Tag: WEEKEND

  • Ohio University puts Black alumni reunion weekend on hold

    Ohio University puts Black alumni reunion weekend on hold

    Ohio University has postponed its annual Black alumni reunion weekend while it reviews the event in light of the Office for Civil Rights’ Feb. 14 Dear Colleague letter, which declared illegal virtually all race-based activities at public institutions.  

    While the Black alumni reunion “has always been open to all individuals who have an interest in the event,” read a statement from the university, “based on OCR’s recent guidance related to Title VI compliance, some of the programming historically included in the event may need to be reimagined. The University is obligated to follow OCR’s guidance in order to protect our access to critical federal funding, including students’ continued access to federal financial aid.”

    The statement also cited the impact of “proposed State of Ohio legislation,” without specifically mentioning SB 1, a bill the Senate has passed that calls for the elimination of DEI statements, offices and trainings.

    “Without question, should this bill pass the House in its current form and be signed into law by the Governor, it will bring changes for all of us,” university president Lori Stewart Gonzalez wrote in an earlier message to the campus community. “However, to define today the specific changes we might make would preempt the legislative process on a bill that is not finalized.”

    Still, all signature events planned for Black alumni reunion weekend, which was scheduled for April 10–13 in Athens, were canceled.

    “While this is difficult news to share, we remain committed to honoring the legacy and accomplishments of Ohio University’s Black alumni,” said planning committee co-chairs Terry Frazier and Jillian Causey in the statement. “We will continue working with the University to develop a plan that aligns with evolving federal and state guidelines while preserving the significance of this gathering.”

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  • WEEKEND READING: Matt Goodwin’s ‘Bad Education’ isn’t good scholarship, but does that matter?

    WEEKEND READING: Matt Goodwin’s ‘Bad Education’ isn’t good scholarship, but does that matter?

    • Steven Jones is Professor of Higher Education at the University of Manchester and his latest book is Universities Under Fire (2022). This review of Bad Education by Matt Goodwin has been written in a personal capacity.
    • HEPI’s other review of the Matt Goodwin’s book can be accessed here.

    In Bad Education, Matt Goodwin makes the argument that Western universities have moved ‘sharply and radically to the left’ (p.51) over the last six decades, to the extent that diversity is now deemed more important than merit. According to Goodwin, a woke orthodoxy has gripped the sector: free speech is stifled; non-authorised viewpoints are unwanted; and social justice trumps the pursuit of truth. Some minorities flourish within this culture, but other ‘political’ minorities – like the one to which Goodwin claims membership – are structurally disadvantaged. 

    To stand this argument up, Goodwin needs the reader to accept two fundamental premises. The first is that the author’s sense of victimhood is real, while others are imaginary or exaggerated. Goodwin achieves this by attributing his every professional setback – from having journal articles and funding bids declined to being overlooked for invited talks (p.47) – to his whiteness, his maleness, or his political positions, such as his refusal to participate in ‘cult-like worship of the EU on campus’ (p.44). No other explanation is countenanced. 

    The second premise is that the real power in universities is cultural, not economic, and therefore held by diversity champions and other woke activists. The evidence Goodwin offers here is underwhelming. Where academic scholarship is cited, the sources are mostly US-based, and the author shows no curiosity about the think-tanks and lobby groups that funded the surveys in which he places his faith. Critical higher educational research is studiously avoided, though Goodwin does turn to Elon Musk for a quote about the ‘woke mind virus’ (p.104). In places, Bad Education reads as a checklist of debunked myths and personal memoirs (‘as I’ve seen first-hand’ is a familiar clause). Yet in the final chapter, Goodwin addresses the reader directly to assert: ‘I’ve bombarded you at times with statistics and research because I wanted you to read it for yourself and make up your own mind’ (p.198). 

    I tried hard to make up my own mind, but it’s difficult to be persuaded by Goodwin’s case against universities when the bulk of empirical data point in an opposite direction. If recruitment practices are so diversity conscious, why were there only 25 Black British female professors in the UK as recently as 2019? If ‘reverse racism’ is such a problem, why did the awarding gap between White and Black students achieving high degrees stand at 18.4% in 2021? In my experience, and according to my research, minority groups are far from over-represented in senior levels of university management and governance, and board cultures tend to be driven by corporate principles, not woke ideologies. As for no-platforming, fewer than 0.8 per cent of university events or speaker invitations were cancelled in 2021-22. In other words, the truths that Goodwin is so boldly willing to speak may be his truths, but they are not universal.

