Tag: work

  • Making grants and the levy work

    Making grants and the levy work

    Opinions vary about the desirability of the levy on international student fees, and the value of the promised return of targeted maintenance grants.

    Rightly so. The announcement and the descriptions of policies within, were political in nature. They were made at a party conference rather than a ministerial statement or consultation document – they were designed to please some, challenge others, and above all to start a debate.

    And as such, all these opinions are valuable. The government will listen to representations, seek commentary and challenge, and eventually start to spell out some more of the detail and implementation.

    Implementation couldn’t care less about opinions or political expediency. Implementation is a matter of whether something can actually be done, and how.

    My number one priority

    Let’s take the simplistic approach, and call the income the government gets from the levy something around £620m (more on that later).

    In the grand scheme of things that’s not a huge amount of money – we paid out more than £8bn on maintenance loans in 2023-24. However, the much-maligned magic money twig (the OfS’ funding for student access and success) is currently just £273m, and it is ostensibly doing part of the same job as the proposed grants – helping non-traditional students access and succeed in higher education. Of course, it mostly goes on hardship grants these days, which is neither what it is designed for nor any meaningful remedy for a student maintenance system that is not fit for purpose. But that makes the parallel even clearer.

    Any extra money going to students, in this economy and with this level of unwillingness to do anything truly radical about student hardship, is welcome. But the kicker is that it is not enough to be from a deprived background to get the new money – you also need to be studying the right subjects. As we’ve already noted, these are the same “priority subjects” as have been set within the Lifelong Learning Entitlement: vaguely STEMish, but with no medicine but added architecture and economics.

    You survived all you been through

    At the end of every cycle UCAS published data on acceptances using a fine-grained (CAH level 3) subject lens, separated by level of deprivation – which in England means the IMD quintile. From this we learn that in the most recent data (2024 cycle) just under 42 per cent of all England domiciled accepted applicants from IMD quintile 1 (the most deprived group) were accepted onto a “priority subject”.

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    This is a substantially higher proportion than in any other IMD quintile – it is also a substantially higher number: 39,870. We don’t get quite the same level of subject fidelity for offers and applications, but it appears that quintile 1 applicants are also much more likely to apply to priority subjects than any other group, and slightly more likely to receive an offer.

    In other words, as far as we can tell with the available data, there is not really a problem recruiting disadvantaged young people onto courses in subjects that the government is currently keen on.

    It is possible ministers may be thinking that adding the grants into the mix would drive these already encouraging numbers up even higher (and away from mere dilettante whims like, er, studying medicine, law, or biology). This would appear to ignore a rather expensive and lengthy experiment that has demonstrated that financial concerns (in the form, back then, of the sticker price) do not actually affect applicant behavior all that much, and when applicant behaviour is already trending in the way you might hope there’s maybe not a lot needs to be done.

    But if you assume that the entire annual levy covers a single year of grants for everyone in IMD quintile 1 in a priority subject – and let’s use the exact numbers here – we get 39,870 students sharing £620.52m: £15,560 each.

    That is baking in a bunch of assumptions around the way the levy is implemented, the way grant allocations are determined (is IMD, an area based measure, really the best way to allocate individual grants?), and even whether the entire levy is to be spent directly on grants and nothing else. But if these rather optimistic assumptions are right, we’re slightly above the current maximum loan (£13,762), and beginning to approach the government’s National Living Wage for those aged 18 to 20 (currently just under £18k). It’s not quite enough to live as a student for a year without working at all, but it would mean someone without any other means of support might not have to “work every hour god sends.”

    I’ll let you be my levy

    Let’s say you are an international student looking to study an integrated (4-5 year) Masters’ course in biomedical engineering at the University of Leicester. You’d be charged £25,100 a year (plus £6,275 if you do a year overseas, or £3,765 if you do a year in industry). As you are resident outside of the UK, you’d pay a deposit of £3,000 up front to secure your place. These figures will vary vastly depending on your choice of course and provider, but that gives you an idea of a ballpark figure.

    If you secured your place via an agent, you may have paid a fee up front to them. Your chosen university would also pay a fee to the agent for each successful application – these vary hugely, but let’s say it is 20 per cent of your first year of fees. In some cases, your university would also pay a direct fee to the agent, over and above their percentage of fee income. Combined, these can get pretty intense – far into the millions for providers that use agents, with some pushing £30m

    If you don’t quite meet some of the academic or English language requirements for your course, you may be accepted onto an international foundation year – often offered by another provider, either on behalf of your university or as a stand alone course. There will be fees for this too.

    Of course, before you are accepted onto your course, you’ll need a Tier 4 Student Visa. For all but a handful of countries, you’ll need evidence (the example given by the Foreign Office is a bank statement) that you currently have enough money to cover your fees for your first year plus nine months of living costs. Your visa will cost £524, plus you need to pay a healthcare surcharge (each year) of £776 each year.

    Let’s imagine for a moment that you never made a name for yourself

    If you are looking to design a levy, the first decision that you make will be what constitutes international fee income. Should it be the sticker price – as promoted to students? Should it, for example, include the fees an institution pays to an international agent? Should it include fees that the student pays to another institution for a co-branded international foundation year? Should you factor in that students are already paying a levy of sorts to cover the cost of issuing a visa or of providing access to the NHS? Should it include accommodation fees (or additional course fees) when these are paid directly to the provider?

    Or should a provider pay a proportion of everything it declares as (and auditors agree that is) international student fee income? At what point – when the fee is paid, when the course starts, when it is declared? And is there not a case to look at a levy on agents fees – there is big money to be made by agents, and unlike with providers no counter arguments about the student experience?

    The modelling I’ve done so far is deliberately simplistic – 6 per cent (or whatever is decided on) of declared fee income in the most recent HESA Finance Data. That’s a valid answer, but it is limited – it is not the same effect as you would get if a university had to pay 6 per cent of every international student’s fee at one of the points above. The Home Office modelling noted that in some cases fees themselves may rise to cover the levy, which may have a knock on effect on recruitment – and that in other cases providers themselves would swallow the cost.

    If you think about it like that – and also bear in mind the Public First angle on the types of students more likely to be dissuaded by higher fees – it is difficult not to see the regressive nature of the levy: well-off providers, who recruit well-heeled middle class students from countries where salaries are high, will pay more but will be able to pass the costs on to students. Providers newer to international recruitment, at the price sensitive end of the market, will lose out either way, and will have to work out whether the recruitment drop of a 6 per cent fee hike is worth more than 6 per cent of their current income.

    Such a funny thing for me to try to explain

    What if we don’t take the accountant’s way out? What if we calculate a levy based on what individual students actually pay?

    As noted above we don’t know – either generally or individually – what international students pay as fees. We also don’t really know how many students are currently paying them – HESA student data turns up after a quite considerable lag, and not all undergraduates (and no postgraduates!) show up in UCAS data.

    The closest we get to international student numbers, at all levels, in-year has historically been OfS’ HESES collection (which it uses to allocate OfS grant funding). I say historically because, from 2025-26 the information on domicile (previously used “for planning purposes”) will no longer be collected.

    If you want a levy based on what students actually pay, you need a new data collection covering the students involved and how much they have paid that year (perhaps separated out into qualifying and non-qualifying payments – with all of the early iteration problems that such things bring. Data Futures may eventually get there, but not for a good few years yet.

    Designing a new data collection is not for the faint of heart – we scrapped an entire section of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act (the bit dealing with income from overseas) primarily because it is a million times easier to torturously audit other data than to collect something new. It would be expensive, both centrally and for individual providers – and it would be commercially sensitive (not all international students pay the same fee for the same course at the same university).

    Know we’re jumping the gun

    At every point in this article, I’ve tried to get across just how broad brush the current details of this policy are. As my colleague Michael notes elsewhere, there is not even clarity that these two halves of an announcement are a part of the same policy, or that it is possible to irrevocably link an income stream with an outgoing like this in the public accounts.

    It is a political announcement, and as such leaping straight to implementation slightly misses the point – like with the “scrapping” of the “fifty per cent participation target” it might well be that how it lands is more important than how it works.

    But as I’ve also tried to show, implementation has no time for political expediency. Real decisions need to be taken, and the current configuration of the sector, of the application cycle, and of the various data collections need to be taken into account. And there’s a need to consider whether the behavioural changes you are trying to make would undermine the funding flows that you are intending will do so – the more parts to a policy the more unintended consequences there could be.

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  • The Wonkhe HE staff survey – how good is work in higher education?

