States and universities are providing new blueprints for making college-based, paid apprenticeships the backbone of new workforce pipelines. “Every year, millions of Americans turn down the promise of a degree because they need to work,” Joe Ross, president of Reach University, said at a June Congressional hearing on modernizing the nation’s apprenticeship system. “Many take jobs in the very schools and hospitals where employers can’t fill the higher-paying roles that require postsecondary credentials.” Stringent accreditation standards, state regulations and a lack of federal guidance have stymied degree-embedded apprenticeships. Witnesses at the U.S. House hearing last month argued that financial aid, employer buy-in and reduced administrative barriers can support uniform growth nationally. One way K12, community colleges and universities can better cultivate relationships with employers is by aligning curriculum and learner pathways with on-site workforce training programs.
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Tuesday, July 28, 2026
AI in class: time to rethink assignments - Willie Chinyamurindi, Mail & Guardian
Ultimately, the future of higher education will not be determined by whether AI enters our classrooms. That has happened. Nor will it be determined by how effectively universities detect AI-generated text. The future will depend on whether institutions are willing to rethink assessment, literacy, ethics and institutional culture for an AI-enabled world. The challenge before higher education is therefore not technological. It is educational. The task is not simply to police AI but to steward its use in ways that strengthen learning, preserve human agency and prepare graduates for an increasingly AI-mediated world.
ED Encouraged Institutions to Limit Graduate Loans. They Don’t Want To. - Johanna Alonso and Jessica Blake, Inside Highter Ed
After a federal judge halted the Department of Education’s definition of “professional” programs, the department said it stood by its original definition—which included just 11 degrees. But following the court order, the agency released a new list of 29 programs that will be considered “professional” while litigation continues. The department, which appears to be planning to fight the order, stressed that the list was temporary and encouraged universities to limit their lending to students whose programs don’t fall under the original, narrower definition. Institutions have long wanted the ability to limit lending in order to protect their students from overborrowing, but for as long as federal loans have existed, they haven’t been permitted to. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act changed that last summer, allowing institutions to set their own lending limits for the first time ever.
Monday, July 27, 2026
What university leaders must learn in the age of AI - James Yoonil Auh, University World News
Why does artificial intelligence require a fundamentally different approach to university leadership? Higher education has repeatedly adapted to technological change – from the printing press and industrialisation to computers, the internet, and online learning. Each transformation reshaped how universities operated, yet none fundamentally altered their intellectual purpose. But artificial intelligence poses a challenge unlike any university leaders have faced before. Unlike previous technologies that expanded access to knowledge, AI expands participation in intellectual work. That distinction reshapes the nature of university leadership. Many universities are responding with familiar institutional mechanisms – drafting policies, investing in platforms, revising curricula, and updating academic integrity policies. These responses are necessary, but they risk misidentifying the challenge.
Mindfulness and artificial intelligence self-efficacy among university students: the mediating role of artificial intelligence literacy - Aamer Aldbyani, et al; Nature
University students now use artificial intelligence (AI) tools in several academic activities, including information retrieval, writing support, and problem-solving. While these technologies may enhance learning efficiency, effective student engagement with AI requires relevant psychological characteristics as well as technology-related competencies. Earlier studies indicate that learner characteristics, including mindfulness, may relate to patterns of engagement with digital technologies. Mindfulness, AI literacy, and AI self-efficacy have been studied separately, but their combined relationships remain insufficiently examined. Accordingly, this study examined the associations among these three variables in university students and assessed whether specific dimensions of AI literacy were involved in the statistical association between mindfulness and students’ self-rated readiness to use AI-supported tools for academic purposes. The study used a cross-sectional survey design. Undergraduate students at Shandong Xiehe University in China completed an online questionnaire. After screening the responses, 929 valid questionnaires were retained for analysis. Participants were between 18 and 22 years of age. Mindfulness, AI literacy, and AI self-efficacy were assessed using established self-report scales.