    Among the fellow marginalised white men willing to support Goodwin is the University of Buckingham’s Eric Kaufmann, who is quoted extensively, and whose back-cover endorsement describes Bad Education as ‘deeply personal and impeccably researched.’ It’s certainly deeply personal. Take Goodwin’s indignation towards a lecturer who unfriended some Conservative voters on Facebook after the 2015 UK general election (p.89). The reader is not told what this incident is supposed to signify, let alone why Goodwin’s cherished free speech principles appear not to extend to academics’ private social media accounts.

    That’s not to say that the sector is always operating to the highest ethical standards. Goodwin is on firmest ground when highlighting human rights violations in China (p.90), and calling out universities for turning a blind eye. But rather than take this argument to its logical conclusion – by critiquing a fee model that leaves sectors reliant on income from overseas students – Goodwin pivots back into anger and anecdote, rebuking universities for being defensive about their historic links with the slave trade (p.91) and sharing stories about junior colleagues too scared to disclose their pro-Brexit leanings (p.94).

    Despite Goodwin’s stated aim to ‘push back against authoritarianism’ (p.208), there are echoes of Donald Trump’s playbook throughout Bad Education. The author’s anti-diversity bombast recalls the President’s recent claim that a fatal air crash near Washington DC was connected to DEI programmes in federal government. It’s not entirely clear to which level of institutional bureaucracy Goodwin is referring when he imagines a ‘hyper-political and highly activist managerial blob’ (p.157), but the language is redolent of that being deployed in the US to justify a purge of federal bureaucrats. According to Goodwin, this ‘managerial blob’ is defined by an insistence on rainbow lanyards and flags on campus, among other things. This is not a characterisation of senior leaders that most university staff would recognise. Could it be that the author is so distracted by empty performative gestures that he fails to see where power is really located?

    Goodwin has now left academia, a story he tells in most chapters, steadily elevating it to the level of Shakespearean tragedy: ‘my professorship – everything I had ever wanted, everything I had worked for – was over’ (p.195). At a time when 10,000 jobs are on the line at UK universities, such self-indulgence is unfortunate. Goodwin’s contrast between the ‘luxury beliefs’ of academics and the ‘real world’ he claims to inhabit (p.78) encapsulates what makes Bad Education read like a ‘prolonged gripe,’ as another reviewer put it. Paradoxically, Goodwin now enjoys a range of high-profile platforms from which to air his grievances about being no-platformed, regularly appearing on television to blame wokeism for various social ills. Why is it that only ‘cancelled’ academics seem to have media agents?

    Bad Education builds towards what Goodwin calls a ‘manifesto’ for universities (pp.217-19) that want to have ‘good, not bad, education’ (p.217). It’s a simplistic way to wrap up any book, comprising a bullet-pointed list of the same few complaints expressed in slightly different terms. Those of us in higher education will quickly recognise Bad Education’s distortions: universities haven’t lurched radically left and there’s no woke coup. But does that matter? Are we the target readership? Or is the book speaking to external audiences? What if a review like this merely confirms what Goodwin and his fellow academic outcasts have been saying all along?

    Since accepting the terms of the market, English universities have struggled to articulate their role in society. Academic expertise has been devalued and the status of higher education as a public good compromised, with universities increasingly embroiled in unwinnable culture wars. These are perfect conditions for someone like Goodwin to ‘blow up’ his own career (p.4), break the ‘secret code of silence’ (p.3) and position himself as the fearless ‘rogue professor’ (p.16). In such ways, important debates become framed by individuals with the shallowest insights but the deepest grudges. Bad Education does a passable job of confirming suspicions about what really goes on inside a secretive and often aloof sector, guiding its readers further down an anti-university, anti-expert rabbit hole. If we continue to leave vacuums in the discourse, then diversity-blaming narratives like Goodwin’s will continue to fill them.

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  • WEEKEND READING: Change is our ally by Professor Sir Chris Husbands

    WEEKEND READING: Change is our ally by Professor Sir Chris Husbands

    This blog has been kindly written for HEPI by Professor Sir Chris Husbands, who was Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University between 2016 and 2023, and is now a Director of  Higher Futures, working with university leaders to lead sustainable solutions to institutional challenges.

    The scale of the funding challenge in higher education is widely known, though almost every week brings news of fresh challenges and responses. Real term funding for undergraduate teaching in 2025 is close to 1997 levels – levels which led the Blair government to introduce £1,000 top-up fees. Some commentators have argued that the scale of the challenge now is as great as the 1981 cuts in government funding for universities, which reduced spending on universities by 15%, and saw Salford University lose 44% of its income.

