surveyed students in the U.K. and found that among young adults aged 18 to 22, 73 percent spend more than four hours on their phone each day. Over three in four students also believe their smartphone negatively impacts their academic performance.

    Finding ways to unplug, however, is difficult.

    One research study from San Jose State University found that students who logged daily social media use reported a slight decrease in overall screen time over the course of a month, but simply monitoring screen time didn’t change the students’ high internet use. A Northwestern study of Americans who deactivated their Facebook account found leaving the platform did improve their mental health, but many just spent their time on other platforms rather than go offline entirely.

    DIY: A 2023 survey of college students found that over 80 percent of respondents believe colleges and universities should do more to support breaks from technology. For practitioners looking to support students who are glued to their phones, other institutions and experts offer interventions that can encourage them to disconnect from devices.

    • Encourage sleep. Excessive screen time is linked to poor health outcomes; it has been shown to disrupt students’ sleep and energy levels as well as their emotional health and cognition. First-year seminar instructors at the New York Film Academy require incoming students to complete a sleep log. Students track how many hours they sleep in a week, and the log provides a space for reflection and links healthy habits to academic and personal performance.
    • Provide tech breaks. Fluid Focus’s survey of U.K. students found that 67 percent of students struggle to disconnect while they’re at home studying; an additional 16 percent said they have trouble disconnecting “during class.” Faculty and staff can help make it possible by assigning classroom activities that don’t require a device or creating phone-free class sessions.
    • Establish phone-free environments. New York University’s president announced this fall that the university would implement device-free spaces, classes and events at campuses in New York, Shanghai and Abu Dhabi. Wyoming Catholic bans phones outright on campus; it also limits students’ internet access in the dorms to college emails and selected websites for class. Students leave their phones at the student life center and can check them out before they leave town.
    • Support student leadership. The fear of missing out can also hinder students from spending less time on their smartphones, according to U.K. survey respondents. Some colleges and universities house student clubs that promote device-free engagement.
    • Provide incentives. Researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Texas at Austin evaluated how an app that rewards students for staying off their phone during class could change behaviors. They found that app users were more likely to be focused, attend class and be satisfied with their academics, but weren’t necessarily more likely to study using the time saved by staying off their phone.

    Do you have a wellness intervention that might help others promote student success? Tell us about it.

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  • 3 threats putting student safety at risk

    3 threats putting student safety at risk

    Key points:

    In today’s schools, whether K-12 or higher education, AI is powering smarter classrooms. There’s more personalized learning and faster administrative tasks. And students themselves are engaging with AI more than ever before, as 70 percent say they’ve used an AI tool to alter or create completely new images. But while educators and students are embracing the promise of AI, cybercriminals are exploiting it.

    In 2025, the U.S. Department of Education reported that nearly 150,000 suspect identities were flagged in recent federal student-aid forms, contributing to $90 million in financial aid losses tied to ineligible applicants. From deepfakes in admissions to synthetic students infiltrating online portals and threatening high-value research information, AI-powered identity fraud is rising fast, and our educational institutions are alarmingly underprepared.

    As identity fraud tactics become more scalable and convincing, districts are now racing to deploy modern tools to catch fake students before they slip through the cracks. Three fraud trends keep IT and security leaders in education up at night–and AI is supercharging their impact.

    1. Fraud rings targeting education

    Here’s the hard truth: Fraudsters operate in networks, but most schools fight fraud alone.

    Coordinated rings can deploy hundreds of synthetic identities across schools or districts. These groups recycle biometric data, reuse fake documents, and share attack methods on dark web forums.

    To stand a fair chance in the fight, educational institutions must work with identity verification experts that enable a holistic view of the threat landscape through cross-transactional risk assessments. These assessments spot risk patterns across devices, IP addresses, and user behavior, helping institutions uncover fraud clusters that would be invisible in isolation.

