Tag: takes

  • English language requirements under the microscope: Do you have what it takes to meet your university’s English language entry requirements for international students?

    English language requirements under the microscope: Do you have what it takes to meet your university’s English language entry requirements for international students?

    • By Tamsin Thomas, Senior Strategic Engagement Manager, Duolingo English Test.

    The English language proficiency of international students is once again under the microscope. Heightened scrutiny is being driven by media coverage of international admissions, including The Times and BBC Radio 4’s File on 4, as well as the new immigration white paper. The Home Office is currently tendering for an English test for immigration purposes and has also undertaken a review of university English testing arrangements.

    There are growing questions about how UK universities assess English proficiency, which tests are accepted, and what governance arrangements are in place to ensure that students have the level of English they need to succeed. These are valid and necessary discussions.

    But it’s also true that much of the debate is happening without lived experience. Most contributors to this conversation — from media commentators to admissions professionals and policymakers — have never sat a high-stakes English language test themselves, certainly not as an entry requirement for studying in another country. That gap matters.

    How Do International Students Currently Meet English Language Requirements?

    UK universities have built robust and nuanced systems for assessing English proficiency, shaped by decades of global engagement. These typically fall into three broad categories:

    • Secondary school qualifications: Many countries offer high school-level English that meets UK university entry standards. For example, iGCSEs, the IB, Hong Kong’s HKDSE, or Germany’s Abitur are often accepted without additional testing.
    • Standardised English proficiency tests: Many international students – especially those from countries where English is not the primary language of instruction – take tests like IELTS, TOEFL, or the Duolingo English Test (DET) in addition to their school diplomas.
    • Evidence of prior study in English: If a student has completed at least three years of education in English at the tertiary level, this can meet requirements under a “Medium of Instruction” policy.

    In countries like India and Nigeria, the situation is more complex. Both operate parallel education systems – some in English, others in regional languages. Students with strong English scores in the Indian Standard XII (CBSE, ISC) or the West African WAEC are often accepted without further testing. Graduates of other boards may need to take a test.

    These frameworks are diverse by design – reflecting the deep, often country-specific, relationships and expertise UK universities have developed over time.

    While the media sometimes focuses on the small minority of international students whose English may fall short, it’s worth remembering that perfection is not the benchmark. Most international students meet entry requirements – and universities have systems in place to support language development throughout the degree. After all, only a small percentage of UK students get a Grade 9 in GCSE English, and developing academic English skills is part of what universities train students to do. Language proficiency exists on a spectrum – the question isn’t whether students are fluent on entry, but whether they have the foundation to succeed.

    What Happens When a New Test Enters the Market?

    As a relatively new entrant to this space, the Duolingo English Test – now accepted by over 40 UK universities – has seen firsthand how institutions evaluate and onboard new tests.

    Typically, the process reflects a practical need to expand the range of tests, paired with a careful scrutiny process – usually via committee:

    • Recruitment teams identify a test that meets student demand or addresses market access barriers.
    • Admissions teams assess delivery method, validity, and the external evidence base.
    • English-language colleagues evaluate whether the test provides evidence that students can succeed academically on campus.
    • Compliance teams consider immigration implications and policy compatibility – is the test secure?

    Tests are often accepted provisionally, with performance tracked for one to two years, however long it takes to build up enough data to make an informed decision. Institutions benchmark outcomes against long-accepted credentials: Do the score thresholds align, and are there heightened compliance risks?

    The process is rarely quick, but it is thorough.

    What Does Good Governance Look Like?

    While most UK universities use similar criteria for test evaluation, governance structures vary. In some institutions, decisions sit with dedicated English policy working groups; in others, with international admissions committees. Sometimes responsibility is split between professional services and academics. In others, it’s entirely devolved to professional services.

    This variation isn’t necessarily a problem but it does mean there’s no single ‘sector-wide’ process for evaluating or monitoring English tests.

    As an online test provider, one gap that has always seemed under-discussed is the practical reality of actually taking a test. If you’re a student in Afghanistan, where crossing borders is difficult and test centres don’t operate, how are you supposed to prove your English proficiency? If you’re a mobility-impaired test taker in a country without inclusive building regulations, how do you sit a test at all? The global distribution of test centres is far from comprehensive.

    Join the Conversation — Enter the DET University Challenge

    Here’s the challenge: put yourself in an international student’s shoes. Could you meet your own university’s English language entry requirements?

    The DET University Challenge 2025 invites UK university staff – whether English is their first language or not – to sit an English proficiency test similar to those taken by millions of international students each year.

