Tag: Universities

Today’s learners have changed – can universities keep up?

Higher education has always prided itself on staying ahead of change. Yet, the last few years have reshaped how people learn, work, and define ‘engagement’ much faster than most institutions anticipated. Engagement is no longer a hand raised in a lecture hall. It may be a late night discussion board post, or a student quietly rewatching a lecture at 1.25x – 1.5x speed – whatever their personal sweet spot for learning may be.

Today’s learners expect to engage on their own terms – and the universities that do not adapt risk falling behind.

Walk onto almost any campus today and you’ll meet an eclectic mix of learners: international students juggling multiple time zones, those studying around work or family commitments, neurodivergent learners who thrive with asynchronous participation, and mature learners returning after long professional careers. All of them, probably looking at their phones.

Learning needs and expectations have rapidly outpaced many traditional institutional models, and they will continue to evolve just as quickly as AI reshapes our world.

Yet, teaching and assessment often still assume a ‘standard student’ – someone who lives nearby, has no dependants, thrives in three hour seminars, loves group work, and apparently doesn’t need sleep. That student certainly exists – but it doesn’t apply to every student, and they are not even the norm anymore. The new classrooms are multigenerational and, like it or not, include learners who will use AI as a tutor, a translator, an assistant, or to whisper the correct answers to them.

Flexibility matters as much as program quality

Flexibility is now just as important to students as program quality. Students aren’t just looking for online resources, they want learning experiences that bend around the complexities of their lives and unlock value for their future employment.

The rise of hybrid and remote work has played a part. Today’s students – many of whom are working alongside their studies – are already accustomed to flexibility, asynchronous communication and digital collaboration. It’s no surprise they expect the same from their learning environments.

Meeting learners where they are

Flexibility does not mean universities must add more tools or redesign their entire curricula overnight. Instead, it means making intentional choices that give every learner meaningful ways to participate.

This can include:

Multiple modes of engagement

A student who is quiet in seminars might contribute confidently in written discussions. Another might absorb information better through video than text. Some need transcripts, captions, or additional time. All are legitimate learning preferences that institutions should plan for.

Assessment choice

Offering varied and new assessment formats broadens the ways students can demonstrate their learning, whether it’s through a written essay, a recorded presentation, a reflective piece, or another method.

Consistent and modern digital spaces

A well organised virtual learning environment should support students, not turn them into detectives hunting for course materials. When resources are always accessible, connected with their favourite apps and easy to find, students can focus their energy on learning rather than navigating platforms.

Accessibility from the outset

Designing with accessibility in mind benefits all learners and reduces barriers. It also spares lecturers from having to re-engineer materials when a student requests accommodations.

Technology won’t solve everything, but it can reduce friction

Debates about technology in higher education are familiar: concerns about pace, complexity, distraction or cost. But technology is not the goal itself. The goal is to remove the barriers that prevent students from engaging fully.

Effective and data-driven digital environments help educators see who is engaging, who may be struggling, and who might need adjustments or support. They offer students personalised pathways through their learning and allow institutions to respond when circumstances change, whether due to shifting demographics or external events.

Good teaching does not depend on technology, but scalable, equitable, mobile and flexible learning does. That’s where technology earns its keep – and maybe even saves a few lecturers from endless email chains.

The risk of doing nothing

Universities that do not adapt to the changing needs of learners are at risk of losing prospective students – and current ones – to institutions that can offer more modern, responsive, flexible experiences.

Students live according to real-time logic: they expect confirmation, follow-up, and immediate responses, just as they do when they shop online, but the answer cannot be to indiscriminately flood classrooms with tools; it is about personalising and adapting to the different generations that now make up the educational landscape.

In a world of multicultural and multigenerational classrooms, engagement now means allowing students to participate in ways that genuinely suit them – not in ways dictated by inherited habits at an institution.

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December 24, 2025
Texas Universities Deploy AI Tools to Review How Courses Discuss Race and Gender – The 74

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A senior Texas A&M University System official testing a new artificial intelligence tool this fall asked it to find how many courses discuss feminism at one of its regional universities. Each time she asked in a slightly different way, she got a different number.

“Either the tool is learning from my previous queries,” Texas A&M system’s chief strategy officer Korry Castillo told colleagues in an email, “or we need to fine tune our requests to get the best results.”

It was Sept. 25, and Castillo was trying to deliver on a promise Chancellor Glenn Hegar and the Board of Regents had already made: to audit courses across all of the system’s 12 universities after conservative outrage over a gender-identity lesson at the flagship campus intensified earlier that month, leading to the professor’s firing and the university president’s resignation.

Texas A&M officials said the controversy stemmed from the course’s content not aligning with its description in the university’s course catalog and framed the audit as a way to ensure students knew what they were signing up for. As other public universities came under similar scrutiny and began preparing to comply with a new state law that gives governor-appointed regents more authority over curricula, they, too, announced audits.

Records obtained by The Texas Tribune offer a first look at how Texas universities are experimenting with AI to conduct those reviews.

At Texas A&M, internal emails show staff are using AI software to search syllabi and course descriptions for words that could raise concerns under new system policies restricting how faculty teach about race and gender.

At Texas State, memos show administrators are suggesting faculty use an AI writing assistant to revise course descriptions. They urged professors to drop words such as “challenging,” “dismantling” and “decolonizing” and to rename courses with titles like “Combating Racism in Healthcare” to something university officials consider more neutral like “Race and Public Health in America.”

Read Texas State University’s guide to faculty on how to review their curriculum with AI

While school officials describe the efforts as an innovative approach that fosters transparency and accountability, AI experts say these systems do not actually analyze or understand course content, instead generating answers that sound right based on patterns in their training data.

That means small changes in how a question is phrased can lead to different results, they said, making the systems unreliable for deciding whether a class matches its official description. They warned that using AI this way could lead to courses being flagged over isolated words and further shift control of teaching away from faculty and toward administrators.