    2. Deepfakes and injected selfies in remote enrollment

    Facial recognition was once a trusted line of defense for remote learning and test proctoring. But fraudsters can now use emulators and virtual cameras to bypass those checks, inserting AI-generated faces into the stream to impersonate students. In education, where student data is a goldmine and systems are increasingly remote, the risk is even more pronounced.

    In virtual work environments, for example, enterprises are already seeing an uptick in the use of deepfakes during job interviews. By 2028, Gartner predicts 1 in 4 job candidates worldwide will be fake. The same applies to the education sector. We’re now seeing fake students, complete with forged government IDs and a convincing selfie, slide past systems and into financial aid pipelines.

    So, what’s the fix? Biometric identity intelligence, trusted by a growing number of students, can verify micro-movements, lighting, and facial depth, and confirm whether a real human is behind the screen. Multimodal checks (combining visual, motion, and even audio data) are critical for stopping AI-powered identity fraud.

    3. Synthetic students in your systems

    Unlike stolen identities, synthetic identities are crafted from real–and fake–fragments, such as a legit SSN combined with a fake name. These “students” can pass enrollment checks, get campus credentials, and even apply for financial aid.

    Traditional document checks aren’t enough to catch them. Today’s identity verification tools must use AI to detect missing elements, like holograms or watermarks, and flag patterns including identical document backgrounds, which is a key sign of industrial-scale fraud.

     AI-powered identity intelligence for education

    As digital learning becomes the norm and AI accelerates, identity fraud will only get more sophisticated. However, AI also offers educators a solution.

    By layering biometrics, behavioral analytics, and cross-platform data, schools can verify student identities at scale and in real time, keeping pace with advancing threats, and even staying one step ahead.

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  • Turning Point’s Student Membership Keeps Growing

    Turning Point’s Student Membership Keeps Growing

    Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, was shot and killed Sept. 10.

    Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune/Getty Images News/Getty Images

    Three months after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the footprint of the right-wing youth organization he founded continues to grow on college campuses.

    This week, Turning Point USA chapters at both Indiana University Bloomington and the University of Oklahoma reported membership surges. According to the Indiana Daily Student (IDS) and Indy Star, IU’s chapter says its membership has tripled this fall, from 180 to 363. At the University of Oklahoma—which put an instructor on leave after the Turning Point chapter accused them of “viewpoint discrimination”—the group’s membership has grown from 15 to 2,000 over the past year, NBC reported.

    Those increases follow other local media reports about new chapters and membership growth at scores of other universities across the country, including the University of Missouri, and Vanderbilt and Brigham Young Universities. Within eight days of Kirk’s death, Turning Point said it received messages from 62,000 students interested in starting a new chapter or getting involved with one.

    “I think that our club has kind of become a beacon for conservatives,” a Turning Point chapter member told IDS, Indiana University at Bloomington’s campus newspaper. “So, after his death, more people showed up, more people got involved, and it was really nice to kind of see a scene in the way people wanted to get involved.”

    Kirk founded Turning Point USA in 2012, with the mission of “to identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of freedom, free markets, and limited government.”

    He gained notoriety in conservative circles by traveling to college campuses across the country, challenging students to prove wrong his conservative stances on topics such as race, gender, abortion and immigration.

    On Sept. 10, Kirk was speaking to a crowd at Utah Valley University when a gunman fatally shot him in the neck. After his death, Trump and his allies moved to canonize Kirk as an exemplar of civic debate—and called to punish anyone who publicly disagreed. Numerous colleges and universities have since suspended or fired faculty and staff who criticized Kirk for his political views.

    Although some faculty and students have objected to new Turning Point chapters, the students growing the organization insist they’re committed to considering all perspectives.

    “You have a place here, you’ll always have a place here,” Jack Henning, president of Indiana University’s Turning Point chapter, told IDS. “We don’t discriminate against any viewpoints at all, we debate them. That’s what American democracy was built upon.”

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  • Five Data-Informed Steps for Optimizing College Student Retention

    Five Data-Informed Steps for Optimizing College Student Retention

    Where do you start as you are creating a student retention plan? The answer is with data. Simply put, data are the lifeblood of successful student recruitment and retention efforts. You cannot possibly hope to maximize enrollment yields and student completion rates without strong data analysis and planning. The following five steps illustrate how to achieve a robust, data-informed approach to retention.

