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Institute for Lifelong Learning

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The contribution of higher education institutions to lifelong learning

From institutional strategies to practical implementation

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How adult learning at university empowered Timmy Long’s transformation

Following the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, lifelong learning has become the overarching concept and vision for education, as reflected in the wording of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, which calls on countries to ‘ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’.

Our societies are rapidly changing because of environmental, scientific and technological transformations and the impact of globalization on all dimensions of life, including culture and education. Coping with these changes and shaping the future accordingly require creative and innovative policy responses. While promoting lifelong learning to achieve a sustainable future constitutes a goal in itself, it is also a requirement for reaching many of the other SDGs. To address this challenge, mobilizing higher education institutions (HEIs) is key, and universities have a special role to play in that respect.

While the university sector, because of its unique capacity and mandate to advance knowledge, foster innovation and educate, constitutes a huge potential for promoting lifelong learning, its actual contribution remains unclear. Many universities continue to prioritize academic excellence and research, yet with less attention being paid to teaching and providing lifelong learning opportunities to the community. Hence, achieving the vision expressed through the SDGs and precisely articulated in SDG 4 will require a substantial transformation of HEIs, in particular universities.

To further explore these issues and provide guidance to policy-makers and higher education institutions, the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) and Shanghai Open University (SOU) are conducting a comprehensive research project on the contribution of universities and other HEIs to lifelong learning.

International Conference on Promoting Lifelong Learning in Higher Education

The “International Conference on promoting lifelong learning in higher education”, organized by the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) and Shanghai Open University (SOU) in Shanghai, People’s Republic of China, from 19 to 21 October 2023, once again emphasized the critical importance of strengthening lifelong learning in and through higher education. The commitment to lifelong learning was captured in a set of 'Recommendations for Promoting Lifelong Learning in Higher Education,' which propose essential framework conditions and steps to advance global efforts in this field.

Voices of speakers of the International Conference on Promoting Lifelong Learning in Higher Education

Ms wen yuan, president of shanghai normal university.

Lifelong education is the ideal of education, lifelong learning is the ideal of learners, and continuous, but fulfilling, effort is required to make such ideals a reality. Higher Education Institutions should cultivate teachers with the ability for lifelong learning and foster lifelong learners.

Ms Beate Hörr, Head of Centre for University Lifelong Learning (University of Mainz) and Vice-President of EUCEN

Lifelong Learning in higher education institutions helps people to cope with transformations and provides learners with research-based and practice-orientated knowledge, learning strategies, tools and competences. Lifelong learning activities of higher education institutions build a bridge to make education accessible to a wider range of learners and are very often forerunners (Microcredentials, learner centred approach etc.).

To strengthen lifelong learning in higher education institutions, we must implement ULLL strategies at institutional, departmental and faculty level. Enhance professional development of teacher, trainers and mentors; widen the target groups for ULLL to include marginalised groups of adult learners; improve access to short-cycle education; initiate research, development and innovation in learning cities-regions and learning communities from the scope of intergenerational and intercultural learning.

Mr GU Hongliang, Vice-President of East China Normal University

Promoting lifelong learning should be a responsibility of every educational institution, including HEI. HEIs have obvious strengths in their ability to promote lifelong learning:  to help young people cultivate a positive lifelong learning attitude and learning ability, which is the development foundation of the future world;  to break down the barriers between various types and forms of learning through recognizing and transferring learning outcomes; to share learning resources; to train specialized senior professional talents for lifelong learning; to undertake scientific research on lifelong education and create related knowledge;  to encourage universities to respect and cherish the value of learning throughout life.

China is now actively promoting the construction of a learning society and a learning nation, it has issued national policies to encourage and support HEI to engage with its important national strategy, such as “exploring to evaluate the situation of HEI’s contribution to lifelong learning for all, promoting the construction of a learning society”.  

East China Normal University is making efforts to contribute to Chinese lifelong learning. Our aim is to enhance the participation rate and quality of higher education and raise the general level of education in China. 

HEI can enhance lifelong learning in higher education in many ways: creating an atmosphere of lifelong learning, offering courses that are more suitable for people's needs, adopting flexible teaching methods, reinforcing the cooperation between different stakeholders, opening high-quality learning resources, expanding the use of IT, etc. HEI should attach importance to inclusivity and provide opportunities for all students and teachers. HEI should strive to serve the national education strategy, make use of professional expertise, and become a pioneer of lifelong learning practice. 

Research project

The UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) and Shanghai Open University (SOU) are conducting a comprehensive research project on the contribution of universities and other HEIs to lifelong learning.

The research project consists of several components, including an extended literature review; an international survey of universities; institutional case studies to capture trends and innovative practices; interviews with key informants; and specific thematic studies, including a survey on open universities in China, an exploration of universities of the third age, and a study on universities in learning cities.

The final comprehensive report, covering the results of all sub-projects, was published on 5 June 2023.

Aims and objectives 

The research project aims to develop a knowledge base on how and to what extent universities and other types of HEIs contribute to lifelong learning, but also to capture how the lifelong learning agenda plays a role in the transformation process of the university sector in response to current societal developments.

The specific objectives of the project are to:

• draw up an overview of the state of the art of HEIs’ contribution to lifelong learning with a focus on universities; assess the current situation in different regions; identify particular patterns according to countries, types of institutions and innovations, particularly related to new technologies for learning; look at attempts to monitor, etc.;
• identify the gaps, e.g. lack of effective legal frameworks, policies and measures at the national level to support and encourage higher education strategies for lifelong learning, lack of institutional strategies for a concerted approach towards lifelong learning, etc.;
• identify examples of best practice that could inspire policy-makers and HEIs, notably the university sector;
• formulate policy and strategic guidelines for policy-makers and institutions. 

Methodology

The research methodology includes the following components: 

•       Literature review; 
•       International survey on universities;
•       Survey on open universities in China; 
•       Thematic studies;
•       Case studies of innovative institutions;
•       Interviews with key informants (university presidents, researchers, national or international institutions).

Partnership

This is a collaborative research project between UIL and Shanghai Open University (SOU) , which is strongly committed to providing flexible and convenient ways of learning through open and distance education in order to meet the lifelong learning needs of all members of society.

The project also benefits from the collaboration of a several partners within UNESCO, namely the UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning (UNESCO–IIEP)  and the UNESCO  International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (UNESCO–IESALC), and the university sector through the  International Association of Universities (IAU).

Advisory group

UIL had invited a body of experts to serve as an advisory group for the project.

Members of the advisory group:

• Mr Uwe Elsholz, Vice-President for Continuing Education, Transfer and International Affairs, FernUniversität in Hagen
• Mr Etienne Ehouan Ehile, Secretary General, Association of African Universities (AAU)
• Ms Nadia Gamal el-Din, Professor, Institute of Educational Studies, University of Cairo
• Ms Margarita Guarello de Toro, President, Continuing Education Network for Latin America and Europe (RECLA)
• Ms Michaela Martin, Programme Specialist, International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP-UNESCO)
• Mr Balázs Németh, President, European Universities Continuing Education Network (EUCEN)
• Mr Michael Osborne, Chair of Adult Education and Lifelong Education, University of Glasgow
• Mr Séamus Ó Tuama, Chair of the ASEM Lifelong Learning Hub, Asia-Europe Meeting
• Mr Francesc Pedró, Director, UNESCO International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (IESALC)
• Mr Johnny Sung, Centre Director, Centre for Skills, Performance and Productivity, Institute for Adult Learning Singapore
• Ms Stamenka Uvalić-Trumbić, Consultant, Paris
• Ms Hilligje van’t Land, Secretary-General, International Association of Universities (IAU)
• Mr Peter Wells, Chief of Section of Higher Education, Division for Policies and Lifelong Learning Systems, UNESCO
• Mr Lizhong Yu, Chancellor, Shanghai New York University
• Ms Thérèse Zhang Pulkowski, Deputy Director, Higher Education Policy Unit, European University Association (EUA)

Related items

• Future of education
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Strengthening higher education outcomes through partnerships, alliances, and mergers

Higher education in the United States is facing a perfect storm. Fewer students are attending college than in the past. First-time student enrollment has fallen by 8 percent in private four-year institutions and 10 percent in public four-year institutions since its peak in 2010. 1 McKinsey analysis of Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System data. Community colleges experienced a similar contraction in first-time, full-time student enrollment, with a decline peaking at 21 percent between the spring semesters of 2020 and 2021. 2 Lawrence Lanahan, “‘It’s just too much’: Why students are abandoning community colleges in droves,” Hechinger Report , January 15, 2021. Off campus, questions regarding cost and return on investment are increasingly complex and critical. Student completion rates remain largely unchanged. While the sticker price for college has risen significantly, our research shows that the net cost to attend has increased comparatively less. 3 Emma Dorn, André Dua, and Jonathan Law, “ Rising costs and stagnating completion rates: Who is bucking the trend? ,” McKinsey, April 2020. That may be cold comfort for students who wish to pursue higher education but find cost to be a barrier.

Alone, these trends are troubling. Together, they are squeezing revenues and intensifying financial pressures for many colleges and universities. To maintain quality without passing growing costs on to a declining student base, institutions must look for other ways to increase efficiency.

In response, a growing number of institutions are joining forces to develop meaningful alliances at scale. These alliances can take many forms, from partnerships and joint ventures to M&A. According to McKinsey analysis, the number of M&A transactions in higher education increased threefold in recent years, from 11 in 2001–05 to 31 in 2016–20. A successful alliance can enhance academic offerings, improve student outcomes, and increase an institution’s financial stability. But not all alliances are successful. In this article, we outline the rising pressures facing higher ed, explore the broad types of partnerships and alliances in the sector, offer important considerations for leaders who are weighing M&A activity, and share insights gleaned from colleges and universities that have engaged in successful alliances.

Declining student enrollment

Colleges and universities face a markedly different landscape today than they did in 2010. Overall, student enrollment and revenues are falling. Inflation has accelerated steadily, pushing operating costs up in recent years. These forces are creating financial pressures for institutions and the students they serve. Whether they threaten the overall financial viability of an institution depends on the size, profile, and funding of the university.

In the years immediately preceding the pandemic (2015 to 2019), institutions with fewer than 10,000 students generally saw their enrollments drop. Schools with fewer than 3,000 students were hit hardest, with an average decline in enrollment of 4.7 percent. Only institutions with a student body greater than 10,000 experienced positive enrollment growth overall (Exhibit 1). This enrollment dynamic is troubling for both institutions and students given the positive impact of a college degree on a student’s employment opportunities, long-term earning potential, and economic mobility. 4 Liberty Street Economics , “Despite rising costs, college is still a good investment,” blog entry by Jaison R. Abel and Richard Deitz, June 5, 2019.

Compounding these challenges is a looming “demographic cliff” in which enrollment is expected to contract further as the population of prospective students declines in line with birth rates. An 8 percent contraction is anticipated between 2026 and 2030. 5 André Dua, Jonathan Law, Ted Rounsaville, and Nadia Viswanath, “ Reimagining higher education in the United States ,” McKinsey, October 26, 2020.

Partnering for better outcomes

To address student enrollment, outcomes, and financial pressures, a growing number of institutions are exploring a range of alliances, partnerships, mergers, and acquisitions. An institution’s approach to collaboration will depend on its unique strategic goals, capabilities, portfolio, student demographics, and geographic position. We outline the available options and offer examples of successful partnerships and alliances.

Through a variety of models, institutions can partner to provide students with new academic opportunities and improved experiences, often in a more efficient and cost-effective manner. These partnership and alliance models can take many forms, including the following:

• Practice-sharing cohorts develop and share best practices among a group of institutions. The Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU), the Boston Consortium for Higher Education (TBC), and the Postsecondary Value Commission are examples of such cohorts. TBC’s Communities of Practice serve as forums for discussion, support, information, and problem solving. The member institutions of TBC (including the College of the Holy Cross, Harvard University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT]) share best practices, brainstorm ideas for new shared services and contracts for cost savings, and deepen collegial relationships through collaboration. The ACCU is designed to support Catholic higher education by facilitating idea exchanging, capability building, networking, and other cooperative initiatives among its members.
• Program reciprocity refers to shared programming that expands offerings for students and faculty. For example, the Five College Consortium is a partnership among Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In some cases, institutions create connected or dual-degree programs. The Georgia Institute of Technology’s Dual Degree Engineering Pathway Program is a partnership between Georgia Tech, a leading engineering institution, and a range of local historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), liberal arts institutions, and community colleges.
• Research collaboration involves the sharing of research agendas and resources. For example, Carnegie Mellon University partners with government, industry, and educational institutions—including the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania State University, and West Virginia University—on its Metro21: Smart Cities Institute to research solutions to urbanization challenges. The Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology, a partnership between MIT and the National Research Foundation of Singapore, is MIT’s largest international research program and its first center outside of the United States. The University of California, Berkeley’s Peder Sather Center for Advanced Study aims to foster research collaborations with a consortium of Norwegian institutions, including BI Norwegian Business School, the Norwegian School of Economics, and the University of Oslo.
• A joint venture (JV) is the sharing of intellectual property, staffing, and investment to launch a new program or campus. A well-known JV is edX, a joint venture between MIT and Harvard designed to offer an open-source platform and online courses for students and faculty worldwide. The venture has since been sold to edtech firm 2U. Duke Kunshan University, a JV between Duke University and Wuhan University, offers a range of academic programs and conferences for students from China and throughout the world. The JV program allows all Duke undergraduate students who hold Chinese citizenship and are unable to obtain a US study visa to earn a four-year bachelor’s degree based in the liberal arts and sciences.
• Integrated services and programming consortiums involve the sharing of costs and infrastructure to improve programming and reduce outlays. Examples include the Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities and the Claremont Colleges—five contiguous liberal arts colleges and two graduate schools in Southern California that have integrated services and infrastructure. And Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education launched a shared-services center to improve efficiencies and reduce costs across human resources, procurement, data analytics, information technology, finance, and labor relations.
• Full M&A results in a combined new entity and touches governance, programming, costs, and infrastructure. Northeastern University’s merger with Mills College and Boston University’s merger with Wheelock College are two examples. Delaware State University’s acquisition of Wesley College is another noteworthy example (see sidebar “Delaware State University acquires Wesley College”).

Delaware State University acquires Wesley College

When Dr. Tony Allen assumed the role of president of Delaware State University (DSU) in January 2020, his first call was to the president of Wesley College, a 147-year-old liberal arts college down the road that President Allen heard was seeking a strategic partnership. After a few conversations, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. President Allen spent the early days of the pandemic explaining why a partnership was a good idea at this seemingly inopportune time.

On the surface, Wesley was interesting for three reasons: the institutions shared similar student profiles; Wesley’s health science programs were well regarded; and Wesley was situated in downtown Dover, close to DSU and in an area of Dover that had a lot at stake should Wesley close its doors.

After signing a letter of intent, DSU spent significant time performing due diligence. The team sought to better understand what capabilities and assets Wesley could bring to DSU students, as well as how Wesley operated. DSU addressed several crucial questions, including what organizational structure would best sustain the alliance; how an alliance would affect faculty, staff, and talent overall; and how an alliance could honor Wesley’s strong tradition of success in Division III athletics. The team also spent time considering the needs of the Dover community and how an alliance could best serve the economy and residents of Dover.

For President Allen, the transaction was more than an acquisition: “It was a transformative moment for Delaware State.” It allowed President Allen to demonstrate to his team that they could do big things and transform DSU as a whole. Looking back, he notes that the acquisition was also “a lesson in what’s possible, even if you are coming from a low-resource institution that does not have a history of being part of these types of transactions.”

Today, with enrollment at its highest, DSU is one of the country’s growing public historically Black colleges and universities. DSU is now the school of choice for students of color in Delaware; for the state of Delaware, the transaction meant nearly $350 million in economic impact. 1 “Delaware colleges ranked by highest percent of Black students,” CollegeSimply, accessed June 29, 2023; “Wesley acquisition finalized,” Delaware State University, July 1, 2021.

Each of these models comes with unique benefits. For example, cross-university collaborations can meaningfully affect how institutions operate and serve students. Institutions that share services and use their scale to consolidate buying power operate more efficiently. Consider the 23 member institutions of the Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, which together have launched more than 45 cost-saving programs and conserved more than $230 million. 6 “WAICU president to retire,” Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (WAICU), December 1, 2021.

Institutions that partner can also expand their academic offerings in key areas. For example, liberal arts–focused HBCUs within the Atlanta University Center Consortium maintain a partnership with Georgia Tech to allow students to engage in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) coursework and earn a joint degree from both institutions. Through collaboration, institutions can also improve student experiences and outcomes. For instance, Boston College’s recent integration with Pine Manor Institute for Student Success aims to increase access for underrepresented and first-generation students.