“I’m not convinced this is about serving students or cleaning up syllabi,” said Chris Gilliard, co-director of the Critical Internet Studies Institute. “This looks like a project to control education and remove it from professors and put it into the hands of administrators and legislatures.”

Setting up the tool

During a board of regents meeting last month, Texas A&M System leaders described the new processes they were developing to audit courses as a repeatable enforcement mechanism.

Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs James Hallmark said the system would use “AI-assisted tools” to examine course data under “consistent, evidence-based criteria,” which would guide future board action on courses. Regent Sam Torn praised it as “real governance,” saying Texas A&M was “stepping up first, setting the model that others will follow.”

That same day, the board approved new rules requiring presidents to sign off on any course that could be seen as advocating for “race and gender ideology” and prohibiting professors from teaching material not on the approved syllabus for a course.

In a statement to the Tribune, Chris Bryan, the system’s vice chancellor for marketing and communications, said Texas A&M is using OpenAI services through an existing subscription to aid the system’s course audit and that the tool is still being tested as universities finish sharing their course data. He said “any decisions about appropriateness, alignment with degree programs, or student outcomes will be made by people, not software.”

In records obtained by the Tribune, Castillo, the system’s chief strategy officer, told colleagues to prepare for about 20 system employees to use the tool to make hundreds of queries each semester.

The records also show some of the concerns that arose from early tests of the tool.

When Castillo told colleagues about the varying results she obtained when searching for classes that discuss feminism, deputy chief information officer Mark Schultz cautioned that the tool came with “an inherent risk of inaccuracy.”

“Some of that can be mitigated with training,” he said, “but it probably can’t be fully eliminated.”

Schultz did not specify what kinds of inaccuracies he meant. When asked if the potential inaccuracies had been resolved, Bryan said, “We are testing baseline conversations with the AI tool to validate the accuracy, relevance and repeatability of the prompts.” He said this includes seeing how the tool responds to invalid or misleading prompts and having humans review the results.

Experts said the different answers Castillo received when she rephrased her question reflect how these systems operate. They explained that these kinds of AI tools generate their responses by predicting patterns and generating strings of text.

“These systems are fundamentally systems for repeatedly answering the question ‘what is the likely next word’ and that’s it,” said Emily Bender, a computational linguist at the University of Washington. “The sequence of words that comes out looks like the kind of thing you would expect in that context, but it is not based on reason or understanding or looking at information.”

Because of that, small changes to how a question is phrased can produce different results. Experts also said users can nudge the model toward the answer they want. Gilliard said that is because these systems are also prone to what developers call “sycophancy,” meaning they try to agree with or please the user.

“Very often, a thing that happens when people use this technology is if you chide or correct the machine, it will say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry’ or like ‘you’re right,’ so you can often goad these systems into getting the answer you desire,” he said.

T. Philip Nichols, a Baylor University professor who studies how technology influences teaching and learning in schools, said keyword searches also provide little insight into how a topic is actually taught. He called the tool “a blunt instrument” that isn’t capable of understanding how certain discussions that the software might flag as unrelated to the course tie into broader class themes.

“Those pedagogical choices of an instructor might not be present in a syllabus, so to just feed that into a chatbot and say, ‘Is this topic mentioned?’ tells you nothing about how it’s talked about or in what way,” Nichols said.

Castillo’s description of her experience testing the AI tool was the only time in the records reviewed by the Tribune when Texas A&M administrators discussed specific search terms being used to inspect course content. In another email, Castillo said she would share search terms with staff in person or by phone rather than email.

System officials did not provide the list of search terms the system plans to use in the audit.

Martin Peterson, a Texas A&M philosophy professor who studies the ethics of technology, said faculty have not been asked to weigh in on the tool, including members of the university’s AI council. He noted that the council’s ethics and governance committee is charged with helping set standards for responsible AI use.

While Peterson generally opposes the push to audit the university system’s courses, he said he is “a little more open to the idea that some such tool could perhaps be used.”

“It is just that we have to do our homework before we start using the tool,” Peterson said.

AI-assisted revisions

At Texas State University, officials ordered faculty to rewrite their syllabi and suggested they use AI to do it.

In October, administrators flagged 280 courses for review and told faculty to revise titles, descriptions and learning outcomes to remove wording the university said was not neutral. Records indicate that dozens of courses set to be offered by the College of Liberal Arts in the Spring 2026 semester were singled out for neutrality concerns. They included courses such as Intro to Diversity, Social Inequality, Freedom in America, Southwest in Film and Chinese-English Translation.

Faculty were given until Dec. 10 to complete the rewrites, with a second-level review scheduled in January and the entire catalog to be evaluated by June.

Administrators shared with faculty a guide outlining wording they said signaled advocacy. It discouraged learning outcomes that describe students “measure or require belief, attitude or activism (e.g., value diversity, embrace activism, commit to change).”

Administrators also provided a prompt for faculty to paste into an AI writing assistant alongside their materials. The prompt instructs the chatbot to “identify any language that signals advocacy, prescriptive conclusions, affective outcomes or ideological commitments” and generate three alternative versions that remove those elements.

Jayme Blaschke, assistant director of media relations at Texas State, described the internal review as “thorough” and “deliberative,” but would not say whether any classes have already been revised or removed, only that “measures are in place to guide students through any adjustments and keep their academic progress on track.” He also declined to explain how courses were initially flagged and who wrote the neutrality expectations.

Faculty say the changes have reshaped how curriculum decisions are made on campus.

Aimee Villarreal, an assistant professor of anthropology and president of Texas State’s American Association of University Professors chapter, said the process is usually faculty-driven and unfolds over a longer period of time. She believes the structure of this audit allows administrators to more closely monitor how faculty describe their disciplines and steer how that material must be presented.