    As contemporary funding challenges have intensified, growth options have become more difficult:

    • international student numbers have either stalled or declined;
    • undergraduate growth, although evident, has not tracked demographic trends;
    • the Office for Students has identified persistent optimism bias in the sector’s funding projections; and
    • competitive pressures are multiplying.

    In many countries, flexible for-profit providers are growing fast, especially in professional and post-graduate education. Many of these are backed by funds with deep investment pockets; some UK for-profit providers are growing very quickly and the expansion of private provision in Germany, France and Canada has been remarkable. In summary, the funding challenge is not only real but increasingly profound.

    Institutional responses to these challenges have been extensive. Almost all universities are now undertaking significant change programmes. There have been major strides in revising operating models, especially for professional and support services, and the impact has been significant. On the other hand, although portfolio reviews are widespread, there have been fewer developments in reshaping business models for teaching and research, though some do exist. Core delivery arrangements largely remain based on a two-semester or three-term model. Staff-student ratios which, as the King’s College Vice-Chancellor Shitij Kapur has repeatedly emphasised are low by international standards, have not been significantly shifted. Undergraduate study remains relatively inflexible. Module sharing and simplified credit transfer arrangements remain small scale. Estate use has not been significantly intensified. All this suggests that individual institutions are finding it difficult to look at the challenge strategically with an eye to the longer term shape, size, structure and nature of the university. There is a lot happening in individual change plans, but probably not enough. Without a secure and sustainable core academic model, institutions will be forced into repeated restructurings, which will not be comfortable for them or for the sector more generally.  

    This is the background to the important Jisc-KPMG report Collaboration for a sustainable future, which was the subject of a this week’s HEPI / Jisc webinar. For all the evidence of individual institutional change, the report argues that a collaborative approach is needed to secure sustainability and reshape the sector. Institutions need to find ways to work together, in back-office functions, in professional services and perhaps in academic delivery. The report acknowledges that there are technical difficulties to overcome, including the requirement to pay VAT on shared services and the need to navigate competition law, though these need to be genuinely tested in practice, but it also argues that the deeper barriers to effective collaboration are cultural. 

    The ingrained habit of individual autonomy, even and perhaps especially in non-competitive services (as Nick Hillman reinforced, no one chooses their undergraduate degree based on the university’s finance system) is a major barrier to significant change.  Moreover, the report acknowledges that collaboration and shared service arrangements are unlikely to deliver cost savings in the short-term – and just now a good deal of thinking in the sector seems to be shaped by Keynes’ dictum that ‘in the long-run we are all dead’. Institutions are caught between the economic realities of the funding challenge and the cultural challenges of collaboration.

    In Four Futures, my HEPI paper published in June last year, I argued that the financial and funding circumstances which produced the sector we have no longer exist. Government is unwilling or unable to pay for the sector most university leaders would like. I argued that there were some policy choices for higher education, and that the sector will almost certainly be different in the future. There are public policy questions here, but there are also questions and challenges for institutions. That means strategic choices for leaders, with universities being much clearer about the things they can do well, and do well sustainably, and building different relationships with other institutions. Leadership matters. As the Jisc / KPMG report observes:

    Given the current trajectory, there is a window of opportunity for institutions to act now and help drive this forward before they are compelled into action by necessity.

    Competition over the past decade has undoubtedly delivered benefits, and we should not understate those, especially in estate investment, student experience, teaching quality and research performance. But competition has also delivered homogeneity, duplication and overlap, and that needs to change.   And for that, as the Jisc / KPMG report identifies, the leadership culture needs to change. Hyper-competitiveness has driven institutionally focused leadership behaviours and associated performance indicators, targets and rewards. But there have been different leadership assumptions in higher education in the past, and other sectors have grappled with the challenge of changing leadership culture. The most successful school improvement initiative of the past generation was London Challenge, in which the performance of schools across the capital was significantly raised. One of the most important shifts was a cultural one, persuading headteachers to think not about ‘my school’ but about ‘[all] our children’: success across the system was a leadership challenge for all.

    The Jisc / KPMG Report is strong on the potential for collaboration to shape the future of the system, though it also makes painful reading on the challenges which have bedevilled this in the past. In the current context, government is unlikely to provide additional funding. The private sector could no doubt provide standardised sector-wide services, but the risks of a single supplier for key services are enormous. If government is not the solution, if the private sector is not the solution, if the status quo is not sustainable, the answer must be imaginative and engaged leadership which is not simply about ‘my institution’ but also about ‘our future’.