Each of these models also comes with unique challenges. For example, the need to agree on governance models and ownership of new intellectual property can make JVs challenging to negotiate and operate. More broadly, academia is built on a foundation of institutional pride, academic freedom, and independence in decision making, often at the individual program level. Some of that autonomy can be sacrificed when schools align. However, the benefits of improved access and outcomes for students, along with scale and efficiency for institutions, can outweigh these drawbacks.

Each of these models comes with unique benefits. For example, cross-university collaborations can meaningfully affect how institutions operate and serve students.

Mergers and acquisitions

While institutions have a range of collaborative options available to them, the most transformative opportunities typically occur through M&A. In higher education, M&A activity has almost doubled, with an average of six transactions per year since 2011 (Exhibit 2).

Because of the extraordinary potential associated with M&A and its growth in popularity, we have chosen to focus on M&A throughout the remainder of this article. However, many of our insights can be broadly applied to other partnership models.

M&A can take multiple forms, such as the traditional merging of two individual institutions into one or the absorption of one institution into another. A third construct involves the broader consolidation of multiple institutions across a university system. Regardless of form, properly planned and executed M&A can yield real benefits for both solvent and struggling institutions, as well as for students. The strategic benefits for solvent institutions include complementary academic programming and research, expanded geographic presence and footprint, the acceleration of new capabilities (such as online learning), enhanced and more-efficient shared-service offerings (for example, optimized administrative services), and a broader range of student opportunities (such as dual degrees and vocational programs). When institutions acquire schools with more diverse student bases, they can also reach diversity and inclusion goals much faster than through organic programs alone. For struggling institutions, M&A can be a lifeline to address operational challenges, ensure financial stability, and expand educational access.

For students, M&A can have a transformative impact on outcomes and cost. When Delaware State University acquired Wesley College in July 2021, tuition for Wesley students decreased by 74 percent for Delaware residents and 37 percent for non-Delaware residents. 7 Elizabeth Redden, “A cross-town acquisition,” Inside Higher Ed , July 1, 2021. In the state of Georgia, system consolidation, coupled with a strategic investment in academic-support services, has increased on-time graduation rates by 29 percent without negatively affecting operating costs. 8 Lauren Russell, “Better outcomes without increased costs? Effects of Georgia’s University System consolidations,” Economics of Education Review , February 2019, Volume 68.

Given M&A’s transformative potential, it’s no surprise that it is top of mind for university presidents. Inside Higher Ed ’s 2023 survey of college and university presidents found that presidents are twice as likely to say they are at least “somewhat” likely to acquire another institution in the next five years than to say they will be acquired or merge into another college. More than a quarter of presidents think their institution should consider merging with another college or university in the next five years. 9 2023 Survey of College and University Presidents, Inside Higher Ed , May 10, 2023.

What can go wrong: Challenges associated with M&A

In spite of their clear benefits, mergers and acquisitions are difficult to execute. Across industries, 70 percent of mergers fail to deliver on their strategic objectives, 10 Scott A. Christofferson, Robert S. McNish, and Diane L. Sias, “ Where mergers go wrong ,” McKinsey Quarterly , May 1, 2004. and higher ed is no exception. Our research shows that since 2005, 85 percent of mergers involving institutions with more than 1,000 students experienced lower net growth in tuition revenue, and 60 percent experienced overall declines in enrollment. Student retention rates did not fare much better, with more than half of large-scale mergers resulting in declines in retention rates (Exhibit 3).

Although mergers in higher ed face similar failure rates and challenges as other sectors do, they also face some unique obstacles, including the following:

• Misaligned objectives. For example, one partner may be seeking to preserve its learning community, while the other is looking for real estate.
• Inexperienced negotiators. Given the relatively small number of mergers within higher education prior to 2011, a majority of university leaders and administrators have not had the opportunity to build the requisite skill set and experience in M&A deal creation and execution.
• Ad hoc approach to finding a partner. Most M&A activity in higher education comes about as a result of ad hoc personal networks rather than a proactive, systematic process.
• Insufficient due diligence. Cursory due diligence can overlook hidden costs, such as deferred maintenance, outdated IT systems, and different compensation structures.
• Inadequate attention to integration and change management. Cultural and operational change is extremely challenging. Institutions often underestimate the complexity and planning required to integrate not just systems and teams but also culture, mission, and student experience.
• Complex stakeholder dynamics. M&A in higher ed can require approval from public and private governance bodies and accreditors in addition to buy-in from faculty, staff, alumni, and donors.

These challenges can also plague partnership and alliance models other than M&A. Universities and colleges that understand the challenges are better positioned to realize their strategic goals. With a clear lens on the obstacles that are specific to higher ed, universities have a better chance of planning for, managing, and overcoming them.

How to get M&A right

Even in the presence of potential challenges, partnerships and M&A can be worth pursuing within higher education. A number of leading institutions are approaching them from a position of strength and finding success. When done well, M&A can have transformative impact for institutions and the students they serve. We identified three steps that university leaders can consider to help ensure that M&A activities deliver upon their strategic promise and value 11 Although we chose to focus on M&A, university leaders may find these steps useful when investigating other partnership and alliance models. :

1. Define a starting position and clear goals

M&A strategy hinges on having a clear understanding of how an alliance or merger will create value for the institution and its many stakeholders, such as students, faculty, staff, alumni, donors, and the surrounding community. In our experience, institutions embarking on an M&A journey typically start from one of the following places:

• National or regional anchors with strong financial positioning. For these institutions, goals can include entering into a new strategic geography, acquiring real estate to fuel growth, or accelerating strategic capability building (such as online-learning programming). For example, acquiring the Thunderbird School of Management allowed Arizona State University to quickly establish and accelerate a signature program.
• Regional or sector-focused (such as healthcare) institutions. Goals can include adding complementary academic programs or research departments to the institution’s academic portfolio, building economies of scale to strengthen regional position and reduce costs, or building the institution’s brand to reach new student segments. For example, the merger between St. Joseph’s University and the University of the Sciences led to more programs in sought-after health and science fields, expansion of the university’s footprint with state-of-the-art facilities, endowment growth of half a billion dollars, and the combination of two alumni networks to total nearly 100,000 graduates.
• Regional or local institutions struggling to achieve financial sustainability. In this case, the overarching goal is most often a proactive pursuit of strategic acquirers to stave off debilitating cost reductions, closure, or bankruptcy. The recent consolidation of public universities in Pennsylvania offers an example. Bloomsburg, Lock Haven, and Mansfield Universities in northeastern Pennsylvania combined to become the Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania, while California, Clarion, and Edinboro Universities in the western part of the state combined to become Pennsylvania Western University.
• Statewide systems looking to integrate institutions. Here, goals most often include achieving cost savings and strengthening student outcomes through enhanced programming and opportunities that often lead to higher graduation rates. An example is the University System of Georgia.

After leaders identify a tangible starting position and value creation goals, they can weigh those potential outcomes with the degree of difficulty the institution can anticipate in achieving them.

2. Conduct sweeping scans and due diligence

Once an institution decides to investigate a strategic merger, the next step is typically a structured scan of potential partners that could help the institution achieve its strategic objectives. Institutions and their boards can assess potential partners by stage-gating several strategic and institution-specific factors, such as alignment across strategic, financial, and operational objectives. Another often overlooked factor for consideration is mission and cultural alignment, which can prove critical to ensuring the sustainability of an integration. External factors—such as regulatory and accrediting body considerations—are also important when considering the viability of a potential transaction.

After an institution identifies a potential target or targets, it can undertake due diligence to weigh a partner’s fit. For some institutions, diligence may help narrow a lengthy list of potential partners. For others, it may help validate one partner. A range of considerations can inform an institution’s diligence efforts. In our experience, key areas include academic and strategic programming planning, expected economics, culture and change management, university talent and organizational design structure, and integration management and governance to facilitate the transaction. In the end, this exercise can provide clarity on fit and the probability of a successful, sustainable alliance.

Are you ready to pursue a merger?

To get started, ask yourself and your leadership team the following questions:

• Do we have a clear strategic plan with specific objectives to guide what our institution says “yes” to and, more important, what it says “no” to?
• Have we mapped out the investments needed to achieve our strategy? Are we clear on what is best built in-house versus acquired via partnership or M&A?
• Have we conducted a structured, thorough scan of potential partners, including those outside the obvious or proximate?
• Have we filtered potential partners for strategic, mission, and cultural alignment?
• Have we fully considered the financial implications, including potential unfunded liabilities (for example, deferred maintenance and potential legal implications)?
• Have we thoroughly investigated potential regulatory and accreditor constraints?
• Have we sought input from staff, student, and alumni stakeholders?
• Have we considered the impact on the local community and how the public and media may respond?
• Do we have a clear “alliance hypothesis” that defines what success looks like for this new partnership, including how the combined entity would equal more than the sum of its parts?
• Have we mapped out how the combined entity would be organized, including the governance structure?

When an institution settles on a target, leadership can test its readiness for M&A by answering ten questions (see sidebar “Are you ready to pursue a merger?”).

3. Plan and prepare the implementation infrastructure

In our experience, the most successful institutions work through a range of foundational activities prior to a merger. This preparation spans regulatory and compliance considerations (such as accreditation, state, and federal requirements) as well as the practicalities needed to ensure the partnership is a success. In our experience, institutions have a tendency to zero in on what must be done to complete the transaction and get to “day one.” But what happens after day one is equally important to ensure the institution is prepared to successfully execute its plans and capture the strategic value that the transaction was expected to create.

A structured planning effort can help an institution achieve these strategic goals, encourage productive stakeholder engagement, and establish the foundation for ongoing stakeholder management. Planning that is inclusive of students, faculty, administration, and other university stakeholders leads to better plans and better implementation. Putting in place a comprehensive implementation infrastructure ensures the institution is prepared to implement merger-related plans in the near and long term, after the deal closes. As institutions and their boards prepare to bring their partnership to life, focusing on four core domains can help guide planning and ongoing management of the deal:

• Integration management and governance, which focuses on the overall approach to integration, including timeline, infrastructure, and process governance. Of equal importance is identifying and selecting the right integration leaders to represent the merging institutions. In our experience, preparing and upskilling these leaders to step into their crucial roles and navigate a high-stakes integration is crucial 12 “ Equipping leaders for merger integration success ,” McKinsey, July 9, 2018. because most leaders have limited integration experience.
• University planning, goal setting, and goal realization, which focuses on establishing a strategy to support the future operating model of the combined institution. This involves deploying functional planning teams in the following key areas: academics, research, enrollment, student affairs, administration (such as finance, legal, risk, and regulations), and operations (such as facilities and safety). In working through this domain, successful institutions seek to go beyond the details of the deal model and thoroughly assess the full potential of synergies for the combined institution.
• University talent and organizational design structure, which includes establishing the desired operating model for the combined institution and which must be informed by the faculty, union, and university labor considerations that are unique to each institution. In our experience, aligning talent retention priorities with the combined institution’s aspirations in strategic areas is an important exercise.
• Culture, communications, and change management, which focuses on addressing potential cultural roadblocks resulting from the integration of stakeholders from both institutions, engaging university stakeholders with meaningful messages throughout the integration process, and employing the organizational change-management measures needed to sustain the integration. Higher-education M&A activity involves engaging and informing a particularly unique and complex set of internal stakeholders (such as students, faculty, and staff) and external stakeholders (such as parents, alumni, and state and federal accrediting bodies) throughout the course of an integration. In our experience, the most successful integration leaders develop a regular cadence of clear messages tailored and delivered to each set of university stakeholders. This approach to consistent and candid communication is one piece of the overall culture puzzle that an institution will need to address, given the importance culture plays in defining an institution and affecting the overall success of a transaction. It’s critically important to make intentional efforts to understand each organization’s culture and meaningfully build the culture of the combined institution both before and after the deal closes.

Putting in place a comprehensive implementation infrastructure ensures the institution is prepared to implement merger-related plans in the near and long term.

In our experience, developing a master plan prior to the close of the transaction can help guide integration efforts. This plan reflects all key integration activities and identifies tasks that need to be completed across each of the four domains. A centralized resource, the master plan is a living document that tracks departmental and functional progress and can help ensure an integration’s long-term success.

To manage falling enrollments and revenues and rising costs, colleges and universities are pursuing a range of alliance options. Regardless of format, alliances share the overarching goals of helping institutions improve student access, experiences, and outcomes, while weathering a changing financial landscape. Some will fail. Those who understand the M&A landscape and take the necessary steps can succeed. How M&A will remake the landscape of higher ed in the United States remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: institutions seeking partnerships, alliances, and mergers are here to stay.

Jake Bryant is a partner in McKinsey’s Seattle office, where David Hobbet is an associate partner;  Ryan Golden is a partner in the Atlanta office; and Ian Jefferson is a senior partner in the Washington, DC, office.

The authors wish to thank Charag Krishnan, Kameron Kordestani, Jonathan Law, Steve Miller, Fiyinfolu Oladiran, Jimmy Sarakatsannis, and Shyla Ziade for their contributions to this article.

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The Role of Higher Education Institutions in the Transformation of Future-Fit Education

Education is a critical driver of the 2030 Agenda . Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) including universities and colleges worldwide are preparing future professionals, conducting meaningful research, and engaging with the community and stakeholders to tackle local, national, regional, and global challenges. These HEIs are at the forefront of the solutions required to advance the Sustainable Development Goals, which underscores the fundamental role of education in creating healthy and inclusive societies as envisioned in the 2030 Agenda. 

The role of HEIs is not confined to that exclusively of higher education per se. In practice, the contribution of HEIs is quite significant to creating a continuum between all levels of education while training future and current teachers, making curricula adjustments and developing new curricula, nurturing ideas and new pedagogical approaches, instilling fundamental values through various learning methods and platforms, and cultivating innovations -including technological ones- to improve the educational experience and educational outcomes.

The debate about the education we need for the future largely depends on the complexities we face and the several conflicting crises and emergencies around us. In this sense, universities and colleges are very well placed to assess such challenges and how they can be addressed. To analyze this, the  United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI)  within the context of the Transforming Education Summit convened by the United Nations, co-organized this event to be hosted by the Center for Global Affairs of New York University , a UNAI member institution in the United States:

Topic: THE ROLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS IN THE TRANSFORMATION OF FUTURE-FIT EDUCATION

Date:  Thursday, 22 September 2022

Time:  10am - 12:30pm (EDT/New York time)

Venue: New York University (United States), with broadcast (further details to be announced prior to the event)

RSVP/Registration form:   Click here

Those who would like to attend this event in-person will need to upload proof of vaccination and booster if eligible to the New York University (NYU) portal and show a "Green" Daily Screener pass upon entry to the campus. Attendees will also be required to follow any mask requirements or COVID-19-related protocols in place. Attendees will receive more information via e-mail about accessing the campus 1-2 weeks before the event.

As of now, registrations for attending in-person are no longer possible.

Please note that UNAI cannot cover travel-related expenses to attend this event, if you decide to do so in-person. 

No certificate of attendance or participation will be provided.

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First panel:   The role of higher education in the transformation of education for the realization of the SDGs

• Mr. Robert Skinner , Deputy Director and Chief of Partnerships and Global Engagement at the Outreach Division of the United Nations Department for Global Communications

Presenters:

• Dr. Carolyn Kissane , Clinical Professor, Academic Director of the graduate programs in Global Affairs and Global Security, Conflict and Cybercrime at the Center for Global Affairs, and Director of the SPS Energy, Climate Justice and Sustainability Lab of New York University (United States)
• Mr. Sarmad Khan , Board Director of the Academic Council on the United Nations System. Co-author of the upcoming book The Sustainable University of the Future: Reimagining Higher Education and Research . Former Head and Senior Policy Adviser of the Resident Coordinator System Leadership Branch at the United Nations Development Operations Coordination Office.  
• Dr. Patrick Paul Walsh , Vice President of Education and Director of the SDG Academy at the Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Professor of International Development Studies and Director of the Centre for Sustainable Development Studies at the University College Dublin (Ireland)
• Dr. Mette Morsing , Head of Principles for Responsible Management Education - PRME) at the United Nations Global Compact. Previous Professor, Misum Chair and Executive Director of the Misum Center for Sustainable Markets, Stockholm School of Economics (Sweden)
• Dr. Priyadarshani Joshi , Senior Research Officer at the Global Education Monitoring Report of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – UNESCO. Specialist on Non-State Actors in Education and Education’s Role in the Sustainable Development Goals

Second panel:   Best practices and case studies from the UNAI SDG Hubs

• Dr. Waheguru Pal Singh , Clinical Professor and Director of the United Nations Specialization at the Center for Global Affairs of New York University (United States). Co-Author of the book The Future of Global Affairs Managing Discontinuity, Disruption and Destruction [2021]
• Prof. Juan José Vásquez , Legal Advisor and Professor of Conflict Resolution, Peace and Mediation at the University for Peace (Costa Rica) / SDG Hub for Goal 12
• Prof. Katja Enberg , Professor at the Department of Biological Sciences of the University of Bergen (Norway) / SDG Hub for Goal 14
• Prof. Sheryl Hendriks , Professor and Head of the Department of Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development at the University of Pretoria (South Africa) / SDG Hub for Goal 2
• Dr. Jonas Richard , Professor and Head of the Department of Social Work at Kristu Jayanti College (India) / SDG Hub for Goal 1

Goal of the Month | September 2024: All Goals

Koya University Launches the Green University Initiative

On 16 May 2024, Koya University launched the Green University initiative, falling under the 7th pillar of its Strategic Plan for five years (2023-2027). Alongside many higher education institutions around the globe adopting technologies, practices, and tools aimed at protecting the environment, Koya University aims to reengineer education in a manner that is consistent with the growing green scientific and economic development that the world is experiencing today.