    The Wonkhe HE staff survey – how good is work in higher education?

    As financial pressures continue to bear down on higher education institutions across the UK, there is a visible impact on higher education staff, as resources shrink, portfolios are rationalised, and redundancy programmes are implemented. These are definitively tough times for the sector and its people.

    One way this plays out is in the industrial relations landscape, with unions balloting for industrial action, as well as, on some specific issues, advancing joint work with employers.

    But there is a wider, arguably more nuanced, lens to bring to bear, about how the current circumstances are reshaping staff experiences of working in higher education, and what options are available to those with responsibility for leading and supporting higher education staff.

    When the Wonkhe team came up with the idea of running a national survey for higher education staff we knew from the outset that we would not be able to produce definitive statements about “the HE staff experience” derived from a representative sample of responses. There is no consensus over how you would define such a sample in any case.

    The best national dataset that exists is probably found in UCEA publications that combine institutional staff experience survey datasets at scale – one published in 2024 titled “What’s it really like to work in HE?” and one in May this year diving into some of the reported differences between academic and professional staff, “A tale of two perspectives: bridging the gap in HE EX.”

    Instead we wanted to, firstly, ask some of the questions that might not get asked in institutional staff surveys – things like, how staff feel about their institution’s capacity to handle change, or the relative importance of different potential motivating factors for working in HE, or, baldly, how institutional cost-cutting is affecting individuals. And secondly, as best we can, to draw out some insight that’s focused on supporting constructive conversations within institutions about sustaining the higher education community during challenging times.

    We’ll be reporting on three key areas:

    1. “Quality of work” – discussed further below
    2. Professional motivations, the relative importance of different motivators for our sample group, and the gap between the level of importance afforded key motivators and the extent to which respondents believe they actually get to experience these in their roles – DK has tackled that subject and you can read about his findings here
    3. Views on institutional change capability – coming soon!

    We’ve not covered absolutely everything in this tranche of reporting – partly because of time pressures, and partly because of format constraints. We have a fair bit of qualitative data to dive into, as well as the third area of investigation on institutional change capability all still to come – watch this space.

    The methodology and demographics bit

    We promoted the survey via our mailing list (around 60,000 subscribers) during July and August 2025, yielding a total of 4,757 responses. We asked a whole range of questions that we hoped could help us make meaningful comparisons within our sample – including on things like nationality, and type and location of institutions – but only some of those questions netted enough positive responses to allow us to compare two or more good-sized groups.

    Our working assumption is that if there was a group of around 500 or more who share a particular characteristic it is reasonable to compare their responses to the group of respondents who did not have that particular characteristic. We have conducted analysis of the following subgroups:

    • Career stage: Early career (n=686), mid career (n=1,304), and late career (n=2,703)
    • Those with an academic contract (n=1,110) and those with a non-academic contract (n=3,394) – excluding some other kinds of roles/contracts
    • Time in higher education: five years or fewer (n=908); 6-10 years (n=981); 11-20 years (n=1,517) and more than 20 years (n=1,333)
    • Working arrangements: on-site (n=988); working from home or remotely (n=475); and flexible/hybrid (n=3,268)
    • Leadership role: respondents who said they have formal management or leadership responsibility in their current role for projects, programmes, resources, or people (n=3,506), and those who did not (n=1,214)

    And we also looked at the following identity characteristics:

    • Gender: men (n=1,386) and women (n=3,271)
    • Sexuality: those who identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual or queer (n=654) and those who did not (n=4,093)
    • Ethnicity: those who identified as being of a minoritised ethnicity (n=247) and those who did not (n=4,444)
    • Disability: those who identified as being disabled (n=478) and those who did not (n=4,269)

    In one case – that of respondents who identified as being of a minoritised ethnicity – our sample didn’t meet the threshold for wholly robust analysis, but we found some differences in reported experience, which we think is worth reporting given what we already know about this group of staff, and would caution that these findings should be viewed as indicative rather than definitive.

    In some cases we have combined subgroups to make larger groups – for example we’ve grouped various academic roles together to compare with roles on other kinds of contracts. In others we’ve ignored some very small (usually n=3 and below) groups to make for a more readable chart; for this reason we don’t often show all responses. And although our response rates are high you don’t have to refine things much to get some pretty low numbers, so we’ve not looked at intersections between groups.

    We have reported where we found what we considered to be a meaningful difference in response – a minimum of four percentage points difference.

    The financial context

    88 per cent of respondents said their institution has taken material steps to reduce costs in the last 12 months, offering a background context for answers to the wider survey and the assurance that the thing we are looking at is definitely staff views against a backdrop of change.

    51.6 per cent said they personally had been negatively affected by cost reduction measures, while 41.9 per cent said the personal impact was neutral. This suggests that while cost reduction may be widely viewed as negative, that experience or the views that arise from it may not be universal.

    Of those that said they had been negatively affected we found no meaningful differences among our various comparator groups. Leaders and those later in their career, were as likely to report negative impacts as those without leadership responsibilities or earlier in their career, suggesting that there is little mileage in making assumptions about who is more likely to be negatively impacted – though of course we did not try to measure the scale of the impact, and we’re mindful we were talking to people who had not lost their jobs as a result of cost-saving measures.

    The one exception was between those on academic contracts, of whom nearly two third (65.3 per cent) reported negative impacts, and those on non-academic contracts, of whom the number reporting negative impact was closer to half (47.4 per cent). This difference gives important context for the wider findings, in which those on academic contracts are consistently more likely to offer a negative perspective than those on non-academic contracts across a range of questions. This tallies to some degree with the national picture explored in UCEA’s “Bridging the gap” report in which academics were more likely to report challenges with workload, work-life balance, and reward and recognition, than professional staff – though higher levels of work satisfaction.

    Regretting and recommending HE

    We asked whether, taking into account what is known about other available career paths, whether respondents feel that choosing to work in HE was the right decision for them – two thirds said yes (66.9 per cent) while 23.8 per cent were unsure. Only 9 per cent said no.

    Those approaching the end of their career were more likely to agree (74.3 per cent) compared to those mid-career (65 per cent) or early career (61.2 per cent). Those with leadership responsibilities were also slightly more likely to agree, at 68.2 per cent, compared to 62.3 per cent for those without leadership responsibilities.

    Those on academic contracts were slightly less likely to agree, at 60.8 per cent compared to 68.9 per cent for those on non-academic contracts.

    However, the real divide opens up when we looked at responses to our follow up question: whether respondents would recommend a career in higher education to someone they cared about who was seeking their advice. A much smaller proportion of our sample agreed they would recommend a career in HE (42.2 per cent), with much higher rates of “unsure” (32.1 per cent) and “no” (24.5 per cent) – most likely reflecting the impact of current challenges as compared to people’s longer-term lived experience.

    For the recommend question, the career-stage trend reverses, with those approaching the end of their careers less likely to say they would recommend a career in HE (39.2 per cent) compared to 41.6 per cent for those mid-career and 50.4 per cent for early career respondents.

    There was a substantial difference by role: only 25.7 per cent of those on academic contracts would recommend a career in HE, compared to 46.9 per cent of those on non-academic contracts.

    We did not find any differences by gender, ethnicity, disability, or sexuality on either confidence in the decision to work in HE or willingness to recommend it as a career.

    Quality of work

    One of the great things about higher education as an employment sector is that there are lots of ways to be employed in it and lots of different types of jobs. What one person values about their role might be quite different from what another person appreciates – and the same for the perceived downsides of any given role.

    So rather than trying to drill down into people’s reported experiences based on our own probably biased views about what “good work” looks and feels like, we turned to the idea of “quality of work” as a guiding framework to look at respondents’ experiences and perceptions. We asked 16 questions in total derived from this 2018 Carnegie UK-RSA initiative on measuring job quality in the UK which proposes seven distinct dimensions of work quality, including pay and conditions, safety and wellbeing, job design, social support, voice, and work-life balance.

    We also kept in mind that, while support, safety and wellbeing at work are foundational conditions for success, so is effective performance management and the opportunity to apply your skills. In the spirit of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs we clustered our questions broadly into four areas: safety, security, and pay/conditions; the balance between support and challenge; relationships with colleagues; and “self-actualisation” incorporating things like autonomy and meaningfulness.

    For each question, respondents were offered a choice of Strongly disagree, Disagree, Agree, and Strongly agree. Here we report overall levels of agreement (ie Agree and Strongly Agree)

    You can see the full findings for all our comparator groups in the visualisation below.