    This week’s HEPI / Jisc webinar on ‘Competition or collaboration? Opportunities for the future of the higher education sector’ can be watched back here.

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  • WEEKEND READING: Why Scotland’s student funding system is “unfair, unsustainable, unaffordable” and needs to be replaced with a graduate contribution model

    WEEKEND READING: Why Scotland’s student funding system is “unfair, unsustainable, unaffordable” and needs to be replaced with a graduate contribution model

    • These are the remarks by Alison Payne, Research Director at Reform Scotland, at the HEPI / CDBU event on funding higher education, held at Birkbeck, University of London, on Thursday of this week.
    • We are also making available Johnny Rich’s slides on ‘Making graduate employer contributions work’ from the same event, which are available to download here.

    Thanks to the CDBU and to HEPI for the invitation to attend and take part in today’s discussion. 

    My speech today has been titled ‘A graduate contribution model’. Of course, for UK graduates not from Scotland, I’m sure they would make the point that they very much do contribute through their fees, but the situation is very different in Scotland and I’m really grateful that I have the opportunity to feed the Scottish situation into today’s discussion.

    I thought it may be helpful if I gave a quick overview of the Scottish situation, as it differs somewhat to the overview Nick gave this morning covering the rest of the UK. 

    Although tuition fees were introduced throughout the UK in 1998, the advent of devolution in 1999 and the passing of responsibility for higher education to Holyrood began the period of diverging funding policies.

    The then Labour / Lib Dem Scottish Executive, as it was then known, scrapped tuition fees and replaced them with a graduate endowment from 2001-02, with the first students becoming liable to pay the fee from April 2005. The scheme called for students to pay back £2,000 once they started earning over £10,000. 

    The graduate endowment was then scrapped by the SNP in February 2008. A quirk of EU law meant that students from EU countries could not be charged tuition fees if Scottish students were not paying them but students from England, Wales and Northern Ireland could be charged. This meant that from 2008 to 2021/22 EU students did not need to pay fees to attend Scottish universities, though students from the rest of the UK did. 

    We’re used to politics in Scotland being highly polarised and often toxic with few areas of commonality, but for the most part the policy of ‘free’ higher education has been supported by all of the political parties. Indeed at the last Scottish election in 2021 all parties committed to maintaining the policy in their manifestos. It is only recently that the Scottish Tories have suggested a move away from this following the election of their new leader, Russell Finlay.

    But behind this unusual political consensus, the ‘free’ policy is becoming increasingly unsustainable and unaffordable. Politicians will privately admit this, but politics, and a rock with an ill-advised slogan, have made it harder to have the much needed debate.

    The Cap

    While we don’t have tuition fees, we do have a cap on student numbers. And while more Scots are going to university, places are unable to keep up with demand. Since 2006 there has been a 56% increase in applicants, but an 84% increase in the number refused entry. 

    It is increasingly the case that students from the rest of the UK or overseas are accepted on to courses in Scotland while their Scottish counterparts are denied. For example, when clearing options are posted, often those places at Scotland’s top universities are only available to students from the rest of the UK and not to Scottish students, even if the latter have better grades. As a result, Scots can feel that they are denied access to education on their doorstep that those from elsewhere can obtain. Indeed, there are growing anecdotes about those who can afford it buying or renting property elsewhere in the UK so that they can attend a Scottish university, pay the higher fee and get around the cap.

    Basically, more people want to go to university, but the fiscal arrangements are holding ambition them back. This problem was highlighted by the Scottish Affairs Select Committee’s report on Universities from 2021.

    Some commentators in Scotland have blamed the lack of places on widening access programmes, but I would challenge this. It is undoubtedly a good thing that more people from non-traditional backgrounds are getting into university, it is the cap that is limiting Scottish places, not access programmes. This is a point that has been backed by individuals such as the Principal of St Andrews, Professor Dame Sally Mapstone [who also serves as HEPI’s Chair].

    Financial Woes

    The higher education sector in Scotland, as with elsewhere in the UK, is not in great financial health. Audit Scotland warned back in 2019 that half of our institutions were facing growing deficits. Pressures including pensions contributions, Brexit and estate maintenance have all played a role and in the face of this decline, but nothing has changed and we’re now seeing crisis like those at Dundee emerge. Against this backdrop, income from those students who pay higher fees is an important revenue stream.

    There is obviously a huge variation in what the fees are to attend a Scottish university, considerably more so than in the rest of the UK.