Aveiro is Ours

The Aveiro é Nosso project was restructured and given new life in 2014 by the Students Union of the University of Aveiro, with the goal of bringing the academic community closer to the Region of Aveiro and its residents. Evolving in action and goals for the next ten years, today the University of Aveiro continues to create and engage in volunteering projects and sustainability initiatives which will help to unite Aveiro communities and contribute to a greater good.

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The most basic question can also be the most difficult to answer: How do we know? In higher education, we think we’re fulfilling our mission. We’re sure students are learning and growing. We’re confident we’re achieving what we said we would. But it isn’t until we ask and answer “How do we know?” that we can unleash our college’s or university’s promise and potential.

What is institutional effectiveness planning?

Institutional effectiveness planning is a higher education institution’s effort to organize evaluation, assessment, and improvement initiatives so the institution can determine how well it is fulfilling its mission and achieving its goals.

Institutional effectiveness planning may cover 1

• Institutional research
• Program review (academic and/or administrative)
• Student learning outcome assessment
• Accreditation
• Plan measurement and decision support

Why do institutional effectiveness planning?

Creating an institutional effectiveness plan helps colleges and universities get a clear picture of their performance and use data to inform decisions. It moves institutional effectiveness from an externally focused compliance exercise to a key capacity for success.

Institutional effectiveness planning also helps institutions:

• Improve student retention and completion
• Determine and keep competitive advantage
• Identify possible efficiencies and improve processes
• Comply with federal and state reporting requirements
• Support accreditation activities and requirements

Why is integrated planning important for institutional effectiveness planning?

Assessment and evaluation efforts happen in almost every unit on campus. When these efforts are siloed, they are inefficient and more focused on fulfilling external reporting obligations than on using data to improve institutional performance. Integrated planning for institutional effectiveness makes assessment more efficient and more useful to the institution.

Who does institutional effectiveness planning?

Institutional effectiveness planning is often managed by a central office, such as an office of institutional research. While evaluation of programs is also conducted at the unit level, the organization and timing of these efforts is often controlled by the office of institutional research.

When is institutional effectiveness planning done?

Institutional effectiveness planning often uses a yearly cycle with certain activities, like re-accreditation, following a multi-year process. Data are collected in an ongoing fashion, and specific reporting windows are informed by state and federal guidelines.

A review of the institutional effectiveness model or processes usually occurs every five to 10 years but may also be triggered by:

• New accreditation standards
• Changes to state/federal regulations
• Recommendations from an accreditation review
• Changes to the college or university strategic planning process

How is institutional effectiveness planning done?

Institutional effectiveness planning is often less about starting a new process and more about bringing current, ongoing assessment processes together into an overarching institutional effectiveness model. Typically, it involves:

• Mission-critical activities (student learning outcomes, research, community engagement, etc.)
• Strategic plan goals
• External reporting requirements
• Identifying assessment and evaluation initiatives already happening across the institution and aligning them to identified needs
• Finding gaps in assessment and evaluation and determining how they will be filled
• Designing a model or cycle that aligns current efforts, incorporates new efforts, and schedules analysis so it can inform planning
• Providing support needed to implement the plan (software, training, documentation, etc.)

You’re invited to join the SCUP community toward learning and practicing integrated institutional effectiveness planning in higher education. Check out our related learning resources and upcoming events and courses below.

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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Student engagement and wellbeing over time at a higher education institution

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Visualization, Writing – original draft

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Computer Science, University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom

Roles Data curation, Methodology, Software

Affiliation School of Psychology, University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – review & editing

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Supervision, Writing – review & editing

Roles Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

• Chris A. Boulton, 
• Emily Hughes, 
• Carmel Kent, 
• Joanne R. Smith, 
• Hywel T. P. Williams

• Published: November 27, 2019
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225770
• Reader Comments

Student engagement is an important factor for learning outcomes in higher education. Engagement with learning at campus-based higher education institutions is difficult to quantify due to the variety of forms that engagement might take (e.g. lecture attendance, self-study, usage of online/digital systems). Meanwhile, there are increasing concerns about student wellbeing within higher education, but the relationship between engagement and wellbeing is not well understood. Here we analyse results from a longitudinal survey of undergraduate students at a campus-based university in the UK, aiming to understand how engagement and wellbeing vary dynamically during an academic term. The survey included multiple dimensions of student engagement and wellbeing, with a deliberate focus on self-report measures to capture students’ subjective experience. The results show a wide range of engagement with different systems and study activities, giving a broad view of student learning behaviour over time. Engagement and wellbeing vary during the term, with clear behavioural changes caused by assessments. Results indicate a positive interaction between engagement and happiness, with an unexpected negative relationship between engagement and academic outcomes. This study provides important insights into subjective aspects of the student experience and provides a contrast to the increasing focus on analysing educational processes using digital records.

Citation: Boulton CA, Hughes E, Kent C, Smith JR, Williams HTP (2019) Student engagement and wellbeing over time at a higher education institution. PLoS ONE 14(11): e0225770. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225770

Editor: Marina Della Giusta, University of Reading, UNITED KINGDOM

Received: April 23, 2019; Accepted: November 12, 2019; Published: November 27, 2019

Copyright: © 2019 Boulton et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: Survey response data can be found at 10.5281/zenodo.3480070.

Funding: This research was supported by the Effective Learning Analytics project at the University of Exeter. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

Engagement with learning is believed to be an important factor in student success in higher education. Engagement has been defined in different ways in the literature [ 1 ], but is considered here to refer to the active commitment and purposeful effort expended by students towards all aspects of their learning, including both formal and informal activities [ 2 ]. Student engagement has been shown to be related to success in both online learning [ 3 – 5 ] and more traditional campus-based higher education settings [ 6 – 8 ]. However, engagement can be difficult to measure. In most studies of online-only education (e.g. [ 9 – 13 ]), student engagement is measured from the interactions a student has within a virtual learning environment (VLE). This may be a reasonable approach for digital-only contexts where a large proportion of learning activities occur through this channel. In contrast, in a traditional, face-to-face learning, university environment, VLE usage only captures one dimension of student learning activity and full engagement with learning is much harder to measure. The numerous and varied interactions students have with their learning programmes, including lectures, seminars, peer group discussions and ad hoc interactions with teaching staff, as well as other aspects of campus life such as participation in sports and student societies, are harder to record, requiring innovative methods for their capture [ 14 , 15 ].

Exploration of the relationship between student engagement and success raises the important question of how “success” is defined. Most obviously, success relates to academic performance, such as final grades (e.g. [ 6 – 8 , 16 ]), but success is also often discussed in terms of retention and completion of a course of learning (e.g. [ 7 , 10 , 13 , 17 – 19 ]). It is important to consider that students may have different motivations for attending university, including, for example, social or sporting aims alongside conventional academic goals. Thus, in seeking to link engagement to success, there is value in adopting a more holistic view of student motivations and appropriate measures of outcomes. Furthermore, it is important to note that engagement and success, however measured, are dynamic and should be expected to vary within and between individuals over the duration of academic study.

There is increasing interest in learning analytics [ 20 – 25 ], which may use either static attributes of students (e.g. demographics, socioeconomic indicators, previous attainment) or dynamic attributes based on digital traces of learning behaviour to understand many aspects of the student experience, including student engagement. Traditionally, such studies have primarily made use of “found” data from institutional databases and “by-product” data from digital learning platforms. This kind of data, which is not collected for the purpose of pedagogical research, has limitations. The records that are collected institutionally tend to relate to either the administration of higher education (e.g., demographic data, recruitment/retention statistics) or to the core components of academic performance (e.g., grades, progression, completion). Data collected as the by-product of student learning activities on digital platforms such as VLEs (e.g. [ 8 – 10 ] only offers a partial view of a complex whole. For example, previous work that examined the relationship between academic performance and engagement at a traditional University found that VLE usage alone is a relatively poor predictor of academic performance in this context [ 8 ], while another study showed that VLE usage was a useful predictor of outcomes for online learning but not significant for face-to-face learning [ 9 ].

Dispositional learning analytics (see [ 26 ]), on the other hand, seeks to combine digital trace data (e.g., those generated by engagement in online learning activities) with learner data (e.g., dispositions, attitudes, and values assessed via self-report surveys). By doing so, recent research has found that learning dispositions (e.g., motivation, emotion, self-regulation) strongly and dynamically influence engagement and academic performance over time (e.g., [ 27 – 29 ]). In addition, this research suggests that the predictive value added by consideration of learner data might be time-dependent: learner data seems to play a critical role up until the point that feedback from assessment or online activities becomes available. This raises the possibility that whether incorporating learner dispositions into learning analytics models is useful depends on learning context (i.e., online only versus campus-based institutions).

Another limitation of learning analytics based solely on digital traces, is that these sources often cannot capture subjective aspects of student life, such as wellbeing and satisfaction, which are rarely routinely measured. Relationships between student engagement and wellbeing, or between wellbeing and success, have consequently been less well studied for higher education than that between engagement and success (but see [ 30 , 31 ]). One project that has moved beyond by-product data and used deliberate collection of digital records to measure student behaviour and wellbeing is the StudentLife study at Dartmouth College in the USA [ 14 ]. This project supplied mobile phones to student participants in a term-long study that attempted to capture a multi-dimensional and longitudinal view of student behaviour. Findings used aspects of student life that had previously been inaccessible to researchers, including social interactions and physical activity patterns, to predict academic performance [ 16 ] and also to diagnose wellbeing issues [ 14 , 32 ]. While the StudentLife study showed that deliberate data collection using digital methods can access important aspects of the subjective student experience, it does not address the difficulty of doing so using the kinds of by-product digital records and institutional data that are routinely collected and used as input into learning analytics.

The importance of student wellbeing for academic outcomes, and the relationships between wellbeing and engagement, remain open research questions for higher education. Wellbeing is a loosely defined concept that may include a number of different dimensions, including satisfaction, positive affect (e.g. enjoyment, gratitude, contentment) and negative affect (e.g. anger, sadness, worry) [ 33 , 34 ]. Many studies have explored the relationship between wellbeing and academic performance, commonly finding a positive association, e.g. in US college undergraduates [ 35 , 36 ] and among high school students [ 37 ]. The relationship between engagement and wellbeing is less well studied in higher education, but a positive association has been found in other working environments [ 34 ]. A recent government report on student mental health and wellbeing in UK universities found increasing incidence of mental illness, mental distress and low wellbeing [ 38 ]. The same study found that these negative wellbeing factors had a substantial harmful impact on student performance and course completion; by extension, students with positive wellbeing are likely to perform better and complete their studies. Another study by the UK Higher Education Academy focused on methods for promoting wellbeing in higher education, as well as identifying several pedagogical benefits [ 39 ].

Here we report on a longitudinal survey of student learning behaviours at a traditional campus-based university in the United Kingdom. Our survey was designed to capture multiple dimensions of student engagement and wellbeing over time, deliberately using self-report to look beyond digital traces and institutional records. An initial questionnaire included questions to characterise individual students on different dimensions including learning style and motivations for study. Subsequent waves captured student learning behaviours and engagement with a wide variety of learning systems (both offline and online) and activities, as well as their subjective feelings of satisfaction and wellbeing. The survey ran in 10 waves spanning a teaching semester, vacation and exam period, allowing observation of changes over time.

This study aims to complement the growing body of work that uses digital trace data to measure engagement, with a more subjective offline approach that captures a fuller representation of the student experience. Our research goals are to understand how engagement and wellbeing vary over time, as well as to determine a multidimensional view of student learning behaviours and patterns. Addressing these questions will make an important contribution to the academic study of student engagement and will help to identify other learning dispositions (e.g., engagement) that might be of value to combine with digital trace data in learning analytic models. Findings may also offer instrumental benefit by helping to guide institutional decision-making around interventions and student support.

The cohort for the survey consisted of 1st year and 2nd year undergraduate students at a research-intensive campus-based university in the United Kingdom. Students were invited to participate via emails containing a link to survey registration. In addition, recruitment booths were set up at the university’s main campus and researchers approached students to invite them to participate. Students were incentivised by entry into a prize draw to win gift vouchers for a well-known online retailer, with 10 prizes available in each wave. There were 10 waves in all. To incentivise continued participation, there was an additional final prize draw with larger prizes available to students who had completed 80% of surveys. Every participant explicitly gave their consent to their data being analysed for research purposes.

The survey ran from February to June 2017. Of the 10 waves, Waves 1–7 were released weekly during the Spring term, followed by a break for the Easter vacation period. Waves 8–10 were released fortnightly during the Summer term, which at this institution was mostly taken up with revision and examinations. Responses were received asynchronously, so although the survey was released in waves, we analyse the data over a continuous time interval spanning 19 weeks.

Our longitudinal survey consisted of a series of questions that students completed in every wave. To measure engagement with learning, we asked respondents to report their participation in each of 17 different learning activities (see Table 1 ), measured as the number of days in the past 7 days they had performed that activity. These activities were selected to represent the variety of online and offline activities, as well as social and academic activities, available to students at the university. To give context, we also asked respondents to report whether they had an assessment due in the past 7 days.

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225770.t001

Effort over the preceding week was assessed with two items assessed on a 5-point Likert scale (specifically, “How engaged were you with your studies?”; “How much effort did you put into your studies?”, 1 = not at all, 5 = very much). The mean response from each student was used to form a reliable scale (Pearson’s r = 0.78, p < .001). Well-being over the last week was assessed with four items that asked about happiness in general (e.g., “How happy did you feel about your life in general?”) and in relation to their programme of study (e.g., “How well do you feel you are doing in your course?”, 1 = not at all, 5 = very much). Responses were averaged to form a reliable scale (Cronbach’s α = 0.69).

In addition to the longitudinal survey questions, we also asked further questions in Wave 1 to determine their self-reported learning engagement style and motivation for attending university.

Engagement with learning was assessed with 10 items adapted from the Student Engagement in Schools Questionnaire (SESQ; [ 40 ]). Participants indicated the extent of their agreement with the statements on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). Principal components analysis with varimax rotation extracted two factors, accounting for 53% of the variance. The first factor was characterised by the items assessing cognitive engagement (e.g., “When I study, I try to understand the material better by relating it to things I already know”), and items were averaged to form a cognitive engagement scale (α = 0.73). The second factor was characterised by the items assessing behavioural engagement (e.g., “In my modules, I work as hard as I can”), and items were averaged to form a behavioural engagement scale (α = 0.75).

Participants indicated their agreement with six different reasons for attending university (1 = not at all, 5 = very much). Principal components analysis with varimax rotation extracted two factors, accounting for 57% of the variance. The first factor was characterised by the items assessing social motivations (e.g., “To socialise with friends”), and items were averaged to form a social motivations scale (α = 0.62). The second factor was characterised by the items assessing academic motivations (e.g., “To get good grades”), and items were averaged to form an academic motivations scale (α = 0.48). The original survey is shown in Supplementary Information ( S1 File ).

The survey and following analysis were undertaken in accordance with the guidelines of the British Psychological Society. All participants provided informed consent prior to participation and were free to withdraw at any time without penalty. The survey and analysis received ethical approval from the University of Exeter Psychology Ethics Committee prior to commencement of data collection.

Our analysis is based on both static and dynamic variables from the survey responses for each student. Static variables include the motivation and engagement style measurements that were calculated from Wave 1. An additional static variable was also used to measure student academic performance across the term in which the survey was conducted, using grade data from the university database; for this metric, a student grade variable was calculated as their credit-weighted average grade from all the modules they took during the term in which the survey was conducted. Dynamic variables include the engagement and wellbeing measurements recorded in every wave. To allow comparison between static variables and dynamic variables, we take the mean value for the dynamic variable (e.g., the mean number of days per week that a student participated in a learning activity, or their mean effort scale score). Correlations between variables are measured using the Pearson correlation coefficient and measure correlations between both the static and dynamic variables. In both cases, all data is used in the correlation measurement, such that there is one record per student who answered in Wave 1, and all the responses are used to calculate the correlation between the dynamic variables.

