This blog was kindly authored by Laura Trevelyan, Chancellor of Cardiff University.
2025 was something of an annus horribilis for Britain’s universities. It felt as though barely a week went by without another alarming report on a university facing a ballooning deficit, compulsory redundancies, shrinking student numbers, or worse. Yet beneath the depressing headlines there is good news story to tell, about how our universities are vital economic engines. I’ve seen this first hand in my ten months as Chancellor of Cardiff University. Britain’s productivity is currently low and recent economic growth has been anaemic. But universities can help put Britain back on the map by commercialising their cutting-edge research, encouraging investment in biosciences and AI which can create the well-paying jobs we need.
Living in America with a son in college, I’ve had a front row seat during a turbulent year for American higher education. The Trump administration’s determination to bring what it sees as woke institutions to heel by whatever means necessary is to Britain’s advantage. Talent will go where the opportunities are. Professor Baljit Khakh, a global authority on brain function, was recently appointed Director of the UK Dementia Research Institute at Cardiff University. eProfessor Khakh studied at Cardiff as an undergraduate and as Professor of Physiology and Neurobiology at UCLA made fundamental advances in understanding how our brains work. Thanks in no small part to the UK Government’s Global Talent Fund, Professor Khakh chose to come home. His work on dementia will, we hope, change lives while powering Welsh and UK science to new heights.
Not only do we provide employers with skilled graduates who pay higher taxes, but we are ourselves one of Wales’ largest employers – almost 1 in every 135 jobs in Wales depends on Cardiff University. Our domestic and international students spend money in Cardiff. Like all of Britain’s universities in their different ways, Cardiff is an anchor institution for our community. Yet it is our role as a research university which holds even greater potential for unlocking economic growth.
I confess that I had no idea what a spinout was until I attended a showcase event in Cardiff Bay on a sunny September evening. Now, I know that a spinout is a new company formed by academics to commercialise intellectual property and technology developed through university research. At Cardiff, we have 164 spinouts and staff and student start-up companies. I was bowled over to learn that a Cardiff spinout called Draig Theraputics (Draig is Welsh for dragon) has raised 140 million pounds from investors for a clinical stage trial into a new drug which could treat neuropsychiatric disorders – conditions like depression and ADHD.
That’s just one example of how research has an impact in the real world, driving entrepreneurship and innovation, and if a new drug comes to market, transforming lives. At Cardiff, we honour our Welsh language and heritage when naming spinouts. Nisien.AI (named for the brother Nisien in the Mabinogion story who fosters peace and reconciliation) works in cybersecurity to make the online world safer by reducing threats and encouraging constructive dialogue. Cardiff is far from being alone in developing spinouts – the latest register details 2,269 companies founded or owned by 100 UK higher education providers. Of course, some of these companies may fail to reach their potential – but others will flourish. This data helps us understand how Britain’s universities are generators of innovation in the economy.
It’s not all doom and gloom within British higher education. Yes, our funding model is broken and we’re trying to figure out a new one. But there are exciting developments afoot which could bring new hope to millions while generating economic growth. In December, the first patient was treated in a clinical trial for a pioneering virus technology targeting cancer cells. The technology was originally developed by Cardiff University scientists. Our future is bright.
For many years, the fair access agenda in UK HE has emphasised more transparent and consistent admissions processes that are underpinned by clearer criteria and targeted support. As a qualified accountant and training in Lean Six Sigma, I’ve always been drawn to efficiency, clarity, and measurable improvement – principles that shaped much of my work in HE. However, as I moved into more senior roles and worked more closely with institutional decision-makers, I started to ask a different kind of question: why do some reforms, even when implemented well, seem to make little real difference?
That question sits at the centre of my doctoral research. Despite significant reforms the social composition of Durham University’s student body has felt largely unchanged. From within the institution, it was evident that fairer offer-making was not translating into meaningful shifts in the home-student entrant profile. This revealed an uncomfortable truth: so far, no amount of investment or policy reform can, by itself, reshape the social forces that determine who sees a Durham degree as desirable.
To understand why, we need to stop looking only at what universities do, and start looking at how students behave, and how the wider customer base, or audience, signals who belongs where.
Why aren’t internal reforms enough?
The limited shift in Durham’s home-student body prompts a key question: are our current metrics assuming universities can control demand, when in fact they can only affect the choices of applicants already in their pool?
My research used fourteen years of UCAS admissions data for Durham University to analyse how applicant characteristics, predicted attainment, school type, and socio-economic background intersect with admissions decisions and outcomes. Using multivariate logistic regression and Difference-in-Differences (DiD) analysis, I examined the impact of Durham’s 2019 move from decentralised to centralised admissions.
Results
Since the centralisation of admissions in 2019:
Contextual students are now 72% more likely to receive an offer, reflecting a major shift in offer-making behaviour.
Contextual applicants to selecting departments remain 40% less likely to get offers than those applying to recruiting ones.
No improvement is seen in firm-acceptance rates, suggesting culture or fit still shape applicant choices.
Insurance-acceptance has risen 21%, showing Durham is increasingly seen as a backup option for these students.