    The Challenge offers a practical, engaging way for staff to experience a process usually reserved for students. It’s a prompt for reflection – and yes, maybe a little fun along the way.

    At a time when English requirements are under increasing public, political, and policy scrutiny, there’s real value in taking a closer look at the systems we rely on – and at how they feel from the other side.

    So: do you have what it takes to meet your university’s English language entry requirements?

    The DET University Challenge is open until 31 May 2025 with participants able to win up to £5,000 in prize money for their university or a designated Higher Education access charity. Terms and conditions apply.

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  • New Jersey City University takes key step to become part of Kean University

    New Jersey City University takes key step to become part of Kean University

    Dive Brief:

    • New Jersey City University is set to become part of nearby Kean University after the two public institutions signed a letter of intent Thursday to combine by June 2026. The merger would be subject to accreditor and regulatory approvals.
    • Under the plan, Kean would assume NJCU’s assets and liabilities and operate the institution as “Kean Jersey City,” the universities said. Executive oversight would fall to Kean’s president, who would appoint a chancellor to lead Kean Jersey City. NJCU will have some representation on Kean’s board of trustees, per the letter.
    • NJCU signaled in March that it planned to pursue a merger with Kean after past years of budgetary struggles and a directive from a state-appointed monitor to find a financial partner.

    Dive Insight:

    In Thursday’s release, Kean and NJCU said that their combination would “preserve NJCU’s mission of serving first-generation, adult and historically underserved students while advancing Kean’s role as the state’s urban research university and a newly designated R2 research university.” 

    Luke Visconti, chair of the NJCU’s trustee board, said Thursday’s letter of intent “provides an important framework for the detailed discussions that will follow.” 

    Still to come are full due diligence, a definitive agreement and a detailed outline for combining the two public universities. That process will be collaborative and “rooted in student and community engagement” so that the merger with Kean celebrates the two “distinct cultures” of the universities, NJCU Interim President Andrés Acebo said in a statement. 

    According to the institutions, an integration planning team with representatives from both universities will begin work immediately, coordinating with New Jersey’s state higher education office. The two universities will develop shared services agreements to streamline operations and boost student success, officials said. 

    Kean is the larger institution of the two, with 13,352 students in fall 2023, which was down by 5% from five years prior, according to federal data.  NJCU, meanwhile, had 5,833 students in 2023, down 10.8% from the year before and 27% lower than 2018 levels. 

    NJCU’s enrollment declines have contributed to its recent financial turmoil. A little over three years ago, the university declared a full-blown financial crisis after heavy spending on real estate expansions, student services and scholarships failed to reverse its enrollment slowdown and enlarged the university’s expenses.

    In 2023, the state comptroller’s office issued a scathing report that accused administrators of failing to fully inform NJCU’s board of the dire financial state, and which also suggested the university “likely” broke federal law by using emergency pandemic funding for an existing scholarship program. 

    Since then, Acebo has taken the reins, and the state has appointed a monitor to help ensure NJCU rights its finances and operations. State lawmakers also provided $17 million in critical stabilization funding to the institution.  

    In November, Fitch Ratings lifted the university’s outlook from negative to stable, citing “significant progress toward achieving fiscal balance despite continued pressure on student enrollment.”

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  • Education research takes another hit in latest DOGE attack

    Education research takes another hit in latest DOGE attack

    Education research has a big target on its back.

    Of the more than 1,000 National Science Foundation grants killed last month by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, some 40 percent were inside its education division. These grants to further STEM education research accounted for a little more than half of the $616 million NSF committed for projects canceled by DOGE, according to Dan Garisto, a freelance journalist reporting for Nature, a peer-reviewed scientific journal that also covers science news.

    The STEM education division gives grants to researchers at universities and other organizations who study how to improve the teaching of math and science, with the goal of expanding the number of future scientists who will fuel the U.S. economy. Many of the studies are focused on boosting the participation of women or Black and Hispanic students. The division had a roughly $1.2 billion budget out of NSF’s total annual budget of $9 billion. 

    Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.

    Neither the NSF nor the Trump administration has provided a list of the canceled grants. Garisto told me that he obtained a list from an informal group of NSF employees who cobbled it together themselves. That list was subsequently posted on Grant Watch, a new project to track the Trump administration’s termination of grants at scientific research agencies. Garisto has been working with outside researchers at Grant Watch and elsewhere to document the research dollars that are affected and analyze the list for patterns. 

    “For NSF, we see that the STEM education directorate has been absolutely pummeled,” Noam Ross, a computational disease ecologist and one of the Grant Watch researchers, posted on Bluesky. 

