A panel of experts discuss the health workforce crisis at the UA Solutions Summit 2025. Picture: UA
Three Australian healthcare experts last week told universities how to solve the biggest challenges and possible solutions to a number of issues.
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I’ll admit that the Neil O’Brien-powered analysis of graduate repayments in The Times recently annoyed me a little.
There’s nothing worse than somebody attempting to answer a fascinating question with inappropriate data (and if you want to read how bad it is I did a quick piece at the time). But it occurred to me that there is a way to address the issue of whether graduate repayments of student loans do see meaningful differences by provider, and think about what may be causing this phenomenon.
What I present here is the kind of thing that you could probably refine a little if you were, say, shadow education minister and had access to some numerate researchers to support you. I want to be clear up top is that, with public data and a cavalier use of averages and medians, this can only be described as indicative and should be used appropriately and with care (yes, this means you Neil).
There is a difference in full time undergraduate loan repayment rates over the first five years after graduation by provider in England when you look at the cohort that graduated in 2016-17 (the most recent cohort for which public data over five years is available).
This has a notable and visible relationship with the proportion of former students in that cohort from POLAR4 quintile 1 (from areas in the lowest 20 per cent of areas).
Though it is not possible to draw a direct conclusion, it appears that subject of study and gender will also have an impact on repayments.
There is also a relationship between the average amount borrowed per student and the proportion of the cohort at a provider from POLAR4 Q1.
The combination of higher average borrowing and lower average earnings makes remaining loan balances (before interest) after five years look worse in providers with a higher proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds..
On the face of it, these are not new findings. We know that pre-application background has an impact on post-graduation success – it is a phenomenon that has been documented numerous times, and the main basis for complaints about the use of progression data as a proxy for the quality of education available at a provider. Likewise, we know that salary differences by gender and by industry (which has a close but not direct link to subject of study).
The Longitudinal Educational Outcomes dataset currently offers a choice of three cohorts where median salaries are available one, three, and five years after graduation. I’ve chosen to look at the most recent available cohort, which graduated in 2016-17.
Thinking about the five years between graduation and the last available data point, I’ve assumed that median salaries for year 2 are the same as year 1, and that salaries for year 4 are the same as year 3. I can then take 9 per cent of earnings above the relevant threshold as the average repayment – taking two year ones, two year threes, and a year five gives me an average total repayment over five years.
The relevant threshold is whatever the Department for Education says was the repayment threshold for Plan 1 (all these loans would have been linked to to Plan 1 repayments) for the year in question.
How much do students borrow? There is a variation by provider – here we turn to the Student Loans Company 2016 cycle release of Support for Students in Higher Education (England). This provides details of all the full time undergraduate fee and maintenance loans provided to students that year by provider – we can divide the total value of loans by the total number of students to get the average loan amount per student. There’s two problems with this – I want to look at a single cohort, and this gives me an average for all students at the provider that year. In the interests of speed I’ve just multiplied this average by three (for a three year full time undergraduate course) and assumed the year of study differentials net out somehow. It’s not ideal, but there’s not really another straightforward way of doing it.
We’ve not plotted all of the available data – the focus is on English providers, specifically English higher education institutions (filtering out smaller providers where averages are less reliably). And we don’t show the University of Plymouth (yet), there is a problem with the SLC data somewhere.
This first visualisation gives you a choice of X and Y axis as follows:
You can highlight providers of interest using the highlighter box – the size of the blobs represents the size of the cohort.
Of course, we don’t get data on student borrowing by provider and subject – but we can still calculate repayments on that basis. Here’s a look at average repayments over five years by CAH2 subject (box on the top right to choose) – I’ve plotted against the proportion of the cohort from POLAR4 Q1 because that curve is impressively persistent.
For all of the reasons – and short cuts! – above I want to emphasise again that this is indicative data – there are loads of assumptions here. I’m comfortable with this analysis being used to talk about general trends, but you should not use this for any form of regulation or parliamentary question.
The question it prompts, for me, is whether it is fair to assume that providers with a bigger proportion of non-traditional students will be less effective at teaching. Graduate outcome measures may offer some clues, but there are a lot of caveats to any analysis that relies solely on that aspect.
by Ourania Filippakou
Open universities have long symbolised a radical departure from the exclusivity of conventional universities. Conceived as institutions of access, intellectual emancipation, and social transformation, they promised to disrupt rigid academic hierarchies and democratise knowledge. Yet, as higher education is increasingly reshaped by market logics, can open universities still claim to be engines of social progress, or have they become institutions that now reproduce the very inequalities they sought to dismantle?
