Tag: Turning
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A turning point for UK international higher education
In 2019, the UK launched its first international education strategy – a landmark effort that set ambitious, cross-government targets for growing our international education footprint. The years since have exposed the fragility of a strategy without a built-in mechanism for review or refresh when buffeted by events. Changing geopolitics, tightening migration strategies and Covid might not individually have been expected, but exposure to global markets will always bring challenges.
The 2019 roadmap lacked clarity on whether those targets were a floor or a ceiling and what we were to do when they were reached. In their absence, policy drifted. Reactive decisions replaced proactive planning. Universities, caught in the crosswinds of shifting geopolitics and domestic migration debates, have too often been left guessing what the government’s long-term vision really is.
That’s why the International Higher Education Commission (IHEC) was formed; to fill this strategic vacuum with a coherent, forward-looking, and inclusive vision. Working across sectors – engaging university leaders, student bodies, recruiters, and policymakers – it’s been working on framework for a new UK international higher education strategy rooted in data, tempered by experience, and open to evolution.
Our personal view is that we need nothing less than a reinvention of how we plan, manage, and grow international higher education; that we must hack a way through the many things we could do, or would like to do, to get to the essential priorities – what we must do – and be brave enough to make difficult decisions.
It is clear that the government wishes the sector well, but is not going to put its hand in its pocket any time soon. Our only way forward in the short term, then, is to ask for modest help, which will provide a short-term, concrete return on investment to trade our way out of the immediate difficulties.
Our personal view is that we need nothing less than a reinvention of how we plan, manage, and grow international higher education
If we steady the ship, we can in parallel put in place a framework, acknowledging the likely ongoing volatility in geopolitics and global markets, that moves us to a more strategic and sustainable approach in the medium and longer term. This may not be elegant policy making, but it is rooted in the pragmatic reality of the changes necessary to stabilise a system so economically, socially and culturally significant.
We have shared our personal views in a number of fora over the past two years as IHEC has unfolded and reiterate them here as we anticipate the imminent publication of our final report. It is very timely now, having been delayed initially by the UK general election, in which higher education as a topic failed to appear. Then the focus of almost everyone was on the US election, and that was followed by the significant challenges in the sector that meant that policy suggestions would not have been appropriate.
Now, there is a more proactive, forward-looking context to which we hope we can contribute.
- A living strategy with built-in review and flexibility
- Policy certainty and sustainable structures
- A competitive, student-centred offer
- Whole-government coherence and accountability
- Strategic marketing and market diversification
- Public-private partnership and institutional innovation
- Reframing migration and public narrative
The UK needs a dynamic framework, not a static document.
Strategies must adapt to shifting global conditions, student preferences, and national needs. A ‘living’ strategy, reviewed regularly, updated transparently, and framed around multiple scenarios, not a single trajectory. Growth must be deliberate, not accidental.
Confidence in the UK’s offer depends in part on consistency. The Graduate Route – allowing students to work post-study – has been a cornerstone of our recent successes, but its future must be secured through clearer legal and policy underpinning in the face of continuing threats from a still-changing migration policy context.
We also need a more sustainable system that doesn’t rely solely on growth from a few key markets, but diversifies and balances recruitment in line with national capacity and ambition.
International students are not just numbers; they’re individuals with aspirations and needs. Better engagement with the ‘student voice’ is critical, as is a re-examination of how we ensure student success as they enter the workforce.
Too often, policy is siloed across Whitehall. Education may do better than other areas, but there are key departments missing from discourse – the Home Office, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, among others – and they are necessary to provide coordinated oversight.
It’s also vital to reflect regional priorities and the role of devolved nations, Metro Mayors, and local authorities in shaping recruitment and integration strategies.
The UK concentrates too heavily on a small number of international markets. We must be smarter.
Study UK does the best it can with the woefully poor levels of investment, but we must invest in data-driven, market-specific campaigns and learn from countries like Australia that tie marketing to outcomes.
Strategic delivery needs strategic partners. We must deepen collaboration with sector bodies like UKCISA, NISAU and BUILA to create a more integrated system that shares responsibility across institutions, government, and industry.