    Terminated grants fall heavily upon STEM Education 

    Graphic by Dan Garisto, a freelance journalist working for Nature

    The steep cuts to NSF education research follow massive blows in February and March at the Department of Education, where almost 90 research and data collection projects were canceled along with the elimination of Regional Education Laboratories and the firing of almost 90 percent of the employees in the research and data division, known as the Institute of Education Sciences.

    Many, but not all, of the canceled research projects at NSF were also in a database of 3,400 research grants compiled by Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican. Cruz characterized them as “questionable projects that promoted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) or advanced neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda.”  

    Ross at Grant Watch analyzed the titles and abstracts or summaries of the terminated projects and discovered that “Black” was the most frequent word among them. Other common words were “climate,” “student,” “network,” “justice,” “identity,” “teacher,” and “undergraduate.”

    Frequent words in the titles and summaries of terminated NSF research projects

    Word cloud of the most frequent terms from the titles and abstracts of terminated grants, with word size proportional to frequency. Purple is the most frequent, followed by orange and green. Source: Noam Ross, Grant Watch

    At least two of the terminated research studies focused on improving artificial intelligence education, which President Donald Trump promised to promote in an April 23 executive order,“Advancing Artificial Intelligence Education for American Youth.” 

    “There is something especially offensive about this EO from April 23 about the need for AI education… Given the termination of my grant on exactly this topic on April 26,” said Danaé Metaxa in a post on Bluesky that has since been deleted. Metaxa, an assistant professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania, was developing a curriculum on how to teach AI digital literacy skills by having students build and audit generative AI models. 

    Related: Chaos and confusion as the statistics arm of the Education Department is reduced to a skeletal staff of 3

    Another canceled grant involved college students creating educational content about AI for social media to see if that content would improve AI literacy and the ability to detect misinformation. The lead researcher, Casey Fiesler, an associate professor of information science at the University of Colorado Boulder, was almost midway through her two-year grant of less than $270,000. “There is not a DEI aspect of this work,” said Fiesler. “My best guess is that the reason it was flagged was the word ‘misinformation.’”

    Confusion surrounded the cuts. Bob Russell, a former NSF project officer who retired in 2024, said some NSF project officers were initially unaware that the grants they oversee had been canceled. Instead, university officials who oversee research were told, and those officials notified researchers at their institutions. Researchers then contacted their project officers. One researcher told me that the termination notice states that researchers may not appeal the decision, an administrative process that is ordinarily available to researchers who feel that NSF has made an unfair or incorrect decision. 

    Related: DOGE’s death blow to education studies

    Some of the affected researchers were attending the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in Denver on April 26 when more than 600 grants were cut. Some scholars found out by text that their studies had been terminated. Normally festive evening receptions were grim. “It was like a wake,” said one researcher. 

    The Trump administration wants to slash NSF’s budget and headcount in half, according to Russell. Many researchers expect more cuts ahead.

    Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or barshay@hechingerreport.org.

    This story about NSF education research cuts was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

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  • Supreme Court takes education cases that could challenge the separation of church and state

    Supreme Court takes education cases that could challenge the separation of church and state

    The Supreme Court over the next two weeks will hear two cases that have the potential to erode the separation of church and state and create a seismic shift in public education.

    Mahmoud v. Taylor, which goes before the court on April 22, pits Muslim, Roman Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox families, as well as those of other faiths, against the Montgomery County school system in Maryland. The parents argue that the school system violated their First Amendment right of free exercise of religion by refusing to let them opt their children out of lessons using LGBTQ+ books. The content of the books, the parents say, goes against their religious beliefs.

    Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond, which will be argued on April 30, addresses whether the St. Isidore of Seville Virtual Charter School should be allowed to exist as a public charter school in Oklahoma. The Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa had won approval for the charter school from the state charter board despite acknowledging that St. Isidore would participate “in the evangelizing mission of the Church.”

    The state’s attorney general, Gentner Drummond, later overruled the approval, saying the school could not be a charter because charter schools must be public and nonsectarian. The petitioners sued and ultimately appealed to the Supreme Court, claiming Drummond violated the First Amendment’s free exercise clause by prohibiting a religious entity from participating in a public program.

    Teachers unions, parents groups and organizations advocating for the separation of church and state have said that rulings in favor of the plaintiffs could open the door for all types of religious programs to become part of public schooling and give parents veto rights on what is taught. In the most extreme scenario, they say, the rulings could lead to the dismantling of public education and essentially allow public schools to be Sunday schools.

    Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education.

    At issue in both cases is the question of whether the First Amendment rights of parents and religious institutions to the free exercise of religion can supersede the other part of the amendment, the establishment clause, which calls for the separation of church and state.

    “I think a chill wind is blowing, and public education as we know it is in extreme jeopardy of becoming religious education and ceasing to exist,” said Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, an advocacy organization that has filed an amicus brief in the St. Isidore case. “The whole idea is to have churches take control of education for American children. It’s about money and power.”

    For some conservative lawmakers, evangelical Christian groups and law firms lobbying for more religiosity in the public square, decisions in the petitioners’ favor would mean religious parents get what they have long been owed — the option of sending their children to publicly funded religious schools and the right to opt out of instruction that clashes with their religious beliefs.

    “If we win this case, it opens up school choice across the country,” said Mathew Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, an Orlando, Florida-based conservative Christian legal firm that has filed a brief supporting the petitioners in both cases. “I see school choice as a reaction to the failed system in the public schools, which is failing both in academia but also failing in the sense they are pushing ideology that undermines the parents and their relationship with their children.”

    By taking the cases, the Supreme Court once again inserts itself in ongoing culture wars in the nation, which have been elevated by presidential orders threatening to take away funding if schools push diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and state laws banning teaching on various controversial subjects. Legal scholars predict that the Supreme Court will lean toward allowing St. Isidore and the opt-outs for parents because of how the justices ruled in three cases between 2017 and 2022. In each case, the justices decided that states could not discriminate against giving funds or resources to a program because it was religious.

    Related: How Oklahoma’s superintendent set off a holy war in classrooms

    Of the two cases, St. Isidore likely could have the greatest impact because it is attempting to change the very definition of a public school, say opponents of the school’s bid for charter status. Since charter schools first started in the 1990s, they have been defined as public and nonsectarian in each of the 46 state statutes allowing them, according to officials at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Today, charter schools operate in 44 states, Guam, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., and serve roughly 7.6 percent of all public school students.

    “It would be a huge sea change if the court were to hold they were private entities and not public schools bound by the U.S. Constitution’s establishment clause,” said Rob Reed, the alliance’s vice president of legal affairs.

    A victory for St. Isidore could lead to religious-based programs seeping into several aspects of public schooling, said Steven Green, a professor of both law and history and religious studies at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon.

    “The ramification is that every single time a school district does some kind of contracting for any kind of service or curricular issues, you’re going to find religious providers who will make the claim, ‘You have to give me an opportunity, too,’” Green said.

    St. Isidore’s appeal to the Supreme Court is part of an increasing push by the religious right to use public funds for religious education, said Josh Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University and author of a 2024 book on school vouchers. Because of previous court decisions, several voucher programs across the country already allow parents to use public money to send their children to religious schools, he said.

    “What’s going to happen if the court says a public school can be run by a religious provider?” Cowen asked. “It almost turns 180 degrees the rule that voucher systems play by right now. Right now, they’re just taking a check. They’re not public entities.”

    The effect of a St. Isidore victory could be devastating, he added. “It would be one more slippery slope to really kicking down the wall between church and state,” Cowen said.

    Related: Inside the Christian legal campaign to return prayer to public schools

    Jim Campbell, chief legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing St. Isidore’s bid to become a charter, discounted the idea that a St. Isidore win would fundamentally change public schools. Like Staver, he views St. Isidore as simply providing another parental option. “We’re not asking the state to run a religious school,” Campbell said. “These are private entities that run the schools. This is a private organization participating in a publicly funded program.”

    Opponents of religious charter schools question whether St. Isidore would have to play by the same rules as public schools.

    “How are they going to handle it when there’s a teacher who has a lifestyle that doesn’t align with Catholic school teaching? They’re talking out of both sides of the mouth,” said Erika Wright, an Oklahoma parent and plaintiff in a lawsuit protesting a Bible in the classroom mandate by Oklahoma’s state superintendent of instruction. She also joined an amicus brief against St. Isidore’s formation.

    “As a taxpayer, I should not be forced to fund religious instruction, whether it’s through a religious charter school or a Bible mandate,” Wright said. “I shouldn’t be forced to fund religious indoctrination that doesn’t align with my family’s personal beliefs.”

    Notably, in the Montgomery County parents’ case going before the court, parents use similar reasoning to support their right to opt out of instruction. “A school ‘burdens’ parents’ religious beliefs when it forces their children to undergo classroom instruction about gender and sexuality at odds with their religious convictions,” the parents’ brief said.