This question is not merely academic; it is profoundly political. Across the globe, democratic institutions are under siege, and the erosion of democracy is no longer an abstraction – it is unfolding in real time (cf EIU, 2024; Jones, 2025). The rise of far-right ideologies, resurgent racism, intensified attacks on women’s and LGBTQ+ rights, and the erosion of protections for migrants and marginalised communities all point to a crisis of democracy that cannot be separated from the crisis of education (Giroux, 2025). As Giroux (1984) argues, education is never neutral; it can operate as both a potential site for fostering critical consciousness and resistance and a mechanism for reproducing systems of social control and domination. Similarly, Butler (2005) reminds us that the very categories of who counts as human, who is deemed grievable, and whose knowledge is legitimised are deeply political struggles.
Open universities, once heralded as radical interventions in knowledge production, now find themselves entangled in these struggles. Increasingly, they are forced to reconcile their egalitarian aspirations with the ruthless pressures of neoliberalism and market-driven reforms. The challenge they face is no less than existential: to what extent can they uphold their role as spaces of intellectual and social transformation, or will they become further absorbed into the logics of commodification and control?
My article (Filippakou, 2025) in Policy Reviews in Higher Education, ‘Two ideologies of openness: a comparative analysis of the Open Universities in the UK and Greece’, foregrounds a crucial but often overlooked dimension: the ideological battles that have shaped open universities over time. The UK Open University (OU) and the Hellenic Open University (HOU) exemplify two distinct yet converging trajectories. The UK OU, founded in the 1960s as part of a broader post-war commitment to social mobility, was a political project – an experiment in making university education available to those long excluded from elite institutions. The HOU, by contrast, emerged in the late 1990s within the European Union’s push for a knowledge economy, where lifelong learning was increasingly framed primarily in terms of workforce development. While both institutions embraced ‘openness’ as a defining principle, the meaning of that openness has shifted – from an egalitarian vision of education as a public good to a model struggling to reconcile social inclusion with neoliberal imperatives.
A key insight of this analysis is that open universities do not merely widen participation; they reflect deeper contestations over the purpose of higher education itself. The UK OU’s early success inspired similar models worldwide, but today, relentless marketisation – rising tuition fees, budget cuts, and the growing encroachment of corporate interests – threatens to erode its founding ethos.
Meanwhile, the HOU was shaped by a European policy landscape that framed openness not merely as intellectual emancipation but as economic necessity. Both cases illustrate the paradox of open universities: they continue to expand access, yet their structural constraints increasingly align them with the logic of precarity, credentialism, and market-driven efficiency.
This struggle over education is central to the survival of democracy. Arendt (1961, 2005) warned that democracy is not self-sustaining; it depends on an informed citizenry capable of judgment, debate, and resistance. Higher education, in this sense, is not simply about skills or employability – it is about cultivating the capacity to think critically, to challenge authority, and to hold power to account (Giroux, 2019). Open universities were once at the forefront of this democratic mission. But as universities in general, and open universities in particular, become increasingly instrumentalised – shaped by political forces intent on suppressing dissent, commodifying learning, and hollowing out universities’ transformative potential – their role in sustaining democratic publics is under threat.
The real question, then, is not simply whether open universities remain ‘open’ but how they define and enact this openness. To what extent do they serve as institutions of intellectual and civic transformation, or have they primarily been reduced to flexible degree factories, catering to market demands under the guise of accessibility? By comparing the UK and Greek experiences, this article aims to challenge readers to rethink the ideological stakes of openness in higher education today. The implications extend far beyond open universities themselves. The broader appeal of this analysis lies in its relevance to anyone interested in universities as sites of social change. Open universities are not just alternatives to conventional universities – they represent larger struggles over knowledge, democracy, and economic power. The creeping normalisation of authoritarian politics, the suppression of academic freedom, and the assault on marginalised voices in public discourse demand that we reclaim higher education as a site of resistance.
Can open universities reclaim their radical promise? If higher education is to resist the encroachment of neoliberalism and reactionary politics, we must actively defend institutions that prioritise intellectual freedom, civic literacy, and higher education for the public good. The future of open universities – and higher education itself – depends not only on institutional policies but on whether scholars, educators, and students collectively resist these forces. The battle for openness is not just about access; it is about the kind of society we choose to build – for ourselves and the generations to come.
Ourania Filippakou is a Professor of Education at Brunel University of London. Her research interrogates the politics of higher education, examining universities as contested spaces where power, inequality, and resistance intersect. Rooted in critical traditions, she explores how higher education can foster social justice, equity, and transformative change.