She said the requirement to revise courses quickly or risk having them removed from the spring schedule has created pressure to comply, which may have pushed some faculty toward using the AI writing assistant.

Villarreal said the process reflects a lack of trust in faculty and their field expertise when deciding what to teach.

“I love what I do,” Villarreal said, “and it’s very sad to see the core of what I do being undermined in this way.”

Nichols warned the trend of using AI in this way represents a larger threat.

“This is a kind of de-professionalizing of what we do in classrooms, where we’re narrowing the horizon of what’s possible,” he said. “And I think once we give that up, that’s like giving up the whole game. That’s the whole purpose of why universities exist.”

The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

Disclosure: Baylor University, Texas A&M University and Texas A&M University System have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.

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December 20, 2025
How U.S. Universities Reproduce Global Inequality
In the public imagination, universities are bastions of knowledge, debate, and progress. Yet beneath the veneer of research and scholarship lies a more troubling reality: many American institutions of higher education are deeply enmeshed in structures of global power, empire, and inequality. From elite research universities to sprawling public institutions, higher education in the United States not only reflects the hierarchies of the world it inhabits but actively reproduces them.

The complicity of universities is neither incidental nor simply a matter of individual choices by administrators. As scholars have noted, the mechanisms of institutional power are deeply structural. Economic and geopolitical pressures shape research priorities, hiring practices, and funding relationships. Academic capitalism, which treats universities as competitive, profit-driven enterprises, has become the norm rather than the exception (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2022). Faculty labor is increasingly precarious, tenure-track opportunities are scarce, and institutional priorities are subordinated to external market logics. The consequences are profound: the promise of knowledge as a public good is eroded, and access is increasingly limited to those already advantaged by class, race, or geography.

U.S. universities’ entanglement with empire is global in scope. Historical patterns of colonialism persist in the form of research agendas, partnerships, and international collaborations that favor dominant powers. The post-apartheid South African university system, for example, demonstrates how neoliberal pressures reshape higher education into corporatized, commodified institutions, constraining equity and social justice efforts (Jansen, 2024). Similarly, elite U.S. institutions reproduce intersectional inequalities, privileging white male scholars while marginalizing women and scholars from the Global South, consolidating a global hierarchy of knowledge production (Smith & Rodriguez, 2024). Knowledge itself becomes a commodity, valued not for its capacity to enlighten or empower but for its capacity to reinforce global hierarchies.

Military and defense connections illustrate another dimension of complicity. ROTC programs, defense research contracts, and partnerships with intelligence agencies embed universities directly within state power and the machinery of imperial control. Students from working-class backgrounds may see military scholarships as pathways to mobility, yet these programs impose long-term obligations, exposure to systemic discrimination, and moral risk, binding individuals to structures that serve national and corporate interests rather than individual or public welfare (Johnson, 2024). By providing both material incentives and ideological framing, universities shape not only research and discourse but also life trajectories, often in ways that reproduce existing inequalities.

Technological developments exacerbate these trends. The rise of artificial intelligence in global education exemplifies digital neocolonialism, where Western frameworks dominate curricula and knowledge production, marginalizing non-Western epistemologies (Lee, 2024). Universities, in adopting and disseminating these technologies, participate in global systems that enforce cultural hegemony while presenting an illusion of neutrality or progress.

Critics argue that U.S. higher education’s complicity is most visible during crises abroad. In Venezuela, universities have hosted panels and research collaborations that echo dominant U.S. policy narratives, while largely ignoring humanitarian consequences (Higher Education Inquirer, 2025). During conflicts in Yemen and Gaza, partnerships with foreign institutions and the enforcement of donor or corporate agendas frequently coincide with silence on human rights abuses. Even when individual scholars attempt to challenge these norms, institutional pressures—funding dependencies, prestige incentives, and market logics—often constrain their capacity to act.

The structural nature of this complicity means that reform cannot be solely individual or performative. Transparency in funding, ethical scrutiny of partnerships, and protection for dissenting voices are necessary but insufficient. Universities must critically examine their embeddedness within global systems of extraction, surveillance, and domination. They must ask whether the pursuit of prestige, rankings, or revenue aligns with the purported mission of fostering equitable knowledge production. Only through systemic, structural change can institutions move from passive complicity toward active accountability.

The implications of these dynamics extend beyond academia. Universities train professionals, shape policy, and generate research that informs global decision-making. When they normalize inequality, silence dissent, or serve as instruments of state or corporate power, the consequences are felt in classrooms, clinics, policy offices, and across global societies. Students, researchers, and communities are both shaped by and subjected to these power structures, often in ways that perpetuate the very inequalities institutions claim to challenge.

In exposing these patterns, recent scholarship has provided both a theoretical and empirical foundation for critique. From analyses of academic capitalism and labor precarity (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2022) to examinations of global knowledge hierarchies (Smith & Rodriguez, 2024) and digital neocolonialism (Lee, 2024), researchers have mapped the pathways through which higher education reproduces systemic inequality. By integrating these insights, scholars, students, and policymakers can begin to imagine alternatives—universities that truly serve knowledge, equity, and global justice rather than empire and market logic.

Higher education’s promise has always been aspirational: the idea that knowledge might liberate rather than constrain, enlighten rather than exploit. Yet in the current landscape, universities often do the opposite, embedding global hierarchies within their governance, research, and pedagogical frameworks. Recognizing this complicity is the first step. Confronting it requires courage, structural awareness, and a commitment to justice that extends far beyond the walls of the academy.