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    Headlines on quality of work and interaction with willingness to recommend

    You can see all the workings out below where I’ve gone through the results line by line and reported all the variations we could see, but the TL;DR version is that the quality dimensions that jump out as being experienced comparatively positively are physical safety, good working relationships with colleagues, and meaningfulness of work. Two key areas that emerge as being experienced comparatively negatively are feeling the organisation takes your wellbeing seriously, and opportunities for progression – the level of agreement is startlingly low for the latter.

    We compared the various quality dimensions against whether people would recommend a career in higher education for the whole sample and found that across every question there was a direct correlation between a positive response and likelihood to recommend a career in HE – and the inverse for negative responses. We think that means we’re asking meaningful questions – though we’ve not been able to build a regression model to test which quality questions are making the largest contribution to the recommend question (which makes us sad).

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    Going through the various comparator groups for the quality of work questions we find that there are three core “at risk” groups – one of which is respondents of a minorised ethnicity, which comes with caveats regarding sample size. Another is those on academic contracts, and the third is disabled respondents. These groups did not consistently respond more negatively to every question on quality of work, but we did find enough differentiation to make it worth raising a flag.

    So to try to see whether we could find some core drivers for these “at risk” groups, we plotted the response to the “recommend” question against the responses to the quality questions just for these groups. At this point the samples for disabled and minoritised ethnic responses become just too small to draw conclusions – for example, under 100 respondents who identified as being of a minoritised ethnicity said they would not recommend a career in HE.

    However, over 400 of those on academic contracts said they would not recommend a career in HE, so we compared the answers of that group to those of respondents on non-academic contracts who also would not recommend a career in HE (just shy of 700 respondents). Interestingly for a number of the quality questions there was no differentiation in response between the groups, but there was noticeable difference for “reasonable level of control over work-life balance”, “able to access support with my work when I need it”, and “opportunities to share my opinion” – in the sense that among the group that would not recommend HE the academic cohort were more likely to give negative responses to these questions, giving a modest indication of possible priority areas for intervention.

    We also found that those who had worked in higher education for five years or fewer were frequently more likely to report agreement with our various propositions about quality work. While there’s clearly some overlap with those early in their career they are not entirely the same group – some may have entered HE from other sectors or industries – though early career respondents do also seem to emerge as having a slightly more positive view as well, including on areas like emotional safety, and wellbeing.

    Safety, security and pay and conditions

    The four statements we proposed on this theme were:

    • I feel reasonably secure in my job
    • I am satisfied with the pay and any additional benefits I receive
    • I feel physically safe at work
    • I feel emotionally safe at work

    On job security, overall two thirds (66.3 per cent) of our sample agreed or strongly agreed that they feel reasonably secure in their job. Those on academic contracts reported lower levels of agreement (57.8 per cent). Those who said they had been employed in higher education for five years or fewer reported higher levels of agreement (71.4 per cent). Respondents who identified as disabled reported slightly lower levels of agreement (61.9 per cent).

    On satisfaction with pay, conditions and additional benefits, overall 63.8 per cent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they were satisfied. Those on academic contracts reported lower levels of agreement (56.3 per cent). Those who identified as having a minoritised ethnicity had the lowest levels of agreement of all our various comparators (53.1 per cent), and were twice as likely to strongly disagree that they were satisfied with pay and benefits than those from non-minoritised ethnicities (15.2 per cent compared to 7.9 per cent). Those who identified as disabled had lower levels of agreement (54.6 per cent agreement) compared to those who did not consider themselves disabled (64.9 per cent agreement)

    On physical safety, the vast majority of respondents (95.8 per cent) agreed or strongly agreed they feel physically safe at work with very little variation across our comparator groups. While the overall agreement was similar between men and women, notably men were more likely to register strong agreement (66.3 per cent) than women (51.9 per cent).

    On emotional safety the picture is more varied. Overall 72 per cent agreed or strongly agreed they feel emotionally safe at work. Those who reported being earlier in their career reported higher levels of agreement (78.6 per cent), as did those who reported having worked in the HE sector for five years or fewer (78.6 per cent). Those with academic contracts reported lower levels of agreement (61.62). Those who identified as having a minoritised ethnicity had lower levels of agreement (62.7 per cent) and were more than twice as likely to strongly disagree they feel emotionally safe at work than those who are not minoritised (14.2 per cent compared to 6.1 per cent).

    Balance, challenge, and performance

    The four statements we proposed on this theme were:

    • The work I do makes appropriate use of my skills and knowledge
    • I have a reasonable level of control over my work-life balance
    • My organisation demonstrates that it takes my wellbeing seriously
    • My organisation demonstrates that it takes my performance seriously

    On using skills and knowledge 79.2 per cent of our sample agreed or strongly agreed that their work makes appropriate use of their skills and knowledge. There was very little variation between comparator groups – the one group that showed a modest difference was those who reported being disabled, whose agreement levels were slightly lower at 75.3 per cent.

    On control over work-life balance, 80.7 per cent of our sample agreed or strongly agreed they have a “reasonable” level of control. Those who had worked in higher education for five years or fewer were more likely to agree (87.2 per cent). 86.5 per cent of those who work from home agreed, compared to 74.4 per cent of those who work on campus or onsite, and 81.7 per cent of those who have hybrid or flexible working arrangements. Those who reported having leadership responsibilities had lower levels of agreement (78.9 per cent) compared to those who did not (85.9 per cent).

    The biggest difference was between those on academic contracts (66 per cent agreement) and those on non-academic contracts (85.3 per cent agreement). There were also slightly lower scores for disabled respondents (74.7 per cent compared to 81.2 per cent for non-disabled respondents) and for minoritised ethnicities (76.6 per cent compared to 81 per cent for non-minoritised ethnicities).

    On wellbeing, 57.8 per cent of our sample agreed or strongly agreed that their organisation demonstrates that it takes their wellbeing seriously. This was higher for early-career respondents – 60 per cent agreement compared to 57.9 per cent for those in mid-career, and 55.5 per cent for those approaching the end of their career. Agreement was higher for those with five years or fewer in higher education at 68.4 per cent agreement, compared with 54.5 per cent for those with more than 20 years’ experience.

    Those on academic contracts were substantially less likely to agree with only 39.7 per cent agreement that their organisation demonstrates that it takes their wellbeing seriously. Disabled respondents were also much less likely to agree than non-disabled respondents, at 47.7 per cent and 59 per cent respectively. Those working from home reported slightly lower levels of agreement, at 52.6 per cent.

    On performance, 63.1 per cent of our sample reported that their organisation demonstrates that it takes their performance seriously. This was slightly higher for those who had five years or fewer in higher education, at 69.6 per cent. Again, there was a difference between those on academic contracts with 57.8 per cent agreement and those on non-academic contracts, with 64 per cent agreement. Disabled respondents were slightly less likely to agree (58 per cent agreement) than non-disabled (63.8 per cent agreement).

    Relationships with colleagues

    The four statements we proposed on this theme were:

    • I am able to access support with my work when I need it
    • I am given sufficient opportunities to share my opinion on matters that affect my work
    • For the most part I have a good working relationship with my colleagues
    • I generally trust that the people who work here are doing the right things

    On accessing support, 76.2 per cent of our sample agreed they are able to access support when they need it. There was higher agreement among those early in their career at 81.3 per cent, and similarly among those who had worked five years or fewer in HE, at 82.8 per cent. There was lower agreement among those on academic contracts: 62.3 per cent agreement versus 80.5 per cent for those on non-academic contracts. Those from a minoritised ethnicity had lower agreement at 70.6 per cent, as did disabled respondents at 67.4 per cent.

    On opportunities to share opinion, 70.4 per cent of our sample agreed or strongly agreed they were given sufficient opportunities to share their opinion on matters that affect their work. There was a small difference between those who held a leadership role and those who did not, at 71.9 per cent and 66 per cent agreement respectively. Again, those on academic contracts had lower levels of agreement, at 58.2 per cent compared to 73.9 per cent for those on non-academic contracts. Disabled staff also had lower agreement at 60.9 per cent.

    On working relationships, cheeringly, 96.1 per cent of our sample agreed or strongly agreed they have good working relationships with their colleagues. While this held true overall across all our comparator groups regardless of leadership roles, working location, personal characteristics or any other factor, notably those of a minoritised ethnicity strongly agreed at a lower rate than those who did not identity as being from a minoritised ethnicity (39.6 per cent strong agreement compared to 48.3 per cent).

