This blog was kindly authored by Professor Adrian Wright, Martin Lowe, Dr Mark Wilding and Mary Lawler from the University of Lancashire, authors of Student Working Lives (HEPI report 195).
The cost‑of‑living crisis has reshaped the student experience, but its effects are not felt evenly. For example, commuter and non‑commuter students encounter these pressures differently. The Student Working Lives (HEPI Report 195) project highlights these contrasts, revealing different needs and constraints. We ask a practical question: How can universities support both groups?
The commuter paradox
Commuter students face distinct time pressures, undertaking more paid work and travel per week on average and spending the same amount studying as their non-commuting counterparts.
Table 1: Workload including travel for commuter and non-commuter studentsTable 2: Hours of paid work versus average grade of commuter and non-commuter studentsTable 3: Hours of paid work versus average attendance of commuter and non-commuter students
Despite attending fewer classes, commuters achieved stronger academic results, although for both groups, performance declined once working hours exceeded 10. This suggests that while commuters generally outperform their peers, both groups are susceptible to the effects of increased working hours.
Table 4: Job quality for commuter and non-commuter students
Our research shows that students in higher‑quality work were 20% more likely to achieve stronger academic results, highlighting work experience as a potential lever for improving academic success. We found non-commuters experience marginally tougher conditions. New data shows this extends to stress, anxiety or depression caused by or made worse by work (+5%) and under casual and zero-hour contracts (+4%), while commuters report better access to staff development (+12.2) and career guidance (+ 7.5).
Our data shows disadvantages for both groups, but neither is homogeneous. Background, proximity to campus, work, and institution, also shape their likelihood of success. This is not a simple categorisation; both groups need attention and support to address their specific needs.
Recommendations
Condense and make timetables consistent
Uneven and variable timetabling increases travel costs and can threaten engagement. Universities should condense timetables and offer dedicated campus days to enable students to access support and social opportunities. Publishing schedules in advance helps all students, particularly those with existing work or caring responsibilities, organise regular shift patterns around their studies. Although often framed as a commuter issue, a focused timetable improves belonging for all students.
Consider what matters for students in their context
While further categorisation of student groups may be useful in national policy making, the complexities of each group call for more understanding of what factors are most important in a student’s context, (including work, proximity to university, household type, mode of travel etc.)
Reposition careers services to improve student employment
Universities should rebalance careers services and strengthen regional employer partnerships to expand access to meaningful and fair paid work. This would align student jobs with local skills needs that boost regional growth and graduate retention. Embedding support for workplace rights and expectations ensures all students can participate safely and confidently in the workforce during their studies, better preparing them for graduate roles in the future.
Introduce curriculum interventions to utilise paid work experiences
Credit-bearing paid work interventions support students by aligning existing work commitments with graduate attributes while reducing the need for additional in‑class time, balancing overstretched workloads. By formally valuing paid work and guiding students to articulate these competencies, institutions can help all students use employment as a meaningful part of their university journey, strengthening employability and long‑term prospects.
Conclusion
The findings are nuanced, however, across all groups, one thing is certain: students need paid work. The sector’s role is to ensure that employment supports rather than hinders learning by easing financial and time pressures, improving job quality, and strengthening the connection between work and study.
For more than 80 years, the law has been clear. The government can’t force public school children to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
One Tennessee school was either oblivious to this settled First Amendment principle or chose to ignore it. But thanks to a letter from FIRE, the school district has stepped in and promised to investigate.
Last month, FIRE wrote to the principal of Meadowview Middle School (part of the Hamblen County school district in eastern Tennessee) and the superintendent of the district after receiving reports that the principal had threatened — and actually followed through on — issuing demerits to students who refused to stand for the pledge. Principal Timothy Landefeld allegedly let students sit for religious reasons but not political ones. In this case, students could not sit in protest of Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in the community.
Pledge allegiance or else: Maryland public school forces students and teachers to salute the flag
FIRE demanded that a public elementary school in Maryland retract its unconstitutional guidance that students and staff must stand and salute the U.S. flag during the Pledge of Allegiance.
Demerits aren’t trivial. Accumulating seven could land a student in 30 days of alternative school — a threshold easily reached in less than two weeks if a student protests every day. Even fewer demerits could carry serious consequences, such as removal from school clubs. All for exercising clearly established constitutional rights.