UTS chancellor Catherine Livingstone told universities they need to rely less on public funding. Picture: UA
The National Student Ombudsman (NSO) First Assistant Ombudsman Sarah Bendall has revealed details of the 220-or-so student complaints she has received in the first three weeks of operation.
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Edward Choi and Young Jae Kim
South Korea has become an attractive destination for international students, boasting a strong higher education system with internationally recognised universities. A complication, however, is emerging with some foreign students enrolling in what they believe are universities, only to later discover that they are attending junior colleges, Korea’s flagship vocational institutions.
This phenomenon may be linked to changes in institutional marketing (identity branding) and key organizational characteristics at junior colleges and universities alike. Many colleges have removed words like “technical” or “vocational” from their names and are now called universities in both Korean and English. They have also expanded their degree offerings to include bachelor’s and, in some cases, even graduate programs.
The blurring of identities (and institutional traits) and the implications thereof are a focus of our study, Confusion in the Marketplace: A Study of Institutional Isomorphism and Organisational Identity in South Korea (Choi and Kim, 2024). Through a national, statistical overview and the content analysis of select institutional websites, we examined the dimensions along which South Korean colleges and universities are organizationally isomorphic, a concept that describes how organizations begin to resemble each other as a result of external pressures (see DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). Importantly, we discuss in our article the market implications for this type of institutional convergence.
Key changes or dimensions of likeness
Nearly all colleges (95%) have rebranded themselves with the term “university” in their Korean names, and 61% have done so in English. Colleges now offer bachelor’s-equivalent degrees, with 92% providing such programs, and some even offering graduate degrees (11%). Both colleges and universities emphasise similar disciplines, including Business Administration, Family & Social Welfare, and Mechanical Engineering, reflecting shared market demands.
Institutional websites suggest colleges and universities adopt similar marketing strategies, emphasising employment outcomes and industry-academic collaboration. Less selective universities resemble colleges in focusing on job-market relevance in research and academic programming. Both institution types operate in local, national, and international spheres with internationalisation efforts at both types.
There are key differences to note. Some universities, particularly elite ones, highlight intellectual growth and social development as a societal role in vision and other identity statements. Research at especially elite universities is both applied and humanities-focused, while this is not true in the case of colleges and lower-tier universities. Furthermore, internationalisation at universities is mostly about citizenship and cultural development while the same is less cultural but utilitarian at colleges (eg career development through international field placements).
Why are junior colleges becoming more like universities?
We discuss several key reasons behind the organisational sameness among Korea’s colleges and universities. One key factor is South Korea’s shrinking student population. With birth rates at record lows, the number of high school graduates has plummeted, creating a crisis for universities and junior colleges alike (Lee, 2024) and forcing these institutions to compete directly for a shrinking pool of students. The offering of baccalaureate degrees and graduate programming, among other organizational changes, may serve as primary examples of survival strategies amid the changing demographics. The same may be said of universities where there is a strong vocational dimension in academic offerings, much like what we see at colleges.
Government policies (both historical and contemporaneous) have also played a major role in the Korean case of institutional isomorphism. Such policy directions have pushed both universities and junior colleges to align their offerings with workforce demands (Ministry of Education, 2023d, 2024a). In 2008 the government approved bachelor’s-equivalent degrees for junior colleges, allowing them to offer advanced major courses. In 2022, junior colleges were even permitted to introduce graduate programs, further blurring the distinction between these institutions and universities.
Additionally, South Korea’s push for internationalisation amid globalisation has encouraged universities and junior colleges alike to aggressively market themselves to international students. The country has set ambitious national goals for attracting students from abroad (ICEF, 2023); as a result, both institutional types are using similar branding strategies. Words like “world-class,” “global,” and “innovative” appear frequently on websites, even in the case of junior colleges like Kyung-in Women’s University, an institution with virtually negligible global recognition or research excellence.
The risks of blurred identities
A key concern with blurred identities and institutional characteristics (including social roles) is that they can create confusion for international students who are increasingly looking to Korea as an attractive education destination. For students seeking a traditional university experience, this can lead to disappointment and even financial and academic setbacks, not to mention reputational damages to Korea and its higher education system.
There is also the issue of mission creep, where junior colleges in their efforts to emulate universities, risk losing sight of their normative societal function. Junior colleges have historically complemented universities in increasing access to education and providing job training for students who might not otherwise pursue higher education (see Brint and Karabel, 1989; Dougherty, 1994; Lee, 1992). This mission is at stake. The accretion and expansion of new and existing programs and services, respectively, require invariably additional resources, which might drive up educational costs. Many prospective students may not be able to afford these fee hikes.