    On trust, 70.8 per cent of our sample agreed or strongly agreed that they generally trust the people they work with are doing the right things. This was very slightly lower among those who work from home or remotely, at 65.9 per cent. Agreement was lower among those on an academic contract, at 61.6 per cent, compared to 73.4 per cent of those on a non-academic contract. Agreement was also lower among disabled respondents, at 63.8 per cent.

    “Self-actualisation”

    The four statements we proposed on this theme were:

    • My current job fits with my future career plans and aspirations
    • I am comfortable with the level of autonomy I have in my job
    • There are sufficient opportunities for progression from this job
    • The work I do in my job is meaningful

    On career plans, 76.1 per cent of our sample agreed or strongly agreed that their current job fits with their future career plans and aspirations. Those who said they work from home or remotely had slightly lower levels of agreement at 69.3 per cent. Those who said they do not have any kind of leadership role had slightly lower levels of agreement at 69.4 per cent.

    On autonomy, 82.5 per cent of our sample agreed or strongly agreed they were comfortable with the level of autonomy they have in their job. Those with an academic contract had very slightly lower levels of agreement at 77.9, compared to 83.8 per cent agreement among those on non-academic contracts. Those of a minoritised ethnicity had lower levels of agreement at 73.9 per cent, as did disabled respondents, at 75.9 per cent agreement.

    On progression, a startling 29.5 per cent agreed or strongly agreed that there are sufficient opportunities for progression from their current position. There was a modest difference between those with leadership roles, 31.1 per cent of whom agreed, compared to 25 per cent of those without a leadership role. Those on academic contracts had higher levels of agreement at 38.5 per cent, compared to 26.8 per cent of those on non-academic contracts.

    On meaningful work, 86.1 per cent of our sample agreed or strongly agreed that the work they do in their job is meaningful. Those who work from home or remotely had very slightly lower levels of agreement at 77.9 per cent but otherwise this held true across all our comparator groups.

    Aspiration to lead and preparedness to lead

    We asked about whether respondents aspire to take on or further develop a leadership role in higher education, and if so, whether they are confident they know what a path to leadership in higher education involves in terms of support and professional development. These questions are particularly relevant given the generally negative view about opportunities to progress held by our survey respondents.

    [Full screen]

    Overall, 44.5 per cent of our sample said they aspire to take on or further develop a leadership role. Curiously, this was only slightly higher for those who already have some level of leadership responsibility, at 48.3 per cent. This can be explained to some degree by differentiation by career stage: 58.8 per cent of early career respondents aspired to take on or develop leadership roles, as did 50.9 per cent of mid-career respondents.

    Aspiration to lead was higher among those identifying as lesbian, gay, or bisexual at 52.6 per cent compared to 43.2 per cent for those who did not. Aspirations were also higher among respondents of a minoritised ethnicity, at 54.5 per cent, compared to 43.8 per cent among those not of a minoritised ethnicity.

    We also asked respondents whether they are confident they know what a path to leadership involves in terms of support and professional development, where we found some important variations. Confidence about pathways to leadership was lower among early career respondents, at 22.8 per cent agreement, and even mid-career respondents confidence was lower than the numbers reporting they aspire to leadership, at 36.6 per cent.

    While there was no difference in aspiration between respondents on academic contracts and those on non-academic contracts, those on academic contracts were more likely to say they are confident they know what a path to leadership involves, at 50.3 per cent compared to 34.8 per cent.

    While there was no difference in aspiration between men and women respondents, women were slightly less likely than men to report confidence in knowing about the path to leadership, at 37.5 per cent compared to 42 per cent. Those who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual, those of a minoritised ethnicity, and disabled respondents were also slightly less likely than their comparator groups to express confidence, despite having expressed aspiration to lead at a higher rate.

    These findings around demographic difference suggest that there remains some work to be done to make leadership pathways visible and inclusive to all.

    We’ll be picking up the conversation about sustaining higher education community during tough times at The Festival of Higher Education in November. It’s not too late to get your ticket – find out more here.

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  • The difficult human work behind responsible AI use in college operations

    The difficult human work behind responsible AI use in college operations

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    COLUMBUS, OHIO — Artificial intelligence-based products and software for college admissions and operations are proliferating in the higher education world. 

    How to choose from among them? Well, leaders can start by identifying a problem that is actually in need of an AI solution. 

    That is one of the core pieces of advice from a panel on deploying AI technology responsibly in college administration at the National Association for College Admission Counseling’s conference last week.

    Jasmine Solomon, senior associate director of systems operations at New York University, described a “flooded marketplace” of AI products advertised for a range of higher ed functions, from tutoring systems to retention analytics to admissions chatbots. 

    “Define what your AI use case is, and then find the purpose-built tool for that,” Solomon said. “If you’re using a general AI model or AI tool for an unintended purpose, your result is going to be poor.” 

    Asking why before you buy

    It’s also worth considering whether AI is the right tool. 

    “How does AI solve this problem better? Because maybe your team or the tools that you already have can solve this problem,” Solomon said. “Maybe you don’t need an AI tool for this.”

    Experts on the panel pointed out that administrators also need to think about who will use the tool, the potential privacy pitfalls of it, and its actual quality. 

    As Solomon put it, “Those built-in AI features — are they real? Are they on a future-release schedule, or is it here now? And if it’s here now, is it ready for prime time or is it ‘here now, and we’re beta testing.’” 

    Other considerations in deploying AI include those related to ethics, compliance and employee contracts.

    Institutions need to be mindful of workflows, staff roles, data storage, privacy and AI stipulations in collective bargaining contracts, said Becky Mulholland, director of first-year admission and operations at the University of Rhode Island. 

    “For those who are considering this, please, please, please make sure you’re familiar with those aspects,” Mulholland said. “We’ve seen this not go well in some other spaces.”

    On top of all that is the environmental impact of AI. One estimate found that AI-based search engines can use as much as 30 times more energy than traditional search. The technology also uses vast amounts of water to cool data centers.

    Panelists had few definitive answers for resolving AI’s environmental problems at the institutional level. 

    “There’s going to be a space for science to find some better solutions,” Mulholland said. “We’re not there right now.” 

    Solomon pointed to the pervasiveness of AI tools already embedded in much of our digital technology and argued untrained use could worsen the environmental impact. 

    “If they’re prompting [AI] 10, 20 times just to get the answer they want, they’ve used far more energy than if they understood prompt engineering,” Solomon said. 

    Transparency is also important. At NYU, Solomon said the university was careful to ensure prospective students knew they were talking with AI when interacting with its chatbot — so much so that they named the tool “NYUAdmissionsBot” to make its virtual nature as explicit as possible. 

    “We wanted to inform them every step of the way that you were talking to AI when you were using this chatbot,” Solomon said. 

    ‘You need time to test it’

    After all the big questions are asked and answered, and an AI solution chosen, institutions still have the not-so-small task of rolling the technology out in a way that is effective in both the short and long term. 

    The rollout of NYU’s chatbot in spring 2024 took “many, many months,” according to Solomon. “If a vendor tells you, ‘We will be up in a week,’ multiply that by like a factor of 10. You need time to test it.” The extra time can ensure a feature is actually ready when it’s unveiled for use. 

    The upside to all that time and effort for something like an admissions chatbot, Solomon noted, is that the AI feature can be available around-the-clock to answer inquiries, and it can quickly address the most commonly asked questions that would normally be flooding the inboxes of admissions staff. 

    But even after a successful initial rollout of an AI tool or feature, operations staff aren’t done. 

    Solomon described a continuous cycle of developing key metrics of success, running controlled experiments with an AI product and carefully examining data from AI use, including by having a human looking over the shoulder of the robots. In NYU’s case, this included looking at responses the chatbot gave to inquiries from prospective students.

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  • Helping kids learn how their brains work

    Helping kids learn how their brains work

    What if improving children’s mental health — and life outcomes — could be done by teaching kids how their brains work?

    That’s a key idea behind the approach of teachers at Momentous School in Dallas, a private elementary school that serves 225 students, most of whom come from low-income families. Each day, educators present lessons on neuroscience and mindfulness, from the youngest learners all the way up to fifth graders. 

    Preschoolers in the school’s 3-year-old classroom learn about the brain by singing “The Brain Song” to the tune of “Bingo” (“I have a brain in my head/And it’s for thinking”). They practice mindfulness by lying down with stuffed animals on their stomachs and watching them move up and down as they breathe.

    Older students learn calming strategies like slowly counting each finger on their hands while breathing in and out. Classrooms offer tactile models of the brain to help students learn about different parts such as the prefrontal cortex, which controls such processes as executive function and problem solving, and the brain stem, which regulates breathing and blood pressure.