Contextual students are now 2% less likely to enrol after receiving an offer, raising concerns about deeper barriers to entry.
Trend Analysis
The findings were initially encouraging with Contextual applicants became more likely to receive an offer after centralisation. However, the increased offer rate had very limited effect on who actually enrolled. Contextual applicants were increasingly likely to accept alternative universities before Durham. Meanwhile, the proportion of entrants from higher parental SES groups increased, and independent-school students (already overrepresented) continued to make up around one-third of Durham’s home undergraduate intake in 2023.
Who is in control of demand?
While Durham has a history of taking affirmative action for contextual students, these findings illustrate that the OfS-set POLAR4 ratios will never be achievable for somewhere like Durham because these measures assume that universities themselves control demand. Drawing on Organisational Ecology, I argue that this assumption is flawed.
To understand why improved offer-making did not shift entrant composition, we need to look beyond institutional behaviour and examine the ecosystem dynamics that shape demand. Just as ecosystems rely on diversity, so does HE. No institution can appeal to every audience, nor should it. Organisations operate within ecosystems shaped by social, economic, and political forces, and crucially by their audiences, who ultimately determine demand. Therefore, it is the audience that defines an organisation’s niche. In HE, applicants gravitate toward universities that align with their social tastes, expectations, and sense of belonging. Therefore, the most powerful forces shaping demand are the social networks and information transmissions within and these influence applicants long before they apply: what they hear at school, family expectations, and what peers believe “people like us” do—and where “people like us” go.
Currently, wider systemic shifts are reinforcing and entrenching Durham’s niche, especially among white independent-school applicants:
As Oxbridge intensifies its widening participation initiatives, applicants who traditionally succeed (predominantly white students from independent schools) are increasingly less likely to secure offers.
These applicants seek the closest alternative to the Oxbridge experience, with Durham emerging as a preferred option.
Durham is increasingly accepted as a firm choice because of its perceived “fit” with these applicants’ identity and expectations (as seen in this research).
Applicants from non-traditional backgrounds thus perceive a lack of belonging.
As a result, these applicants are less likely to select Durham as their firm choice.
While these dynamics may prompt questions about whether Durham could or should shift away from its position as an “almost-Oxbridge” institution, the evidence suggests that only limited movement is structurally possible. Organisational Ecology predicts that Durham’s niche will remain relatively stable over time and there are many benefits of sticking with a niche approach. The university may be able to broaden its appeal slightly at the margins, drawing in more students from POLAR4 Q3 and Q4 backgrounds, but POLAR4 Q1 and Q2 students are likely to remain outliers. The real question is therefore not whether Durham can radically transform its appeal, but whether it can create the conditions in which those who do apply feel they can belong and thrive. This is where the OfS should take action because, rather than holding universities accountable for applicant pools (which they do not control), it should focus on the areas where institutional agency is strongest. Improving the lived experience of contextual students, strengthening narrative and cultural inclusion, and raising offer-to-acceptance conversion rates are all within Durham’s sphere of influence. Current patterns, particularly the relatively low acceptance and entry rates among contextual applicants, suggest that cultural barriers remain. Regulators should therefore attend less to the composition of the total entrant pool and more to how effectively institutions support, retain, and attract those who already see themselves as potential members of the community.
Taken together, the wider systemic effects detailed above reinforce, rather than shift, Durham’s niche. Only a proportion of applicants will ever feel an affinity with the institution, which is entirely natural in a diverse HE ecosystem where students gravitate toward environments that resonate with their identities and expectations.
These systemic forces lie largely outside Durham’s control, and changing the feedback loop requires more than procedural reform. It demands narrative change within the social networks where ideas of belonging are first formed, and a commitment to ensuring that the lived experiences of contextual students at Durham are positive and affirming. Building stronger partnerships with schools can help shift these early perceptions, while amplifying the stories and experiences of students from diverse backgrounds can offer powerful, alternative points of identification. Applicants make decisions based not just on information, but on a deep, intuitive sense of whether a place feels like it’s for “people like us”. This cannot be achieved through admissions policy, strategy, or marketing alone. Institutions can also look to examples such as the University of Bristol, which has reshaped its entrant pool through doing exactly this. Their efforts have influenced not only who feels able to apply, but who can genuinely imagine themselves thriving within the institution, resulting in a gradual shift in their niche.
Proposal for new metrics
If we evaluate universities on metrics that assume they control demand, we will misread both the problem and the solution. In the short term, universities cannot determine who chooses to apply, but they can influence who feels confident enough to accept an offer, which may, as seen with Bristol, create gradual shifts in the entrant pool over time. Universities can and should work to broaden their niches, yet Organisational Ecology reminds us that institutions rarely move far from their point of peak appeal, meaning Durham’s niche is likely to remain relatively stable and only widen at the margins. Expecting rapid transformation would be like assuming a population adapted to the Arctic could swiftly relocate to the Caribbean. That’s not saying it’s not possible, but it is not fast. Any substantial change in who feels an affinity with Durham will likewise unfold slowly, as cultural experiences and social narratives evolve. In the meantime, improving the lived experience of contextual students, and seeing this reflected in rising conversion rates, is the most realistic and meaningful early sign of movement within the niche. This stability also means that proportion-based performance measures will continue to make the University appear as though it is underperforming, even when it is behaving exactly as expected within its ecological position. Durham has added complexities in that it will always occupy a relatively small share of the HE market because the physical constraints of Durham City limit expansion. This adds presents further broadening of the niche simply because they can’t change by admitting more students.