FIRE’s letter called on Meadowview officials to immediately and publicly end this practice and rescind all related disciplinary actions. In response to our letter, legal counsel for the Hamblen County Board of Education promised the district was looking into the matter, assured FIRE that district policy allows students to opt out of the pledge, said any related demerits would be reversed, and said the superintendent would remind the district’s principals of the opt-out policy at an upcoming meeting.
“The First Amendment does not yield to the discomfort or hostility of onlookers.”
We’re gratified that the district is taking our concerns and its constitutional obligations seriously. While school districts have broad discretion to establish curriculum and prohibit expression that’s truly disruptive to the learning environment, that doesn’t mean students “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” Those rights include not just the right to speak but the right not to speak, including the right to refuse to pledge allegiance to the flag or any other symbol.
In 1943, the Supreme Court conclusively ruled on the issue in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette. Even in the midst of World War II, the Court invalidated a requirement that schoolchildren salute the flag and recite the pledge. As FIRE told Meadowview Middle School:
The Court recognized that coercing expressions of reverence for national symbols is incompatible with our country’s commitment to individual liberty. As the Court famously declared, “if there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”
That protection extends not only to refusing to salute the flag or recite the pledge, but also to declining to stand for it at all. Like a flag salute, standing for the pledge is a symbolic gesture that cannot be compelled. In fact, sitting silently to protest ICE is doubly protected — both as a refusal to endorse the government’s message and as a non-disruptive expression of a different message.
By allowing only a religious opt-out, Meadowview officials both unconstitutionally compelled speech and discriminated based on viewpoint, which the Supreme Court has called an “egregious” form of censorship. In Barnette, the students objected to saluting the flag on religious grounds, but it doesn’t matter whether a student’s decision is for religious or political reasons. Courts have consistentlyupheld students’ right not to take the pledge for political reasons. That’s because all Americans have the right not to affirm a government message, full stop. This is a basic First Amendment principle that doesn’t turn on one’s reason why.
Forcing students . . . to profess allegiance ironically violates the very principles of freedom of conscience and individual liberty that the flag itself represents.
Meadowview officials may be offended by the students’ reasons for sitting, and they may be upset by what they see as disrespect toward a revered national symbol. But, as we told the school, “the First Amendment does not yield to the discomfort or hostility of onlookers.” Meadowview may not punish students out of “a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint.”
America’s public schools partly exist to help turn students into engaged citizens, and school officials are free to model respect for national symbols. But compelled loyalty rings hollow. Forcing students, under threat of punishment, to profess allegiance ironically violates the very principles of freedom of conscience and individual liberty that the flag itself represents.
FIRE applauds the Hamblen County school district for taking swift action to address this issue. We encourage district officials to not only remind school principals of their constitutional requirements, but to ask that individual school officials, especially at Meadowview, proactively notify students and parents that students are free to exercise their First Amendment rights when it comes to pledging allegiance to the flag “and the liberty for which it stands.” FIRE will continue watching to ensure students’ rights are secure.
On the one hand, today’s students appear more alert to the demands of safety and security than previous cohorts, with increased support for the use of content warnings, safe space policies, and a decent majority (63 per cent) who agree with the premise that protection from discrimination and ensuring the dignity of minorities can be more important than unlimited freedom of expression.
On the other, the same cohort of students expresses support for a good number of principled free speech positions, with 70 per cent agreeing that universities should never limit free speech, and 52 per cent that education should “not be comfortable” because “universities are places of debate and challenging ideas.” There is also increased support for the proposition that “a lot of student societies are overly sensitive.”
If you’re searching for coherence in students’ position then none of our collective mental models seems to apply – whether that’s a “woke” model (in the pejorative sense of snowflake students drawing equivalence of mild offence with grievous bodily harm), or from the classical liberal pro-free speech standpoint. These, we are forced to conclude, may not be the mental models current students are using in their understanding of navigating complex political territory.
One of the characteristics of the free speech debate has been that a lot has been said about students, and the sort of environment they ought to be exposed to while on campus, but rather less attention has been paid to what students might want to say, or what purposes and values they attach to political debate and civic participation. The current political climate is, to put it mildly, grim as hell – raucous, accusatory, significantly short on empathy and compassion and, worst of all, not producing significant improvements in young people’s lives.
Given that context, it might not be all that surprising that most students want at least one political party banned from campus – it was Reform topping the poll that caught the headlines last week, but I find more significant that only 18 per cent of students said that no political party should be banned from campus. Could it be that students don’t feel the parties have all that much to offer them?