Dynamic variables were used to analyse trends in behaviour over time, such as trends in engagement and wellbeing. To allow analysis of trends across the whole cohort, we created time series for engagement and wellbeing variables using a moving average across all responses with a 7-day window size. To ensure robustness, we made sure there were at least 10 responses in each window for which a mean was calculated. Since counts were lower during vacation and examination periods, we restricted our trend analysis to term-time only. Trends in these time series were calculated using the Kendall rank correlation coefficient, which counts the proportion of concordant pairs (both x i >x j and y i >y j or x i <x j and y i <y j ). Using time as one of the variables, this gives a measure of tendency in the range [– 1 , 1 ], with a score of -1 if the time series is always decreasing, a score of +1 if the time series is always increasing, and a score of 0 if there is no overall trend.

Our analysis involved looking for differences in behaviour between sub-populations within our respondent cohort (e.g. splitting the cohort into those who did or did not have an assessment due each week). We present differences in the mean values between the two distributions and then use a Mann-Whitney U-test to determine if the distributions are significantly different. We use these non-parametric tests since the distributions of values are typically non-normal and vary in shape between different variables. We also have a small sample size once the distributions have been split. However, we still present the difference in mean values, rather than the difference in median values, since the discrete nature of our data (e.g., integer values in range 0–7, which for some variables have an inter-quartile range of 0 to 1) means that medians are sometimes too coarse-grained to show differences even where the distributions are significantly different.

Survey response

Overall, we had responses from 175 unique students, 174 of which answered the Wave 1 survey including questions to determine engagement style and motivations. We had 1050 responses overall, giving an average of exactly 6 responses per student.

Fig 1 shows the number of responses received over time during the 19-week period that the survey was active. There is an expected decline in the number of responses over time as participants lose interest or for other reasons drop out of the cohort. Despite this, we still have a reasonably steady and high response rate during the Spring term (left of the grey shaded area). There is a significant drop off in survey participation during the Easter break (grey shaded area), before the response rate recovers during the Summer term, although not to the levels seen previously (right of great shaded area). The Summer term in our survey is dominated by revision and exams, which suggests we might see different student behaviour.

Grey shaded region refers to the Easter break between semesters. Spring Term is to the left of the grey region, Summer Term to the right. Vertical dotted lines indicate the weeks in which a survey email was sent and a responder lottery was held to incentivise participation. Note that students could answer a survey wave in the following week, hence a lower amount of first-week responses is observed when compared to the 174 students that answered the first wave of the survey.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225770.g001

Table 2 shows some demographics of our survey respondents (n = 175), compared to the entire student population (n = 15646). We find that our survey respondents are slightly biased towards being female and in their first year of study. The students who took the survey also have slightly higher marks than the student population. The number of students in the Life and Environmental Sciences college is greater than expected, with less representation of students from the Social Sciences and International Studies college and the Medical School. The low numbers from the Medical School reflect the fact that this School is based on a different campus to where physical recruitment of participants occurred.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225770.t002

Respondent characteristics

The Wave 1 survey included one-time questions intended to allow construction of engagement style and motivation scores for each individual student (see Methods ). The distributions of these scores are shown in Fig 2 . Due to the nature of these measurements, and the fact that they are only measured once, they make up part of our ‘static’ data and can be thought of as measuring a student’s underlying dispositions. They suggest that generally students reported slightly higher levels of behavioural engagement than cognitive engagement, although there was a bigger spread in behavioural engagement scores. Most of the students who responded to our survey reported higher academic motivation than social motivation for attending university.

Students were asked a one-time set of questions to determine their engagement type and motivations (see Methods ) and as such this is a static measurement. Dotted lines show the minimum and maximum scores, solid lines show the interquartile range, and points show the medians.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225770.g002

Relationships among student characteristics, average engagement and performance

Fig 3 shows the distributions of values from the longitudinal survey questions used to measure dynamic variables related to engagement with different learning activities and levels of student wellbeing. The plots show all responses from all students aggregated together, with the various learning activities ordered according to their mean usage level. The distributions suggest that activities that are most directly associated with learning (e.g. using the VLE, using the info app, using the Internet for learning, attending a teaching session) are used much more frequently than those that are not (e.g. using sports facilities, talking to a year representative, using SU facilities). This is consistent with the finding above that most students in the sample had stronger academic than social motivations for attending university. Distributions of scores on the “effort” and “happy” scales derived from the wellbeing questions asked each week (see Methods ) show that both metrics have a broad absolute range but a relatively narrow interquartile range. These metrics cannot be usefully compared.

The underlying survey questions were asked in all waves and as such these are dynamic variables. Plot shows minimum and maximum scores (dotted lines), the interquartile range (solid lines) and median values (points). For this analysis all student responses were pooled.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225770.g003

Next, we related the various static variables to each other and to the mean values for the various dynamic variables for each student in our cohort. Table 3 shows (Spearman’s) correlations between static variables across the cohort for: engagement style, motivation, grades, wellbeing, and engagement levels. Statistical significance is indicated in Table 3 ; henceforth we only discuss correlations with statistical significance at level p <0.05, unless stated explicitly. For the dynamic variables, we use the mean reported level across all responses for each student. Grades are analysed using the average credit-weighted module grade from the term in which the survey was carried out (see Methods ).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225770.t003

We find relatively strong positive correlation (ρ = 0.36) between levels of the two engagement styles (behavioural and cognitive). Behavioural engagement is correlated positively with academic motivation for attending university (ρ = 0.15) but correlated negatively with social motivation (ρ = -0.22). Behavioural engagement is very strongly positively correlated with effort (ρ = 0.55) and positively correlated with grades (ρ = 0.24). Cognitive engagement, on the other hand, is not correlated with grades (ρ = 0.02) but is positively correlated with happiness (ρ = 0.30). Cognitive engagement is also often positively correlated with participation in the various learning activities, with several positive correlations: seeing a lecturer (ρ = 0.32); going to the library (ρ = 0.28); using social media for learning (ρ = 0.18); and using the Internet for learning (ρ = 0.24). Cognitive engagement is negatively correlated with viewing lecture recordings (ρ = -0.16). Interestingly, behavioural engagement was typically uncorrelated with participation in learning activities except negatively with attending scheduled teaching sessions (ρ = -0.16); and viewing lecture recordings (ρ = -0.17).

The two types of motivation (academic and social) are not significantly correlated with each other (ρ = 0.14), but social motivation is correlated negatively with grades (ρ = -0.25). Academic motivation is significantly correlated with wellbeing scales for both effort (ρ = 0.28) and happiness (ρ = 0.29), whereas social motivation is not. Regarding participation in learning activities, the pattern of correlations makes intuitive sense. Academic motivation is weakly positively correlated with two academic activities: info app usage (ρ = 0.22); and VLE usage (ρ = 0.23). Social motivation is positively correlated with one core academic activity, attending a teaching session (ρ = 0.26), but is also positively correlated with several activities that are less directly academic and have a social aspect: working with friends (ρ = 0.19), using sports facilities (ρ = 0.46), using retail facilities (ρ = 0.23), using catering facilities (ρ = 0.23), using social media for learning (ρ = 0.21), and attending clubs or societies (ρ = 0.36).

It is interesting to note that the only significant correlations between student academic performance (measured by average grades) and levels of participation in learning activities are negative. Perhaps less surprising are negative correlations between grades and participation in “social” activities: using retail facilities (ρ = -0.22); and using catering facilities (ρ = -0.32). It is hard to explain the negative correlations between grades and attending a teaching session (ρ = -0.17). We return to this topic in the Discussion.

The wellbeing scales (effort and happiness) are positively correlated with each other (ρ = 0.30): students who put in more effort report greater happiness. Effort is positively correlated with several non-compulsory learning activities: using the VLE (ρ = 0.27); going to the library (ρ = 0.31); using career services (ρ = 0.30); using social media for learning (ρ = 0.36); and using the Internet for learning (ρ = 0.50). Effort is also positively correlated with using retail facilities (ρ = 0.27), perhaps suggesting more time spent on campus. Happiness is uncorrelated with core learning activities but is positively correlated with more social activities: using SU facilities (ρ = 0.28); and going to clubs or societies (ρ = 0.36).

Table 3 shows many positive correlations between levels of participation in various learning activities. Without listing all the pairwise relationships here, we find that 50% of activity pairs are significantly positively correlated, with no activity pairs negatively correlated. This suggests that students who engage more with learning do so in a holistic manner, with raised participation across a variety of learning activities.

Temporal trends and correlations

Next, we consider trends or changes in behaviour during the Spring term ( Fig 4 ), looking first at time series of reported participation levels for each learning activity (see Methods ). Since we use a moving average to give robust values, and since survey response rate falls outside term time, we restrict our analysis to the period within the Spring term (Waves 1–7, prior to the grey shaded area in Fig 1 ). We use a moving average equal to one week (7 days) and when doing this, the lowest number of responses in any window is 17 (on the last day of term), suggesting the plotted values are reliable. Apart from the final two days of term, all the windows have 38 or more responses within them. Trends are calculated using Kendall’s tau correlation coefficient (see Methods ). For ease of viewing, we have split the learning activities into ‘Online’ learning activities ( Fig 4a ), ‘Offline’ learning activities ( Fig 4b ) and ‘Other’ activities ( Fig 4c ). We also plot time series for wellbeing variables ( Fig 4d ).

Time series are calculated as a moving average using data from all students. Trends and significance are calculated using Kendall’s tau correlation coefficient.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225770.g004

There is a general downward trend in participation with learning activities over the Spring term. Of the ‘Online’ systems ( Fig 4a ), all of them have a significantly downward trend as the term goes on: using the VLE (τ = -0.72); using the info app (τ = -0.65); using the Internet for learning (τ = -0.85); using social media for learning (τ = -0.67); and accessing lecture recordings (τ = -0.47). Three of the ‘Offline’ systems also decrease over the term ( Fig 4b ): attending teaching sessions (τ = -0.91); accessing the library (τ = -0.20); viewing past exams (τ = -0.56). Since teaching activities are scheduled with a roughly uniform density throughout the term, the downward trend in engagement with learning activities is notable. A similar trend is seen for many of the ‘Other’ activities ( Fig 4c ): going to clubs or societies (τ = -0.70); using the sports facilities (τ = -0.32); using retail facilities (τ = -0.83); using catering facilities (τ = -0.63); talking to a year rep (τ = -0.49); using SU facilities (τ = -0.68). There are no learning activities that show an increase in participation over the term.

Looking at trends in the wellbeing variables over the term, we see that effort increases slightly but not significantly (τ = 0.10). However, happiness increases significantly (τ = 0.36), suggesting that students report greater happiness as the term progresses. We cannot say whether this increase in self-reported happiness is related to the concurrent decrease in engagement, though it is tempting to speculate.

Table 4 shows correlations between the dynamic variables measuring participation in learning activities and wellbeing. This analysis shows whether there are temporal associations between levels of participation in different activities (e.g., if a student does more of one activity, does this correspond to more engagement in other activities). The striking observation in this analysis is that nearly all pairwise relationships between dynamic variables show significant positive correlations, with a small number of exceptions. This indicates a pattern whereby student learning activity varies holistically; students may be more or less active, but when they are active, they are active across a wide range of activities and behaviours. Again, the two wellbeing scales are correlated with each other (ρ = 0.37). Overall, 83% of the pairwise relationships between learning activities show a positive correlation over time (compared to 50% for the averaged data shown in Table 3 ). We find two significant negative correlations: between viewing past exam papers and visiting a lecturer (ρ = -0.08) and attending a teaching session (ρ = -0.13). This is most likely because Table 4 uses time-resolved information and is affected by the switch between attendance at scheduled teaching sessions during the Spring term and using past exams to revise for upcoming exams during the Summer term.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225770.t004

Impact of assessments on engagement and wellbeing

To determine the impact of assessments (e.g., coursework, class tests, final exams, etc.) on student engagement and wellbeing, we split our dataset into “assessment week” responses (those responses where the student answered that there was an assessment due in the 7-day reporting period) and “non-assessment week” responses (where no assessments were due). Note that “assessment weeks” are temporally heterogeneous and specific to the individual; that is, the assessment/non-assessment weeks are not temporally correlated across the cohort. This rules out effects from globally correlated hidden variables such as, for example, campus wide events, external media stories, etc. For each set of responses, we create distributions for each dynamic variable and then measure the differences between these distributions using the difference in means and Mann-Whitney U-tests (see Methods ). Results are shown in Fig 5 . The bars in Fig 5 plot the difference in mean values for each distribution, with positive differences referring to increased participation in assessment weeks. Bar colours indicate whether the difference between the distributions is statistically significant according to the Mann-Whitney U-test.

Bars show the difference in mean values for reported score distributions for (upper panel) participation in each learning activity measured in days, or (lower panel) levels of effort and happiness on scale 1–5. Positive values indicate an increase in assessment weeks. Bar colours indicate statistical significance for the difference between distributions calculated from a Mann-Whitney U-test (blue—significant positive difference, red—significant negative difference, white—not significant).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225770.g005

Fig 5 (upper panel) shows the mean difference for assessment weeks and non-assessment weeks in the reported number of days of participation in each learning activity. We find increased participation in all learning activities during assessment weeks, except using career services, which had significantly less usage when an assessment was due. Of the activities with increased participation, 9 of the 15 increases were significant. Interestingly, increased participation in assessment weeks extends across a mix of activity types; for example, there is greater attendance at clubs and societies when assessments are due. Overall, the analysis suggests there is higher engagement with most learning activities when assessments are due.

We also look for differences in the wellbeing variables of effort and happiness between assessment weeks and non-assessment weeks ( Fig 5 , lower panel). We find that there is a significant increase in the effort levels students report when an assessment is due. There is also, perhaps surprisingly, a slight increase in happiness, although this is not significant.

Relationships between behaviour and wellbeing

To explore the relationship between engagement with learning activities and reported wellbeing, we again split our dataset, this time into sets of responses where the student reported high/low levels of effort and high/low levels of happiness for that week. Since both variables are measured on an integer scale from 1 (low) to 5 (high), we use a threshold of 3 to split the cohort in each case, creating datasets for those who responded below 3 and those who reported 3 or above. This gives comparator sets for students who report “high effort” or “low effort” and students who report “happy” or “not happy”. Results are shown in Fig 6 .

Bars show the difference in mean scores (in days) from the distributions of participation levels for different learning activities. Positive values indicate higher participation by the (left) high effort and right (happy) students. Bar colour indicates significant differences between the distributions according to a Mann-Whitney U-test (blue—significant positive difference, red—significant negative difference, white—not significant).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225770.g006

As expected, we find that 16 of the 17 learning activities show higher mean participation levels by high effort students, and for 10 of these the difference between the distributions is significant ( Fig 6 , left panel). Happy students have higher mean participation levels in all activities that students who are not happy ( Fig 6 , right panel). However, these differences are generally smaller than those for high vs low effort groups. When comparing the left and right panels in Fig 6 , there is a significant increase in going to the Sports Park and using catering facilities for happier students, whereas rates of viewing past exams are only significantly increased for high effort students.

In planning this research, we expected to find different patterns of engagement among students, such as individuals showing more engagement with certain systems and less with others. This might be driven by students’ personal preferences (e.g., [ 27 , 28 ]) or by the teaching activities prescribed and/or preferred by different disciplines and programmes (see e.g. [ 8 , 41 ]). Instead we find that students who are engaged with learning tend to be engaged with all learning activities and systems; engagement appears to be a holistic phenomenon (Tables 3 and 4 ). The only exception to this pattern is a negative correlation between attending scheduled teaching sessions and viewing past exam papers. This might be explained by the separation (for most students) of learning and revision, with exam papers used for revision after scheduled teaching has finished. The strong correlation between all forms of engagement with learning has possible instrumental value for the design of systems to monitor student engagement, since it suggests that engagement could be effectively tracked using only a subset of engagement metrics as indicators. Monitoring of engagement might be used to identify anomalies or changes in behaviour of individuals, for example, to assist tutors in providing support and pastoral care. Indeed, the predictive analytics project at Nottingham Trent University (NTU Student Dashboard), which calculates engagement scores based on five online resources (VLE access, library usage, attendance, assignment submissions, and card swipes), has identified a positive relationship between student engagement and both progression and attainment. Moreover, this information, when communicated to students and staff, has been used to provide more targeted support to students from pastoral tutors (see [ 42 ]).

A feature of our survey design is the ability to measure variables at a campus-based university that would otherwise be difficult to access. Of the 17 learning activities recorded by our survey, only four could be tracked digitally with current methods (VLE, info app, past exam views and recorded lecture viewing), with the rest not routinely measured. Furthermore, this study provides temporally resolved data on student wellbeing, giving the opportunity to explore relationships between engagement and wellbeing.