    This focus on mindfulness is happening in schools across the country, according to the Child Mind Institute, a nonprofit focused on children’s mental health. Experts say the goal is teaching self-awareness and regulation.

    “Once the kids feel they can calm themselves, even just through breathing it’s like the ‘wow’ moment,” said Rick Kinder, creator of a mindfulness program called “Wellness Works in Schools,” in an article by the Child Mind Institute.

    At Momentous School, conversations about the brain continue throughout the day, as teachers can be heard encouraging students to identify their emotions or asking, “What’s your amygdala saying to you in this moment?” according to Jessica Gomez, a psychologist and executive director of Momentous Institute, the Dallas-based mental health nonprofit that operates the school. (The amygdala processes emotions in the brain.)

    Through these frequent discussions and additional lessons on mental health and healthy relationships, teachers are “trying to normalize these things as part of the human condition versus something that is stigmatizing,” Gomez said. The school also holds regular parent nights to educate families on how the brain works and teach emotional regulation strategies that families can practice together at home.

    Momentous School, which launched in 1997 and is funded by philanthropic donations, was developed to put into practice mental health and brain science research from Momentous Institute*. A recent study by Momentous Institute and the Center for BrainHealth at the University of Texas at Dallas found this approach may be contributing to positive outcomes for graduates of the school. Of the 73 Momentous School students who went on to graduate from high school in 2016 through 2018, 97 percent earned a high school diploma and 48 percent earned a college degree.

    These findings come at a time when lessons on emotions, relationships and social awareness, often referred to as social and emotional learning, have become a flashpoint in education and culture wars. Studies show such lessons can improve academic performance: Other researchers unaffiliated with Momentous School have also found that teaching about the brain can provide motivation for students and improve academic and social development. 

    As teachers and students head back to school and face new routines and social situations, now is a good time to build relationships and introduce even young students to ideas about how their brain works, Gomez said. Although many students at Momentous deal with challenges such as poverty, she believes that the school’s emphasis on mental health and brain science has helped families to better cope with those pressures. 

    “The point isn’t to never have stress in your life, it’s to know what to do with it,” Gomez said. “Children and parents having agency and tools helps them know how to navigate life stressors, which has a buffering effect on their brain.” 

    *Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify that Momentous School was developed based on research by Momentous Institute.

    Contact staff writer Jackie Mader at 212-678-3562 or [email protected].

    This story about neuroscience in education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • How We Think, How We Teach: Five Ways to Think About AI in Faculty Work – Faculty Focus

    How We Think, How We Teach: Five Ways to Think About AI in Faculty Work – Faculty Focus

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  • Colleges add sports to bring men, but it doesn’t always work

    Colleges add sports to bring men, but it doesn’t always work

    SALEM, Va. — On a hot and humid August morning in this southwestern Virginia town, football training camp is in full swing at Roanoke College. Players cheer as a receiver makes a leaping one-handed catch, and linemen sweat through blocking drills. Practice hums along like a well-oiled machine — yet this is the first day this team has practiced, ever.

    In fact, it’s the first day of practice for a Roanoke College varsity football team since 1942, when the college dropped football in the midst of World War II. 

    Roanoke is one of about a dozen schools that have added football programs in the last two years, with several more set to do so in 2026. They hope that having a team will increase enrollment, especially of men, whose ranks in college have been falling. Yet research consistently finds that while enrollment may spike initially, adding football does not produce long-term enrollment gains, or if it does, it is only for a few years.

    Roanoke’s president, Frank Shushok Jr., nonetheless believes that bringing back football – and the various spirit-raising activities that go with it — will attract more students, especially men. The small liberal arts college lost nearly 300 students between 2019 and 2022, and things were likely to get worse; the country’s population of 18-year-olds is about to decline and colleges everywhere are competing for students from a smaller pool.  

    “Do I think adding sports strategically is helping the college maintain its enrollment base? It absolutely has for us,” said Shushok.  “And it has in a time when men in particular aren’t going to college.”   

    Women outnumber men by about 60 percent to 40 percent at four-year colleges nationwide. Roanoke is a part of this trend. In 2019, the college had 1,125 women students and 817 men. 

    This fall, Roanoke will have 1,738 students altogether, about half men and half women. But the incoming freshman class is more than 55 percent male. 

    Sophomore linebacker Ethan Mapstone (26) jogs to the sideline at the end of a drill. Mapstone said he hadn’t planned to play college football until Roanoke head coach Bryan Stinespring recruited him. Credit: Miles MacClure for The Hechinger Report

    “The goal was that football would, in a couple of years, bring in at least an additional hundred students to the college,” said Curtis Campbell, Roanoke’s athletic director, as he observed the first day of practice. “We’ve got 97 kids out there on the field. So we’re already at the goal.”

    That number was 91 players as the season began, on Sept. 6 — and the Maroons won their first game, 23-7, over Virginia University of Lynchburg, on what Shushok called “a brilliant day full of community spirit and pride.”

    “Our students were out in force, side by side with community members spanning the generations,” he said via email. “In a time when we all need more to celebrate and opportunities to gather, it is easy to say our first football game since 1942 was both historic and invigorating.”

    Related: Interested in more news about colleges and universities? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter.

    In the NCAA’s Division III, where Roanoke teams compete, athletic scholarships are not permitted. Athletes pay tuition or receive financial aid in the same way as other students, so adding football players will add revenue. For a small college, this can be significant. 

    Shushok said it’s not just about enrollment, though: He wants a livelier campus with more school spirit. Along with football, he started a marching band and a competitive cheerleading team. 

    “It plays to something that’s really important to 18- to 22-year-olds right now, which is a sense of belonging and spirit and excitement,” said Shushok, who came to Roanoke after being vice president of student affairs at Virginia Tech. Its Division I football team plays in a 65,000-seat stadium where fans jump up and down in unison to Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” as the players take the field. 

    The Maroons play in the local high school stadium — it seats 7,157 — and pay the city of Salem $2,850 per game in rent. The college raised $1.3 million from alumni and corporate sponsors to get the team up and running. 

    Roanoke College players gather on the sidelines during practice. Credit: Miles MacClure for The Hechinger Report

    Despite the research showing limited enrollment gains from adding football, colleges keep doing it. About a dozen have added or relaunched football programs in the last two years, including New England College in New Hampshire and the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Several more plan to add football in 2026, including Chicago State University and Azusa Pacific University in California. 

    Related: Universities and colleges search for ways to reverse the decline in the ranks of male students

    Calvin University in Michigan recently added football even though the student body was already half men, half women. The school wanted to broaden its overall appeal, Calvin Provost Noah Toly said, citing “school spirit, tradition, leadership development,” as well as the increased enrollment and “strengthened pipelines with feeder schools.”

    A 2024 University of Georgia study examined the effects of adding football on a school’s enrollment.

    “What you see is basically a one-year spike in male enrollment around guys who come to that school to help be part of starting up a team, but then that effect fades out over the next couple of years,” said Welch Suggs, an associate professor there and the lead author of that study. It found early modest enrollment spikes at colleges that added football compared to peers that didn’t and “statistically indistinguishable” differences after the first two years.

     ”What happens is that you have a substitution effect going on,” Suggs said. “There’s a population of students that really want to go to a football school; the football culture and everything with it really attracts some students. And there are others who really do not care one way or the other. And so I think what happens is that you are simply recruiting from different pools.” 

    Today, college leaders value any pool that includes men. Most prefer the campus population to be balanced between the sexes, and, considering the low number of male high school graduates going to college at all (39 percent in the last Pew survey), many worry about too few men being prepared for the future workforce.

    “ I don’t know that we have done a good job of articulating the value, and of programming to the particular needs that some of our young men are bringing in this moment,” Shushok said. “I think it’s pretty obvious, if you read the literature out there, that a lot of men are feeling undervalued and perhaps unseen in our culture.”

    Roanoke College President Frank Shushok Jr. in his office. Shushok said he brought football back to Roanoke to boost enrollment and create a livelier campus. Credit: Miles MacClure for The Hechinger Report

    Shushok said that Roanoke’s enrollment-building strategy was not centered on athletics. The college has also forged partnerships with local community colleges, guaranteeing students admission after they complete their associate degree, and has added nine new majors in 2024, including cannabis studies. Shushok pointed out that while freshman enrollment is down slightly this year, the community college program has produced a big increase in transfer students, from 65 in fall of 2024 to 91 this fall.