The winds are changing
This is a deeply pertinent question for contemporary student leaders, who frequently find themselves in the cross-fire of these debates.
Speaking to student leaders about free speech policy, particularly in the wake of the Office for Students’ intervention at the University of Sussex, there’s a growing challenge for institutions to confidently be a political actor on campus. And for students there is a real sense that their attitudes to politics at university are changing.
On my regular briefing calls with student unions I run through the top ten things happening in policy that month, and recently there’s been a steady influx of questions about what happens when students get frustrated that there’s a new student society on campus that they ideologically disagree with.
At one students’ union a group of Reform supporting students filed to be a registered SU society following the US election in 2024. Even if the Higher Education Freedom of Speech Act wasn’t around, the SU would still be required to register and ratify the society – the only difference now is it’s clearer they must follow the joint free speech code with the university. Students signed petitions and directed their anger at the SU for ratifying the society in the first place and any subsequent events held by ReformSoc were met with student protest (also protected under the terms of the new legislation).
The protests centered around the events being a threat to safety on campus, fearing events would border on hate speech and that the SU no longer reflected or represented them. Students that protested likely support abstract principles of free speech, yet these don’t neatly map onto what they fear may be its results. The ratification and later protests did the rounds on social media and got the attention of the public at which point a rush of unpleasant comments and attacks headed towards the SU.
In one sense all this is as it should be – the society was enabled to exist, those who wanted to protest did so – but it’s doubtful that much actual debate took place, or that many minds were changed. The SU leaders involved were left trying desperately to stick to the law, facilitate student political engagement, keep the peace, and protect themselves from increasingly vicious attacks for doing so.
Statements and action about EDI, decolonisation or the recent trans ruling are wrapped up in a new sense of nervousness that will frustrate both ends of the student political spectrum, albeit in different ways. I did enjoy speaking to one team who told me the frustration from students about ReformSocs has led them to put on more EDI based events in the hope more students keep coming, find their safe spaces and recognise that the campus still represents them.
Making it happen
All this is contributing to a real tension when it comes to understanding how SUs can best support students and student leaders to become political actors, and agentive citizens. Both the toxicity of the current political environment and the regulations that are intended to try to lay down some principles to manage it, are difficult for student leaders to navigate.
Now that the free speech legislation is in force, the next debate needs to be about how we get to a space where universities and SUs are agents of civic and political action which isn’t seen exclusively through the lens of “woke” or even the classical liberal position – but something more directly applicable to students’ lived experience of engaging with these tricky political issues.
There needs to be a deeper understanding and discussion within the student movement, supported by institutions, of the importance of having a plurality of ideas on campus and recognition of the particularities of the current political moment. For university to be both a safe space and also a space to be challenged, the mode of challenge needs to be tailored to the issues and the context.
In the conversations I’ve had there’s a willingness to try and convert the protest energy into political action, to push SUs to continue to be political agents and welcoming of debate, developing students’ civic identities. I’d love to see debates about free speech reframed as an exciting opportunity, something which already allows diverse student thought, often through student societies. But just sticking to the rules and principles won’t deliver this – we need to move the conversation to the practicalities of making this happen.
We write from a Big 10 Prison Education Program, where we’ve worked for a decade to increase access to higher education for incarcerated individuals. We found the framing of the article,“Prison Education May Raise Risk of Reincarceration for Technical Violations” (Jan. 12, 2026) to be misleading and have deep concerns for its potential impact on incarcerated students and prison education programming.
The article fails to acknowledge decades of evidence about the benefits of prison education. The title and framing deceptively imply that college programs increase criminal activity post-release at a national scale. The Grinnell study—an unpublished working paper—is only informed by data collected in Iowa. Of most impact to incarcerated students, the title and introductory paragraphs mislead the reader by implying that the blame for technical violations and reincarceration should be placed on the justice-impacted individuals themselves. Buried in the article is a nuanced, accurate, structural interpretation of the data: per Iowa-based data, incarcerated individuals who pursue college may be unfairly targeted by parole boards and other decision-making bodies in the corrections system, thus leading to a higher rate of technical violations.
The impact of the article’s misleading framing could be devastating for incarcerated college students, especially in a climate where legislators often value being “tough on crime.”