Therefore, metrics focused solely on broad institutional demand will never fully capture the dynamics of access or institutional “progress”. However, rising conversions – from offer to firm acceptance or offer to entry – among contextual students would signal a growing sense of fit, belonging, or affinity. And even if these students never form a majority, improving conversion is a meaningful and realistic way to measure widening participation progress, because it focuses on what an institution can actually influence, the student experience.
To take these social forces seriously, and to acknowledge that a healthy HE system depends on a diversity of institutions meeting the diverse needs of students, we need metrics that reflect audience attraction and demand dynamics. Current proportion-based measures, fail to capture these realities. Instead, I propose:
Because Russell Group institutions occupy a similar position in the Blau Space (they attract applicants with comparable social, cultural, and educational characteristics), organisational ecology theory suggests they compete in neighbouring overlapping niches. This means that isolated widening participation initiatives at a single institution may simply redistribute socially advantaged applicants across the group rather than increase diversity overall. Coordinated widening participation strategies across the Russell Group would therefore reduce competitive displacement and support genuine, sector-wide broadening of access.
Introduce regulatory metrics that reward successful conversion, for example offer-to-firm-acceptance rates for underrepresented groups, rather than focusing solely on offers or entrant proportions. This would bring cultural belonging into WP evaluation by capturing the fact that where these students accept an offer and enter, there is likely be a greater sense of affinity, a place where they feel they can “fit”, belong, and succeed.
Measure and report the impact of cross-institution outreach among universities with similar audience profiles, recognising that widening participation is driven by sector-level dynamics rather than isolated institutional efforts.
Track behavioural demand patterns (such as firm-choice decisions) across groups of institutions to reveal how social signalling influences applicant preferences.
The future of access lies in changing what we measure—and what we tell ourselves
Universities often feel they are held solely accountable for widening access, yet my research demonstrates that applicant perceptions, social networks, and systemic hierarchies play an equally powerful role. The most important conclusion of this research is that access outcomes are co-produced. Universities are not solely responsible for entrant composition; applicants are active agents whose perceptions and choices shape institutional realities. To make meaningful change, we need approaches that reflect this distributed responsibility. To make real progress, we must rethink both the metrics we prioritise and the narratives we reproduce.
Fair admissions processes matter – but without addressing the social dynamics shaping applicant behaviour, procedural fairness alone will never deliver equitable outcomes. By shifting the sector’s focus to behavioural metrics and narrative change, we can begin to challenge the feedback loops that sustain exclusivity and move toward a system where access is genuinely a collaborative effort.
Durham University may never appeal to more than a small share of the applicant pool, but perhaps the real measure of success is ensuring that those who do not fit the perceived mould feel confident enough to accept and enter. Ecosystems flourish through diversity, and so does HE; no single institution can – or should – meet every need. Our responsibility is to keep access fair, to reshape the narratives that limit choice, and to support those who want to join us to feel that they truly belong. In focusing on this conversion (from offer to entrant) we move toward a more honest and sustainable understanding of what widening participation success looks like. We cannot control the applicant pool, but we can influence the student experience, the narratives that spread through their networks, and their confidence in imagining themselves belonging here.
Dr Kate Ayres is a Chartered Management Accountant (CIMA) with a DBA from Durham University, where her research explored market niches and widening participation in UK HE through organisational ecology using quantitative methods. She has worked across finance, academic, and project management roles in UK Higher Education, including positions at Durham University and the University of Oxford. Kate currently serves as an Academic Mentor on the Senior Leaders Apprenticeship at Durham University Business School. Her work brings together analytical insight, organisational experience, and a commitment to improving HE culture. She also co-manages and sings with the Durham University Staff Chamber Choir, which she founded.
When the NHS launched its Long-Term Workforce Plan in 2023, it set out an ambitious vision: to nearly double the number of doctors and nurses through the first fully comprehensive national workforce strategy in its history. For universities (the institutions responsible for training these professionals) it offered rare clarity. Yet without a clear funding and implementation framework, progress quickly stalled.
Two years on, that ambition has not only faltered but, in some respects, reversed. Both universities and NHS trusts face severe financial pressures: universities are cutting courses and staff, while trusts reduce job vacancies and apprenticeships. Meanwhile, universities remain excluded from decisions shaping the future workforce.
Although Labour supported the Conservatives’ plan while in opposition, in office it has taken a different approach. The NHS 10-year plan, published last June, gave limited attention to workforce issues.
With the government committed to reducing net migration, boosting homegrown staff remains a priority, though now on a smaller scale. An entirely new workforce plan is expected in the spring, envisaging fewer staff – but with better conditions and “more exciting roles”. In the meantime, a radical change in the relationship between the NHS and higher education is needed.