We also need to support the new found enthusiasm for TNE at scale to ensure that the new initiatives are robustly founded, and better data to inform national and institutional decision making.
International students bring huge value to local economies, research, and the cultural fabric of our campuses. Yet in public discourse they too often become collateral in broader immigration debates.
We must be able to show, and more effectively communicate, that almost all students return home. A confident, positive narrative is essential, based on evidence – not emotion.
The road ahead
This is a moment for boldness and clarity. The sector stands at a crossroads. It is under unprecedented threat, but it is also brimming with opportunity. If we get it right, the UK will not only remain a top destination for international students: we will lead globally on how it integrates education with diplomacy, soft power, and innovation.
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Head Start, the federal child care program for low-income families, is turning 60 this year. Will it make it to 61?
NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Bright morning sun is streaming through her home’s windows as Sandra Dill reads a picture book about penguins to a room full of busy toddlers. While listening, the kids blow kisses, plop in a visitor’s lap, then get up to slide down a small slide.
Dill has been running a family child care business from her home for 15 years, and every one of her 13 grandchildren has spent time here — currently it’s 20-month-old Nathaniel, who has a puff of curly hair and a gooey grin.
“My older ones started to call it ‘grandma school,’” she said. Another one of her granddaughters, now a teenager, is returning this summer to help out.
Four of Dill’s eight available slots are funded through Head Start. This is the federal-to-local program that funds child care and other support for the poorest families in America. (Regular Head Start serves children 3 to 5 years old; Early Head Start is for those under 3.) The program — which began right here in New Haven, Connecticut — is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.
It’s also never been so at risk: First a federal funding freeze hit providers, then a chunk of Head Start federal support staff were fired by the Department of Government Efficiency. On March 27, the Department of Health and Human Services announced it was cutting a further 10,000 jobs, and reorganizing the Administration for Children and Families, which administers Head Start. As of April 1, Head Start employees in five of the program’s 10 regions — Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle — had reportedly been laid off, according to a LinkedIn post that day from Katie Hamm, a former official with the federal Administration for Children and Families. Hamm said there does not appear to be a transition plan laying out how Head Start programs in those regions will receive funding and support. Project 2025, the conservative policy handbook organized by the Heritage Foundation, which the Trump administration has been following closely, calls for eliminating Head Start altogether.
“I think it’s terrible,” Dill said. “I just can’t imagine. It’s already not enough, and if this happens, it’s going to affect a lot of families that are already struggling.”
Ed Zigler, the “father of Head Start,” was the son of immigrants from Poland. His father was a peddler and his mother plucked chickens to make a little money, according to Walter Gilliam, executive director of the University of Nebraska’s Buffett Early Childhood Institute, who counted Zigler as his closest mentor.
When Zigler was a child, his family made its way to a settlement house in Kansas City, Missouri; these community-based charities offered a two-generation approach, caring for and educating children while also teaching English and job skills to parents and connecting families with medical care and housing help.
“That made a huge impact on his and his family’s life,” Gilliam said.
Related: Young children have unique needs and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks the issues.
As a young psychology professor at Yale, Zigler was hired as an advisor to President Lyndon Johnson to help design family programs for the federal War on Poverty. In creating Head Start, he turned to the same two-generation model he grew up with.
To date, Head Start has served nearly 40 million children. In fiscal year 2023, the Head Start program was funded to serve 778,420 children. The program has always been underfunded: In 2020 Head Start served barely 1 in 10 eligible infants and toddlers and only half of eligible preschoolers. It’s limited to families making under the federal poverty level, which is just $31,200 for a family of four.
The sand table at Dill’s child care is an opportunity to explore shapes, colors and textures. Credit: Anya Kamenetz for The Hechinger Report Still, for many of the families who do manage to make it through the doors, the program is life-changing.
“Head Start is in every community in America,” said Cara Sklar, director of early & elementary education policy at the D.C.-based think tank New America. “It’s the original two-generation program, with wraparound support for kids. It’s really held up as a model of quality in early learning.”