What to make of institutional isomorphism?
At the end of the day, students want a quality education and meaningful career opportunities. It is important for them to clearly understand what they are signing up for – given how important higher education is to shaping their career trajectories. Policy discussions at the national level must now consider the global character of Korea’s junior colleges, whose cosmetic and organisational changes can impact international mobility patterns. Clearer differentiation from a policy perspective is needed in this regard.
We must not ignore the positive implications of institutional isomorphism, whose market advantages have not been fully explored by scholars. We argue that institutional isomorphism – particularly where college and university programs converge – can be strategically utilised as a policy lever to address market challenges. Rather than viewing institutional homogenization as inherently problematic, policymakers could use it to correct market inefficiencies like supply and demand challenges. The shortage of nurses in Korea (see Lee, 2023), for example, is likely being addressed through the joint efforts of colleges and universities in training and producing nurses with similar qualifications.
Unchecked isomorphism, however, has its challenges, as pointed out earlier (ie confusion in the international student marketplace). We are also concerned about a skills mismatch where colleges and universities are pumping out graduates with homogenised skillsets. This type of sub-optimisation can result in high youth unemployment rates and students working in careers unrelated to their academic majors, which are already concerns in Korea (see Sungmin and Lee, 2023).
To conclude, our study notes that institutional isomorphism is a global phenomenon, with similar trends observed in countries such as China, the US, and Australia (see Bae, Grimm, and Kim, 2023; Bük, Atakan-Duman, and Paşamehmetoğlu, 2017; Hartley and Morphew, 2008; Saichaie and Morphew, 2014; Taylor and Morphew, 2010). Further research is needed to assess whether isomorphism in higher education lends to competitive market advantages beyond Korea.
Edward Choi is an Assistant Professor at Underwood International College, Yonsei University. His research interests centre on a range of topics: Korean higher education, traditional Korean education, the internationalisation of higher education, and the global phenomenon of family-owned universities.
Young Jae Kim was a student at Underwood International College, Yonsei University.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis is launching a state initiative to cut spending and optimize efficiency modeled after the Elon Musk’s federal Department of Government Efficiency, which has cut billions in contracts at federal agencies, The Orlando Sentinel reported.
Over the course of a year, Florida’s version of DOGE intends to sunset dozens of state boards and commissions, cut hundreds of jobs, and probe university finances and managerial practices.
“This is the DOGE-ing of our state university system, and I think it’s going to be good for taxpayers, and it’s ultimately going to be good for students as well,” DeSantis said Monday.
He added that the state would leverage artificial intelligence to help with the initiative.
The Republican governor also indicated that the state-level initiative would target what he referred to as “ideological study stuff” in an effort to “make sure that these universities are really serving the classical mission of what a university should be, and that’s not to impose ideology. It’s really to teach students how to think and to prepare them to be citizens of our republic.”
The move comes as the state has already targeted curriculum in recent months, stripping hundreds of courses from the general education offerings of state universities earlier this year. Many of the classes touched on topics such as race, gender, sexuality, and non-Christian religions.
Florida has also hired multiple GOP officials—some sitting, others who previously served—to lead state universities, including several who have no higher education management experience.
In a response to DeSantis, who pressed for the need to eliminate inefficiencies, the Florida Democratic Party noted that Republicans have controlled state politics for nearly 30 years and questioned the outgoing governor’s motivations in launching the state equivalent of DOGE.
For many students and faculty, it’s an exhausting time to be on campus. The long–polarized climate has been supercharged by everything from the flurry of executive orders to lingering tensions over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to proposed cuts to government spending on higher ed. All while administrators come under intense pressure from groups on all sides to issue public statements, invest or divest, and cancel speakers — as federal and state government actors stoke the flames.
Some have argued universities have a duty to cast aside neutrality and, for example, declare certain politicians fascists. But this kind of political grandstanding undermines the central purpose of the university: the pursuit of truth, a process that requires debate and discussion. This process can’t happen when a university’s leaders put a proverbial thumb on the scale. Instead, it’s in the most fraught times that university leaders most need to draw a line in the sand against censorship and intimidation.
While the current climate feels unprecedented, history tells a different story. In the late 1960s, America was on fire — literally and figuratively. Protests erupted, generational divides widened, and a divisive president presided over a deeply unpopular war in Vietnam that claimed tens of thousands of lives. Amidst the chaos, the president of the University of Chicago convened a faculty committee to determine how the institution should respond to burning political and social upheaval.