Engagement and wellbeing are shown in this study to be positively related. Looking longitudinally across the survey ( Table 4 ), we find 13 forms of engagement were positively (and significantly) correlated with at least one of the wellbeing variables, either effort or happiness. Reasonably, one could suggest a possible feedback loop where increasing engagement increases academic performance, which in turn increases wellbeing (happiness and grades are correlated; Table 4 ), which then increases engagement. Alternatively, students with greater background levels of wellbeing may be more likely to engage with learning (see also [ 30 , 31 ]). This study cannot separate these potential mechanisms, since it only shows correlation and cannot assign causality.

The responses to our survey show a broad sample of student engagement at the university where the study was based. The survey was widely advertised and contains responses from students across all disciplines. However, in common with most survey studies, it relies on voluntary participation and we had no control over who would participate (see also [ 43 ]). This may introduce bias into our results. For example, we find that the students who responded scored much higher on academic motivation than on social motivation ( Fig 2 ), but this may be an artefact of self-selection bias in the sample of survey respondents, such that academically motivated students who are engaged with learning were more likely to participate (see also [ 43 , 44 ]). Indeed, analysis of the demographic data of respondents suggests that certain disciplines were over-sampled. This might limit the generalizability of our findings to the whole cohort, given that there are likely to be disciplinary differences in the extent to which students are expected to engage with various learning systems (see [ 8 ]). Furthermore, since this study was based at a single university in the UK, it may not represent students at other universities in the UK or worldwide. We encourage other researchers to repeat our study at other institutions in order to consolidate our findings. We make our survey design available in the Supplementary Information ( S1 File ) to facilitate this.

Another caveat to our results is that differences between student workloads associated with different learning activities are not considered. In previous work, we have shown that the amount of observed VLE usage differs between different disciplines [ 8 ], explained by the differing requirements of different disciplines, programmes and modules. For example, a humanities student is likely to have a balance of learning activities that differs from an engineering student, with resulting variation in the time they spend on the VLE. In addition, the number of scheduled lectures and other contact hours will differ between disciplines, with students taking STEM subjects typically having more contact hours than those taking arts or humanities subjects which require more self-study. It is possible that these differences might affect some of our findings. For example, the correlation between attending scheduled teaching sessions and student happiness might be influenced by the fraction of sessions attended, rather than the absolute number; a student who attends 100% of 4 scheduled sessions might be happier than a student who attends 50% of 8 scheduled sessions, even though the number of attended sessions remains the same. This kind of difference might mask or confound some relationships, so it is possible that a study sample stratified on discipline or programme would give a more nuanced picture of the relationships between engagement and wellbeing. With a larger sample size, we would have been able to create disciplinary subsets of students to explore this aspect, but our sample size did not permit this here.

One interesting dimension of student engagement that we are yet to explore within our survey is how well students predict their own usage of various learning systems; that is, do they accurately report their usage of digital tools? Results given here are based on student self-report rather than documented usage of different systems. In general, students might mis-report their behaviour either by mistake or deliberately, for whatever reason. If self-reported data in the current survey are inaccurate, it might raise the interesting question of whether some students systematically under- or over-report their levels of engagement with learning, and whether students who misreport perform better or worse academically (see [ 45 , 46 ]). We will return to this question in future work. If self-report and documented data (where available) do not agree, it raises the question of which sources show a more accurate picture of student behaviour and which are more important in relation to student wellbeing.

We can only speculate why there is an observed decrease in engagement during the academic term. It could be because students like to get ahead at the start of term and work harder or engage more to do this. The larger drop off in engagement at the end of term may be due to students having assessments that are not due until after the break and therefore not needing to work as much as they do during the middle of term. The rise in reported effort during the term (although not statistically significant) is interesting in relation to the decrease in reported engagement. The observed increase in happiness towards the end of term seems to be robust but is hard to explain; we speculate that perhaps students become happier as they start to receive assessment outcomes, or maybe they are simply looking forward to the end of term. This may be at odds with the correlations between engagement and wellbeing discussed previously. However, we believe that the correlations are picking out individual student behaviours, whereas these trends reflect the whole population.

Our research identified strong differences in behaviour between students who have an assessment due and those who do not. This gives us confidence that our survey can identify meaningful results, despite the limited sample size. We also find strong differences in behaviour between those students who feel engaged as well as happy. Finding that students who are happy are engaging more is an important result for our understanding of student wellbeing. Coupled with mechanisms to routinely measure engagement, it could assist tutors to identify students who are suffering with poor wellbeing and might benefit from intervention or greater support.

Supporting information

S1 file. questions used in survey completed by participants..

The original survey was completed using survey software Qualtrics.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225770.s001

Acknowledgments

This project aims to make effect use of data to help students reach their full academic potential while studying at the University of Exeter.

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What you need to know about higher education

UNESCO, as the only United Nations agency with a mandate in higher education, works with countries to ensure all students have equal opportunities to access and complete good quality higher education with internationally recognized qualifications. It places special focus on developing countries, notably Africa. 

Why does higher education matter?  

Higher education is a rich cultural and scientific asset which enables personal development and promotes economic, technological and social change. It promotes the exchange of knowledge, research and innovation and equips students with the skills needed to meet ever changing labour markets. For students in vulnerable circumstances, it is a passport to economic security and a stable future. 

What is the current situation? 

Higher education has changed dramatically over the past decades with increasing enrolment, student mobility, diversity of provision, research dynamics and technology. Some 254 million students are enrolled in universities around the world – a number that has more than doubled in the last 20 years and is set to expand. Yet despite the boom in demand, the overall enrolment ratio is 42% with large differences between countries and regions. More than 6.4 million students are pursuing their further education abroad. And among the world’s more than 82 million refugees, only 7% of eligible youth are enrolled in higher education, whereas comparative figures for primary and secondary education are 68% and 34%, respectively ( UNHCR) . The COVID-19 pandemic further disrupted the way higher education was provided.

What does UNESCO do to ensure access for everyone to higher education? 

UNESCO's work is aligned with Target 4.3 of SDG 4 which aims, by 2030, “to ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university”. To achieve this, UNESCO supports countries by providing knowledge, evidence-based information and technical assistance in the development of higher education systems and policies based on the equal distribution of opportunities for all students. 

UNESCO supports countries to enhance recognition, mobility and inter-university cooperation through the ratification and implementation of the Global Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications concerning Higher Education and regional recognition conventions . To tackle the low rate of refugee youth in higher education UNESCO has developed the UNESCO Qualifications Passport for Refugees and Vulnerable Migrants , a tool which makes it easier for those groups with qualifications to move between countries. The passport brings together information on educational and other qualifications, language, work history. UNESCO places a special focus on Africa with projects such as the Higher Technical Education in Africa project for a technical and innovative workforce supported by China Funds-in-Trust.  

​​​​​​​How does UNESCO ensure the quality of higher education? 

The explosion in demand for higher education and increasing internationalization means UNESCO is expanding its work on quality assurance, helping Member States countries to establish their own agencies and mechanisms to enhance quality and develop policies particularly in developing countries and based on the Conventions. Such bodies are absent in many countries, making learners more vulnerable to exploitative providers.  

It also facilitates the sharing of good practices and innovative approaches to widen inclusion in higher education. As part of this work, it collaborates with the International Association of Universities to produce the World Higher Education Database which provides information on higher education systems, credentials and institutions worldwide. 

​​​​​​​How does UNESCO keep pace with digital change?  

The expansion of connectivity worldwide has boosted the growth of online and blended learning, and revealed the importance of digital services, such as Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Higher Education Management Information Systems in helping higher education institutions utilize data for better planning, financing and quality. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this transformation and increased the number of providers and the range of degree offerings from cross-border to offshore education. The Organization provides technical support and policy advice on innovative approaches to widening access and inclusion including through the use of ICTs and by developing new types of learning opportunities both on-campus and online. 

How does UNESCO address the needs of a changing job market?

Labour markets are experiencing rapid changes, with increased digitization and greening of economies, but also the rising internationalization of higher education. UNESCO places a strong emphasis on developing science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, indispensable to sustainable development and innovation. It aims to strengthen skills development for youth and adults, particularly literacy, TVET, STEM and higher education to meet individual, labour market and societal demands.  

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Trends of Active Learning in Higher Education and Students’ Well-Being: A Literature Review

Elsa ribeiro-silva.

1 Faculty of Sport Sciences and Physical Education, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

2 Research Unit in Sport and Physical Activity (CIDAF), Coimbra, Portugal

3 Centre for 20th Century Interdisciplinary Studies (CEIS20), Coimbra, Portugal

Catarina Amorim

José luis aparicio-herguedas.

4 Faculty of Education, Universidad Internacional de La Rioja, La Rioja, Spain

Paula Batista

5 Faculty of Sport, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

6 Research Centre in Education, Innovation, Intervention in Sport (CIFI2D), Porto, Portugal

7 Centre for Research and Intervention in Education (CIIE), Porto, Portugal

This literature Review had the purpose of inspecting how the use of active learning methodologies in higher education can impact students’ Well-being. Considering the Heads of State meeting at United Nations Headquarters on September 2015, in which the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was adopted by all United Nations Member states, this literature review is limbered to the time period between September 2015 and September 2021. A Previous research focused on reviews was made to support the conceptual framework. The search was done in two databases - Web of Science main collection and Scopus - by two researchers autonomously, using the following search criteria: “higher education AND active learning AND student AND wellness OR well-being OR wellbeing.” The studies section attended the following inclusion criteria: (i) published in peer-reviewed journals; (ii) empirical studies; (iii) written in English, French, Portuguese or Spanish; (iv) open access full text; (v) Higher education context; and (vi) focused on the topic under study. The search provided 10 articles which were submitted to an inductive thematic analysis attending to the purpose of this review, resulting in two themes: (i) students’ well-being during confinement; (ii) methodological solutions for students’ well-being. Data show that the use of active methodologies, as digital technologies, and the incorporation of some practice as physical activity and volunteering seems to benefit students’ well-being, namely in their academic achievement, physical, emotional, and social life, and empower them to the professional future with multi-competencies. Higher education institutions need to understand the value of active learning methodologies in sustained education and promote them in their practices.

Introduction

The well-being of students has grown in importance in recent decades, and according to Ecclestone and Hayes (2009) , everyone considers that well-being should be emphasized as a component of education. There are different interpretations of well-being, and several educational policies that consider well-being in different ways. Tiberius (2013) highlights five main theories, with well-being considered as either a subjective theory (based on things that are intrinsically good for us) such as hedonism ( Bradley, 2015 ); desire fulfillment ( Griffin, 1986 ) or life satisfaction ( Sumner, 1996 ), or an objective theory (based on things that are instrumentally good for us) such as human nature fulfillment theory ( Nussbaum, 2011 ) or individually driven nature fulfillment theory ( Haybron, 2008 ). Thorburn (2020) taking as a reference this conceptual framework encompassed in two major perspectives of well-being, pointed out that a “middle-path version of well-being (one that coherently merges the intrinsic and the instrumental, the subjective with the objective) could better answer to the necessity of improvements in subject teaching and personal well-being.” Seeing this understanding of well-being, and the importance of citizens’ well-being for societal growth and sustainability, it is crucial that students’ well-being, the future citizens, be included in national and international policies.

Since the 2000s, there has been a strong interest in educating for personal well-being, Thorburn (2020) reported that countries like Australia, England, New Zealand, and Scotland, in different ways, try to incorporate issues related to students’ well-being in their national curricular reforms. As stated by Matthews et al. (2015) , well-being is represented in educational policy when schools display the ability to answer to societal concerns for students’ mental, emotional, social, and physical needs. Norway is an example since it believes that, even in difficult economic circumstances, schools can help to make young people’s lives more rewarding and meaningful ( Layard and Dun, 2009 ).

On a global scale, the United Nations resolution titled “Transforming our World: Sustainable Development Agenda 2030” went into effect on January 1, 2016, along with the 17 sustainable development goals. These intended to build, by 2030, a world with equitable and universal access to quality education at all levels, to health care and social protection, where physical, mental and social well-being are assured ( United Nations, 2015 , p. 17), emphasizing that no one, whether from developed or developing nations, would be left behind. Concerning education, especially goals three and four, pointed to “ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages and ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all, respectively” ( United Nations, 2015 , p. 17).

Without foreseeing the global public health crisis that was to come, the General Secretary of the UN reiterated the Agenda in September 2019, appealing to the need for the current decade to be one of action, so that the goals could be met, with education being one of the primary vectors of change ( United Nations, 2020 ). In fact, the pandemic’s accentuated inequality heightened a digital, educational, and social gap ( Díez-Gutiérrez and Gajardo-Espinoza, 2020 ), exacerbating socio-economic disparities and focusing attention on digital exclusion ( Tommaso and Soncin, 2021 ), jeopardizing even more the 2030 Agenda’s goals by forcing many students, already among the most disadvantaged, to drop out of school ( World Bank, 2020 ).

In this pandemic scenario, the relevance of student well-being has increased. Higher education institutions made significant technology expenditures to set up classrooms despite the fact that each university was free to select how to best organize the transition ( Bergdahl et al., 2020 ; Silamut and Petsangsri, 2020 ). As a result, the route toward the goals of sustainable development, although always significant, has become both fundamental and complex in this new context, with everyone having a role to play.

Universities, which Batista et al. (2021) claims that, in the context of teacher education, their commitment to society is nothing more than mere declarations of intent, see their responsibility increased here, given that they will have to train teachers for a future they do not foresee, but which they know is constantly changing and updating. Despite the limited academic references relating to how well-being may become a successful element of schooling, curricular adjustments have been taking place in several countries, including Australia, England, New Zealand, and Scotland, in order to integrate questions linked to well-being ( Thorburn, 2020 ).

In the ‘90s, higher education teachers had an intuitive grasp of “active learning,” believing that learning is intrinsically dynamic and that students are actively participating when listening to formal lectures in the classroom ( Bonwel and Eison, 1991 ). This kind of thinking shifted. According to the National Survey of Student Engagement and the Australasian Survey of Student Engagement, active learning includes students’ efforts to actively create their knowledge ( Brame, 2016 ). Students must read, write, discuss, solve problems, and engage in higher-order thinking activities such as analysis, synthesis, and assessment. Students should be involved in doing things and thinking about what they are doing, and students’ explorations of their attitudes and values should be emphasized in active learning practices ( Bonwel and Eison, 1991 ; Carr et al., 2015 ). Nevertheless, the notion of active learning results not only from teaching methodologies that require students to actively participate in the classes’ activities (to build their own knowledge) but involves other methodologies not related with the subject under study and that lead students to leave the walls of the school space. Carr et al. (2015) referring that this broader understanding of active learning, entails not only working with other students on projects during class, giving a presentation, asking questions or contributing to discussions, but also participating in a community-based project as part of a course, working with other students outside of class on assignments, discussing ideas from a course with others outside the class, and tutoring peers. So, active learning requires viewing the learning process as a constructive process that brings individuals from all over the world together. As stated by Misseyanni et al., 2018 (in preface 2018, p. XIX) “we do believe in the capacity of the global community of creative minds and caring individuals to use active learning for the development of a new culture that will lead to more sustainable societies.” The same authors argued that active learning entails adapting our circumstances, personal beliefs, and understandings to a global scale. According to this remark, higher education programs may empower students to have a more humanistic perspective, as well as for the well-being of their pupils. As a result, teaching approaches must be tailored to people and should aid in their integration into society, so that learning may be transferred to the future active lives of students who do not yet know what they want to do ( Sebastiani, 2017 ).

Collaboration among all is the way to answer to the challenges that the world is currently facing, such as environmental preservation, poverty, socially inclusive and just development, smart and sustainable cities, mutual respect, and the generation of new knowledge for providing sustainable solutions to social problems, is the vision for the active learning philosophy that must be implemented ( Misseyanni et al., 2018 ). Learning can always make a difference in this situation, reducing passivity in the face of challenges, mobilizing emotions, and inspiring action.

This issue prompted us to look at how the use of active learning methodologies in higher education might affect students’ well-being, which is the study’s main purpose. To accomplish this, we conducted a literature review focusing on the use of active learning methodologies in higher education, from the approval of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda (2015) and today (2021), in order to understand the sensitivity of higher education institutions to the agenda, based on the studies conducted during that time period.

What We Know From Previous Reviews?

With the goal of starting from a conceptual framework that would help to frame the focus of the current review, and in response to the component of PRISMA 2020 1 (previous studies), a search was conducted in the same databases considered for this review (Web of Science and Scopus), in journals that published exclusively reviews or are important in the field of higher education (see Figure 1 ), resulting on the selection of six studies were ( Akinla et al., 2018 ; van der Zanden et al., 2018 ; Kötter et al., 2019 ; Theelen et al., 2019 ; Thorburn, 2020 ; Tommaso and Soncin, 2021 ). These previous reviews approach the issue of student well-being from various angles and with different emphasis; however, the importance of educational procedures focusing on students is a recurring theme.