Workforce Pell watch: Valuable funding for every college’s mission - Alcino Donadel, University Business
Colleges should resist viewing Workforce Pell—which launches on Wednesday—as a policy designed exclusively for vocational schools and short-term training, says Aaron Thompson, president of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education. “I see all of our institutions as workforce institutions, whether you’re a research institution or a community college,” he says on The University Business Podcast. “It’s just for a different segment of the workforce.” Rather than treating workforce readiness as a separate function, Kentucky encourages colleges to make employment and economic advancement the cornerstones of students success. Dr. Thompson credits this approach with boosting the state’s enrollment and college completion rates. “We know we higher education is valuable, but one of the main reasons is because we are a direct connector to a strong economy,” Thompson says. “We cannot be afraid to embrace that.”
Friday, July 24, 2026
New research shows OER’s biggest impact isn’t cost—it’s completion - Alcino Donadel, University Business
Free textbooks, when fully embraced by administrators and faculty, lead to better student outcomes, a new American Association of Colleges and Universities report finds. Open educational resources, or OER, emerged at the turn of the century to make college less expensive. A two-year study examining 700,000 student records and featuring 240 faculty interviews across 15 institutions contends that free learning materials accomplish much more. Courses that offered students free course materials lowered course withdrawals, increased the number of A’s earned and decreased, by a year, the time to graduation for community college students.
Coursera adds five Workday courses to enterprise learning catalog - Emma Thompson, Ed Tech Innovation Hub
Coursera has added five Workday courses to its enterprise catalog, expanding access to training on the cloud software provider’s finance, human resources, payroll and student applications for organizations using Coursera’s workforce learning service. Workday provides enterprise cloud applications for financial management, human resources, planning, spend management and analytics. Anthony Salcito, Coursera’s Senior Vice President and President of Enterprise, announced the additions in a LinkedIn post.The courses are listed in English and are available to enterprise learners. The content focuses on the terminology, frameworks and operational use of Workday systems rather than software development. “Making this content available to enterprise learners gives teams broader access to training that supports real operational readiness,” Salcito wrote. Learners can now explore the courses through Workday Education on Coursera. Coursera and Workday did not provide details about pricing, course length, assessment formats, credentials, geographic availability or whether access varies between enterprise agreements.
How to integrate AI-enabled lifelong learning across disciplines - Tim Brown, Times Higher Education
The traditional boundary between a traditional degree and active professional development has permanently dissolved, writes Tim Brown. AI skills need to be taught in a similarly joined-up way. An uncomfortable truth for the higher education sector is that artificial intelligence is reshaping how work gets done. Graduates will need to enter AI-enabled workplaces with a clear sense of how to work alongside intelligent systems, and millions of experienced professionals are going to require reskilling. Yet our institutions are not preparing new students or providing structured upskilling pathways at the pace this moment demands. While we debate policies at the margins, business and government are moving ahead – with or without us. Serving traditional students and those seeking continuing professional development are not separate challenges; they are a single lifelong learning problem. To address this, faculty must move beyond teaching AI tools and start developing AI-enabled professional fluency.
Thursday, July 23, 2026
Measuring the Impact of Continuing Education - Lisa Rochman, Evolllution
Continuing education (CE) is often one of the most responsive parts of postsecondary institutions. It is where many institutions move quickly to respond to changing workforce needs, emerging industries, community priorities and the growing need for lifelong learning. That role is becoming more important as workers must adapt quicker, employers respond to changing skill requirements and postsecondary institutions support learning across a longer span of more people’s lives. What we don’t have is a clear picture of the impact, volume and scope of the work continuing education does as a sector. When continuing education is not clearly measured, its full contribution is hard to see.
https://evolllution.com/measuring-the-impact-of-continuing-education
Course Design as an Act of Care - Julian King and Catherine Patterson, Faculty Focus
Designing a learning experience is too often treated as a workflow task rather than a relational practice. It becomes about moving content online, checking accessibility boxes, or aligning outcomes to rubrics. In the process, design can become transactional. But course design is, at its core, an act of care. Care is the everyday practice of meeting people where they are and responding with compassion and support. It is the intentional work of helping others thrive. Designing with care means anticipating needs, reducing barriers, and creating environments where both faculty and students feel seen and supported. When care is centered, design becomes relational: designers partner with faculty, and faculty design with students’ humanity in mind. This article examines how care shapes the designer–faculty relationship and how that care extends into faculty and student experiences.