We understand the importance for journalism to tell the full story, and many of the Grinnell study’s findings may be useful for understanding programmatic challenges; however, this particular framing could lead to its own unintended consequences. The 1994 repeal of Pell funding collapsed prison education for nearly thirty years; as a result, the US went from having 772 Prison Ed Programs to eight. Blaming incarcerated individuals for a structural failure could cause colleges and universities to pull support from their programs. We’ve already seen programs (e.g.,Georgia State University) collapse without institutional support, leaving incarcerated students without any access to college. This material threat is further amplified by the article’s premature conclusions about a field that has only recently—as of 2022 with the reintegration of Pell—begun to rebuild.
In a world where incarcerated students are denied their humanity on a daily basis, it is our collective societal obligation to responsibly and fairly represent information about humanizing programming. Otherwise, we risk harming students’ still emerging—and still fragile—access to higher education.
Liana Cole is the assistant director of the education at the Restorative Justice Initiative at Pennsylvania State University.
Efraín Marimón is an associate teaching professor of education; director, of the Restorative Justice Initiative; and director of the Social Justice Fellowship at Pennsylvania State University.
Elizabeth Siegelman is the executive director for Center for Alternatives in Community Justice.
“I also feel that the sense of hopefulness…is essential. Without it there isn’t much concrete to hold on to. At least I see that this kind of outlandish dreaming and utopian imagining is, in a certain way, also reflected in the actions taken toward it. Or that nothing moves anywhere if you don’t envision it.”
This quotation illustrates how a group of higher education students understood outlandish dreaming as essential for social and political change. It also connects directly to our main argument: that political imagination is a form of political agency. The shared recognition in the quote, that imagining itself matters, shows how utopianising is potentially already a political act.
We explored higher education students’ political imagination as part of an ongoing project, Breadline Utopias. We invited students from social sciences, education, social services, and healthcare to participate in workshops on alternative futures of food assistance. These students are likely to work in roles connected to food assistance (directly and indirectly), which makes their perspectives especially relevant. Altogether, 86 students participated in seven workshops across four higher education institutions. Our analysis draws on 21 small-group discussions in which students discussed the current state of food assistance and imagined alternative futures for it.
Food assistance in Finland is a contested practice that sits between Nordic welfare state ideals and charity-based logics. Over the last 30 years, it has become an institutionalised part of Finnish society. Because food assistance is intertwined with broader societal issues, such as poverty, justice, food, and social policy, it offers a rich site for examining how students navigate and relate to political questions.
Constraints, conditions and cracks of political imagination
Our research shows that political imagination is shaped by a dynamic between three elements: constraints, conditions and cracks. This dynamic suggests that political imagination is a fragile yet meaningful mode of political agency.
Constraints block imagination
Constraints are moments where students’ political imagination becomes blocked. They act as barriers for imagination – like the dead-end of a labyrinth. Constraints relate to who is seen as able to imagine and what legitimate imagining should look like. For example, some students felt that they don’t have the “right” knowledge or experience to envision alternative futures for food assistance. As one student put it:
“Since I’m not an expert on the issue at all, it’s [difficult] to predict it or to develop it in general, because I’ve never been part of it myself.”
This lack of perceived expertise reduces students’ sense of agency, leading them to position themselves outside the political sphere. Another constraint, solution-orientation, also blocks political imagination. With this mindset, societal questions are approached as technical problems to be fixed, reflecting an internalised sense of what kinds of discussions are acceptable and meaningful.
Conditions limit imagination
Conditions shape what students imagine by acting as boundaries that limit how far imagination can extend toward contesting taken-for-granted logics of the topic in question. We identified three conditions: the ethos of helping, resource efficiency, and market-drivenness. All three stem from the charity economy frame, which means that students’ visions focused on improving helping practices, maximising existing resources (volunteers, surplus food and money) or finding market-compatible solutions. Within these boundaries, both food assistance and poverty are depoliticised, as imagination remains anchored to the existing system rather than questioning or transforming it.
Cracks reveal fractures and open up alternatives
Cracks are moments that reveal fractures in the current system and in students’ experiential worlds: openings through which alternative futures become visible or thinkable. Cracks took different forms in students’ discussions. At times, conversations drifted onto sidetracks that disrupted linear and solution-oriented talk, allowing new questions and possibilities to surface. In other moments, students paused to consider the perspectives of food assistance recipients. Such reflexive stumbles invited empathy, vulnerability and relational awareness, opening space for politicisation. There were also critical pushes in which seemingly neutral features of the system were recognised as politically constructed. These instances opened cracks through which alternative social and institutional arrangements were imagined. Finally, as the quotation in the beginning shows, outlandish dreams are moments when students collectively affirm that hope and utopias themselves matter, even though the process of imagining alternatives is difficult and involves constraints and conditions.
