The hottest University funding Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
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Top Education Topics

Friday brief: Course cuts considered by under pressure university

NN Journal • 139 implied HN points • 01 Nov 24
🚌 Education University funding
  1. The University of Northampton is considering cutting some courses due to financial issues. This may include merging or dropping certain subjects to stabilize their finances.
  2. Students are worried about how these changes might impact their education and the quality of teaching. Some are actively petitioning to save specific courses that they feel are being undervalued.
  3. Local MPs are concerned about the university's financial stability and have called for better funding for higher education. They emphasize that the university is important for the local economy and workforce.

The Kollel and the Quad

What Is Called Thinking? • 146 implied HN points • 17 Feb 26
🚌 Education University funding
  1. Both the Haredi kollel system and many humanities departments claim intrinsic value to block accountability while still drawing public subsidies.
  2. What began as narrow exemptions for elite practitioners has expanded into mass entitlement, protected by self-certification, ideological gatekeeping, and the romanticizing of poverty to excuse low standards and avoided obligations.
  3. A better model pairs deep study with civic duty; examples like hesder yeshivot and veterans-turned-scholars show that service and learning can reinforce each other, so intrinsic value should come with reciprocal public responsibility.

When The Times asked, “Why is Britain educating China’s scientists?” What did they really overlook? by Michael Jinghan ZENG

Pekingnology • 101 implied HN points • 02 Mar 26
🚌 Education University funding
  1. Treating Chinese students as strategic threats and closing academic openness will damage the UK's universities and its role as a global centre of ideas.
  2. UK universities depend heavily on tuition from international students, especially Chinese postgrads, and losing that income would trigger layoffs, cuts, and a fall in research capacity.
  3. The global higher-education map is changing as Asian universities rise and students have more options, so the share of Chinese students in the UK will likely adjust; narrowing the focus to ‘British’ STEM while sidelining the humanities would weaken the UK's soft power and intellectual influence.

The sports boom will bust universities

The Recovering Academic • 316 implied HN points • 03 Oct 23
🚌 Education University funding
  1. The financial pressures of college athletics can lead universities to prioritize branding over their core missions, potentially damaging academic programs and faculty support.
  2. Despite the belief that college athletics bring in profits, most universities actually lose money on athletic programs, leading to subsidies from operational budgets.
  3. The emphasis on branding, particularly through successful sports programs, can overshadow the real purpose of higher education, with financial investments in athletics often outweighing those in academics.

Quantifying Department Performance

Heterodox STEM • 85 implied HN points • 03 Aug 25
🚌 Education University funding
  1. Departments should be ranked based on their contributions to education and research, using a clear and simple scoring system. This approach helps avoid favoritism when deciding which departments to close.
  2. A score function can measure teaching and research impact in monetary terms, making it easier to understand for the public and to justify budget decisions.
  3. It’s important for the score data to be open to the public, ensuring transparency in how department performance is evaluated and making it clear why certain decisions are made.
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Texas vs. Ohio State: Auditors Pick a...Loser

OpenTheBooks Substack • 148 implied HN points • 10 Jan 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics University funding
  1. Ohio State and UT Austin are both spending large amounts of money on DEI initiatives. Ohio State's spending is higher at $13.3 million compared to UT Austin's $9.8 million.
  2. Both universities have received significant federal funding, around $3.5 billion since 2020, but they are using some funds for research on topics that many might find unusual, like promoting bug eating and studying gender identity.
  3. UT Austin has been critiqued for accepting considerable foreign funding, especially from China and Saudi Arabia, raising concerns about influence on campus.