    1. Make data the foundation for decision-making.

    It sounds simple, yet we know that many campuses do not rely on data to guide strategies. Often “conventional wisdom” or “that’s the way we’ve always done it” override any actual research or data. Those types of processes are very flawed for crafting enrollment strategies, especially given the rapid changes that are reshaping the higher education environment.

    2. Collect all the data that are relevant to student success.

    Data are the lifeblood to successful student recruitment and retention efforts

    In discussing student retention, first-to-second year persistence and overall completion/graduation rates are useful metrics. However, they are lagging indicators gathered only after it is too late to intervene with students and do not provide a complete picture of persistence patterns. There are many data elements that can help not only provide a more accurate assessment of retention at your campus, but also allow you to intervene with students in a more timely fashion such as:

    • Student motivation data. How do students feel about attending college? What are their attitudes toward studying? What family and/or social factors could interfere with their success? Motivational data can go a long way toward focusing your student retention initiatives, especially when gathered as students first enroll at your institution. (Learn more about the motivational assessment tools that are available to support your efforts).
    • Credit hours attempted versus credit hours earned. This ratio is very revealing as it demonstrates if students are succeeding in their educational plans before reaching the critical juncture of withdrawing. These data can be especially helpful during a student’s first and second semesters.
    • Student satisfaction and priorities assessment. When students are not satisfied, they become less likely to persist. Improving their satisfaction improves the quality of their life and learning. When satisfaction is viewed within the context of importance (priorities), the data allows you to better understand which satisfaction issues are more pressing and in need of immediate attention. (Take a look at the satisfaction-priorities surveys options).
    • Common characteristics in student retention. Do students who persist or withdraw share common characteristics? Are there indicators of student success or red flags for persistence that would help you quickly understand which students you should target? (Contact me if you would like to learn more about data analytics options for retention guidance).
    • Institutional barriers to student success. Similar to student characteristics, are there certain factors across campus that may hinder persistence and completion? Conducting an opportunity analysis with an outside perspective can help you identify places where you could make improvements.

    3. Understand what the data are telling you

    Once you have made a commitment to collect the data and have gathered what you need to inform your decisions, you may ask yourself, “Now what?” This is your turning point for using data to improve student retention. You have to know what the data say about student persistence. Are there patterns to observe? Do you know which students or cohorts to prioritize? Which resources are having the greatest impact on student success? This is admittedly one of the more difficult tasks in data-informed retention planning and one where experience can make a big difference. However, once you successfully analyze your data, your retention efforts have the potential to improve!

    4. Take action based on the data

    Here we close the loop with steps one and two. Now that you are informed by data, you can build retention initiatives on solid information. You will be able to focus your limited resources more strategically on the students who need the most help and/or are the most receptive to assistance. You will be able to direct your attention to improving areas that matter to students. You will be able to be proactive based on the knowledge of characteristics of successful (and less successful) students. The power of data comes when your institution takes action based on what it has learned about your students.

    5. Use what you know about retention to guide recruitment

    There is a tendency to look at student recruitment and retention as two unrelated silos. But one of the biggest factors in student retention is the shape of the incoming class. It is vital for campuses, when recruiting, to extend their concept of the funnel past the initial enrollment state and through the career of the student. By determining which students not only have the desired characteristics you want, but also the best chance to persist and success, your entire campus benefits.

    Are you curious about how institutional choice plays into student satisfaction (the idea that students have enrolled in the college they want to attend), along with importance factors in the decision to originally enroll and how satisfied students are with financial aid? (All of these are links between recruitment and retention efforts). If yes, I invite you to download the 2025 National College Student Satisfaction and Priorities Report.

    If you are looking for support with data collection, data analytics and/or understanding what opportunities exist for your campus in the area of student success, contact me to learn more.

    Thanks to my former colleague Tim Culver for the original development of this content.

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