Political imagination as a democratic capacity
The dynamic between constraints, cracks and conditions highlights that ‘the political’ in political imagination appears unevenly – sometimes blocked, sometimes strengthened, sometimes catalysed. Thus, political imagination is not a linear process but unfolds within the dynamics of these three elements (see Picture 1). Despite its fragility, we suggest that political imagination is a meaningful mode of political agency: it is visible in how students critique existing conditions, propose alternative futures and reposition themselves in relation to the political. Political imagination makes the openness of the future visible. It is precisely this openness that gives imagination its value as a form of agency: it keeps the alternative futures alive.
Picture 1. Constraints, conditions and cracks of political imagination
Recognising these everyday acts of imagining as political practices expands our understanding of what counts as students’ political agency. In doing so, it points to political imagination as a capacity for democratic citizenship, as the ability to envision alternatives is integral to democratic life. This capacity is all the more important given reports of young people’s reduced hope for the future and the global challenges we are facing (e.g., polarisation and climate change). Cultivating such capacity should be part of higher education’s democratic mission. In other words, outlandish dreaming is not trivial or escapism – it is a fragile, necessary political act.
Dr Anu Lainio works as a Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Eastern Finland. Her research focuses on higher education students’ political imagination and utopias, as part of the project ‘Utopias from the breadline’. Before her current position, she completed her doctoral research at the University of Surrey, UK, where she explored higher education students’ identities and media representations across different European countries. Her research interests include political imagination; media and higher education; and student identities, agency, and (in)equalities in the context of marketised higher education and a changing welfare state.
Dr Anna Sofia Salonen is a University Lecturer in Practical Theology at the University of Eastern Finland. Her research combines sociological and theological perspectives to explore issues related to food, religion, ethics, inequality and the food system. She is the principal investigator of the research project “Utopias from the breadline” (Kone Foundation 2023-2025) and leads a work package on nonreligion in research project “Religion, Meaning and Masculinity” (Research Council of Finland 2024-2028).
Students often learn about entrepreneurship without a clear path to turn their ideas into a viable business. The University of Dayton’s capstone course gives them that path.
Launched in fall 2024, Flyer Nest guides students to develop scalable business ideas they can continue after graduation.
Housed in UD’s School of Business Administration, Flyer Nest is part of the university’s entrepreneurship program and teaches students not just how to launch companies but also how to design ventures that solve real problems and benefit their communities.
To date, Flyer Nest has served 12 teams totaling about 70 students, with each team developing a single business venture. Two teams have continued their ventures beyond the course, and six new teams began this semester.
Vince Lewis, associate vice president for entrepreneurial initiatives at UD, said all students in the capstone course end the semester not just with a classroom project but with a proposal they can submit for funding.
“There is a bigger learning outcome than just the start-up,” Lewis said. “Students gain better confidence in actually being able to execute an entrepreneurial venture.”
He added that two students from a continuing team raised about $400,000 to fund their venture aimed at improving helmet safety for football players.
“That’s a valuable, real-world opportunity,” Lewis said. “Students build a business case and then present it to business owners, investors and entrepreneurs at the end of the semester to get feedback.”
“It really does provide a win for students actively pursuing start-ups,” he added.
Lewis said students build their projects around technologies they find in a database of innovations available for licensing from research labs.
“Scientists and engineers develop [the technologies], but they aren’t focused on commercializing them,” said Lewis. He added that Flyer Nest teams work together to turn these technologies into solutions for real-world problems, from disease detection to health literacy for Black Americans.
Lewis said the team from Flyer Nest’s inaugural cohort focused on helmet safety secured $200,000 in state funding through TVSF, then secured the rest from new-venture competitions and grants.
The project leveraged the students’ football backgrounds and technology originally designed for hazmat suits to create a sensor embedded in helmet chin straps, he said.
“If you integrate Bluetooth and communications already being added into helmets, it can alert coaches or someone on the sideline that a chin strap isn’t tight, potentially preventing head injuries,” said Lewis.
He added that another team from the capstone course is using technology originally designed to detect fatigued pilots to assist truck drivers. The students are currently partnering with three local trucking companies interested in pursuing the venture with them.
What’s next: Lewis said next steps involve expanding Flyer Nest beyond business and entrepreneurship majors, particularly pulling students from engineering, design, communications and other disciplines.
He also said he wants to create a year-round venture studio where students can continue developing their ideas after the semester ends.