References
- Higher Education Inquirer. (2025). Higher Education and Its Complicity in U.S. Empire. https://www.highereducationinquirer.org/2025/11/higher-education-and-its-complicity-in.html
- Jansen, J. (2024). The university in contemporary South Africa: Commodification, corporatisation, complicity, and crisis. Journal of Education and Society, 96, 15–34.
- Johnson, M. (2024). The hidden costs of ROTC and military pathways. Higher Education Inquirer. https://www.highereducationinquirer.org/2025/11/the-hidden-costs-of-rotc-and-military.html
- Lee, C. (2024). Generative AI and digital neocolonialism in global education: Towards an equitable framework. arXiv:2406.02966.
- Slaughter, S., & Rhoades, G. (2022). Not in the Greater Good: Academic capitalism and faculty labor in higher education. Education Sciences, 12(12), 912.
- Smith, R., & Rodriguez, L. (2024). The Howard‑Harvard Effect: Institutional reproduction of intersectional inequalities. arXiv:2402.04391.
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December 18, 2025
Universities must be a reason for optimism about the country’s future

Last week, Universities UK’s members came together, as we do three times a year, to take stock of the state of the university sector. We were joined by Ted Mitchell, the President of the American Council on Education and a personal hero of mine.

Ted joined us in Tavistock Square, where Universities UK has its headquarters, and where Charles Dickens once lived. Fittingly, he came in the guise of the ghost of Christmas yet to come. He told us about the onslaught of measures which have been taken by the Trump administration in relation to higher education and research: from the restriction of research funding on ideological grounds, to attacks on university autonomy with threats and legal action against universities which don’t comply with the administration’s demands.

Recently, the US federal government proposed a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” – a nine page document offering unspecified rewards in terms of access to federal funding for universities which voluntarily agreed to a set of commitments, covering issues ranging from eliminating the consideration of personal characteristics such as race or sex in admissions, to freezing tuition fees for five years.

It demanded universities prohibit employees from making statements on social or political matters on behalf of the university; screen international students for “anti-American values”; and eliminate departments that are “hostile to conservative ideas.” The compact was initially offered to nine universities. When eight of them refused to sign up, the administration expanded the offer to all 4,000 universities and colleges in the US. So far, two have agreed to sign.

Ted was asked to reflect on a simple question. Knowing what has happened, what would you do differently if you could turn back time by three years? He gave us five pieces of advice, and I think they are worth thinking about very seriously indeed.

Ted talks, we should listen

First: he would have listened more to the critics of the higher education system.

Second: he would have worked to identify the weaknesses in the sector – the things that universities and colleges are rightly criticised for. The sense that the US system is “rigged” against some students, particularly in relation to admissions; that there was a lack of transparency around the costs and financial support packages on offer, such that students often didn’t understand what the deal was; and the fact that about 40 per cent of students who entered higher education dropped out before completing their degree. He would have worked hard to take those issues “off the table”, removing the grounds for criticism by addressing the causes.

Third: he would have talked to those who were critical, especially at the political level, and asked what evidence would be necessary to convince them that “we are not who you think we are.” He would ask “how would you know we are doing better?”

Fourth: he would strive to “move the narrative” by “bringing your case to the people you serve” – focusing strongly on local and community impact, playing to the great strengths of the US university system which is, like ours, often loved locally when it is not thought of so fondly nationally.

Fifth and finally: he would have recognised that this is a 10-year problem which requires a long term solution, which will involve patiently building relationships and allies, but which starts with trying to get the hugely diverse US higher education system pulling in the same direction, allowing different institutions to focus on the things which matter most to them, but with a coherent guiding set of core principles behind them. These, he argued might be based on Justice Felix Frankfurter’s four essential freedoms of a university: freedom to determine who may teach, what may be taught, how it should be taught, and who may be admitted to study.

Here in the UK

What do we do with this advice? Universities UK has been thinking very hard about the reputation of the university sector for some time, and we have been paying close attention to the experience of our US colleagues.

Reading the compact I was doubly horrified, both by the extremity of the measures it proposed, and by the familiarity of the issues on the table. So I believe Ted’s advice is good, and that we need to take it seriously.

Over the next year Universities UK will start to implement a strategy that we have spent much of this year developing. At its heart is a set of simple ideas, which echo all of the points Ted made in his address to us.

We will listen and be responsive to others’ views, including those of our strongest critics.

We will seek to identify and address areas where we are vulnerable and will build the strategy around a willingness to be accountable and responsive. But we will do it in an unapologetically positive way, asking ourselves what the country needs of its universities now, in this decade, and the decades to come? How do we need to evolve to serve those needs? This is work we started with the Universities UK Blueprint, which was strongly reflected in the Westminster government’s post-16 white paper. We intend to position universities as a reason to be optimistic about this country’s future, the source of both historic and future success.

We will call on all parts of the political spectrum to back universities because they are one of the things that Great Britain and Northern Ireland are best at, and to work with us to develop a long term plan which will ensure that they can be what the nation needs them to be, for the next generation.

We will be clear that the country needs its universities to step up now, as we have many times in the past, to deliver on our promise as engines of the economy.

We will seek to build support around the idea that we’re at our best as a nation when we are making the most of talented people from all walks of life – just as universities changed in the Victorian era to ensure that working men (for they were predominantly but not exclusively men) could power the industrial revolution, through the creation of a new generation of arts and mechanical institutes which evolved to become some of our great civic universities.

We could do more to ensure that we can’t be accused of political bias as institutions, while defending the right of individuals to express their views, within the law, as guardians of free speech and academic freedom.

But first and most importantly, we owe it to our students to make good on the promises we offer them about the opportunities that a higher education opens up. We recognise that we are in a period of profound disruption to the labour market as a result of a new industrial revolution driven by artificial intelligence. We are on the cusp of a major demographic shift, as the young population starts to shrink. We must show that we can be agile, adapt and prepare students to be resilient and successful as the labour market changes around them, and serve a broader range of students in more diverse ways, at different points in their lives.

Finally, following Ted’s great advice, we will be patient and take a long term approach, and we will use that time to build relationships and allies, not by asking people to advocate for us, but by building a shared sense of vision about how we need to change to give this country the best chance of success.