    The school district in 2022 adopted several books with LGBTQ+ themes and characters as part of the elementary language arts curriculum. Initially, families were allowed to opt out. But then the school system reversed its policy, saying too many students were absent during the lessons and keeping track of the opt-outs was too cumbersome. The reversal led to the lawsuit.

    Historically, school districts have given limited opt-outs to parents who, for example, do not want their child to read a particular book, but the Montgomery County parents’ request is broader, said Charles C. Haynes, a First Amendment expert and senior fellow for religious liberty at the Freedom Forum in Washington, D.C. The parents are asking to exclude their children from significant parts of the curriculum for religious reasons.

    “If the court sides with the parents, I think the next day, you’re going to have parents across the country saying, ‘I want my kids to opt out of all the references to fill-in-the-blank.’ … It would change the dynamic between public schools and parents overnight,” Haynes said.

    Related: Tracking Trump: His actions to abolish the Education Department, and more

    Sarah Brannen, author of “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding,” one of the LGBTQ+ books Montgomery County schools adopted, sees major logistical issues if the school system loses. “Allowing parents to interfere in the minutia of the curriculum would make their already difficult jobs impossible,” she said.

    Colten Stanberry, a lawyer with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty representing the Montgomery County parents, disagreed. School systems manage to balance different student needs all the time, he said.

    A triumph for the Montgomery County families and St. Isidore would cause much more than logistical issues, said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association. It could lead to a public education system where parents can pick a school based on religious beliefs or try to change a traditional public school’s curriculum by opting out of lessons in droves.

    “For us to be a strong democracy, then we necessarily need to learn about all of us. To separate us flies in the face of why we were founded,” Pringle said.

    This story about church and state was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

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  • Brown Takes Out $300 Million Loan

    Brown Takes Out $300 Million Loan

    Brown University is borrowing $300 million from an unspecified lender, according to a regulatory filing—a move that comes as other wealthy universities have tapped the bond market recently.

    The Trump administration has frozen $510 million in federal research funding to Brown over alleged antisemitism on campus related to pro-Palestinian protests.

    “Given the volatility in the capital markets and the uncertainty regarding future federal policy related to research and other important priorities of Brown, the University is fortunate to have a number of sources of liquidity, including commercial paper programs, bank lines and the private and public debt markets that are available to help us manage our finances and priorities during this period,” Brown spokesperson Amanda McGregor wrote to Inside Higher Ed by email.

    She added that Brown “chose to negotiate directly with a lender in order to tailor the loan to our particular objectives,” rather than leverage bonds, as some other institutions have done recently. Beyond threats to its federal funding, the university also announced last year that it had a $46 million budget deficit.

    Both Harvard University and Princeton University announced in recent weeks that they were issuing bonds. Harvard, which is issuing $750 million in bonds, told Inside Higher Ed the move was about “contingency planning for a range of financial circumstances.” Harvard recently had $2.2 billion frozen by the Trump administration after it rejected a series of demands. President Alan Garber argued that the government was asking Harvard to surrender its autonomy, calling such a demand “unconstitutional.”

    Princeton, which has clashed with the administration over academic freedom, also announced plans to issue $320 million in bonds but offered little specificity about the purpose of the funds.

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  • FSA Executive Retires and Acting Under Secretary Takes Over

    FSA Executive Retires and Acting Under Secretary Takes Over

    The responsibilities of acting under secretary James Bergeron doubled as the Department of Education announced Wednesday that he will not only oversee the regulatory duties related to higher ed but manage the entire Office of Federal Student Aid.

    Even in the wake of major layoffs, FSA remains the largest office in the department. It oversees the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, the allocation of Pell Grants and—at least for now—management of the $1.7 trillion student loan portfolio.

    FSA had been led for much of the last year by Denise Carter, who is now retiring after more than 30 years working in the federal government. Carter also served as acting education secretary earlier this year. The department didn’t say in the news release why Carter was retiring now; the agency has offered early retirement offers and buyouts as part of an effort to reduce the workforce.

    Carter said in the release she was grateful for the opportunity to serve her country.

    “As I move on, I hope we as a nation commit to ensuring every student has the support needed to achieve extraordinary educational outcomes,” Carter added. “The economic strength of our nation depends on their success.”

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  • Colleges advise some international students to return to U.S. before Trump takes office (PBS News Hour)

    Colleges advise some international students to return to U.S. before Trump takes office (PBS News Hour)







    Higher Education Inquirer : Colleges advise some international students to return to U.S. before Trump takes office (PBS News Hour)




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