    About 55 percent of Roanoke’s students come from Virginia, but 75 of the football team’s 91 players are Virginians. The head coach, Bryan Stinespring, a 61-year-old Virginia native, knows that recruiting territory, having worked on the coaching staffs at several Virginia universities in his career. 

    Related: College Uncovered podcast: The Missing Men

    When Stinespring took over as head coach in 2023, hoping to inspire existing students and potential applicants to join his new team, there was no locker room, no shoulder pads or tackling dummies, no uniforms. 

    “The first set of recruits that came on campus, we ran down to Dick’s, got a football, went to the bookstore, got a sweatshirt,” said Stinespring, referring to a local Dick’s Sporting Goods store. “These kids came on campus and they had to believe in the vision that we had.” 

    Students bought into that vision; 61 of them joined a club team last fall, which played four exhibition games in preparation for this year. The community bought in, too; 9,200 fans showed up to the first club game, about 2,000 of them perched on a grassy hill overlooking the end zone. 

    Linebackers Connor Cox (40) and Austin Fisher (20) look on from the sidelines. Credit: Miles MacClure for The Hechinger Report

    Before Ethan Mapstone, a sophomore, committed to Roanoke, he was on the verge of giving up football, having sustained several injuries in high school. Then Stinespring called. 

    “I could hear by the tone of his voice how serious he meant everything he was saying,” said Mapstone, a 6-foot-1-inch linebacker from Virginia Beach. “I was on a visit a week later, committed two weeks later.”  

    To him, the football leaders at Roanoke seemed to be “a bunch of people on a mission ready to make something happen, and I think that’s what drove me in.” 

    Related: Even as women outpace men in graduating from college their earnings remain stuck 

    KJ Bratton, a junior wide receiver and transfer student from the University of Virginia, said he was drawn to Roanoke not because of football but because of the focus on individual attention in small classes. “You definitely get that one-on-one attention with your teacher, that definitely helps you in the long run,” said Bratton.  

    Jaden Davis, a sophomore wide receiver who was an honor roll student in high school, said, “ The staff, they care about all the students. They’ll pull you aside, they know you personally, they’ll send you emails, invite you to office hours, and they just work with you to do the best you can.” 

    Not everyone was on board with football returning to the college when the plan was first announced. Some faculty and administrators were concerned football would change the campus culture, said Campbell, the athletic director. 

    Sophomore wide receiver Jaden Davis poses for a photograph before the first practice of the season. Davis said the individual attention he could get from professors is what attracted him to Roanoke. Credit: Miles MacClure for The Hechinger Report

    “There were just stereotypes about football players,” he said. “You know, they’re not smart, they’re troublemakers. They’re gonna do this and they’re gonna do that, be disruptive.” 

    But the stereotypes turned out to be unwarranted, he said. When the club team started, he said, “I got so many compliments last year from faculty and staff and campus security about how respectful and polite and nice our students were, how they behaved in the classroom, sitting in the front row and just being role models.”

    Payton Rigney, a junior who helps out with the football team, concurred. “All the professors like them because they say ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, ma’am,’” she said.

    Like most Division III athletes, the Roanoke players know that they have little chance of making football a professional career. Mapstone said there are other reasons to embrace the sport. 

    “It’s a great blessing to be able to do what we do,” he said. “There’s many people that I speak to who are older and, and they reminisce about the times that they had to play football, and it’s very limited time.

    “And even though there’s not a future for it, I love it. It’s a Thursday, my only problem in the world is that there’s dew on my shoes.”  

    Contact editor Lawrie Mifflin at (212) 678-4078 or [email protected].

    This story about college football was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger higher education newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

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  • English Teachers Work to Instill the Joy of Reading. Testing Gets in the Way – The 74

    English Teachers Work to Instill the Joy of Reading. Testing Gets in the Way – The 74


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    A new national study shows that Americans’ rates of reading for pleasure have declined radically over the first quarter of this century and that recreational reading can be linked to school achievement, career compensation and growth, civic engagement, and health. Learning how to enjoy reading – not literacy proficiency – isn’t just for hobbyists, it’s a necessary life skill. 

    But the conditions under which English teachers work are detrimental to the cause – and while book bans are in the news, the top-down pressure to measure up on test scores is a more pervasive, more longstanding culprit. Last year, we asked high school English teachers to describe their literature curriculum in a national questionnaire we plan to publish soon. From responses representing 48 states, we heard a lot of the following: “soul-deadening”; “only that which students will see on the test” and “too [determined] by test scores.”

    These sentiments certainly aren’t new. In a similar questionnaire distributed in 1911, teachers described English class as “deadening,” focused on “memory instead of thinking,” and demanding “cramming for examination.” 

    Teaching to the test is as old as English itself – as a secondary school subject, that is. Teachers have questioned the premise for just as long because too many have experienced a radical disconnect between how they are asked or required to teach and the pleasure that reading brings them.

    High school English was first established as a test-driven subject around the turn of the 20th Century. Even at a time when relatively few Americans attended college, English class was oriented around building students’ mastery of now-obscure literary works that they would encounter on the College Entrance Exam. 

    The development of the Scholastic Aptitude Test in 1926 and the growth of standardized testing since No Child Left Behind have only solidified what was always true: As much as we think of reading as a social, cultural, even “spiritual” experience, English class has been shaped by credential culture.

    Throughout, many teachers felt that preparing students for college was too limited a goal; their mission was to prepare students for life. They believed that studying literature was an invaluable source of social and emotional development, preparing adolescents for adulthood and for citizenship. It provided them with “vicarious experience”: Through reading, young people saw other points of view, worked through challenging problems, and grappled with complex issues. 

    Indeed, a national study conducted in 1933 asked teachers to rank their “aims” in literature instruction. They listed “vicarious experience” first, “preparation for college” last.

    The results might not look that different today. Ask an English teacher what brought her to the profession, and a love of reading is likely to top the list. What is different today is the  unmatched pressure to prepare students for a constant cycle of state and national examinations and for college credentialing. 

    Increasingly, English teachers are compelled to use online curriculum packages that mimic the examinations themselves, composed largely of excerpts from literary and “informational” texts instead of the whole books that were more the norm in previous generations. “Vicarious experience” has less purchase in contemporary academic standards than ever. 

    Credentialing, however, does not equal preparing. Very few higher education skills map neatly onto standardized exams, especially in the humanities. As English professors, we can tell you that an enjoyment of reading – not just a toleration of it – is a key academic capacity. It produces better writers, more creative thinkers, and students less likely to need AI to express their ideas effectively.

    Yet we haven’t given K-12 teachers the structure or freedom to treat reading enjoyment as a skill. The data from our national survey suggests that English teachers and their students find the system deflating. 

     “Our district adopted a disjointed, excerpt-heavy curriculum two years ago,” a Washington teacher shared, “and it is doing real damage to students’ interest in reading.” 

    From Tennessee, a teacher added: “I understand there are state guidelines and protocols, but it seems as if we are teaching the children from a script. They are willing to be more engaged and can have a better understanding when we can teach them things that are relatable to them.”

    And from Oregon, another tells us that because “state testing is strictly excerpts,” the district initially discouraged “teaching whole novels.”  It changed course only after students’ exam scores improved. 

    Withholding books from students is especially inhumane when we consider that the best tool for improved academic performance is engagement – students learn more when they become engrossed in stories. Yet by the time they graduate from high school, many students  master test-taking skills but lose the window for learning to enjoy reading.

    Teachers tell us that the problem is not attitudinal but structural. An education technocracy that consists of test making agencies, curriculum providers, and policy makers is squeezing out enjoyment, teacher autonomy and student agency. 

    To reverse this trend, we must consider what reading experiences we are providing our students. Instead of the self-defeating cycle of test-preparation and testing, we should take courage, loosen the grip on standardization, and let teachers recreate the sort of experiences with literature that once made us, and them, into readers.


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  • The incentives don’t work they just make growth worse

    The incentives don’t work they just make growth worse

    The UK’s economy looks particularly bad at the moment.

    There is a Jeremy Hunt view of the world that while the UK is in a muddle with its money the foundations are strong. After all, the UK is still one of the world’s largest economies. There is the City AM view that the UK is in many ways fundamentally broken. And, there is the Resolution Foundation that predicts that many households will endure another decade of lost earnings.

    The UK’s particular malaise is manifold. The IFS talks about it as a result of “Low investment, policy mistakes, political instability, and Brexit,” (Covid didn’t help either). The result is what former LSE president and now advisor to Keir Starmer Minouche Shafik and founder of the Resolution Foundation Clive Cowdery have called a “toxic combination of low growth and high inequality.” Their view is stagnation is because of low records of investment in staff by business, regional inequalities, and the overplaying of the UK’s manufacturing strengths at the expense of its actual strengths in services.