'Workforce Pell' kicks off, but colleges find that few programs qualify - Elissa Nadworny, NPR
To qualify, programs must meet length and time parameters (between eight and 14 weeks and between 150 and 599 instructional hours), train for an in-demand field and demonstrate earnings and job placements. But like thousands of existing workforce training programs, this CNA class at St. Paul College doesn't quite meet those qualifications: It is only 112 hours. In fact, none of St. Paul College's workforce programs do. "I think maybe a year ago, I was living in a world where I was like, 'Oh my gosh, July 1 is going to be so great, and we're just going to start handing out money to people,'" says Jennifer Huston, the executive director of workforce training at St. Paul College. "Slowly, as we got closer and closer to July 1, you realize, nope, it's going to take us a while to get there." All across the country, community colleges are finding many of their workforce training programs are too short or too long or just don't fall within the allotted hours.
Wednesday, July 22, 2026
Online Computer Science Degree: Why Flexible Tech Education is becoming a Business Priority (UK)
Technology skills are no longer confined to the IT department. Retailers need data teams, manufacturers depend on software systems, financial firms compete through automation and small businesses increasingly rely on digital platforms to reach customers. The result is a labour market in which computer science knowledge has become a practical business asset.For many people, however, the route into the sector is still difficult. Leaving work to study full-time is not realistic for every learner, while employers cannot always wait for traditional graduate pipelines to meet urgent skills needs. This is why the online Computer Science Degree has become more relevant: it offers a structured academic pathway for students and working professionals who need flexibility without reducing the importance of depth.
Bridging the gap between secondary, further and higher education: a tale of three sectors - Sue Williamson and Michelle Morgan; Higher Education Policy Inatitute (UK)
In this blog, we explain why there is an urgent need for the secondary, further education and higher education sectors to interact and collaborate more effectively to create a better understanding of student learning at these levels of study – helping to more effectively bridge the transition of students. This is especially critical as a result of the Independent Curriculum and Assessment Review chaired by Professor Becky Francis which looked at year groups spanning 5-19, and published its final report in November 2025. The report highlighted an overloaded and inflexible curriculum, narrowing of subject options, severe assessment stress and burden and a lack of adequate digital literacy skills. All these education sectors have experienced major changes in the past few years and are under pressure to chase metric-based outcomes. We need to recognise the impact of those changes on one another and on the students. Through collaboration and mutual understanding, we can be more effective in raising student education aspirations across the sectors, regardless of the route an individual undertakes.
How does online deep learning occur among college students? An empirical investigation based on CoI - Qingshuang Huang & Rong He; Nature
In the context of global digital transformation in education and post-pandemic reforms, online teaching has evolved from an emergency response into an essential instructional mode in higher education. Enhancing the quality of university students’ online learning and fostering their capacity for online deep learning (OnlineDL) have thus become key concerns in the educational field. Drawing on the extended Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework—which integrates teaching presence (TP), social presence (SP), cognitive presence (CP), and learning presence (LP, encompassing self-efficacy (SE) and self-regulated learning (SRL) as key antecedents of learner agency)—this study surveyed 3,167 Chinese university students and employed structural equation modelling to examine how these four core presences jointly facilitate OnlineDL. The results reveal that CP, LP (via its components SE and SRL), and TP exert significant and positive direct effects on OnlineDL.
Tuesday, July 21, 2026
Trump, who had signed an order to the effect, handed legal defeat after judge sided with Democratic-led states - the Guardian
A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from implementing a new rule stripping public service workers of eligibility for federal student loan forgiveness if it deems their employers to have a “substantial illegal purpose.” US district judge Myong Joun in Boston sided with Democratic-led states, cities and non-profits that argued the US Department of Education’s rule would allow it to target groups supporting immigration rights, transgender healthcare and other causes the Trump administration disfavors, by disqualifying them from the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. That program allows borrowers to have their federal student loans forgiven after 10 years working for government or non-profit employers. More than a million borrowers have received debt relief since Congress established it in 2007.