Contradictions
Alliance universities educate a third of England’s nurses, a significant share of allied health professionals, and a growing number of doctors. We’re innovating and collaborating on degree apprenticeships, opening medical schools and creating new pathways into health careers. Yet as with the previous long-term workforce plan, universities have barely been consulted – despite being central to delivering the workforce the NHS needs.” The recent call for evidence on the forthcoming plan didn’t mention universities once.
That is why key bodies representing healthcare educators recently sent a joint letter to health ministers calling for education, training, and research to be at the heart of the 10-year workforce plan. We are asking for a cross-government taskforce to coordinate efforts on student recruitment, retention, clinical placement capacity, and planning. These systematic issues are at the heart of the NHS workforce crisis – not poor-quality education and training.
Universities can help scale solutions, but only if government stops pulling policy levers in opposite directions. These contradictions undermine progress: the Department for Education’s decision to scrap level 7 apprenticeship funding directly conflicts with the NHS’ emphasis on advanced practice. Add to that the patchy engagement of Integrated Care Systems with educators, leaving universities uncertain about their role in local workforce planning.
Despite these mixed signals, universities continue to devise innovative approaches. At Oxford Brookes, the School of Nursing and Midwifery operates as a joint venture with two NHS trusts, sharing leadership and strategic planning to align education with workforce needs. In North Central London, Middlesex University works with the Integrated Care Board to raise the profile of nursing in social care, providing bespoke training that has cut A&E admissions from care homes. These partnerships show what’s possible when universities are treated as equal partners, aligning education with workforce needs and improving patient outcomes.
Joint work on the pipeline
But innovation alone can’t compensate for a shrinking recruitment pipeline, which is still largely unaddressed by policymakers. Nursing applications have fallen post-Covid and in the wake of the cost-of-living crisis. Attrition figures often mislead: many students do not drop out but delay completion due to life pressures – financial strain, caring responsibilities, and mental health challenges. Intensive placements leave little room for paid work, compounding these pressures. University Alliance supports the RCN’s proposal for a loan forgiveness scheme in exchange for time served and an uprated learning support fund to keep students in training.
If we want a future-ready nursing and midwifery workforce, we need to ditch the outdated obsession with counting hours and start focusing on outcomes. The NMC will soon be consulting to reduce its requirements from 4,600 to 3,600 programme hours, which is a small step in the right direction.
The pandemic showed what’s possible when regulators embrace flexibility. Emergency standards unlocked innovation in simulation and digital training. Today, Alliance universities use augmented reality mannequins and advanced simulation suites to replicate hospital and home-care settings – boosting confidence and easing placement pressures. Scaling these solutions, however, requires capital investment and regulatory reform – neither of which is happening fast enough.
Flexibility isn’t just about training hours – it’s about pathways too. Degree apprenticeships have been one of the NHS’s success stories, creating alternative routes into nursing and allied health professions. However, without attention, the NHS risks losing one of its most flexible entry points into the profession.
Social Market Foundation research found that intensive inspection regimes, audits and reporting processes from multiple oversight bodies are driving up costs and leading to some universities leaving the market. Some successful programmes have been paused because employers can’t afford backfill costs. Anglia Ruskin University developed the UK’s first medical doctor degree apprenticeship to tackle shortages in rural communities at considerable cost – only for the level 7 funding decision to slam the brakes on expansion.
Long-term ambitions
Finally, if the NHS is to move beyond a hospital-centric model – a long-term government ambition – universities must help drive that change. The infrastructure to support the shift to community care has been hollowed out over decades.
Alliance universities are piloting community nursing pathways, increasingly arranging placements in primary care and social care settings. But growth is significantly hampered by a shortage of community staff able to supervise students. Without investment and clear career routes, graduates will continue to gravitate toward acute settings, and the vision of neighbourhood care will remain a mirage.
The next workforce plan is a chance to break the cycle of short-term fixes and build a sustainable system. That means joining-up health and education policy, embracing regulatory flexibility, and investing in the infrastructure that enables transformation. Above all, it means treating universities as strategic partners. Without these measures, ambitions for a homegrown, future-ready workforce will remain out of reach.
State universities would be responsible for portions of students’ defaulted loans under legislation advanced Wednesday by an Iowa House subcommittee.
House Study Bill 540 would require state universities to offset 25% of a borrower’s liability if they default on an educational loan taken out to attend the institution. This means the university would be liable for 25% of what the student owes.
More than 40% of Iowa public college graduates finish their education debt-free, Iowa Board of Regents State Relations Officer Jillian Carlson said, and those who do take out loans receive financial counseling early in their college career “to help them right-size their debt and advise them on not taking out more than they need.”
“One question or concern that we do have is to clarify whether students who default on their loans are actually defaulting because they’re unable to make the payments, versus defaulting on their loans because they know that we would pick up 25% of the bill when they actually do have the resources to make the payments,” Carlson said.
Rep. Heather Matson, D-Ankeny, said there are important, practical questions on the topic of universities potentially being liable for defaulted loans that are not answered in the bill, such as where the money to take on these debts would come from. She also asked whether it should be the responsibility of a university to “be on the hook for” part of a loan in certain situations, like if a graduate finds themself in medical debt and must decide how they’ll use their money to stay safe and healthy.