    New advisor old problems

    As the country has ambled through its decade and more of low growth the university sector has expanded rapidly. As I wrote about in a paper for the Post-18 Project this presents a fundamental problem for people like me that believe in the economic utility of universities.

    The best version of the story is that universities have genuinely transformed the economic fortunes of some parts of the country, if not the entire country. A recent Centre for Cities report suggests there are some places that have become more prosperous through all the economic goods a university attracts to their place including students, knowledge workers, and some kinds of innovation.

    The second sunniest version is that the country would be in an even greater mess were it not for its universities. The gloomiest picture is that despite the enormous amount of additional public funding, increases in turnover, new research schemes, capital builds, and other fiscal levers, universities have not been able to get the country out of its fiscal funk.

    The rejoinder to this is that universities don’t just exist for reasons of economic utility. The problem is, as Jane Robinson has pointed out for Wonkhe, university’s social contract and the funding that flows to them is increasingly about how they choose to invest, the partnerships they build, the ways in which they grow their economies, and their role in regional development. Their ability to meet the challenges Shafik and Cowdery have set out is the bargain for further funding.

    This is fair enough. It is unreasonable for universities to expect more public funding in a tight economy without offering something in return. The problem is the things that universities are doing are often going under the radar and the things they might do better are often beyond their control.

    It’s not that universities don’t want to contribute to economic growth, it is that it is hard and government policy often makes it harder. To demonstrate, let’s consider Shafik’sand Cowdery’s triangle of growth; skills (as a key part of productivity), regions, and maximising the UK’s strengths.

    Start, stop, go

    Universities generally produce people with the skills the economy needs. They do not produce as many people with the skills the economy needs at pre-degree level, because the curriculum is usually built around undergraduate degree level qualification, but there is no other game in town when it comes to producing the graduate workers an economy requires.

    Universities will probably never provide all the sheet metal workers the country requires or fill the massive gaps in the care system but they will provide a good number of the nuclear physicists, programmers, engineers, lawyers, accountants, and managers the industrial strategy requires.

    The problem is that universities have almost no incentive to teach the things that the industrial strategy says the country needs. They may do so for academic reasons, civic good, inertia, research profile, specialism, or something else, but teaching the future home students in high-cost programmes is the exact opposite way any sensible university financial planner would arrange their portfolio of programmes. Programmes at pre-degree level have students for less time on them, with a less obvious market, and comparable individual unit costs. An even worse deal.

    To look at this another way the university which aimed solely to meet the needs of their local and national labour markets would have to ignore the financial reality they exist within. My own view is that on narrow economic terms it’s a good thing universities teach broad based curricula because the labour market is unpredictable and benefits from a range of skilled people to draw upon. The government view is that it’s not only necessary to entirely reform the skills pipeline but to provide more specific skills in AI, engineering, cyber, and other STEM related fields.

    The government has therefore created a misalignment between financial incentives and the labour market outcomes they are trying to achieve. To address this the government could increase university funding generally through strategic grants (probably not going to happen), boost other forms of income through relaxing visa regulations (absolutely not going to happen,) or improve incentives to teach home students in high cost programmes (we might get some inflationary fee increases).

    The alternative is to recognise that an entirely student demand led model is going to lead to some skills gaps. Various attempts to nudge students into certain qualifications (remember the adverts on cyber?) don’t seem to have made an awful lot of difference. Through the Post-18 project my co-authors and I argued that some HE provision could be commissioned:

    The Devolution Bill should make provision for mayoral combined authorities to convene a post-18 education and skills provision group with a diversity of provider and industry representation that can draw on the insight from regional growth insight centres to develop post-18 pathways, provision and partnerships. These groups could initially propose business cases for reprofiling of funding but over time could be given direct commissioning powers and/or direct injections of public funding to catalyse new provision aligned to national or regional economic growth priorities.

    The government can find ways of boosting or redirecting teaching resources or the country, in the long term, can have fewer graduates in high-cost degrees. There is no path to more students studying more expensive things in line with government priorities without resources to do so.

    Regions

    Regional growth is another area where the incentives make absolutely no sense. The UK is unusually imbalanced where second cities are comparably unproductive to many other large economies. One way in which to rebalance economies is to increase investment and the supply of skilled human capital.

    The single most important measure of skilled human capital in the university sector is Graduate Outcomes. Graduate Outcomes measure whether a student is in highly-skilled employment fifteen months after they graduate. Universities are regulated and placed in league tables based on this metric. The incentive for universities is to place their graduates where there are the highest number of available highly skilled jobs which is London. Even building a spin-out outside of London only gives a 6/10 chance the spin-out won’t migrate to the capital anyway.

    Universities do not have golden handcuffs to their places and the economic geography of London can too easily pull their economic goods away. Research excellence and impact is not measured on a regional footprint. Infrastructure investment does not follow where there is the greatest latent potential. There is astoundingly little policy that is place sensitive.

    In supporting the UK’s strengths universities are not often the primary beneficiaries of the economic growth they support. There is lots of stick for them to do good economic things but the carrots for supporting growth, particularly in local economies, tend to be the odd grant and bit of underspend like the Regional Innovation Fund. The government cannot be surprised about investment and talent flight where regional educational incentives are non-existent.

    Leave alone

    It can feel like the role of universities in the economy is both over- and understated. On the one hand they are not designed to, never will, and should not be expected to solve every problem with the economy.

    They will not bring back manufacturing, they will not rebalance regions on their own, and they will not fill all of the gaps in the labour market. At the same time they do a lot of good stuff as employers, innovators, anchors, coalition builders, contributing to clusters, attracting knowledge workers, and through educating students.

    The bit where the incentives do work is producing students for the knowledge economy. The part of the UK’s economy that has grown as manufacturing has declined. Universities have a reliable (if not predictable) income, their graduate outcomes are regulated (how well is a different question), and parts of the economy make good use of their graduate skills. If university marketing departments are to be believed this good employment is also one of their major selling points which through student recruitment then puts more funding back into the system. The incentives just line up a bit better.

    The problem is that universities are not only not always supported to get on with the job but they aren’t left alone to do so. It would perhaps be too much to hope for but welcome that the reshuffle leads to clear direction on what universities are expected (or maybe even regulated or incentivised to do) in the local economy, recognition for their national role and how they will continue to be supported to do so, and a clear sense of where they will be given a little boost but mostly left alone to keep doing the good things they are doing.

    Refiring the economy does not have to be about doing new things. It might be about doing old things in a more joined up, properly funded, and regionally focussed way. As growth goes to the top of the agenda, let’s not forget the work universities are already doing.

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  • Exploring a new standard for preparing students for the future of work

    Exploring a new standard for preparing students for the future of work

    Key points:

    According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, nearly 40 percent of workers’ core skills will change in just the next five years. As AI, automation, and global connectivity continue to reshape every industry, today’s students are stepping into a world where lifelong careers in a single field are increasingly rare.

    Rather than following a straight path, the most successful professionals tomorrow will be able to pivot, reinvent, and adapt again and again. That’s why the goal of education must also shift. Instead of preparing students for a fixed destination, we must prepare them to navigate change itself.

    At Rockingham County Schools (RCS), this belief is at the heart of our mission to ensure every student is “choice-ready.” Rather than just asking, “What job will this student have?” we’re asking, “Will they be ready to succeed in whatever path they choose now and 10 years from now?”

    Choice-ready is a mindset, not just a pathway

    Let’s start with a quick analogy: Not long ago, the NBA underwent a major transformation. For decades, basketball was largely a two-point game with teams focused on scoring inside the arc. But over time, the strategy shifted to where it is today: a three-point league, where teams that invest in long-range shooters open up the floor, score more efficiently, and consistently outperform those stuck in old models. The teams that adapted reshaped the game. The ones that didn’t have fallen behind.

    Education is facing a similar moment. If we prepare students for a narrow, outdated version of success that prepares them for one track, one career, or one outcome, we risk leaving them unprepared for a world that rewards agility, range, and innovation.

    At RCS, we take a global approach to education to avoid this. Being “choice-ready” means equipping students with the mindset and flexibility to pursue many possible futures, and a global approach expands that readiness by exposing them to a broader range of competencies and real-world situations. This exposure prepares them to navigate the variety of contexts they will encounter as professionals. Rather than locking them into a specific plan, it helps them develop the ability to shift when industries, interests, and opportunities change.