Over the course of the next year, Universities UK will start to unfold our own strategy under the banner of Future Universities. We don’t want to do this alone, but want to align with anyone who thinks that this country’s success needs its universities in great shape, doing more of the great stuff, and fixing the things that need to be fixed. Come with us.

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December 15, 2025
International postgraduate enrolments continue to fall across UK universities

Fresh enrolment data indicates a further fall in overseas students starting postgraduate courses in September 2025, marking another year of decline.

Of 69 universities responding to a survey from the British Universities International Liaison Association (BUILA) in November 2025, 61% reported a decrease in postgraduate enrolments in international students in September 2025-26 compared with the previous year.

Across all study levels, overall enrolments from overseas students are down 6%, according to the latest release from BUILA.

Despite the drop, data shows that many institutions are seeing growth in postgraduate enrolments from the EU and the US, with average rises of 13% and 19% respectively.

But the biggest overall enrolment drops came from China, where 80% of universities reported average declines of 17%. For India, 63% of institutions reported average drops of 9%.

The decline is not as steep as previous years, where in November 2024, 80% of universities reported lower international postgraduate enrolments, with a 20% decrease overall, according to HESA data.

International students play a key role in UK postgraduate education, in 2023-24 making up 71% of full-time postgraduate enrolments and contributing significantly to universities’ teaching and research capacity.

The continued decline in international postgraduate enrolments this year is largely driven by increased competition from other global education destinations
_{Andrew Bird, BUILA}

“The continued decline in international postgraduate enrolments this year is largely driven by increased competition from other global education destinations,” explained Andrew Bird, chair of BUILA.

“With global competition intensifying, the government must act to protect the UK’s reputation as a world-leading study destination while balancing its immigration agenda.”

The total number of study visas issued to international students fell by 19% between 2022 and 2024, as reported by The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford.

The decline in study visas comes as universities prepare for the introduction of the international student levy, which will see English universities will charged a flat fee of £925 per international student per year from August 2028.

Under the levy, each institution will receive an allowance covering only their first 220 students each year.

The continued drop in international student numbers is likely to put additional financial pressure on universities, which rely heavily on fees from these students to support their budgets.

“With measures like the international student levy and tighter recruitment rules still to come, we urge the government to deliver a much-needed period of stability for the sector,” Bird added.

“The budget confirmed that the levy will be introduced from 2028, so while 2026 enrolments are unlikely to be impacted, universities will be considering how to navigate the impact of this in a challenging financial environment.”

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December 12, 2025
Policy Impact Undervalued by Universities

Barely a third of social scientists believe their university would promote them based on the strength of their research impact, a global poll of researchers has found.

Asked whether their institution would promote or give tenure to a scholar for their efforts to apply research outside academia, only 37 percent of 1,805 social scientists surveyed by Sage agreed.

Only 28 percent of respondents said their efforts to make a difference outside academia would lead to additional research funding from their institution, while just 35 percent said their university offered awards or prizes to recognize impact.

Thirty percent of the survey’s respondents, who came from 92 countries, say they receive no recognition at all for this work.

Instead, the survey by the U.S.-based social sciences publisher suggested institutions tend to value and reward publication in highly cited journals more than academics. Asked whether the ultimate goal of research is to make a positive impact on society, 92 percent agreed this is the case for themselves, but only 68 percent believe it’s true for institutions.

“I don’t care about impacting my colleagues and being cited—I want to impact practice in the field,” explained one U.S.-based respondent, who added there is “no good way to know if this happens.”

“All the other metrics (like rejection rates, Google scores) are internal to the discipline and don’t really measure anything useful,” the researcher continued, according to the Sage report, titled “Do Social Scientists Care If They Make Societal Impact?” and published Tuesday.

Similarly, 91 percent of researchers agree the ultimate goal of research is to build on the literature and enable future research, but only 71 percent think the leaders at their institution agree with this.

That perceived misalignment between the motivation of social scientists and institutions should prompt a rethink on whether prestige metrics used in academia are misaligned with values, argues the Sage report.

It notes that researchers value peer regard more than citation metrics, yet they perceive that administrators prioritize impact factors, creating tension in tenure and promotion decisions.

“At times, this means we have to challenge the status quo of what matters in higher education—for example, by moving beyond an overemphasis on scholarly impact measures [and] toward recognizing research that benefits people through policy, practice and public life,” said Ziyad Marar, president of global publishing at Sage.

“It’s important that we listen closely to researchers themselves as we do this work—understanding what motivates them, where they focus their efforts and what barriers stand in their way. This report does exactly that,” he added.

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December 12, 2025
Willamette and Pacific Universities Plan Merger

If approved, the merger between Willamette (above) and Pacific would create the largest private university in Oregon.

Pacific University and Willamette University have signed a letter of intent to merge, pending approval, which would create the largest private institution in Oregon if the deal is finalized.

Together the two institutions have a collective study body of about 6,000 students.

“If finalized and approved, this merger would be a defining moment for private higher education in the region. Pacific and Willamette are both deeply rooted in Oregon’s history and have educated thousands of leaders who have helped make the Pacific Northwest synonymous with innovation and excellence,” Willamette president Steve Thorsett said in a news release.

Pacific president Jenny Coyle emphasized a shared “commitment to addressing the region’s most pressing workforce needs while preserving the personalized, mission-driven education that defines both of our institutions” and the opportunity to leverage “our collective strengths.”

The combined entity would be known as the University of the Northwest.

The two institutions plan to operate under a shared administrative structure but maintain their respective campuses, admissions requirements, academic programs and athletic teams. Their main campuses are located roughly an hour apart; Willamette is in Salem and Pacific in Forest Grove. Willamette also has a campus in Portland that houses an art college.

The merger will require approval from regulatory bodies, including the Department of Education.

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December 11, 2025
Re-thinking research support for English universities: Research England’s programme of work during the REF 2029 pause
In September, Science Minister Lord Vallance announced a pause to developing REF 2029 to allow REF and the funding bodies to take stock. Today, REF 2029 work resumes with a refreshed focus to support a UK research system that delivers knowledge and innovation with impact, improving lives and creating growth across the country.