“I think it’s important to recognize that the majority party talks a lot about personal responsibility, especially when it comes to student loans,” Matson said. “So I’m curious as to why you all are proposing to put a graduate’s financial decisions back onto a university if personal responsibility for student loans is so incredibly important.”
Rep. Jeff Shipley, R-Fairfield, said during the subcommittee meeting he believes the idea presented in the bill has “some merit.” He and subcommittee chair Rep. Taylor Collins, R-Mediapolis, approved the legislation to move to the Iowa House Higher Education Committee.
“My general thoughts are, we need to make sure we have some skin in the game when it comes to … the future employment of these individuals, once they graduate,” Collins said.
Iowa Capital Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: [email protected].
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This blog was kindly authored by Dr Alessandro Siani, Senior Teaching Fellow at the School of the Environment and Life Sciences, University of Portsmouth.
There is a visible shift in mood across higher education in the UK. Whether in committee meetings or coffee breaks in between lectures, conversations have moved from the familiar tongue-in-cheek moaning about marking and grant proposal deadlines to more foreboding tones and matters. If the current academic zeitgeist had to be summarised in a single word, it would probably be ‘survival’ – both at the institutional and individual level.
While budget cuts, institutional restructures, and a certain degree of uncertainty have always been a part of academic life, there is a palpable feeling of impending doom in UK higher education. The mounting pressure felt by institutions across the country is different from the peaks and troughs universities are accustomed to: this time it feels structural rather than cyclical, with no clear solution in sight. With academic and professional staff feeling overworked and undervalued, and two-thirds of university staff considering leaving the sector, it is clear that the current situation is not sustainable.
Lifting higher education out of its current slump is likely to require a paradigm shift in how educational institutions are funded and managed. To move forward, however, it is worth asking how the sector ended up in such dire straits in the first place.
Restructuring, redundancies, and the burden on those who remain
The UCU’s live tracker of redundancies, restructures, reorganisations and closures across the UK higher education sector offers a sobering insight into the impact of underfunding on institutions and people alike. As of December 2025, the tracker lists a hundred and five higher education institutions as currently undergoing redundancy and restructuring programmes, and universities have announced over twelve thousand job cuts over the previous year alone.
The consequences of the job cuts are not only catastrophic for those who find themselves suddenly unemployed. After each redundancy round, the remaining staff are left struggling with uncertainty around further cuts on the horizon, survivor’s guilt and drastically increased workloads. Despite carrying an ever-growing emotional and operational burden, staff often end up sacrificing their time and wellbeing to ensure that student support, research outputs and administrative responsibilities continue to be delivered to a high standard.
Workload models: when the numbers lose meaning
Given these challenges, senior leadership teams often find themselves caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, they are tasked with sustaining operations with shrinking budgets and skeleton staff, which inevitably leads to unpopular decisions. On the other, they are aware of the need to preserve morale in a workforce already stretched thin.
In this context, workload models can appear like an attractive solution, offering – at least in principle – a transparent way to allocate an increasing amount of work amongst dwindling staff numbers. Workload models are automated systems used to quantify and allocate workload by assigning a set time allocation to each task – for example, thirty minutes for marking an essay. The problem arises when time allocations are manipulated to deflate the formal workload, artificially creating capacity to carry out additional work. In the previous example, if the allowance for marking an essay was reduced from thirty to ten minutes, staff would be expected to mark three times as many papers in the same time – which realistically means taking thrice as long if (as is usually the case) staff are unwilling to carry out the task to a significantly lower standard. Under the veneer of fairness and organisational efficiency, workload models are increasingly being revealed for what they often are: an accounting trick to prove that there is still capacity and justify staff cuts and increased workloads.
Despite all of this, most higher education institutions continue to function – not because the current system works, but because the staff on the ground are working to breaking point and beyond to keep things running. To ensure the long-term sustainability of the sector, the focus should shift from surviving to thriving, and the planning from tactical to strategic.
A two-pronged policy intervention should constitute the bedrock of academic funding and sustainability. The first prong is an increase in governmental support: it is imperative that governments, regardless of their political colour, acknowledge that higher education is a remunerative investment in the future not just of our learners, but also of our communities, industries, economy and nation at large. It is also crucial to reverse policies that have been proven to cause financial strain (such as the restrictions on international student visa introduced under Sunak), or at the very least to avoid further aggravating them, as it appears to be the case with the proposal set forward by the Starmer government in 2025 to extend the visa restrictions to research master’s courses.
At present, the only certainty is that staff trust and goodwill cannot be expected to last forever and, unless urgent action is taken to stop their erosion, it will be hard to rebuild institutional cultures that were fostered over decades of hard and collegial work.
Harvard officials wrote in financial statements that fiscal year 2025 “tested Harvard in ways few could have anticipated.”
Zhu Ziyu/VCG/Getty Images
Uncertainty has been the single most damaging aspect of the second Trump administration, professors have said, with university finances taking a hit despite the impact of many of the president’s cuts not yet coming to fruition.