    For example, to study Accounting and Business as an undergraduate at Edinburgh University, the cost for a full-time new student for 2024/25 is £1,820 per year for a Scottish-domiciled student (met by the Scottish Government), £9,250 per year for someone from the rest of the UK and £26,500 for an international student. 

    It is clear why international students and UK students from outside Scotland are therefore so much more attractive than Scottish students.

    However, there is by no means an equal distribution of higher fee paying students among our institutions.

    For example, at St Andrews about one-third of undergraduate full-time students were Scots, with one-third from the rest of the UK and one-third international. The numbers for Edinburgh are similar.  

    At the other end of the scale, at the University of the Highlands and Islands and Glasgow Caledonian, around 90% of students are Scottish, with only around only 1% being international.  

    So it is clear that institutions’ ability to raise money from fee-paying students varies very dramatically, increasing the financial pressures on those with low fee income.

    However, when looking at the issue, it is important to recognise that it is not just our universities who are struggling, Scotland’s colleges are facing huge financial pressures as well. 

    The current proposed Scottish budget would leave colleges struggling with a persistent, real-terms funding cut of 17 per cent since 2021/22. Our college sector is hugely important in terms of the delivery of skills, working with local economies and as a route to university for so many, but for too long colleges have been treated like the Cinderella service in Scotland. The prioritising of ‘free’ university tuition over the college sector is adding to this problem.

    Regardless of who wins the Holyrood election next year, money is, and will remain, tight for some time. It would be lovely to be able to have lots of taxpayer funded ‘free’ services, but that is simply unsustainable and difficult choices need to be made. 

    This is why we believe that the current situation is unfair, unsustainable, unaffordable and needs to change.

    Reform Scotland would offer another alternative solution. We believe that there needs to be a better balance between the individual graduate and Scottish taxpayers in the contribution towards higher education. 

    One way this could be achieved is through a fee after graduation, to be repaid once they earn more than the Scottish average salary. This would not be a fee incurred on starting university and deferred until after graduation, rather the fee would be incurred on graduation.

    In terms of what that fee could be, the Cubie report over 25 years ago suggested a graduate fee of £3,000, which would be about £5,500 today.  This could perhaps be the starting point for consideration.  

    Any figure should take account of different variations in terms of the true cost of the course and potential skill shortages. 

    However, introducing a graduate fee would not necessarily mean an end to ‘free’ tuition. 

    Rather it provides an opportunity to look at the skills gaps that exist in Scotland and the possibility of developing schemes which cut off or scrap repayments for graduates who work in specific geographic areas or sectors of Scotland for set periods of time. 

    Such schemes could also look to incorporate students from elsewhere for Scotland is facing a demographic crisis. Our population is set to become older and smaller, and we are the only part of the UK projected to have a smaller population by 2045. 

    We desperately need to retain and attract more working-age people. Perhaps such graduate repayment waiver schemes could also be offered to students from the rest of the UK who choose to study in Scotland – stay here and work after graduation and we will pay a proportion of your fee. A wide range of different schemes could be considered and linked into the wider policy issues facing Scotland. 

    According to the Higher Education Statistics Authority (HESA) there were 3,370 graduates from the rest of the UK who attended a Scottish institution in 2020/21. Of those, only 990 chose to remain in Scotland for work after graduation. Could we encourage more people to stay after studying?

    Conclusion

    A graduate fee is only one possible solution, but I would argue that it is also one with a short shelf life. As graduates would not incur the fee until they graduated, there would be a four-year delay between the change in policy and revenue beginning to be received. Our institutions are facing very real fiscal problems and there is a danger of a university going to the wall. 

    If we get to the 2026 election and political parties refuse to shift the dial and at least recognise that the current system is unsustainable, then there is a danger that nothing will change for another Parliamentary term. I don’t think we can afford to wait until 2031.

    There is another interesting dynamic now as well. Labour in Scotland currently, publicly at least, oppose tuition fees. However, there are now 37 Scottish Labour MPs at Westminster who are backing the increase of fees on students from outside Scotland, or Scottish students studying down south. Given the unpopularity of the Labour government as well as the tight contest between the SNP and Labour for Holyrood, it seems unlikely that position can be maintained.

    All across the UK there are increasing signs of the stark financial situation we are facing. Against that backdrop, along with the restrictions placed on the number being able to attend, free university tuition is unsustainable and unaffordable. People outside Scottish politics seem to be able to see this reality, privately so do many of our politicians. We need to shift this debate in to the public domain in Scotland and develop a workable solution.

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