Their answer was simple yet compelling: the university, as an institution, must remain neutral.
Enshrined in the committee’s Report on the University’s Role in Political and Social Action (commonly called the Kalven Report, after its lead author, First Amendment scholar Harry Kalven, Jr.), the report warned that universities “cannot take collective action on the issues of the day without endangering the conditions for its existence and effectiveness. There is no mechanism by which it can reach a collective position without inhibiting that full freedom of dissent on which it thrives.”
In other words, the mere act of taking an official position on an issue stifles dissent — and, again, undermines the primary reason for the university’s existence.
Critics have argued that neutrality is impossible because everything is political, from school calendars to core curricula. By that logic, even declining to make political statements is a political act. But this merely serves as a rhetorical trap designed to justify disposing of neutrality altogether.
America already has plenty of division and distrust. Institutional neutrality is a critical tool for fostering academia’s only peaceful path through the storm: honest debate.
The Kalven Report’s authors made clear that the university must take a position when its mission is at stake. For example, they must defend academic freedom when governments attempt to silence professors. But that’s entirely different from taking a stand on which side was “right” in Vietnam, or is “right” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There may be close cases in which people will disagree on where that line should be drawn. But denying that intelligent distinctions can be made is like arguing that one cannot differentiate red from blue because they are both on a visual spectrum that lacks clear demarcations.
Neutrality does not mean that universities will play no part in grappling with social and political questions. The Kalven Report affirms that “[t]he university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic,” and notes that universities play a vital role “in fostering the development of social and political values in a society.” This is a long-term role “defined by the distinctive mission of the university and defined too by the distinctive characteristics of the university as a community.” But rather than acting as an advocacy organization, the university is a community of learned advocates with the freedom to agree or disagree with one another. Administrators must intentionally avoid becoming the former so they can function as the latter.
The Kalven Report recognized taking sides in the day’s debates would kneecap the university’s ability to serve as a forum for the pursuit of truth among individual scholars. “There is no mechanism by which it can reach a collective position,” the committee explained, “without inhibiting that full freedom of dissent on which it thrives.”
Most faculty understand this. Two-thirds of faculty members agree that colleges and universities should remain neutral on political and social issues, according to FIRE’s 2024 Faculty Survey Report. The issue of neutrality is especially salient for adjunct instructors, who lack the tenure protections of their full-time peers. As FIRE notes in its Scholars Under Fire report of attempts to sanction professors for speaking their minds, adjuncts — who account for 70 percent of all faculty — are particularly prone to speech-related terminations. An astounding 54 percent of attempts to sanction adjuncts result in termination, compared to 21 percent for all scholars. The most vulnerable faculty have the most to lose when universities take sides.
FIRE has taken a proactive stance on institutional neutrality, discouraging universities from taking up ill-advised “collective positions” on divisive issues. The University of North Carolina System, Vanderbilt, Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth — and, of course, the University of Chicago — have all adopted official positions on institutional neutrality, and we’re leading the fight to get more colleges on board.
Institutional neutrality is key, but it is not the be-all and end-all. It’s an important slice of a well-diversified portfolio of pro-free speech policies — but just one slice. Universities must also refrain from punishing students and faculty for dissenting views amid sky-high tensions and changing political winds. Sometimes this is an uphill battle against political and social pressure. It’s vital nevertheless.
America already has plenty of division and distrust. Institutional neutrality is a critical tool for fostering academia’s only peaceful path through the storm: honest debate. All sides must have a fair chance to speak and be heard. If universities cannot deliver an environment that cultivates such discussion, they risk becoming just another partisan casualty in the culture war.
Universities Australia CEO Luke Sheehy. Picture: Supplied
The peak body representing universities, Universities Australia (UA), has said the federal government should offer more money and less bureaucracy to the higher education sector ahead of the election due by April.
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Here is a short list of US universities with legacy admissions. These elite and highly selective schools give preferential treatment to applicants who are related to alumni, which rewards parents, grandparents, and relatives of students rather than rewarding deserving students for their skills and efforts.
For a more exhaustive list, visit edreformnow.org. The spreadsheet is here.
California banned legacy admissions for private colleges in 2024. The practice is also under increased scrutiny in the wake of the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling against college admissions policies that consider race.
While it may not be just or fair, the process is not illegal in the
United States, nor is there much public outcry about this elitist tradition.
Without insider information, it’s also difficult to know how individual schools use legacy admissions and
how the murky process operates.