Research England has undertaken a parallel programme of work during the pause, intended to deliver outcomes that align with Government’s priorities and vision for higher education as outlined in the recently published Post-16 Education and Skills white paper. Calling this a pause doesn’t reflect the complexity, pace and challenge faced in delivering the programme over the last three months.

Since September, we have:
- explored the option of baseline performance in research culture being a condition of funding
- considered how our funding allocation mechanisms in England could be modified to better reward quality, as part of our ongoing review of Strategic Institutional Research Funding (SIRF)
- fast-tracked existing activity related to the allocation of mainstream quality-related research funding (QR).
- developed our plans to consider the future of research assessment.
Over the last three months to progress this work, we’ve engaged thoughtfully with groups across the English higher education and research sector, as well as with the devolved funding bodies, to help us understand the wider context and refine our approaches. Let me outline where we’ve got to – and where we’re going next – with the work we’ve been doing.

Setting a baseline for research cultures

Each university, department and team are unique. They have their own values, priorities and ways of working. I therefore like to think of ‘research cultures and environments’, using the term in plural, to reflect this diversity. The report of the REF People, Culture and Environment pilot, also published today, confirms that there is excellent practice in this area across the higher education sector. REF 2029 offers an opportunity to recognise and reward those institutions and units that are creating the open, inclusive and collaborative environments that enable excellent research and researchers to thrive.

At the same time, we think there are some minimum standards that should be expected of all providers in receipt of public funding. To promote these standards, we will be strengthening the terms and conditions of Research England funding related to research culture. In the first instance, this will mean a shift from expecting certain standards to be met, to requiring institutions to meet them.

We are very conscious not to increase burden on the sector or create unnecessary bureaucracy. This will only succeed by engaging closely with the sector to understand how this can work effectively in practice. To this end, we will be engaging with groups in early 2026 to establish rigorous standards that are relevant across the diversity of English institutions. As far as possible, we will use existing reporting mechanisms such as the annual assurance report provided by signatories to the Research Integrity Concordat. While meeting the conditions will not be optional, we will support institutions that don’t yet meet all the requirements, working together and utilising additional reporting to help with and monitor improvements. And because research cultures aren’t static, we will evolve our conditions over time to reflect changes in the sector.

This will lead to sector-wide improvements that we can all get behind:
- support for everyone who contributes to excellent and impactful research: researchers, technicians and others in vital research-enabling roles, across all career stages
- ensuring research in England continues to be done with integrity
- ensuring that is also done openly
- strengthening responsible research assessment.
Our next steps are to engage with the sector and relevant groups as part of the process of making changes to our terms and conditions of funding, and to establish low-burden assurance mechanisms. For example, working as part of the Researcher Development Concordat Strategy Group, we will collectively streamline and strengthen the concordat, making it easier for institutions to implement this important cross-sectoral agreement.

These changes will complement the assessment of excellent research environments in the REF and the inspiring practice we see across the sector. Championing vibrant research cultures and environments is a mission that transcends the REF — it’s the foundation for maintaining and enhancing the UK’s world-leading research, and we will continue to work with the devolved funding bodies to fulfil the mission.

Modelling funding mechanisms

The formula-based, flexible research funding Research England distributes to English universities is crucial to underpinning the HE research landscape, and supporting the

financial sustainability of the sector. We are aware that that this funding is increasingly being spread more thinly.

As part of the review of strategic institutional research funding (SIRF), we are working to understand the wider effectiveness of our funding approaches and consider alternative allocation mechanisms. Work on this review is continuing at speed. We will provide an update to the sector next year on progress, as well as the publication of the independent evaluation of SIRF, anticipated in early 2026.

Building on this, we have been considering how our existing mechanisms in England could be modified to better reward quality of research. This work looks at how different strands of SIRF – from mainstream QR to specialist provider funding – overlap, and how that affects university finances across English regions and across institution types. We are continuing to explore options for refining our mainstream QR formula and considering the consequences of those different options. This is a complex piece of work, requiring greater time and attention, and we expect next year to be a key period of engagement with the sector.

The journey ahead

While it may seem early to start thinking about assessment after REF 2029, approaches to research assessment are evolving rapidly and it is important that we are able to embrace the opportunities offered by new technologies and data sources when the moment comes. We have heard loud and clear that early clarity on guidance reduces burden for institutions and we want to be ready to offer that clarity. A programme of work that maximises the opportunity offered by REF 2029 to shape the foundation for future frameworks will be commencing in spring 2026.

Another priority will be to consider how Research England as the funding body for England, and as part of UKRI, can support the government’s aim to encourage a greater focus on areas of strength in the English higher education sector, drawing on the excellence within all our institutions. As I said at the ARMA conference earlier in the year, there is a real opportunity for universities to identify and focus on the unique contributions they make in research.

The end of the year will provide the sector (and my colleagues in Research England and the REF teams) with some much-needed rest. January 2026 will see us pick back up a reinvigorated SIRF review, informed by the REF pause activity. We will continue to refine our research funding and policy to – as UKRI’s new mission so deftly puts it – advance knowledge, improve lives and drive growth.
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December 10, 2025
Why Universities Need a Strategic Marketing Shift
This past week, presenting at the UPCEA MEMS conference in Boston, we explored a question that is becoming central to the future of higher education: What does it actually take to engage learners in lifelong learning with an institution?

In a moment of rising enrollment volatility, shifting global dynamics and accelerating technological change, this question cuts to the heart of what universities must become. For decades, higher education has centered its marketing and enrollment strategy around discrete, program-level recruitment pipelines: find prospective students, convert them into a program and repeat the cycle for the next cohort.