The “wraparound support” for Dill’s Early Head Start families is funded by the United Way of Greater New Haven, and comes via a network for family child care educators called All Our Kin. The network helps mothers enroll in community college and apply for housing subsidies. Dill has had mothers who lived in their cars and one who was living with her mother “six to a room,” she said. She also does regular home visits with families to talk about children’s development and support parents in goals like potty training.
Thanks to Early Head Start, a nurse, a mental health consultant and a nutritionist all help Dill keep the kids healthy and safe. And the program also provides extra funds she can use to get back up and running if, for example, the furnace needs fixing.
But Head Start is now facing funding challenges that go far beyond a broken furnace. “The past month has been harrowing for child care providers,” said Carolina Reyes, director of Arco Iris Bilingual Children’s Center, a preschool in Laurel, Maryland, that is a Head Start partner, and also a member of the nationwide advocacy group MomsRising.
The first blow to Head Start in this administration was President Donald Trump’s January 27 executive order calling for a federal funding freeze. Since Head Start is a direct federal-to-local grant program, even temporary interruptions in funding can cause programs to close their doors.
“ Programs like mine operate on razor-thin margins,” said Reyes. “I don’t have any reserves to pull from if funding is delayed or slashed.”
Related: Is Head Start a failure?
While funding for most programs has resumed, Joel Ryan, the executive director of the Washington State Association of Head Start, said in a recent press conference that as late as the week of Feb. 17, one in four of his programs still had trouble accessing the Head Start payment website.
That same week of the 17th, almost 70 Head Start staffers were pink-slipped in the federal government’s sweep of “probationary” employees — about one-fifth of the program’s workforce. One laid-off employee, who didn’t want to give his name because he is still fighting his dismissal and fears reprisal, said he spent five years as a contractor before switching to full time this past summer, which accounted for his probationary status. He wore many hats at Head Start, doing data analytics, working with grant recipients and serving as a liaison for state partners.
“They say we’re bloated; we could have used two more full-time people,” he said.
The cuts, he feared, will lead to further delays in programs getting the payments they rely on, not to mention the oversight that keeps kids safe.
“I come from the private sector. I will find another job,” he said. “The issue isn’t us, it’s the children and the families. We’ve got all these people in poverty who are getting screwed over by what’s happening.”
A third blow came on February 25, when the House passed a budget resolution calling for $880 billion in cuts to discretionary spending programs over the next decade, with Medicaid the prime target, along with the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Head Start families overwhelmingly rely on these safety net programs. The White House’s gutting of the Department of Education also threatens many services for preschoolers, especially those in special education. (This process, which maps out the next fiscal year, is separate from the recent vote to fund the government until Sept. 30.)
“This is going from the precipice of disaster to decimating the system,” Sklar said. “All the parts that help families, from Head Start to child care to food to health care, are all being destabilized at once.”
Gilliam said that threats to eliminate Head Start are nothing new. After designing the program during the Johnson administration, Zigler was appointed to run it under the presidency of Richard Nixon. “Some folks told him that his job was to destroy, essentially, the program that he had created,” Gilliam said.
Related: In 2024, Head Start programs are still funded by a formula set in the 1970s
Head Start advocates said the program has been able to fight off political challenges in the past because it is widely distributed geographically and has bipartisan support.
“I agree that Project 2025 is a real threat to Head Start, as well as to other programs that we all care about,” said Ryan, with the Washington State Head Start association.
“But I will say this: We have great research. We have great data. We have a great track record. We have a lot of bipartisan support in Congress. And we have parent power.”
By coincidence, the week the House passed its budget resolution, a group of 150 Head Start parents were on Capitol Hill lobbying as part of a group called Start Early, and they met with many Republican senators.
Tommy Sheridan, the deputy director of the National Head Start Association, struck an almost defiantly optimistic tone after the visit to lawmakers: “We still believe and have seen indicators that this administration is supportive of Head Start. And Congress as well.”
NaMaree Cunningham and her twin sister turned two on the day of our visit. Credit: Anya Kamenetz for The Hechinger Report Another potential bright spot is the growth of child care support and funding on the state level. Elizabeth Groginsky is New Mexico’s first cabinet secretary for the state’s new Early Childhood Education & Care Department, and she said the pandemic woke a lot of people up to the importance of early care and education.