Preferred reporting items for this review.

Some of the arguments in higher education include the stress that the transfer to higher education causes students ( Akinla et al., 2018 ), as well as the desired results of higher education and how such outcomes should be assessed ( van der Zanden et al., 2018 ). By exploring multiple theoretical research strands, the conversation about what it means to be successful at university produced a conceptual framework made of three domains: students’ academic accomplishment, critical thinking skills, and social-emotional well-being. As a result, interventions that promote students’ well-being are critical to their performance. In a research with medical students, Akinla et al. (2018) suggested that near-peer mentorship may help with some of these issues during the transition phase to the university. Near-peer mentoring is a strategy that may enhance students’ professional and personal growth, as well as ease the transition and preserve well-being. In addition to being a significant resource in offering social and academic assistance to incoming students, near-peer mentoring aids in transition and stress reduction. Additionally, customized housing and activity programs (for example, participation in an outdoor orientation program) had a favorable influence on students’ well-being. Multiple research on peer mentorship programs found that involvement aided students’ social integration and adjustment rather than their overall adjustment feelings ( van der Zanden et al., 2018 ).

The pandemic scenario is another issue that makes well-being a crucial concern for higher education. According to Tommaso and Soncin (2021) , universities made significant technology expenditures to prepare classrooms for blended learning and strive to provide other activities in addition to teaching. The challenges of the shift from face-to-face to online education were numerous and complex, but they demonstrated that the fundamental goals of the faculties had to be the students, not the method itself. The significance of digital transformations was also emphasized. The difficulty presented has some positive aspects for innovative education. Furthermore, the same authors stated that one of the most essential lessons of this challenge is that the emphasis of education stays on relationships. Relations give meaning to students’ educational experiences as well as the process through which research and innovation are developed ( Tommaso and Soncin, 2021 ).

In a research with preservice teachers, Theelen et al. (2019) reported that computer-based classroom simulations provide a safe tool to practice and develop preservice teachers’ interpersonal competency, as well as contribute to preservice teachers’ well-being. This teacher-student centered strategy aids students in overcoming their difficulties with classroom management and interpersonal relationships between teachers and students. The authors also emphasize the need of investing in simulation active methodologies that improve preservice teachers’ learning experiences and have the potential to be a valuable asset for teacher education by bridging the gap between teacher education and classroom practice. It is necessary to conduct additional research into the interrelationships between preservice teachers’ well-being, interpersonal competency, learning experiences, and computer-based classroom simulations.

According to Thorburn (2020) , governmental policies in England, Australia, New Zealand, and Scotland are attempting to interact with well-being goals in education. There is an emphasis on teachers’ agency and students’ overall school-based accomplishments. The intention is to allow teachers to use their professional autonomy to create more comprehensive learning experiences for their pupils.

In a systematic review focused on the protective variables for health and well-being throughout medical education, Kötter et al. (2019) found a considerable variability of potential predictors, with few consistent. However, long-term coping techniques that involve all groups of students as active learners assist them in maintaining their well-being.

Summarizing, despite the various uses and coexistence of different active learning methodologies, the authors are unanimous in recognizing the benefits of student-centered approaches, providing them with experiences that go beyond the class. Learning, according to Sfards ’ ( 1998 ) conception, needs to be interpreted not only as acquisition, but also as an experience, where learners become active constructors of their learning. Acquiring academic specific knowledge is crucial, however, for that, students need to develop meta-competencies, such as critical thinking, problem-solving ability, and strategies for self-development. In addition, the pandemic situation, with the transition to online teaching, has brought even more emphasis to the need for higher education pedagogy centered on active learning methodologies, in which the teacher educator supports students in the construction of their knowledge and in the social and emotional well-being.

Materials and Methods

The procedures for this review were guided by Petticrew and Roberts ’ ( 2006 ) guidelines and the component of the previous studies (present at point 2.1) from of the suggestions of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis ( Page et al., 2021 ) was integrated. The stepwise approach used encompasses (i) formulating search items, (ii) selecting databases, (iii) conducting literature search, (iv) formulating inclusion criteria and applying these criteria to elected relevant literature, and (v) data extraction.

The formulation of search terms and eligibility criteria for searching relevant databases was meant to focus on identifying the most pertinent retrievals related to higher education, well-being, and active learning. The authors believed it was timely to review the interim period from 2015 to 2021, given the milestone that represents the approval in 2015 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in order to understand the sensitivity of higher education institutions to that agenda through the studies developed during that time period. The retrieved studies were considered relevant and included in this review when convincingly connected higher education teaching and student-centered approaches.

Databases and Search Terms

Two researchers independently conducted the search in two databases — Web of Science main collection and SCOPUS — using the following search criteria: “higher education AND active learning AND student AND wellness OR well-being OR wellbeing” in all fields. These databases were selected because they contain many of the leading publishers of scientific journals and worldwide databases most relevant to educational research.

Eligibility Criteria

The review’s eligibility required empirical studies in open access full text, written in languages understood by the authors (English, Portuguese, French, or Spanish), published in peer-reviewed academic journals, and limited to the period of 2015 to 2021 in open access. The inclusion criteria also required articles that report methodologies, and strategies used in higher education not only to promote university students’ learning but also well-being.

Selection of Articles and Descriptive Overview

Two of the authors independently conducted the identification of articles provided by the database searches in September 2021 to ensure consensus on relevant articles. The process of screening articles began with a close examination of each of the 42 references (24 from Scopus and 18 from Web of Science) retrieved by the database search (informed by the four specific search terms and the eligibility criteria). Abstracts from the 42 articles were reviewed by the same two authors. Each author independently determined which articles were relevant to the review before comparing data and analyzing any inconsistencies. Both authors agreed that 10 articles were eligible.

From Scopus were excluded 18 articles after analyzing each of them: 11 because they deviated from the focus of this review on the topic itself, five because the participants were not from higher education, and two because they did not present empirical studies in their methodology. This analysis resulted in six final articles included.

As for Web of Science, 14 articles were excluded from the 18 initial articles, of which one was not available, two were duplicated, six due to the participant profile (students not from higher education), three because the theme did not meet the focus for this review, and two for not presenting an empirical study, resulting in four final articles included.

This resulted in a total of 10 articles being considered relevant to the review. The process of selection of references for review and for the previous studies is summarized in Figure 1 , according to the three phases (identification, screening and included).

Data Extraction and Data Analysis

The 10 articles were examined through an inductive thematic analysis ( Braun and Clarke, 2012 ). Four steps were engaged in the theme analysis process: (i) reading each article and noting the main conclusions; (ii) compiling the numerous conclusions of each article in a Word document; (iii) labeling the conclusions of each article with preliminary codes before grouping them into more generic topics; and (iv) organizing the more generic topics into themes. Following the coding of each article’s conclusions, initial codes were iteratively grouped into general subjects and discussed among the authors, culminating in the identification of two themes: (1) students’ well-being during confinement; (2) methodological solutions for students’ well-being.

Regarding the year of publication, Scopus has three articles from 2021, two from 2020, and one from 2019, whereas Web of Science has one from 2021, two from 2020, and one from 2018. Taking both databases into account, four papers were published in 2021, four in 2020, one in 2019, and one in 2018. All the articles are written in English and any document from 2015 to 2017 fulfills our set of inclusion requirements.

The investigations were conducted in seven countries: three in Spain ( Díaz-Iso et al., 2020 ; Fernández et al., 2020 ; Luque-Suárez et al., 2021 ), two in the United Kingdom ( Mayew et al., 2020 ; Defeyter et al., 2021 ), and one in Germany ( Paulus et al., 2021 ), Taiwan ( Dutta et al., 2021 ), Israel ( Martin et al., 2020 ), the United States of America ( Vatovec and Ferrer, 2019 ), and Sweden ( Bälter et al., 2018 ). Most studies included students in higher education (as it was an inclusion criterion), however, Bälter et al.’s (2018) investigation included also nine teachers. Those students’ (and teachers’) scientific fields are distinct such as medicine ( Martin et al., 2020 ), engineering ( Bälter et al., 2018 ; Paulus et al., 2021 ), education ( Luque-Suárez et al., 2021 ), human health and the environment ( Vatovec and Ferrer, 2019 ). The remainder studies did not specify the scientific areas of the participants but stated that they belong to various areas, colleges, or universities.

Six of the authors’ approaches were fundamentally quantitative, with questionnaire searching as data collecting instrument ( Fernández et al., 2020 ; Mayew et al., 2020 ; Defeyter et al., 2021 ; Dutta et al., 2021 ; Luque-Suárez et al., 2021 ; Paulus et al., 2021 ), and four employed a mixed methods approach, where other instruments were used alongside the questionnaires, such as interviews ( Bälter et al., 2018 ; Díaz-Iso et al., 2020 ), life experiences ( Martin et al., 2020 ), and intervention reports ( Vatovec and Ferrer, 2019 ). Table 1 displays the results and provides an overview of the research found.

Articles included in the literary review.

In view of the results obtained, we can observe that four of the five articles from 2021 (the year with the most publications) focus on the well-being of students, particularly mental and emotional, during their confinement due to COVID-19, as does one of the four articles from 2020. The discussions will be structured according to the two main themes identified: (i) students’ well-being during confinement; and (ii) methodological solutions for students’ well-being.

The study main purpose was to look at how active learning in higher education might affect students’ well-being. This literature review focused on the use of active learning methodologies in higher education in order to understand the sensitivity of higher education institutions to the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. The studies included in this review pointed that students’ well-being was an issue under study, considered during confinement period and in relation of diferents active methodologies used by university teachers.

Students’ Well-Being During Confinement

Fernández et al. (2020) discovered that developing a virtual communicative relationship was a way to reduce emotions of loneliness or social isolation. This similar assumption, about the favorable effects of online classes on student well-being, is evident in a Theelen et al. ’s ( 2019 ) study with preservice teachers. According to the authors, computer-based classroom simulations offer a safe approach for preservice teachers to practice and develop their interpersonal competency, which contributes to their well-being. This teacher-student centered strategy assists them in overcoming issues with classroom management and teacher-student interpersonal interaction.

Dutta et al. (2021) also looked at how Taiwanese students used digital technologies during confinement, focusing on what they called a “sustainable cloud-base e-learning system,” which defined a learning configuration that included data and communications and allowed for the creation and execution of innovation within an e-learning system. The findings highlight that self-efficacy has a significant impact on students’ predisposition to utilize or not use ‘digital cloud technologies’ functioning as a facilitator of student behavior.

However, as Thorburn (2020) points out, public policies in England, Australia, New Zealand, and Scotland are attempting to interact with well-being goals in education. There is an emphasis on instructors, agency, and students, as well as broader school-based accomplishments. The goal is to provide instructors greater professional autonomy so they may create more comprehensive learning experiences for their pupils. In the same context, Defeyter et al. (2021) attempted to understand why some English students showed low levels of mental well-being during confinement, with the findings indicating that the lack of confidence in the performance of their respective universities and governments in the face of ecological disasters has an impact on their mental well-being, as it transmits a sense of insecurity and uneasiness.

With an identical intention, Luque-Suárez et al. (2021) focused on ways to overcome the mental and emotional distress caused by the first confinement of Spanish students, defending the voluntary work performed by those students as a very positive way to find them again. Promoting emotional well-being improves self-esteem and people’s lives by restoring emotional balance and coping with feelings of depression or isolation. Simultaneously, the shortage of employment, which existed previous to the pandemic but has been exacerbated by it, leads Spanish students to regard volunteering as a method to get into the labor market.

In summary, these four studies looked at the effects of confinement on university students’ mental and emotional well-being, attempting to understand the causes and methods for maintaining well-being ( Fernández et al., 2020 ; Defeyter et al., 2021 ), confirming the role of digital technologies in their daily lives ( Dutta et al., 2021 ), and compensating for the wear and tear of that period through the development of voluntary work ( Luque-Suárez et al., 2021 ).

Despite their undeniable interest, these studies seem to be discrete pedagogical experiences conducted by groups of researchers and focusing on extremely specific features, rather than strategic and anchored goals of higher education institutions.

Given that the pandemic has increased the risk of public mental health problems ( Zhang et al., 2020 ) and that approximately 30 million university students worldwide have had to transition from traditional learning to virtual learning ( Wang and Zhao, 2020 ; Hermassi et al., 2021 ), it would be expected to investigate and expand teaching through active learning methodologies in higher education, in which students’ autonomy and decision-making capacity, but also cooperation and experience sharing, are the focus. Learning using these approaches would lessen the sense of malaise caused by isolation (or even loneliness) and ambiguity of the situation, since they transform into a contextualized and self-responsible learning process that takes into account each individual’s skills and restrictions.

Methodological Approaches for Students’ Well-Being

This is where we find the least recent articles, with just one from 2021, three from 2020, one from 2019, and one from 2018. In general, they are simple research documenting active approaches used in higher education. The main goal is to empower students given their academic accomplishment, critical thinking skills, and social-emotional and contribute to their well-being ( Akinla et al., 2018 ; van der Zanden et al., 2018 ). In studies with German and Swedish students, Bälter et al. (2018) and Paulus et al. (2021) concluded that a sedentary lifestyle is detrimental to higher education students’ commitments and results, proposing breaks in academic activities with moments of physical activity ( Paulus et al., 2021 ), and holding seminars outside ( Bälter et al., 2018 ), an idea that we had already found in the review study by van der Zanden et al. (2018) . These results put in evidence the necessity to include well-being in educational policies in schools. Matthews et al. (2015) defends that society needs to take attention to students’ mental, emotional, social, and physical state.

Martin et al. (2020) found that discussing vulnerable situations that occurred throughout the professional life of experienced doctors with Israeli medical students had a highly good effect on the latter’s well-being, making them realize that there is room for failure. This concept of near-peer mentoring as a means of promoting personal and professional development and social integration of students had already emerged in the review study by van der Zanden et al. (2018) , namely in the transition to higher education ( Akinla et al., 2018 ). Near-peer mentoring, in addition to being a valuable resource in providing social and academic support to new students, also helps to facilitate transition and a reduction in stress levels.

The studies by Díaz-Iso et al. (2020) , with Spanish students, and Mayew et al. (2020) , with English students, focus on well-being through a sense of social integration resulting from the interrelationship promoted by extracurricular volunteering ( Díaz-Iso et al., 2020 ), and from the use of a digital platform. Communication between students becomes (more) inclusive as a result ( Mayew et al., 2020 ) due to the use of that digital platform that has the potential to give a voice to less interventionist pupils for whatever reason, whether gender, culture, disability, or other.

Finally, in a broader ecological context, Vatovec and Ferrer (2019) determined that students’ well-being is directly related to their perceptions of the ecological sustainability of each activity they engage in.

Attempting to link the research based on the methods used or advised to attain well-being, three articles link the feeling of well-being of students with the usage of (new) digital technologies ( Fernández et al., 2020 ; Mayew et al., 2020 ; Dutta et al., 2021 ); in two of them, well-being is associated with the practice of physical activity as a way to counteract a sedentary lifestyle, which is considered detrimental to individuals’ well-being ( Bälter et al., 2018 ; Paulus et al., 2021 ); and in two others, it is associated with the performance of volunteer work ( Díaz-Iso et al., 2020 ; Luque-Suárez et al., 2021 ). According to Thorburn (2020) , this kind of methodologies emphasize not only teacher’s agency but also students’ agency. In this way teachers can use their professional autonomy to create more comprehensive learning experiences for their pupils.

Seeking to recognize active methodological forms in higher education, it appears that those that incorporate some practice of physical activity to balance sedentary life, and those that carry out some volunteer practice greatly favor the well-being of students, whether in their academic, professional, physical, emotional, and social perspectives. Regardless of the approaches identified as possible predictors of student well-being, the consistency is low. Long-term coping techniques that involve all groups of students as active learners assist them in maintaining their well-being.

Even in a time of pandemic and subsequent confinement, it was expected that teaching through active methodologies, which were translated into work proposals that implied communication and cooperation between teachers and students, would have increased in an attempt to alleviate the isolation in which everyone was and controlling the harmful emotional effects. However, while there was some concern for the students’ well-being, it was restricted to pedagogical experiences and/or focused on instrument use.

So, despite these results, and although some countries (and some higher education institutions) are attempting to integrate well-being goals into education, as seen in England, Australia, New Zealand and Scotland ( Thorburn, 2020 ), the global picture is not encouraging, given the 193 United Nations members who have signed the Organization’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This was clear when we identified that, since the signing of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, no study from 2015, 2016, or 2017 was found in the two databases used, and just one in each of the subsequent years (2018 and 2019). Despite the inclusion criteria including French, Spanish and Portuguese, only articles in English were found. This brings us back to Batista et al. (2021) , who state that when we try to critically evaluate the work performed by universities in regard to their commitment to society, we find nothing promising beyond simple declarations of intent.