Although many of the harshest cuts have been quietly rescinded or blocked by the courts, universities have suffered considerable damage and are likely to face more systematic reforms to research in future, said Marshall Steinbaum, assistant professor of economics at the University of Utah.
“Beyond the high-profile, ideologically ostentatious cuts to some aspects of federally funded research, the whole enterprise is set to be less lucrative for universities going forward,” he told Times Higher Education.
Even though many of the cuts might not come to fruition, the uncertainty caused by having to plan for potential cuts had been the most damaging aspect, said Phillip Levine, professor of economics at Wellesley College.
“There’s still tremendous damage that’s been done, [but] the damage isn’t as extensive as it could have been.”
Levine said he was most worried about undergraduate international student enrollment, which often takes longer to feel the impacts of policy decisions.
Visa concerns were blamed for overseas student numbers falling by a fifth last year, but Harvard University recently announced a record intake, despite Trump’s attempts to ban its international recruitment.
But the institution did report its first operating deficit since 2020 in its financial statements—stating that the 2025 fiscal year “tested Harvard in ways few could have anticipated.”
Many institutions will suffer in the long term from a series of changes to student loan repayment. Trump has rolled back parts of the student loan origination system and introduced less generous income-based repayment plans and limits on federal loans, which will pose financial challenges to universities.
Recent research found that more than 160,000 students may be unable to find alternative sources of financing when the cap for loans kicks in later this year.
“The three-legged stool of higher education finance in the United States is tuition, federal research funding and state appropriations,” said Steinbaum. “All three legs have been cut down in the last year.”
Todd Ely, professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado–Denver, said the traditionally diversified revenue portfolio of higher education had been weakened—which he said was particularly worrying because it coincided with the arrival of the “demographic cliff” and a hostile narrative around the value of a college degree.
Although highly selective and well-endowed private and public institutions will adjust more easily to the new environment, Ely said, “‘Uncertainty’ remains the watchword for U.S. higher education.”
“Research-intensive institutions, historically envied for their diverse revenue streams and lack of dependence on tuition revenue, have had their model of higher education funding thrown into disarray,” Ely added. “The battle for tuition-paying students will only increase, straining the enrollments of less selective and smaller private colleges and regional public universities.”
Robert Kelchen, professor and head of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Tennessee, said cuts within universities are mitigating some of the effects of these pressures.
“The general financial challenges facing higher education prior to the Trump administration have not abated, and the cuts to federal funding have been notable,” said Kelchen.
“Universities need to try to get funding from other sources, such as students and donors,” Kelchen added, “but that is often easier said than done in a highly competitive landscape.”
If accessibility was being treated as an afterthought in higher education, then that ended in June 2025.
The European Accessibility Act (EAA) came into force on 28 June 2025, and it applies to all UK universities that serve EU disabled students, sell into EU markets, or run EU-based partnerships and enterprises.
Meanwhile, for those universities looking to expand operations into other international markets, India has gone further.
Its Supreme Court has declared accessibility a constitutional right, new standards are enforceable in law, and fines are already being issued.
Global convergence is happening. Universities that think they can ignore it may be sleepwalking into criminal liability.
Beyond PSBAR
The UK already has the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations (PSBAR), which legal eagles will recall came into force in 2019 across public-sector bodies in Europe and the UK. PSBAR already monitors the accessibility of digital products such as websites and apps, and sanctions are civil.
For vice chancellors and chief operating officers, this is no longer a compliance box to tick. It’s a personal risk.
Both PSBAR and EAA cover:
Virtual Learning Environments, Continuing Professional Development platforms, and publishing systems
Websites, apps, digital documents, and email attachments
Audiovisual media and cultural collections
Now hardware is also in scope for EAA, from smartphones to laboratory kit. That means every corner of the institution must be born accessible – IT, procurement, estates, marketing, research, teaching, enterprise, and the university press. And don’t forget the sector’s elephant in the room – legacy systems. Retrofitting is messy, costly, and in many cases unworkable.
Faced with ageing platforms and the difficulty of retrofitting legacy systems and content, many institutions are turning to so-called “quick-fix” tools such as overlays that promise to make websites accessible and compliant at the flick of a switch.
While these can appear to improve surface-level usability, regulators have made clear that they do not replace compliance with core standards such as Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
For leaders, the risk is assuming that bolt-ons have solved the problem – when in reality, only intentional design, governance, and testing with disabled people will stand up to regulatory scrutiny.
Who owns accessibility?
The uncomfortable truth is that many universities don’t know who owns accessibility. Governance is weak, responsibilities diffuse, and decisions are made without the right expertise in the room.
Too often, a shiny new rebrand is unveiled before anyone realises it isn’t accessible. By then, fixes are expensive and reputationally embarrassing. The solution? Put digital experience and accessibility specialists at the table from the start, to help with scoping, strategy, procurement, governance, and sign-off. These governance challenges have been raised across the sector.
Fans of Cartesian dualism may suggest the sector faces a choice:
Basic compliance – scramble to patch systems, pray regulators don’t look too closely.
Inclusive excellence – embed accessibility in governance, procurement, and culture.