But today’s learners don’t behave in discrete cycles. Their lives aren’t structured around one big decision. They move fluidly across roles, industries and learning needs. They progress in fits and starts. They upskill to chase opportunity or reskill to navigate disruption. They return to learning not once, but many times over.

And that means universities have a unique opportunity—if they choose to seize it.

Rethinking Acquisition

Rather than thinking transactionally—acquiring each enrollment anew—we can build relationships that honor a simple premise: If we provide value consistently, learners will keep choosing us.

This is about rewriting the social contract. Not only with current students, but with alumni, midcareer professionals, online learners and the millions of individuals who may engage with us long before (or long after) a degree is on the table.

Gone are the days when it is sufficient for a university to promise that earning a college degree is all that is needed for a long, successful career. Today’s learners and our broader society demand more.

Instead, imagine a world where a learner begins with a short online experience or a noncredit course from an institution and immediately encounters a clear, welcoming pathway:

Try something, learn something, earn a credential, return to learn more; stack the credentials and pursue a degree; return again for what’s next in their career and life.

This is not an acquisition and retention strategy rooted in constraints. It is a relationship strategy rooted in community, trust and relevance.

Lifetime learning becomes a shared journey and not simply a recruitment goal.

Why Strategic Marketing Must Shift

Much of higher ed’s traditional marketing infrastructure was built for a different era—one where programs were stable, pipelines were predictable and learners followed linear paths. Budgets are owned by program leaders, who allocate a portion to marketing “their” program. Central marketing functions may provide brand guidelines and a few templates. Marketing happens in silos across the institution.

Challenges to this model today abound: from surging paid media costs and the rise of nontraditional learners to how AI is reshaping both labor markets and learner preferences. In this landscape, marketing single programs in isolation is not only inefficient—it’s misaligned with how learners actually behave.

The more effective and learner-centered approach is clear.

Market On-Ramps and Pathways, Not Just Destinations

Instead of funding dozens of disconnected campaigns across schools and units, universities can invest centrally in marketing strategic portfolios of programs, composed of not just degrees but noncredit courses, certificates and more. This aligns messaging, reduces duplication, supports brand coherence, expands reach and—most importantly—mirrors the way different learner segments make decisions.

People don’t all jump straight into an undergraduate degree or master’s program. They explore. They try something small and low-risk. They re-engage when life or work creates new urgency. They seek clarity, not complexity.

Portfolio-based marketing meets them where they are.

Building for Lifelong Value

At the University of Michigan, we have been reorganizing our approach to online learning and marketing through this lens. Michigan Online, stewarded by the Center for Academic Innovation, serves as our unified destination for online, noncredit and for-credit learning opportunities.

When a learner enters Michigan Online, our goal is not simply to direct them to a single offering; we welcome them into a coherent ecosystem.
1. Pathways That Make Progression Clear
We’ve aligned noncredit courses and certificates with for-credit opportunities, creating intentional pathways that help learners move from exploration to deeper engagement. When learners earn value early, the transition to degrees becomes more natural and more meaningful.
1. CRM and Automation as Relationship Infrastructure
We invested in CRM and marketing automation, bringing together noncredit and for-credit learner records into a single enterprise system. Just as importantly, we invested in the people and processes to use the tools well. This allows us to nurture learners over time, personalize recommendations, track cross-program engagement and create communications that feel relevant rather than transactional.
1. A Shared Experience, Not a Siloed One
By unifying messaging, branding and learner pathways, Michigan Online makes it easier for individuals to see themselves across programs, schools and stages of life. Instead of navigating institutional boundaries, they navigate opportunities.
1. Reduced Reliance on Expensive Paid Media
When the value is built into the learning itself—and when pathways clearly connect noncredit to for-credit—universities can rely less on costly late-funnel advertising. The relationship, not the ad spend, becomes the engine of enrollment.

The Future Belongs to Institutions That Build Relationships, Not Funnels

A lifetime-value approach to learners is not simply a marketing strategy. It is an institutional strategy. It asks universities to:
- Design portfolios—not just degree programs
- Welcome learners early—with value, not pressure
- Create seamless transitions between credential types
- Embrace personalization at scale
- Invest in shared infrastructure instead of parallel campaigns
- Build trust by offering meaningful learning at every stage
Learners are telling us, through their behavior and their choices, that the old model no longer fits. They want ecosystems, guidance and clarity. They still want courses and content but they also want coaching and community. They want to return again and again, not because they’re targeted—but because they’re well served.

The question for universities is not whether this shift is coming. It’s whether they will lead it. Leading means protecting a direct relationship with learners—so access, quality, privacy and long-term benefit remain anchored in educational values, not solely in market logic

We believe that if institutions embrace this more holistic, value-centered approach—one rooted in lifelong relationship-building—they will not only strengthen enrollment resilience. They will also deepen their impact, broaden their reach and fulfill the promise at the heart of higher education: to support learners not just once, but throughout their lives.

James DeVaney is associate vice provost for academic innovation and the founding executive director of the Center for Academic Innovation at the University of Michigan.

James Cleaver is chief marketing officer for the Center for Academic Innovation at the University of Michigan.

Carol Podschwadt is associate director of marketing for the Center for Academic Innovation at the University of Michigan.
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December 9, 2025
Labour must not repeat history by sidelining research in post-92 universities

As Labour eyes reshaping the higher education sector, it risks reviving a binary divide that history shows would weaken UK research.

While there is much to admire in the post-16 education and skills white paper regarding the vision for upskilling the population, there are some more difficult proposals. There in the shadows lies the call for HE institutions to specialise, with the lurking threat that many will lose their research funding in some, but perhaps many, areas, in order to better fund those with more intensive research.

The threat resides in the very phrasing used to describe research funding reform in the white paper, the “strategic distribution of research activity across the sector” to ensure institutions are “empowered to build deep expertise in areas where they can lead.” What is the benchmark here for judging whether someone can lead?