Higher education institution policy is a key impediment to social innovation and preserving ethical consistency between what is claimed and done in vocational training and what is actually done in reality of classrooms in higher education. In this regard, structural changes at both macro (institutional) and micro (educational practice) levels are required to lead to an understanding of the value of active learning methodologies in sustained education, because they are situated, meaningful, and contextualized, making the most of resources with view to multi-competence learning, which forms citizens with rights ( Vallaeys, 2021 ). According to Thorburn (2020) , the lack of consistency between national and international policies on teaching for well-being hampers the role of schools and teachers, who are tasked with juggling a plethora of tasks. Simultaneously, they must prepare how to include and respond to the new imperatives of personal well-being policies. In light of this, Thorburn (2020) argues that it is critical to devise a feasible plan for improving students’ progress and allowing teachers to make greater use of their professional autonomy.

Notwithstanding the modest amount of studies found, the results show that the use of active learning methodologies (in and out of class) in higher education positively impacts students’ well-being, particularly, in their academic accomplishment, physical, emotional, and social lives, and to equip them with multi-competencies for their professional future. Nevertheless, there is some alienation or even lack of interest on this subject from the scientific community and, eventually, from higher education institutions themselves.

Concerning the understanding of higher education institutions to the 2030 Agenda, where universal literacy is aspired through equitable and universal access to quality education at all levels, to health care and social protection, and where physical, mental, and social well-being are assured. However, that sensitivity is still tenuous and interpreted in a very limited and geographically circumscribed way. Despite the Agenda’s recruitment of all social sectors, including the scientific and academic community, and its appeal to transparent, effective, and accountable institutions, it appears to us that universities are slow to recognize the significance of their role in this entire process, as well as the ways to play it.

Furthermore, with the massive global public health problem that we have been experiencing since the beginning of 2020, it was expected that the panorama would change significantly. Given the gravity of the situation, we cannot consider the ten articles discovered as a good number, even when the results show that the majority of the objectives of the studies pursue things that are instrumentally good for us, converging to an essentially objective interpretation of well-being. This number is one of the study’s limitations, as is the fact that it only represents seven countries, of which, five from the European Continent, one from North America, and one from Asia. This reveals a lack of sensitivity to the study of student well-being while using active learning methodologies, whatever its interpretation, in socially disadvantaged regions or countries. We believe that investing in research on this topic in teams that mobilize different higher education institutions, or even international scientific networks that may include institutions and researchers from different continents, will be one way to overcome this limitation, allowing not only the geographical expansion of research, but also broader interpretations of well-being.

Finally, given the importance of this topic, we believe that in future studies, the number of research databases should be expanded beyond Scopus and Web of Science, allowing for an increase in the number of articles as well as a greater diversity and representativeness of other countries or regions.

Author Contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The reviewer CS-G declared a shared affiliation, with no collaboration, with one of the authors, JA-H to the handling editor at the time of the review.

Publisher’s Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Acknowledgments

We thank the Faculty of Sport Sciences and Physical Education of the University of Coimbra for having financially supported this publication.

1 The PRISMA 2020 statement replaces the 2009 statement and includes new reporting guidance that reflects advances in methods to identify, select, appraise, and synthesize studies. The structure and presentation of the Prisma have been modified to facilitate implementation (see Page et al., 2021 ). Besides the identification of studies in databases, the new PRISMA offers the possibility to include previous review studies and identification of other studies using other tools as websites, organizations, and manual search.

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The Inventive Activities of Russian Higher Education Institutions: An Information Study

• Published: 18 May 2020
• Volume 47 , pages 15–23, ( 2020 )

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This study used information and analytical methods to determine the overall level of inventive activities of Russian higher-education institutions. In-depth study of selected descriptions of inventions reveals the leading universities and regions of Russia in terms of intellectual property creation. The current state and the main directions of inventive activities of Russian universities are revealed. An attempt has been made to establish whether the subject matter of inventive activities of higher-education institutions corresponds to the Strategy for Russia’s Innovative Development 2020.

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Strategy for Russia’s Innovative Development 2020 – URL: http://government.ru/docs/9282/ (accessed on 28.08.2019).

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Zakharchuk, T.V., Kii, M.I. The Inventive Activities of Russian Higher Education Institutions: An Information Study. Sci. Tech. Inf. Proc. 47 , 15–23 (2020). https://doi.org/10.3103/S0147688220010049

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A higher purpose

Ten people making higher education more affordable, accessible and effective.

By Ethan Bauer , Natalia Galicza , Mariya Manzhos , Samuel Benson

Benjamin Franklin was in his 50s, decades beyond his own formal education, when he put quill to paper and delivered to us the words that have come to best define the modern idea of education. “If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it from him,” Franklin inked in 1758, adding, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” This idea, the notion that education, that seemingly ephemeral thing, is not only unerodable and impervious to pilfering, but is also an investment, has for decades, centuries, even, defined how learning is regarded in the Western world. Essentially, you get out of education what you put in.

But there’s always been something unspoken in Franklin’s otherwise unimpeachable maxim, an idea unfulfilled, like a kite and metal key aloft in the storm yet to touch lightning. And it is this: No one can reap the promises of education if they can’t get an education in the first place. And since long before Franklin’s time, access to education has been limited to the very few. That’s where the 10 women and men on this list come in. Each holds a smaller part of a bigger idea: make college accessible to as many people as possible — and, once those people get to college, make what they learn there effective enough to change their lives and the lives of their families.

Brian Ashton: A World of Knowledge

The students come from all over. Brazil and Mexico. Nigeria and the Philippines. But the enrollee Brian Ashton is thinking of right now came from Uganda. She enrolled in BYU-Pathway Worldwide — the global online education program Ashton has helmed since 2021 — after she escaped an abusive marriage with her four daughters. And she exemplifies the goal of Pathway, overall. “Intelligence or the ability to learn is equally distributed throughout the world, but opportunity is not,” Ashton says. “And what we want to do is to make opportunities equally distributed.” Among Pathway’s 65,000 enrollees, more than 60 percent come from outside the U.S., the majority first-generation college students from low-income backgrounds.

After a foundational yearlong Pathway Connect program, students begin earning job-ready certificates while working toward a bachelor’s degree in areas of technology, communications, health or human services. Accredited through BYU-Idaho and Ensign College, Pathway offers three-year bachelor’s degrees online. Tuition is adjusted based on financial circumstances in the student’s country. This means that U.S. students can earn a degree for as low as nearly $7,000, with scholarships available, and for international students the cost is even lower. Alongside academics, the program focuses on integrating students’ faith with learning. “Religious principles are baked into every single course,” Ashton says.

And that mother from Uganda? After completing her Pathway coursework, she’s thriving at a venture capital firm. — Mariya Manzhos

Linda Livingstone: Faith and science

When Linda Livingstone was inaugurated as Baylor’s 15th president in 2017, she declared, “The world needs Baylor.” What she meant, she told Deseret Magazine, is that the world “needs a Christian research university that is taking seriously the preparation of students to become leaders.”

The world, in turn, is recognizing Baylor for what it’s doing. In 2022, Baylor earned “Research 1″ status, placing it shoulder-to-shoulder among the world’s upper echelon of research universities. Achieving “R1″ status has long been Livingstone’s goal — but she did so without sacrificing the university’s faith-based mission.

Shortly after taking office, Livingstone introduced “Illuminate,” the university’s comprehensive strategic plan to transform into a world-class research institution. The first of the plan’s four pillars is creating an “unambiguously Christian educational environment.”

That Christian-informed education structure is appealing to many young people, Livingstone says, allowing the school to attract top students who crave an environment that encourages them to live their faith. “The best students in the country really want to have opportunities to do research while they’re in college,” she explained. “We have the ability to do that, while also giving them the opportunity to strengthen and grow their faith.”

Livingstone sees that mission in global terms. The university’s longtime motto — Pro Ecclesia, Pro Texana — outlines the mission: “For Church, For Texas.” But in May 2024, the school’s board approved an addition to it: Pro Mundo, or “For the World.” —Samuel Benson

Mildred García: Representing the underrepresented

Mildred García began her speech with a parallel. In March, she introduced herself to the California Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Subcommittee as chancellor of the state’s university system. “The (California State University) story mirrors my own,” she told the panel of state senators. “I see myself in the students we serve.” A first-generation college student who began her academic career with an associate degree from New York City Community College, Garcia took the helm of the nation’s largest university system, the first Latina chancellor in its history, in October 2023.

About one-third of those enrolled in the California State University system are first-generation college students and nearly half are underrepresented minorities, making it the most diverse four-year university network — a grid of more than 20 campuses strewn throughout the Golden State, with almost half a million in attendance. Some 40 percent of its undergraduate students transfer from state community colleges.

Garcia’s latest aim is to strengthen programs that lead to more successful transfers for students from state community colleges to state universities. One such program would make some university courses accessible at community colleges to grant students more exposure to the difference in study. “Taking classes at a community college or high school with a CSU faculty member opens up possibilities and gives you confidence,” she told the Public Policy Institute of California in December. “This is the lifeblood of our system.” — Natalia Galicza

Ted Mitchell: Rise of the differentiated university

Today’s American colleges and universities are aspiring to an ideal of what they think a college or university should be, says Ted Mitchell, instead of embracing their unique strengths. “Not taking anything away from research universities,” he explains, “(but) it’s not clear that everybody should try to be one.” Instead, he promotes the idea that schools should lean into more specialized missions and pursue them vigorously. As president of the American Council on Education, one of his major initiatives has been developing a new tool that makes it easier for these schools to compare themselves to each other, instead of some vague archetype.

For too long, Mitchell says, higher education classifications have been much too broad to reflect the country’s unique, dynamic landscape. In February 2022, his organization partnered with the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education — a long-running classification system — to perform a much-needed update. “(We) created a way of grouping institutions that’s very different than anything in the past,” he says. The update, to be released next year, will better allow users to compare institutions based on multiple specific factors, like urban/rural/suburban settings or research/liberal arts focuses, instead of catch-all classifications like “doctoral universities” or “special-focus institutions.” Such a tool lets prospective students sort by characteristics of importance to them; lets institutions better identify their most similar peers; and lets both parties compare similar schools in terms of socioeconomic mobility ratings, which will also be included in the new classifications.

Categorizing universities based on what they do well, and encouraging them to lean in deeper, would be a healthy development in a nation of substantial regional and ideological diversity. “It’s very important for universities to be diverse themselves, and to represent different ways of thinking,” Mitchell says. “There are different environments that are going to be useful to different students, that will serve their communities in different ways.” — Ethan Bauer

Elise Awwad: Future-proofing skill sets

Elise Awwad looked out at an auditorium full of graduates with equal parts pride and nerves. She’d attended commencement ceremonies and spoken to students plenty of times in her career, which began as an admissions adviser two decades earlier. But in June, she spoke to the DeVry University class of 2024 for the first time as its first woman CEO and president.

“Throughout your time at DeVry University,” Awwad told the crowd in Rosemont, Illinois, “you have been at the forefront of innovation, interacting with emerging technologies and learning to problem-solve in a world whose only constant is change.” That commitment to innovation is part of what defines DeVry. It’s also what has defined her own trajectory.

In the early 2000s, when the internet was still in its infancy and virtual school was far from a mainstream option, Awwad, a university adviser, guided students interested in online learning. In her first term as president, she’s doubled down on shepherding accessibility and “future-proofing” students. Under Awwad’s leadership, DeVry has introduced four new scholarship programs, frozen the cost of tuition for its fourth consecutive year and revamped more than 60 percent of its courses to reflect current workforce trends. She also plans to expand course offerings focused on artificial intelligence so graduates can remain competitive as the employment landscape shifts across industries. “It’s not just about looking at what’s in front of you,” she says. “It’s about trying to look far beyond that and being ready for that. Because the world doesn’t wait for you to change.”

It’s the future Awwad thinks about the more she works with students. It’s what she thought of as she congratulated graduates in June — with all their smiles, their academic caps and tassels. “I got up there and I looked out at all of our students, and I thought to myself, this is why I did what I do,” she says. “This is why I spent 20 years here.” — Natalia Galicza

Michael Crow: Education as service

Since becoming president of Arizona State University in 2002, Michael Crow has established himself as one of the most innovative leaders in American higher education. Among his most ambitious projects was the 2014 establishment of an official charter — a document meant to define the school’s role and mission as the “New American University.” The charter focuses on student success, but also on the university’s responsibility to something bigger. ASU, according to the charter, assumes “fundamental responsibility for the economic, social, cultural and overall health of the communities it serves,” and will prioritize “research and discovery of public value.”

At a time when an overwhelming majority of Americans believe higher education is heading in the wrong direction, Crow’s insistence on serving local and national needs could help bolster support for universities in general. “We can make our universities produce master learners more dedicated to the breadth of our society, more dedicated to the betterment of our society, more dedicated to the betterment of our democracy,” he has said. “If we can do that, we will have had a major impact on the outcome of humanity.” — Ethan Bauer

Eric Hoover: The students’ watchdog

Every week, a college-aged Eric Hoover pored over the latest edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education. At 20, Hoover wasn’t the publication’s typical audience; most readers, professors and other professionals within or adjacent to academia skew much older. But as editor of the University of Virginia’s student newspaper, he had a free print subscription, and the Chronicle’s pages proved rife with inspiration for a burgeoning journalist, pushing him to think outside the bounds of his own school and experience.

He was particularly drawn to stories about students’ grievances and concerns, from demands for representation of minority groups on campus to coverage that fell outside the elite institutions so obsessed over by mainstream news outlets. When he joined the Chronicle staff years later, Hoover pursued that same mission of writing with the average student in mind. “Low-income students, underrepresented minority students, undocumented students, first generation students, students who just don’t have much, if any, money,” he says. “I reoriented my beat to focus on the lived experience of students like that.”

Since 2001, he’s covered financial aid, college admissions, student judicial issues and student culture, a beat he calls “getting to and through college.”

“The conversation needs to be broader than just access to college,” he says. “Getting in — as hard as it can be for many disadvantaged students, whatever their age, to get in, to be admitted, to enroll — that’s, for many students, just the beginning of challenges.” — Natalia Galicza

Eboo Patel: Strength in differences

One of Eboo Patel’s mentors often said that “diversity is a fact.” That mentor was speaking about the country generally, but more specifically about college campuses, where most students encounter people of diverse races, ethnicities, religions and languages for the first time. Navigating those situations, therefore, is not optional. It’s something that every campus must confront. “The question is,” Patel says, “are they going to be in conflict, or are they going to be in cooperation?”

Patel’s approach to fostering this cooperation is pluralism, which he defines as “an ethos that is about respect for diverse identities, relationships between different communities and cooperation on concrete projects for the common good.” As the leader of Interfaith America, the country’s largest such organization, as well as a University of Utah impact scholar, Patel has spent years promoting this vision.

Lately, though, louder voices have promoted a different kind of diversity work, which he says is defined by an “oppressor-oppressed mindset.” “Where (it) is the case that diversity departments have fallen under that spell,” he says, “I think that’s a really bad thing.” But most, he adds, have not. “I would say the numerical majority are part of what I call the respect, relate, cooperate paradigm, effectively the paradigm of pluralism,” he says, “and they’re not part of what I call the demonize, demean and divide paradigm.”

In confronting the clashes on campuses in recent years, Patel has been repeating another line: “Diversity is not just the differences you like. Diversity includes the disagreements.” His pluralistic approach tries not to flatten identities into something tribal and narrow, and instead emphasizes working together. — Ethan Bauer

Condoleezza Rice: The democratization of education

Raised by a teacher and a high school guidance counselor in Birmingham, Alabama, Condoleezza Rice internalized the fundamental importance of education. “(It) was your armor against whatever was going on around you,” she once said in a speech.

Rice went on to prominent leadership roles in higher education and the U.S. government, becoming a distinguished professor and provost at Stanford University in the 1990s and, in the early 2000s, serving as the secretary of state under President George W. Bush. Under her leadership, Stanford recovered from its $20 million budget shortfall, hired more diverse faculty and enhanced its academic programs. Rice has emphasized the importance of education as a means of social mobility and advocated for policies that support disadvantaged students, ensuring they have access to resources they need to succeed. As a co-chair of the task force on education reform and national security, she’s drawn the link between the deficiencies in the American education system and the country’s future security and prosperity.

Rice now serves as the director of the Hoover Institution, a public policy think tank at Stanford, which, along with economic freedom issues, examines higher education financing, the role of universities in society, academic freedom and the impact of technological advancements on education.