“People began to understand the impact that child care has on children’s development, families’ ability to work, the overall economy,” Groginsky said.
Since 2020, New Mexico has gone through a major expansion in home visits, child care and preschool. Vermont has made similar moves, and New York and Connecticut are heading in that direction as well. Even the deep-red state of Kentucky has expanded access.
What all of these state-level programs have in common is that they are much more widely available to middle-class families, rather than tightly targeted to families in poverty, as Head Start still is. Historically, with programs like Medicare and Social Security, universal access has meant durable support.
Now those states are contemplating stepping in further if the federal government drops the ball.
“Because the state has made such an impressive commitment to child care, we’re potentially in a better spot than others,” said Janet McLaughlin, deputy commissioner for Vermont’s Department of Children and Families. And Groginsky, in New Mexico, said firmly, “The governor and the legislature — I don’t think we’ll let New Mexicans go without. They’ll find a way.”
Support for this reporting was provided by the Better Life Lab at New America.
Contact editor Christina Samuels at 212-678-3635 or samuels@hechingerreport.org.
This story about Head Start was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
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Turning Insight Into Action: The 2025 RNL National Alumni Survey
51,000 alumni weigh in on giving priorities, engagement preferences, and more.
This blog features an excerpt from Howard Heevner, fundraising industry leader and co-author of the
2025 RNL National Alumni Survey.RNL’s 2025 National Alumni Survey was just released and, while the insights gleaned from this report are always valuable, one could argue that this data is worth its weight in gold during times of extreme uncertainty like we are currently facing in our sector. After all, there are a few universal truths that strategic fundraisers understand, regardless of differing priorities, levels of experience, or overall philosophy:
- “Hope”‘” is not a strategy.
- Stewardship matters.
- You will never regret confirming your flight departure time ahead of an important donor visit…
- When in doubt, go straight to the source: your donors.
RNL’s National Alumni Survey gives fundraisers a valuable opportunity to refine their engagement strategies by focusing on what truly matters—understanding donor expectations. By analyzing responses from more than 51,000 alumni across generations and institutions of all types, this report sheds light on alumni sentiments toward their alma maters, their giving priorities, generational volunteer trends, and the motivations behind their contributions of time, talent, and financial support.
Facilitated by RNL’s Sarah Kleeberger, this report also benefits from the expertise of longtime RNL partner and industry leader Howard Heevner. Howard provides both a foreword and conclusion to the report, offering insightful commentary, practical applications, and a forward-looking perspective on the future of donor engagement.
Excerpt from the 2025 RNL National Alumni Survey Report,
written by Howard Heevner:
Howard Heevner As part of RNL’s second annual research study, we are again sharing the collective wisdom of 51,000 alumni representing a broad spectrum of higher education. The opportunity to provide a conduit for these voices to be heard is an honor, and along with the team at RNL, we are excited to share the feedback alumni from 21 institutions.
In higher education, we often spend our time looking inward or looking at other institutions instead of turning to those we wish to connect, engage, and inspire to be in a closer relationship with our institutions. For decades, we have been able to rely on an expectation of loyalty from our alumni because that’s how it’s always been. However, so many factors have changed the nature of that relationship and those expectations. Among them are the rising costs of education, the implied and often explicit promise that degree achievement will provide you with a pass to greater opportunity, and the increasing mistrust of institutions and higher education.
There is a growing concern for our pipeline of donors. We have seen a dramatic decrease in alumni donor counts across the United States over the past three decades. These trends pre-date the pandemic but seem to be exacerbated post-pandemic. Many schools are struggling to acquire new donors and are searching for new methodologies to do so. However, it seems most often we are taking the fractured giving structures that brought us here and bringing those into these new strategies. Maybe the issue isn’t our tools or strategies, but our ability to authentically connect with our alumni.
Ready to dive into the data yourself?
Download your copy of the 2025 National Alumni Survey, featuring eight key findings about alumni giving and connection taken from more than 50,000 alumni, as well as additional insights from Howard.