For other institutions interested in creating an experiential course like Flyer Nest, Lewis said it’s essential that they have strong institutional commitment and an engaged community partner embedded in the local entrepreneurial ecosystem.
“The community partners are what makes it work,” Lewis said. “Because they have this vast network of people they can bring in and integrate into the course to help us execute.”
Ultimately, Lewis said, running a capstone course like Flyer Nest requires dedication and a willingness to navigate the uncertainty that comes with real-world learning.
“It’s a significant lift in terms of effort, because there’s a little ambiguity when you’re going into it,” he said. “This experiential, real-world opportunity for students is a really big commitment.”
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The Renters’ Rights Act is a transformative piece of legislation set to benefit renters through greater security and lower costs, except for one major blind spot.
In particular, it may act as a homelessness pipeline for independent students – the status given by Student Finance England to students without external familial support while at university.
Particularly vulnerable are those who are estranged, without living parents, or are care-leavers.
The summer gap
One of the key measures in the Renters’ Rights Act is the replacement of fixed-term tenancies with periodic tenancies, i.e., tenancies will be rolling, not fixed-term.
This benefits most students, as it means that contracts can be terminated by tenants in May or June when the academic year is over, instead of being trapped in a twelve-month fixed-term contract.
This creates the first major problem for independent students.
Independent students rarely live exclusively with others who require year-round accommodation, and for many doing so may not be an option. So, instead of the security of a year-long contract guaranteeing accommodation, the landscape may shift so that most shared student rentals are only available between September and June.
If independent students do manage to seek one another out and live together, this may seem to be one fix to this issue; it isn’t.
Another key measure in the Renters’ Rights Act is to end no-fault evictions. However, there is a carve-out for student landlords to be able to evict students on a no-fault basis between June and September, provided they live in a student-only HMO. This is a major issue for students who do not have a home to return to.
Then, there is the option for independent students to live in university halls. Unfortunately, this isn’t a secure option in many universities either. The Renters’ Rights Act allows purpose-built student accommodation to maintain fixed-term contracts. They are often only available from September to June, with providers utilising their accommodation over summer months for other uses.
Where twelve-month tenancies are available, many purpose-built student accommodation blocks are significantly more expensive than student house shares.
An independence tax
Every option available to independent students is likely to add substantial costs. It seems improbable that student landlords will simply swallow the cost of having two or three fewer months of rental income over the academic year. So, there is a strong incentive for student landlords to up the cost of renting for the September to June period to a similar level to what it currently costs for twelve-month contracts.
While the Renters’ Rights Act allows tenants to challenge unfair rises in rent, this isn’t a particularly effective measure for student housing; students are an incredibly transient group of tenants who can’t challenge an increase prior to being a tenant.
All that is before considering the loss of the only cost-free workaround for students without a guarantor – upfront rental payments. Often, independent students have avoided the need for a UK-based guarantor by paying several months of rent in advance.
However, the Renters’ Rights Act is set to curtail this practice by capping the amount of rent a landlord can request upfront. Without the option to pay upfront, these students will be forced toward private guarantor schemes, which are commercial services that typically charge a non-refundable fee in the region of 10 per cent of annual rent.
Time for an extended maintenance loan
Without substantially changing the Renters’ Rights Act to the detriment of most students, there seems to be no easy fix available beyond providing additional financial support for independent students.
Last year, I called for the government to implement an extended maintenance loan aligned with the uplift available for other students who need year-long maintenance support – those on a “long course” – the name for those on a course which runs longer than thirty weeks and three days.
When I wrote for Wonkhe to launch the campaign for an extended maintenance loan, I predicted that the government would make good on their promise of grants primarily to benefit the Department for Education’s public relations department. This prediction has come true – the government reintroduced grants for the poorest students, on specific courses.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the progressive silver bullet it sounds like. It means that those students on those courses eligible for grants will repay less in the future. This benefit only materialises if, at some point in the future, their income is of an adequate level to be able to repay their loan in full – which is predicted to be about half of borrowers by the government.
It’s a nice middle-earner’s income bonus in middle-age for a small number of students. While a step in the right direction and not to be scorned, it’s not the radical progressive reform it’s touted as. It changes nothing for the students struggling to cover basic living costs and, for example, being forced to live at home during their degree, which is around one-third of undergraduates according to UCAS, the highest level ever recorded – and not an option for independent students.