The second option unlocks real gains – improved student experience with a knock-on for NSS scores, stronger international recruitment, efficiencies in procurement, and staff upskilling. It can also help secure routes to research funding, given Research Council and Horizon priorities for EDIA (Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and… Accessibility).
Some universities are deploying accessibility apprenticeships and paid accessibility internships, as well as disabled student panels for accessibility. This is the kind of initiative that could give the UK sector a genuine competitive edge, and is testament to the great work taking place at a grassroots level across the sector.
For those teams managing universities’ sprawling and complex digital estates, clear plans and roadmaps are needed to guide procurement, commissioning, audits, and improvements.
Having a well-defined strategy, proper planning, and good digital governance can make the process much smoother. However, without sustained backing from the top, and the mandate or authority to decommission ineffective systems and websites, these teams are limited in what they can achieve.
The global direction of travel
If Europe feels far away, look at India. In 2025, over 150 organisations were fined under new accessibility rules. Educational institutions are explicitly in scope. Early adoption of EAA standards positions UK universities ahead of this regulatory convergence. While UK laws may differ in some respects from India’s, they are all pointing in the same direction – accessibility is an essential requirement for the physical environment, digital systems, documents, media, hardware, and services.
Accessibility is about disabled students. It’s also a test of digital maturity, institutional leadership, and international credibility. The European Accessibility Act is a wake-up call. The only real choice left is whether universities treat it as a burden or seize it as an opportunity for inclusive excellence.
Global accessibility standards are coming. The only question is whether the UK sector will be ahead of the curve or behind it.
Education in England remains segmented by regulation.
Schools operate within Ofsted’s education inspection framework and the statutory regimes of the DfE. FE colleges navigate the new suite of Ofsted frameworks alongside funding and skills accountability structures. Universities face OfS oversight, TEF metrics, and the expectations of the professional standards framework (PSF).
Even within universities, initial teacher training (ITT) can sit slightly apart. It is tightly regulated, operationally complex, and often detached from wider higher education teaching development.
This fragmentation undermines the very professional identity that all sectors claim to cultivate. Educators, whether in early years, FE, HE or the workplace, share core capabilities: pedagogical reasoning, reflective practice, evidence-informed decision-making and relational skill. Yet current inspection and quality structures often privilege compliance over coherence. The new regulatory climate – with Ofsted’s expanded reach and the Office for Students’ growing emphasis on outcomes – risks hardening rather than healing these divides.
Connected teacher formation
The development of educators should be understood as a connected professional landscape spanning all phases of education. Early-years practitioners cultivate curiosity and foundational learning; FE teachers integrate academic knowledge with technical and vocational practice; HE staff foster critical inquiry and disciplinary expertise; workplace trainers translate theory into competence and innovation.
These contexts differ, yet the core professional capabilities – reflective practice, relational pedagogy, and evidence-informed judgement – are deeply aligned. It is this alignment that offers the potential for genuine coherence across the system.
Yet policy and regulation often pull in the opposite direction. Current agendas, including the post-16 white paper and recent ITT reforms, prioritise measurable outcomes and workforce supply. While these imperatives matter, they risk reducing professional formation to a compliance exercise they privilege evidence collection over reflection and credentials over capability. Entrenching directive, overly prescribed curricula that constrain professional judgement rather than deepen it.
The challenge for higher education is not to reject accountability, but to reclaim its meaning: to own, shape, and model what intelligent, developmental regulation could look like in practice for our educational professionals.
Connecting silos
Higher education institutions are uniquely positioned to reconcile accountability with professional growth across sectors. They already engage in ITT partnerships with schools, support FE teacher education through validated programmes, and offer HE teaching qualifications, from PGCerts to Advance HE fellowships.
Yet in practice these streams often operate in splendid isolation, reinforcing sector barriers, constraining professional mobility, and limiting opportunities for genuine cross-sector learning.
Recognising teacher formation as relational and interconnected allows universities to model genuine professional coherence. QTS, QTLS and HE-specific qualifications should not be seen as separate territories – but as mutually informing frameworks that share a commitment to learning, reflection and the public good. At their best, reflective and research-informed practices become the collaborative engine that drives dialogue and professional mobility to connect schools, FE and HE teaching, fostering shared inquiry, and generating innovation that travels across boundaries rather than staying within them.
The central challenge is one of narrative and ownership. Policy discourse too often frames teacher education as a workforce pipeline and a mechanism for filling vacancies, meeting recruitment targets whilst delivering standardised outputs. While workforce priorities matter, they must not be allowed to define the profession. The new Ofsted frameworks for ITT and FE, and the emerging regulatory language in HE, offer a moment of reckoning: will these instruments shape teachers, or will teachers and universities shape them?
Universities have the intellectual capital, research capacity, and civic role to do the latter. They can reposition teacher education as the means by which professional agency is restored. They can demonstrate that robust accountability can coexist with autonomy, and that inspection need not stifle innovation.
As I’ve set out, ITT, education and training, and HE teaching frameworks share a foundational logic: reflective practice, evidence-informed professionalism, and a commitment to learner outcomes. Treating these frameworks as interdependent rather than siloed gives HEIs the permission to shape, not just satisfy, regulation.