It raises once again the question: should non-intensive research institutions – by which I largely here mean post-92 universities – undertake research at all?

Since the paper came out, both Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology Liz Kendall and science minister Sir Patrick Vallance have stressed that this “specialisation” will not privilege the traditional elite institutions, with Sir Patrick describing as “very bizarre” the idea that prioritisation necessarily means concentration of power in a few universities.

Liz Kendall echoes this logic, framing strategically focused funding as akin to a “no-compromise approach,” similar to investing more intensely in select Olympic sports to win medals rather than spreading resources thinly over many.

Yet for many post-92 institutions, this re-engineering of UK research funding spells very real danger. Under a model that favours “deep expertise” in fewer, strongly performing institutions, funding for more broadly based teaching and research universities risks erosion. The very students and communities that post-92 universities serve – often more diverse, more regional, and less elite – may find themselves further marginalised.

Moreover, even where teaching-only models are adopted, there is already private concern that degrees taught without regular input from research-active staff risk being perceived as inferior, despite charging similar fees. Pushing these providers towards a “teaching-only” role risks repeating a mistake we thought we had left behind before 1992, when polytechnics undertook valuable research but were excluded from national frameworks.

Excellence and application

When I wrote earlier this year that so-called “research minnows” have a vital role in UK arts and humanities doctoral research, the argument was simple: diversity of institutions, methods, locations, and people strengthens research. That truth matters even more today.

Before 1992, polytechnics undertook valuable research in health, education, design and industry partnerships, amongst other things. But they were structurally excluded from national assessment and funding. In 1989, Parliament described that exclusion as an “injustice,” now it appears it may be seen as just. Yet it’s not clear what has materially changed to form that view, beyond a desire to better fund some research.

The 1992 reforms did not “invent” research in the ex-polytechnics. They recognised it – opening the door to participation in the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), quality-related funding and Research Council grants. Once given visibility, excellence surfaced quickly. It did so because it had always been there.

In the 1996 Research Assessment Exercise – only the second in which post-92s could take part – De Montfort University’s Built Environment submission was rated 4 out of 5*. That placed it firmly in the category of nationally excellent research with international recognition, a standard many established pre-92 departments did not reach in that assessment panel. Indeed, the University of Salford topped the unit of assessment with 5*, just as City did in Library Studies. In Civil Engineering, the 5s of UCL and Bristol were also matched by City.

In Physics, Hertfordshire with a 4 equalled most Russell Group universities, as did their score in Computer Science. In the areas of Linguistics and in Russian Thames Valley (University of West London) and Portsmouth earned 5s respectively, equalling Oxford and Cambridge. In Sports Liverpool John Moores and Brighton topped the ranking alongside Loughborough with their 5s.

And it wasn’t just the ex-polytechnics that shone in many areas; the universities formed from institutes also did. The University of Gloucester outperformed Cambridge in Town and City Planning with their 4 against a 3a. Southampton Solent received a 4 in History, equalling York.

The RAE 1996 results are worth recalling; as new universities who had previously not had the seed funding monies of the older universities, we certainly punched above our weight.

Since their re-designation as universities, and even before, post-92 universities have built distinctive and complementary research cultures: applied, interdisciplinary, and place-anchored. Their work is designed to move quickly from knowledge to practice – spanning health interventions to creative industries, curriculum reform to urban sustainability.

Applied and interdisciplinary strength was evident in 1996 in the high scores (4) in areas of Allied Health, (Greenwich, Portsmouth and Sheffield Hallam), sociology (4) (City), Social Policy (4) (London South Bank and Middlesex). Art and Design was dominated by post 92s, as were Communications and Cultural Studies (with 5s for Westminster and University of East London). In Music, City (5), DMU and Huddersfield (4) saw off many pre-92s.

This is not second-tier research. It broadens the national portfolio, connects directly to communities, and trains the professionals who sustain public services. To turn these universities into “teaching-only” providers would not only weaken their missions, it would shrink the UK’s research base at the very moment that the government wants it to grow.

Learning history’s lessons

Research, which as we know universities undertake at a loss, has been subsidised over the last decades through cross subsidy from international student fees and other methods. Those who have been able to charge the highest international fees have had greater resource.

But I wonder what the UK research and economic landscape would look like now if thirty years ago national centres of excellence were created following the 1996 RAE, rather than letting much of our excellent national research wither because there was no institutional cross subsidy available? Had that been undertaken we would have stronger research now, with centres of research excellence in places where the footprint of that discipline has entirely disappeared.

There is a temptation to concentrate funding in fewer institutions, on the assumption that excellence lives only in the familiar elite. But international evidence shows that over-concentration delivers diminishing returns, while broader distribution fosters innovation and resilience. Moreover, our focus on golden triangles, clusters and corridors of innovation, can exclude those more geographically remote areas; we might think of the University of Lincoln’s leadership of advancing artificial intelligence in defence decision-making or agri-tech, or Plymouth’s marine science expertise. Post-92 research is often conducted hand-in hand with industry; a model that is very much needed.

If the government wants results – more innovation, stronger services, a wider skills base – it must back promising work wherever it emerges, not only in the institutions the system has historically favoured.

The binary divide was abolished in 1992 because it limited national capacity and ignored excellence outside a privileged tier. Re-creating that exclusion under a new label would repeat the same mistake, and exclude strong place-based research.

If Labour wants a stronger, fairer system, it must resist the lure of neat hierarchies and support the full spectrum of UK excellence: theoretical and applied, lab-based and practice-led, national and local. That is the promise of the so-called “minnows” – not a drag on ambition, but one of the surest ways to achieve it. Sometimes minnows grow into big fish!

Fund wherever there is excellence, and let that potential grow – spread opportunity wide enough for strengths to surface, especially in institutions that widen participation and anchor regional growth. The lesson is clear: when you sideline parts of the sector, you risk cutting off strengths before they are seen.

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December 8, 2025