There were some incremental improvements for care-leavers last year, who are no longer to be means assessed if entering higher education after the age of twenty-five. Indeed, the government is making progress on strengthening support for care-leavers.
Ensuring more robust implementation of care-leaver “Pathway Plans” – a statutory duty which means local authorities must support care-leavers up to the age of twenty-five – would go a long way to helping this specific group with additional costs due to the aforementioned issues, too.
A new barrier to be broken
So, the Renters’ Rights Act, which I should be clear that I largely support and will myself benefit from, has a blind spot. It’s one I’ve raised, and multiple supportive MPs have raised, too.Independent students, particularly care-leavers, estranged students, and students with no living parents, already have a much higher attrition rate and a large attainment gap.
This blind spot may lead to homelessness and act as a further deterrent for this group to access higher education and reach their full potential.You could say it is a barrier to opportunity, hoisted up by a government committed to breaking all the other barriers down.
If the government is serious about its “Barriers to Opportunity” mission, it cannot allow a housing reform to become a homelessness pipeline for the very students who have already overcome the most to get to university.
We appreciate the opportunity to respond to the recent opinion essay “Degrees of Uncertainty” (Dec. 15, 2025). The author raises important questions about rising college costs, institutional incentives and the risks of oversimplifying complex financial challenges facing students and families. We are pleased that she recognizes Loan Repayment Assistance Programs (LRAPs) help address affordability challenges and provide many benefits for students and colleges.
However, the author questions whether students should benefit from a guarantee that their college degree will be economically valuable.
LRAPs are, at their core, student loan insurance. It can be scary to borrow large student loans to finance an expensive college degree. There is a market failure, however, every time a student does not attend their preferred college, study their preferred major or pursue their preferred career because they are afraid of student loans. Students should be free to pursue their passions—not forced into second-best choices because of the cost of the degree or the prospect of a lower income in the future.
Society also loses out—especially if the lower-income career a student wants to pursue is a human service profession, such as education, where they will invest in improving the lives of others.
Most purchases come with a warranty or guarantee. Why should college be different? Colleges promise to provide value to students. We applaud those colleges and universities that stand behind that promise with a financial guarantee.
As consumers, we routinely insure our biggest risks and largest purchases. We insure our homes, cars, boats and lives—and even our pets. Why shouldn’t we insure an expensive investment in college?
In any class, we can expect some students will earn less than their peers. It is reasonable for students to fear being among that group. An individual student cannot diversify that risk. That is the function of insurance.
LRAPs spread the risk across many students, just as insurance does with other familiar risks. Most drivers can’t protect themselves from the chance of being in a car accident and facing large repair and medical expenses. Insurance spreads that risk, turning a small chance of a very large cost into a small premium that protects against that loss.
LRAPs serve the same function for students—without the cost—because colleges cover the program, giving students peace of mind and the freedom to attend their preferred college and pursue their passions.
By doing this, LRAPs are a tool that can help colleges increase enrollment and revenue. This additional revenue can be invaluable at a time when colleges face many structural challenges—from regulatory changes to the disruption of AI to declining enrollment caused by the demographic cliff.
LRAPs provide meaningful protection to students while maintaining clear incentives to focus on completion, career preparation and postgraduation outcomes.
Peter Samuelson is president and founder at Ardeo Education Solutions, a loan repayment assistance program provider.
A Tennessee high school suspended a student after his off-campus posting of satirical Instagram memes about his principal.
FIRE sued, and a jury found the suspension violated the First Amendment.
KNOXVILLE, Tenn., Jan. 15, 2026 — Two years after a Tennessee high school student sued Tullahoma City Schools for suspending him over Instagram memes lampooning his principal, a jury found that the school district’s actions violated the First Amendment.
The now 20-year-old former student is represented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
“This isn’t just a victory for our client, it’s a victory for any high school student who wants to speak their mind about school online without fear of punishment,” said FIRE senior attorney Conor Fitzpatrick. “Our client’s posts caused no disruption, and what teenagers post on social media is their parents’ business, not the government’s.”
FIRE’s lawsuit challenged Tullahoma High School administrators’ August 2022 suspension of the student for three days during his junior year for posting three memes lampooning then-Principal Jason Quick.
The school cited its social media policies to justify the suspension. The student’s first meme showed Quick holding a box of vegetables with the caption, “🔥My brotha🔥.” The second depicted Quick as an anime cat wearing whiskers, cat ears, and a French maid dress. The third showed Quick’s head superimposed on a hand-drawn cartoon character being hugged by a cartoon bird. The student intended the images to be tongue-in-cheek commentary, gently lampooning a school administrator he perceived as humorless.