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Essay on the play “Heroes of the Fourth Turning” (opinion)
A brief announcement: After 20 years of writing “Intellectual Affairs” for Inside Higher Ed, I am retiring at the end of the month—from the gig, that is, not from writing itself. The final column will run in two weeks.
Going to a play at the height of COVID-19 was effectively impossible, but I managed to see two productions of Will Arbery’s Heroes of the Fourth Turning in the fall of 2020. The first performance was via Zoom. The actors did what they could, but the suspension of disbelief was never a viewer option. Heroes was then produced by Philadelphia’s Wilma Theater and “captured digitally as a site-specific production, created in a closed quarantine ‘bubble’ at a private location in the Poconos, following strict health guidelines,” as press materials stated at the time.
Set at a small Catholic college in rural Wyoming during the first months of Donald Trump’s presidency, Heroes centers on four friends (two men, two women) who reunite at a college function, a few years after graduation. They all admire a professor who has been appointed as president of the college. She joins them around two-thirds of the way through the play; one of the four is her daughter.
The audience quickly picks up that Transfiguration College of Wyoming has a curriculum based on the Great Books, with a strong dose of conservative theology—not least on matters of sexual morality. And the lessons have gone deep. None of the four has drifted away from the faith, or skewed to the left, although one is clearly more troubled by punitive rhetoric than the rest.
The play’s title alludes to a pop-sociological theory of history as moving through a cycle of four periods, each about two decades long. Since graduation, one member of the group has become a fairly successful figure in right-wing media (likely she has Steve Bannon on speed dial) and an ardent believer in the apocalypse promised by the fourth turning.
“It’s destruction,” she says. “It’s revolution, it’s war. The nation almost doesn’t survive. Great example is the Civil War, and the economic crisis before that. Or the Great Depression and World War II. And it’s right now. The national identity crisis caused by Obama. Liberals think it’s Trump. It’s the fight to save civilization. People start to collectivize and turn against each other. It seems like everything’s ending—we’re all gonna die. No one trusts each other. But the people who do trust each other form crazy bonds. Somehow we get through it, we rise from the ashes …”
The phoenix that emerges? An era of security, conformity and prosperity. The apocalypse has a happy ending.
When the play premiered off-Broadway in 2019, reviewers often imagined the discomfort it would presumably give New York theatergoers—plunged into a continuous flow of red state ideology, with no character challenging it. But the play did more than that. The figures Arbery puts on stage are characters, not ventriloquist dummies. They have known one another at close proximity for years and formed “crazy bonds” of great intensity.
Their conversation is rooted in that personal history as well as in Transfiguration College’s carefully tended vision of Judeo-Christian Western civilization. The playwright creates a good deal of inner space for the actors to occupy and move around in. When I finally got to see Heroes of the Fourth Turning onstage, in person, there were moments that felt like eavesdropping on real people.
What comes out of a character’s mouth at times echoes well-worn culture-war talking points—many unchanged now, almost eight years after when the play is set. At the same time, the characters clash over points of doctrine and ethical disagreement, and express very mixed feelings about the MAGA crusade. The closest thing to an expression of enthusiasm for the new president (then and now) is when a character calls Trump “a Golem molded from the clay of mass media … Even if he himself is confused, he has the ability to spit out digestible sound bites rooted in decades of the work of the most brilliant conservative think tanks in the country.”
This is cynical, but also naïve. When the president of the college appears before her adoring former students, she recites some points they have undoubtedly heard from her many times:
“Progressivism moves too fast and forces change and constricts liberty. Gridlock is beautiful. In the delay is deliberation and true consensus. If you just railroad something through because you want it done, that’s the passion of the mob. Delaying is the structure of the [republic], which is structured differently in order to offset the dangers of democracy. I believe in slowness, gridlock.”
She’s a fictional character, but I still wonder what she’s made of the last few weeks.
Not long after Heroes opened in 2019, Elizabeth Redden wrote an in-depth article for Inside Higher Ed about Wyoming Catholic College, the not-so-veiled original for the play’s Transfiguration College. Arbery’s father was the college’s president at the time. All of which goes some ways toward explaining how a one-act play can evoke so palpably a college that is also a counterculture.