Bridging the gaps
The spaces between sectors – the school-to-FE transition, FE-to-HE pathways, and workplace interfaces – are where professional formation is most fragile. Policy and inspection regimes often treat these spaces as administrative handovers, yet they are precisely where higher education can add value.
Universities can convene cross-sector networks, support shared professional learning, and promote collaborative research that spans education from the early years to lifelong learning. In doing so, teacher education becomes both the hub and the bridge: a central space where insight, evidence and practice converge, and a connective route through which ideas, people and purpose move freely.
When universities play this role with intent, they enable knowledge, skill and reflective practice to travel with educators, strengthening the coherence of teaching as a truly lifelong, connected profession.
Looking forward
Teaching is the connective tissue of education, yet current regulatory and inspection frameworks continue to partition the profession into sector-specific silos, limiting transitions and weakening shared professional identity. The post-16 white paper, ITT reforms, and evolving HE teaching frameworks present more than compliance obligations – they offer a pivotal moment to restructure teacher education towards collaborative, cross-sector and shared professional agency.
HEIs are uniquely positioned to seize this opportunity. By bringing schools, FE, and HE into constructive dialogue, aligning teaching pathways, and engaging inspection regimes strategically, universities can model a profession that is both coherent and adaptive. In doing so, they can collectively lead the sector in addressing complex challenges, ensuring teacher education supports not just quality, but innovation, inquiry, and resilience across the system.
The pressing question is this: if teaching is the thread that binds the system, will higher education step forward to unite the sectors, shape regulation, and demonstrate what it truly means to teach without borders?
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Dive Brief:
Florida’s public universities could be barred from hiring any new employees through the H-1B visa program this year under a policy the system’s leaders are considering this month.
The university system’s Board of Governors plans to vote on introducing the proposed policy change for public comment during its meeting on Jan. 29. The proposal says trustee boards “shall not utilize the H-1B program” for new hires through Jan. 5, 2027.
The policy would carry out the wishes of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who directed the system’s governing board in October to end what he described as “H-1B abuse” at Florida universities. DeSantis argued that Florida’s universities were hiring foreign workers through the program over qualified Americans.
Dive Insight:
The H-1B visa program is intended to allow U.S. employers to hire highly educated foreign workers for specialized positions, such as software development or research. Many high-profile universities, including those in Florida, rely on the program to hire researchers.
The University of Florida, the state’s flagship, employed 253 workers through the H-1B visa program in fiscal 2025, according to federal data. Statewide, it was followed by Florida State University, with 110 H-1B workers, and the University of South Florida, with 107.
Officials from those universities did not immediately respond to Higher Ed Dive’s request for comment on the policy proposal.
In October, DeSantis directed the state’s university system during a press conference to “pull the plug on the use of these H-1B visas in our universities.” With the new proposed policy, the governing board would carry that out through a roughly one-year pause on H-1B hiring.
DeSantis’ views on the H-1B program are in line with the Trump administration’s. In September, President Donald Trump issued a proclamation creating a $100,000 fee on new applications for H-1B visas, setting off alarms in the higher education world and other sectors that rely on these workers.
Nearly three dozen higher education groups have asked U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for a sectorwide exemption to the fee.
In an October letter to Noem, American Council on Education President Ted Mitchell argued that carving out an exemption for higher ed would be similar to the sector’s current exemption from the nationwide annual cap on new H-1B awards,set at 85,000 per year.
The $100,000 policy has also drawn several lawsuits. However, a federal judge sided with the federal government last month on one of those legal challenges, ruling that Trump did not exceed his authority by issuing the proclamation.
The groups who sued, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Association of American Universities, appealed the ruling on Dec. 29.
DeSantis told universities in October to end the use of the visa program.
All Florida public universities would be banned from hiring foreign workers on H-1B visas under a policy change that the Florida Board of Governors will consider next week.
Next Thursday, the board’s Nomination and Governance Committee will consider adding to a policy a line saying the universities can’t “utilize the H-1B program in its personnel program to hire any new employees through January 5, 2027.” If the committee and full Board of Governors approve the addition, there will be a 14-day public comment period.
The proposal, reported earlier by Politico, comes after Florida governor Ron DeSantis ordered the state’s public universities in October to “pull the plug on the use of these H-1B visas.” Fourteen of the Board of Governors’ 17 members are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate.
DeSantis complained about professors coming from China, “supposed Palestine” and elsewhere. He said, “We need to make sure our citizens here in Florida are first in line for job opportunities.”
Last fiscal year, according to a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services database, the federal government approved 253 H-1B visa holders to work at the University of Florida, 146 at the University of Miami, about 110 each at Florida State University and the University of South Florida, 47 at the University of Central Florida, and smaller numbers at other public institutions. Universities use the program to hire faculty, doctors and researchers and argue it’s required to meet needs in health care, engineering and other areas.
Spokespeople for the State University System of Florida and DeSantis didn’t respond to requests for comment Thursday.
The policy revisions would also say that each university board’s “personnel program must not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex.”