But Quick had the school suspend the student anyway, under its social media policy that banned images which “embarrass,” “discredit,” or “humiliate” another student or school staff member. Another school policy banned posts “unbecoming of a Wildcat,” the Tullahoma High School mascot.
Shortly after FIRE sued on the student’s behalf, the school district lifted those policiesand removed the suspension from the student’s record while litigation continued.
LAWSUIT: High school student sues after receiving suspension for posting off-campus cat meme
A Tennessee high school student, backed by FIRE, sued his school after being suspended for posting satirical Instagram memes while off campus.
Today, a jury found the school district liable for suspending the student for his speech in the first place. The verdict confirms that the student’s First Amendment rights were violated by the school’s punishment. A jury also awarded the student nominal damages.
“Thin-skinned high school principals can’t suspend students for poking fun at them outside of school,” said Fitzpatrick. “The evidence and the jury’s verdict make it clear: High school students get to use the First Amendment, not just learn about it.”
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending and sustaining the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought — the most essential qualities of liberty. FIRE educates Americans about the importance of these inalienable rights, promotes a culture of respect for these rights, and provides the means to preserve them.
China’s introduction of a standardized admissions exam for international students shows that efforts to build a world-class university system matter more to the country than increasing enrollments, according to experts.
Beginning with the 2026 intake, most international applicants will be required to take the China Scholastic Competency Assessment (CSCA), a centrally designed test intended to benchmark students from different education systems against a common academic standard.
The exam will be compulsory for recipients of Chinese government scholarships starting this year and later phased in more widely, becoming mandatory for all international undergraduate applicants by 2028.
It will be delivered primarily as an online, remotely proctored test, with some countries also offering off-line test centers.
Richard Coward, CEO at Global Admissions, an agency that helps international students apply to universities, said the policy was “one of the biggest changes” he had seen for international students studying in China.
“This is more about the shift in focus away from quantity to quality, which is happening all over the world. Previously China had the target of 500,000 students; now the target is towards world-class universities by 2050 with the double first-class initiative.”
“There is a great deal of variation in students with different academic backgrounds and it can be challenging to assess,” Coward said. “There are also many countries that don’t have the equivalent level of maths compared with China. This change aims to make all international applicants have the same standard so they’ll be able to follow the education at Chinese universities and so they are at least at the same level as local students.”
Under the new framework, mathematics will be compulsory for all applicants, including those applying for arts and humanities degrees.
Coward said this reflected “the Chinese educational philosophy that quantitative reasoning is a fundamental baseline for any university-level scholar.”
Those applying to Chinese-taught programs must also sit for a “professional Chinese” paper, offered in humanities and STEM versions. Physics and chemistry are optional, depending on program requirements. Mathematics, physics and chemistry can be taken in either Chinese or English.
Gerard Postiglione, professor emeritus at the University of Hong Kong, said the CSCA should be understood as part of a broader shift in China’s approach to internationalization.
“The increasing narrative in China in all areas is to focus on quality,” he said. “That also means in higher education. If China has the plan by 2035 to become an education system that is globally influential, there’s going to be more emphasis on quality.”
Postiglione added that the move also reflected how China approaches admissions locally.
“If you look at how China selects students domestically, there is no back door,” he said, pointing to the importance of thegaokao, China’s national university admissions test taken by local students. “The gaokao is the gaokao, and I don’t think there will be much of a back door for international students, either.”
He cautioned, however, that the framework may favor applicants with certain backgrounds.
“Language proficiency and subject preparation will inevitably advantage some students over others,” he said. “Students who have already studied in Chinese, or who come from systems with stronger mathematics preparation, may find it easier to meet the requirements.”
While the exam framework is centrally set, Postiglione said, individual universities are likely to retain autonomy over admissions decisions.
“The Ministry of Education will provide a framework and guidelines,” he said, “but it would be very difficult for a central agency to make individual admissions decisions across the entire system.”
Pass thresholds have not yet been standardized, and Coward said that in the future, universities may set minimum score requirements, but this is not in place yet.
He added that the additional requirement was unlikely to reduce demand. “Some more casual students may be deterred,” he said. “But for top-tier universities, it reduces administrative burden by filtering for quality early.”
In the longer term, though, “it signals that a Chinese degree is becoming more prestigious, which may actually increase demand from high-caliber students.”