    The core competencies to embrace this mindset and flexibility include:

    • Creative and analytical thinking, which help solve new problems in new contexts
    • Empathy and collaboration, which are essential for dynamic teams and cross-sector work
    • Confidence and communication, which are built through student-led projects and real-world learning

    RCS also brings students into the conversation. They’re invited to shape their learning environment by giving their input on district policies around AI, cell phone use, and dress codes. This encourages engagement and ownership that helps them build the soft skills and self-direction that today’s workforce demands.

    The 4 E’s: A vision for holistic student readiness and flexibility

    To turn this philosophy into action, we developed a four-part framework to support every student’s readiness:

    1. Enlisted: Prepared for military service
    2. Enrolled: Ready for college or higher education
    3. Educated: Grounded in academic and life skills
    4. Entrepreneur: Equipped to create, innovate, and take initiative

    That fourth “E”–entrepreneur–is unique to RCS and especially powerful. It signals that students can create their opportunities rather than waiting for them. In one standout example, a student who began producing and selling digital sound files online explored both creative and commercial skill sets.

    These categories aren’t silos. A student might enlist, then enroll in college, then start a business. That’s the whole point: Choice-ready students can move fluidly from one path to another as their interests–and the world–evolve.

    The role of global education

    Global education is a framework that prepares students to understand the world, appreciate different perspectives, and engage with real-world issues across local and global contexts. It emphasizes transferable skills—such as adaptability, empathy, and critical thinking—that students need to thrive in an unpredictable future.

    At RCS, global education strengthens student readiness through:

    • Dual language immersion, which gives students a competitive edge in a multilingual, interconnected workforce
    • Cultural exposure, which builds resilience, empathy, and cross-cultural competence
    • Real-world learning, which connects academic content to relevant, global challenges

    These experiences prepare students to shift between roles, industries, and even countries with confidence.

    Redesigning career exploration: Early exposure and real skills

    Because we don’t know what future careers will be, we embed career exploration across K-12 to ensure students develop self-awareness and transferable skills early on.

    One of our best examples is the Paxton Patterson Labs in middle schools, where students explore real-world roles, such as practicing dental procedures on models rather than just watching videos.

    Through our career and technical education and innovation program at the high school level, students can:

    • Earn industry-recognized credentials.
    • Collaborate with local small business owners.
    • Graduate workforce-ready with the option to pursue higher education later.

    For students who need immediate income after graduation, RCS offers meaningful preparation that doesn’t close off future opportunities, keeping those doors open.

    And across the system, RCS tracks success by student engagement and ownership, both indicators that a learner is building confidence, agency, and readiness to adapt. This focus on student engagement and preparing students for the world postgraduation is already paying dividends. During the 2024-25 school year, RCS was able to increase the percentage of students scoring proficient on the ACT by more than 20 points to 44 percent. Additionally, RCS increased both the number of students who took AP exams and the number who received a passing score by 12 points to 48 percent.

    Preparing students for a moving target

    RCS knows that workforce readiness is a moving target. That’s why the district continues to evolve with it. Our ongoing focus areas include:

    • Helping graduates become lifelong learners who can retrain and reskill as needed
    • Raising awareness of AI’s influence on learning, creativity, and work
    • Expanding career exploration opportunities that prioritize transferable, human-centered skills

    We don’t know exactly what the future holds. We do know that students who can adapt, pivot, and move confidently from one career path to another will be the most prepared–because the most important outcome isn’t fitting students into today’s job market but preparing them to create value in tomorrow’s.

    At Rockingham County Schools, that’s what being “choice-ready” really means. It’s not about predicting the future. It’s about preparing students to thrive within it wherever it leads.

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  • ‘Much work to do’ at ANU, VC admits – Campus Review

    ‘Much work to do’ at ANU, VC admits – Campus Review

    The Australian National University (ANU) admitted its has “much work to do” regarding its management and culture in a report it produced for the sector regulator’s ongoing investigation into its governance.

    The Self-Assurance Report, completed for the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), is the first step in TEQSA’s current compliance assessment of the university’s leadership, council culture and financial position, which started in October, 2024.

    “The report makes clear that we’re on a journey and that we still have much work to do in the areas of risk management, governance and culture,” vice-chancellor Genevieve Bell said in a statement.

    “We recognise that ANU is at a critical point in its history – one where we need to reset not only our finances but also our operating and structural model.”

    The university has reported an operating deficit every year since 2020, except 2021, and has forecast a $110 deficit for 2025 and a break-even for 2026.

    The recurring deficits caused a major restructure, known as Renew ANU, that aims to save $250 million in yearly spending; $100 million in salary costs and $150m in non-salary costs.

    There has 135 voluntary separations and 83 staff redundancies so far, which has saved $13 million, and $37 million has been saved from spending cuts.

    From this point, there will be no more forced redundancies that haven’t already been announced, management has said. More salary savings will come from natural attrition.

    It has also restructured its teaching operations, causing entire schools, such as its School of Music, to close.

    “While the program of work has taken a strategic, phased approach to organisational change, guided by clear principles and extensive consultation, it has been a significant cultural shift and has caused anxiety and uncertainty in the university community,” the report said.

    “Council has been regularly briefed about the progress of the work; and an internal governance board has maintained appropriate oversight … council has identified and is addressing the risks that led to the university’s current financial position, however, there remains work to be done to bring the whole university community along on this journey.

    “Given the complexities with the university’s finances, this involves continuing to work with the university community in an enhanced way to ensure the finances are more easily understood.”

    Vice-chancellor Genevieve Bell. Picture: Andrew Meares

    The university’s ongoing deficits were not the result of one factor, the report said, but multiple, including the 2017-2021 strategic plan that called for an overall reduced, but more diverse, student base, and a had a projected increase in philanthropic donations. There were also costs associated with hailstorm and fire damage throughout 2019 and 2020.

    The strategic plan initiated an ambitious philanthropic campaign that aimed to produce $1bn in donations over 10 years, which would make up for budget shortfalls relating to the overall reduction in student headcount.

    The Self-Assurance Report said the philanthropic campaign “never eventuated and was quietly abandoned in late 2022.”

    Professor Bell said the university council was very open to reflecting on its own practices and culture when it was discussed at a meeting in early August.

    The Cover Letter, which was submitted alongside the Self-Assurance Report, also said ANU will set up an independent investigation into matters raised by academic Liz Allen, who alleged she was bullied and intimidated by ANU chancellor Julie Bishop at the Quality of governance at Australian higher education providers inquiry.

    Dr Allen initially lodged a workplace complaint about the incident and the university agreed to appoint an external investigator, who eventually terminated the investigation on ethical grounds of ANU interference.

    Other ANU staff and former council members also told the inquiry of alarming bullying, intimidation and secrecy linked to the university’s governing council.

    Professor Bell was absent with the flu on the day of the inquiry hearing, although she responded to the claims on the same day in a statement.

    “Although we cannot address individual allegations publicly [due to ongoing investigations], I was really saddened to see members of our university in such distress, both those who appeared at the inquiry and those on our campus who have been impacted,” she said.

    More on this story: Students sitting on floor in ANU tutorials | 800 ANU staff vote no confidence in leadership | Professor Bell on ANU’s public perception 

    “Here on campus, I have now hosted nine ‘Facing the Future’ conversations and I want to thank staff who have made themselves available … I have been encouraged that people have been frank in their feedback, and most have turned up with a spirit of optimism and passion for the university which is a wonderful thing to hear in moments of change.”

    The Self-Assurance Report assured TEQSA that ANU has a competent leadership team.

    ANU's executive leadership team. Source: ANU
    ANU’s executive leadership team. Source: ANU

    “While the majority of the Executive Leadership Team are relatively new to their positions, they bring extensive experience to their roles from both within, and external to, ANU and the sector,” it said.

    Only three out of nine members of its executive leadership team started their term before February, 2024.

    The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) on Tuesday launched a petition urging the council to sack chancellor Julie Bishop and vice-chancellor Genevieve Bell and reverse the job and course cuts. It follows a vote of no confidence in the leadership pair by 800 ANU staff in March.

    “We don’t need a new investigation, we need new leadership,” NTEU ACT division secretary Lachlan Clohesy said of the independent investigation into Dr Allen’s allegations.

    “The matters raised during the Senate hearing are already being investigated by the regulator, TEQSA, and that is appropriate.

    “This investigation is a distraction at a time when over one hundred people still face forced redundancies.”

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