ETS acquires ACT, consolidating two testing giants - Ben Unglesbee, Higher Ed Dive
The move comes as more colleges are going back to requiring standardized tests for admissions. Educational nonprofit ETS is acquiring ACT — roughly two years after the standardized test maker was taken over by a private equity firm. The deal will create a testing giant reaching 35 million people every year and comes as several universities announce a return to requiring standardized tests for admissions. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. The deal was expected to close on July 1, according to an ETS spokesperson. Los Angeles-based Nexus Capital Management acquired ACT in 2024, converting the nonprofit college admissions assessment organization into a for-profit company in the process.
Understand AI in 14 minutes - Anthropic's Chloe Lubinski [ARC 2026], Alliance for Responsible Citizenship
In this presentation, Chloe Lubinski from Anthropic warns that AI is advancing at a breakneck speed driven by massive capital, scaling laws, and the onset of recursive self-improvement. Unlike traditional coded software, these neural networks learn from vast amounts of human language, meaning they are trained on our collective thoughts, values, and concepts. Crucially, internal alignment research shows that AI models can infer a generalized "character" or psychology from their reinforcement; if rewarded for deceptive shortcuts, they can develop a broader corruption that extends to unrelated tasks. Because these human-like systems mirror us so closely, Lubinski emphasizes that the quality of their character will have profound consequences for our future. She calls on moral voices and critics outside of tech labs to help steer the incentives and push development in a better direction. Ultimately, ray, she challenges us to use our moral imagination to ensure AI does not displace humanity, but instead enhances our capacity for care, hospitality, and meaningful human connection. [assistance with summary by Gemini 3.5 Flash]
Monday, July 20, 2026
Building Synergy and Empowering Learners: Strategies for Higher Ed Success - Adam Fein, Evolllution
For higher education broadly, it’s been great to see the growth in diversity. For us, we’re a federally designated Minority- (MSI) and Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI). We are now the third-largest university in Texas, and 41% of our students are first-generation. It says a lot about our nation’s changing demographics and being prepared, not only to serve diversity in that way but to also be really good at it. More specifically, within our division at UNT, 67% of students are taking at least one online course. It’s our job to ensure they have flexibility in the new hybrid landscape. Those courses need to be world class and as good or better than their in-person counterparts. Higher education is really making strides in better understanding what it needs to do to evolve out of a degree-or-nothing industry. While degrees remain powerful for social mobility, not everyone wants or needs an entire degree at all times. We need to unbundle the degree, especially for adult learners.
Making Learning Stick - Jason Lodge; Philipp Lorenz-Spreen; American Scientist
A significant bottleneck is our ability to only pay attention to a certain number of things at a time. Decades of research have told us that things we selectively pay attention to are much more likely to be processed, because they enter into consciousness and memory. These things then impact us in a persistent way. For various reasons, the way that technology has evolved—including built-in advertising—has been about trying to capture that selective attention. Philipp Lorenz-Spreen [PLS]: We prefer novelty and surprise. Our attention guides us to that because it’s important to know new things. But there are other factors as well, especially if you think about the competition between sources of information. Also, negativity and other emotions such as outrage often guide our attention. There’s negativity bias; negative headlines are more successful. There’s another factor, in-group and out-group feelings, that humans are quite susceptible to. Whenever content talks about “us versus them,” it tends to succeed more than other content.
One New Thing: Giving Students Individualized Work and Feedback, Even in Large Classes - Melissa Morriss-Olson, US News
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign developed PrairieLearn, an online assessment platform designed to provide students with immediate feedback and opportunities to practice course concepts. Originally created to support high-enrollment engineering and computer science courses, the system generates unique versions of problems for each student and instantly evaluates their responses. This allows students to work through multiple variations of a concept, learn from mistakes and refine their understanding as they progress. PrairieLearn shifts assessment from a one-time measurement of learning to an ongoing process of practice and improvement. By automating routine grading and providing immediate feedback, the platform frees instructors and teaching assistants to spend more time supporting student learning. Rather than waiting days or weeks to see if they understand a concept, students receive guidance in real time, helping them move more efficiently toward mastery.
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