Amid political polarization and divisiveness, Rice sees education as a unifying force. “I believe that we can come together around a couple of principles,” Rice said at a Hoover education summit. “Most important of those principles is that everybody deserves a high-quality education.” —Mariya Manzhos

Scott Pulsipher: The case for competency

In less than three decades since its formation, Western Governors University has become the country’s largest university, boasting some 175,000 current students. The secret? A “competency-based” approach that prioritizes acquiring skills over checking boxes.

That’s how Scott Pulsipher, WGU’s president, describes it. “Ultimately, becoming proficient is the thing that matters, not how much time it took you to be proficient,” he explained. Instead of tracking progress toward graduation based on credit hours, or hours spent in class, WGU gauges a student’s competency. And as soon as a student passes an exam showing her proficiency in those areas, she moves onto other subject materials.

That template has revolutionized higher education for nontraditional students, who can now achieve a bachelor’s degree through WGU in 2 1/2 years. Some do it even faster, if they enter their degree program with experience or knowledge in the field. “This is someone who already has a busy life,” Pulsipher said. “They have a job, they have family commitments, they have a variety of other things that they’re having to manage. And they need to figure out how to fit education into their already busy lives.” Through an online WGU program, they can enroll in as many courses as they want during the six-month term, and any previous work or educational experience offers a leg up.

“We do have to reaffirm what is still true, which is that education is still one of the single greatest catalysts to help someone change their life for the better,” he said. A lot of competing voices are arguing against the economic benefits of higher education; Pulsipher, in turn, argues against higher education’s traditional model, but pushes for a revamped version better suited to serve a diverse population of prospective students. “Most institutions,” he said, “still haven’t figured that component out.” — Samuel Benson

This story appears in the September 2024 issue of Deseret Magazine . Learn more about how to subscribe .

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Imposing Additional Costs on Russia for Its Continued War Against Ukraine

Office of the Spokesperson

August 2, 2022

The United States is committed to working alongside our allies and partners to further impose severe consequences on President Putin and his enablers for Russia’s unconscionable war against Ukraine.

VISA RESTRICTIONS

The Department of State is announcing a series of actions to promote accountability for actions by Russian Federation officials and others that implicate violations of Ukraine’s sovereignty to include:

• Visa restrictions on 893 Russian Federation officials, including members of the Federation Council and members of Russia’s military, pursuant to a policy under Section 212(a)(3)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) that restricts visa issuance to those who are believed to have supported, been actively complicit in, or been responsible for ordering or otherwise directing or authorizing actions that threaten or violate the sovereignty, territorial integrity, or political independence of Ukraine.
• Visa restrictions on 31 foreign government officials who have acted to support Russia’s purported annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine pursuant to a policy under Section 212(a)(3)(C) of INA that restricts visa issuance to those who are believed to have supported, been actively complicit in, or been responsible for ordering or otherwise directing or authorizing actions that threaten or violate the sovereignty, territorial integrity, or political independence of Ukraine.

DESIGNATION OF PUTIN ENABLERS

The Department of State is designating oligarchs DMITRIY PUMPYANSKIY , ANDREY MELNICHENKO , and ALEXANDER PONOMARENKO .

• ALEXANDER ANATOLEVICH PONOMARENKO is being designated pursuant to Section 1(a)(i) of Executive Order (E.O.) 14024 for operating or having operated in the aerospace sector of the Russian Federation economy.  He is an oligarch with close ties to other oligarchs and the construction of Vladimir Putin’s seaside palace.  Ponomarenko has been previously designated by the U.K., E.U., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
• DMITRIY ALEKSANDROVICH PUMPYANSKIY is being designated pursuant to Section 1(a)(i) of E.O. 14024 for operating or having operated in the financial services sector of the Russian Federation economy.  Pumpyanskiy has been previously designated by the U.K., E.U., and New Zealand.
• The yacht AXIOMA is being identified as blocked property in which Dmitriy Aleksandrovich Pumpyanskiy has an interest.
• ANDREY IGOREVICH MELNICHENKO is being designated pursuant to Section 1(a)(i) of E.O. 14024 for operating or having operated in the financial services sector of the Russian Federation economy.  He has previously been designated by the U.K., E.U., and New Zealand.

The Department of State is designating four individuals and one entity that are or are enabling illegitimate, political leaders installed by Russia or its proxy forces to undermine political stability in Ukraine in support of Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine. The four individuals and the entity are being designated pursuant to Section 1(a)(ii)(F) of E.O. 14024, for being responsible for or complicit in, or having directly or indirectly engaged or attempted to engage in, activities that undermine the peace, security, political stability, or territorial integrity of the United States, its allies, or its partners, for or on behalf of, or for the benefit of, directly or indirectly, the Government of the Russian Federation.

• SALVATION COMMITTEE FOR PEACE AND ORDER collaborates with the Government of Russia to support Russia’s control of the Kherson region and discourage resistance.
• KOSTYANTYN VOLODYMYROVYCH IVASHCHENKO is the illegitimate mayor of Russia-controlled Mariupol.  Pro-Russia separatist forces of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) installed Ivashchenko.  According to Ukrainian authorities, Ivashchenko coordinated pro-Russia separatist efforts to destroy evidence of war crimes in Mariupol.
• VOLODYMYR VASILYOVICH SALDO is the head of the Russia-created Kherson Military-Civilian Administration.  His self-declared aim is to move the Kherson region towards unification with Russia. He has previously been designated by the E.U. and Japan.
• KYRYLO SERHIYOVYCH STREMOUSOV is the deputy head of the Russia-created Kherson Military-Civilian Administration.  He has acted to introduce the use of Russian Federation currency and laws in the Kherson region, in addition to the issuance of Russian Federation citizenship in the region. Stremousov has previously been designated by the E.U. and Japan.
• SERGEY VLADIMIROVICH YELISEYEV is the head of the Russia-installed Kherson regional government and has sought to move the Kherson region towards unification with Russia.  Yesileyev was a Russian government official and member of the Russian security apparatus.

Pursuant to Section 1(a)(vii) of E.O. 14024, the Department of State is designating JOINT STOCK COMPANY STATE TRANSPORTATION LEASING COMPANY (JSC GTLK) for being owned, controlled by, or having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, the Government of the Russian Federation.  JSC GTLK is a Russian state-owned enterprise that the Russian Ministry of Transportation oversees. It is the largest transportation leasing company in Russia.  JSC GTLK is an important part of Russia’s transportation networks due to its leases of railroad cars, vessels, and aircraft on favorable terms to support Russia’s development strategy. JSC GTLK has been previously designated by the U.K. and E.U.

Pursuant to Section 1(a)(vii) of E.O. 14024, the Department of State is designating the following four JSC GTLK subsidiaries for being owned or controlled by, or having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, JSC GTLK. These companies leased JSC GTLK’s transportation equipment outside of Russia and /or enabled JSC GTLK to access capital from western financial markets to fund its activities.

• GTLK EUROPE DESIGNATED ACTIVITY COMPANY 
• GTLK EUROPE CAPITAL DESIGNATED ACTIVITY COMPANY 
• GTLK MIDDLE EAST FREE ZONE COMPANY
• GTLK ASIA LIMITED

DESIGNATION OF DEFENSE AND HIGH-TECHNOLOGY ENTITIES

Under the leadership of U.S.-designated Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Russian Federation has systematically focused on exploiting high-technology research and innovations to advance Russia’s defense capabilities. Putin has also repeatedly underscored his concerns about Russia’s access to microelectronics.  Advanced technologies such as microelectronics are used in numerous weapon systems used by Russia’s military.  Today, the Department of State is imposing sanctions on numerous Russian high-technology entities as a part of the United States’ efforts to impose additional costs on Russia’s war machine.

The Department of State is designating the FEDERAL STATE INSTITUTION OF HIGHER VOCATIONAL EDUCATION MOSCOW INSTITUTE OF PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY (MOSCOW INSTITUTE OF PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY) (MIPT) pursuant to Section 1(a)(i) of E.O. 14024 for operating or having operated in the defense and related materiel sector of the Russian Federation economy.  MIPT has developed drones for Russia’s military that are intended to be used in direct contact with enemy forces, has won an award from Russia’s Ministry of Defense for developing technologies in the interests of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, and promotes that it focuses on conducting innovative research and development in the defense and security fields.  MIPT has worked with a leading Russian fighter aircraft developer to design a visualization system related to fighter aircraft and has a laboratory that supports Russia’s military space sector.  MIPT is also part of a consortium of Russian institutions involved in training specialists for Russia’s defense-industrial complex and has collaborated on research projects with a Russian defense research organization.

The Department of State is designating the SKOLKOVO FOUNDATION pursuant to E.O. Section 1(a)(i) of 14024 for operating or having operated in the technology sector of the Russian Federation economy.  The Skolkovo Foundation was established by a Russian Federation law in 2010 to manage the Skolkovo Innovation Center, which consists of the Technopark Skolkovo Limited Liability Company and the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech), which are also being designated as part of this action.  Since its founding, the Skolkovo Foundation has focused on supporting the development of technologies to contribute to technology sectors prioritized by the Russian Federation government including strategic computer technologies, technologies for maintaining Russia’s defense capabilities including with regard to advanced and sophisticated weapons, and space technologies related to Russia’s national security.  As additional information, the Skolkovo Innovation Center has hosted U.S.-designated Rosoboronexport, Russia’s state-controlled arms export agency, as a part of Rosoboronexport’s efforts to export weapons to foreign clients.

The Department of State is designating the SKOLKOVO INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (SKOLTECH) pursuant to Section 1(a)(i) of E.O. 14024 for operating or having operated in the technology sector of the Russian Federation economy.  Skoltech is a pioneer in cutting-edge technologies and seeks to foster new technologies to address critical issues facing the Russian Federation.   As additional information, for nearly a decade, Skoltech has had a close relationship with Russia’s defense sector.  Contributors to Skoltech’s endowment include numerous sanctioned Russian weapon development entities including JSC Tactical Missiles Corporation, Uralvagonzavod (which makes Russian tanks), JSC MIC Mashinostroyenia (which manufactures Russian missiles), JSC United Aircraft Corporation (which manufactures Russia’s combat aircraft), JSC Concern Sozvezdie (which produces electronic warfare systems for the Russian military), JSC Almaz-Antey (which manufactures Russia’s surface-to-air missiles systems), and JSC Corporation Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology (which manufactures Russian missiles).  Over the course of the last decade, Skoltech has had partnerships with numerous Russian defense enterprises – including Uralvagonzavod, United Engine Corporation, and United Aircraft Corporation – which have focused on developing composite materials for tanks, engines for ships, specialized materials for aircraft wings, and innovations for defense-related helicopters.  Skoltech has also presented advanced robotics at the Russian Ministry of Defense’s premier defense exhibition.

The Department of State is designating TECHNOPARK SKOLKOVO LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY pursuant to Section 1(a)(i) of E.O. 14024 for operating or having operated in the technology sector of the Russian Federation economy.  Technopark Skolkovo Limited Liability Company is one of the largest technology development parks in Eurasia and hosts events related to technology.

The Department of State is designating numerous additional Russian high-technology entities as a part of our effort to isolate Russia’s technology sector in order to limit its contributions to Russia’s war machine.

Specifically, the Department of State is designating the following entities pursuant to Section 1(a)(i) of E.O. 14024 for operating or having operated in the technology sector of the Russian Federation economy:

• JOINT STOCK COMPANY PENZENSKY NAUCHNO ISSLEDOVATELSKY ELEKTROTEKHNICHESKY HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTION is one of the largest Russian enterprises engaged in the development and production of cryptographic information protection technology.  As additional information, Joint Stock Company Penzensky Nauchno Issledovatelsky Elektrotekhnichesky Higher Education Institution organized a technology-related symposium with a Russian weapons-related organization.
• JSC ZELENOGRAD NANOTECHNOLOGY CENTER conducts nanotechnology research, and develops manufacturing technologies and high-tech products, including developing and manufacturing products in the field of microelectronics and microsystems engineering.
• JOINT STOCK COMPANY INSTITUTE OF ELECTRONIC CONTROL COMPUTERS NAMED AFTER I.S. BRUK is involved in the development of Russian microprocessors, computing systems, and nanotechnology. As additional information, a microprocessor chip developed by entities including Joint Stock Company Institute of Electronic Control Computers Named After I.S. Bruk was promoted at a Russian military-industrial complex conference.
• FEDERAL STATE INSTITUTION FEDERAL SCIENTIFIC CENTER SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH INSTITUTE FOR SYSTEM ANALYSIS OF THE RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES conducts activities related to the development of nanotechnology, information technology, and computing, and is also involved in activities related to semiconductors.
• SCIENTIFIC AND PRODUCTION ASSOCIATION OF MEASURING EQUIPMENT JSC is involved in digital circuitry activities and microelectronics for space technologies.

The Department of State is designating the following entities pursuant to Section 1(a)(i) of E.O. 14024 for operating or having operated in the electronics sector of the Russian Federation economy:

• MITISHINSKIY SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF RADIO MEASURING INSTRUMENTS is a leader of Russia’s radio-electronic industry; its staff has conducted research regarding components for electronics systems; and it has been involved in developing regulations for Russia related to specialized electronic components.
• JOINT STOCK COMPANY RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF ELECTRONIC AND MECHANICAL DEVICES specializes in the development and production of complex, high-technology electronic and mechanical devices and electrical measuring devices.  As additional information, it has developed electronic components for Russia’s Ministry of Defense.
• JSC SVETLANA POLUPROVODNIKI is a Russian electronics entity involved in the manufacture and design of integrated circuits and semiconductor devices (integrated circuits are components of electronic devices and semiconductors are components involved in the manufacture of electronic devices).
• JOINT STOCK COMPANY DESIGN CENTER SOYUZ is a Russian electronics entity that specializes in the design and development of semiconductors and integrated circuits.
• OJSC SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF PRECISION MECHANICAL ENGINEERING is a Russian electronics entity that develops process equipment for Russia’s electronic industry, including for semiconductor production.  OJSC Scientific Research Institute of Precision Mechanical Engineering provides services related to process implementation for nano- and micro-electronics activities.
• PUBLIC JOINT STOCK COMPANY KREMNY is a Russian electronics entity that produces components for power electronics as a part of the Russian Federation’s import substitution program. As additional information, Public Joint Stock Company Kremny has been described by Russian authorities as a Russian defense industry enterprise.
• JOINT STOCK COMPANY INSTITUTE FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH MICROELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT PROGRESS develops and manufactures microelectronic devices.
• JOINT STOCK COMPANY VORONEZHSKY FACTORY POLUPROVODNIKOVYKH PRIBOROV SBORKA is one of Russia’s largest suppliers of electronic components.
• OPEN JOINT STOCK COMPANY SCIENTIFIC AND PRODUCTION ENTERPRISE PULSAR is a Russian electronics entity that develops electronic components including components related to semiconductors and microelectronics.
• LLC SCIENTIFIC PRODUCTION ENTERPRISE DIGITAL SOLUTIONS is a Russian electronics entity that specializes in electronic engineering.
• JOINT STOCK COMPANY DESIGN TECHNOLOGY CENTER ELEKTRONIKA specializes in the development, application, production, and delivery of electronic products, including for Russian government clients.  One aspect of Joint Stock Company Design Technology Center Elektronika’s business involves designing semiconductor devices.  Joint Stock Company Design Technology Center Elektronika is part of a Russian radioelectronics technology competencies cluster formed on the basis of JSC Concern Sozvezdie, which specializes in developing electronic warfare systems and other specialized equipment for Russia’s armed forces.
• JOINT STOCK COMPANY VOLOGODSKY OPTIKO MEKHANICHESKY FACTORY produces “special purpose” electronic products. The phrase “special purpose” is often used by Russian entities to distinguish items related to military matters as opposed to civil applications.

The Department of State is designating FEDERAL STATE BUDGETARY SCIENTIFIC INSTITUTION RESEARCH AND PRODUCTION COMPLEX TECHNOLOGY CENTER pursuant to Section 1(a)(i) of E.O. 14024 for operating or having operated in the technology sector and the electronics sector of the Russian Federation economy.  Federal State Budgetary Scientific Institution Research and Production Complex Technology Center develops and produces integrated circuits including application specific-integrated circuits, which are a type of high-technology electronic component, and also is involved in Russia’s semiconductor industry.

The Department of State is designating JSC SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH INSTITUTE SUBMICRON pursuant to Section 1(a)(i) of E.O. 14024 for operating or having operated in the aerospace sector of the Russian Federation economy.  JSC Scientific Research Institute Submicron specializes in the design and development of components for computer systems for aviation and space control systems, as well as the development of other digital and data systems for aviation and space systems.  As additional information, the main customers of JSC Scientific Research Institute Submicron are Russia’s Ministry of Defense and Air Force.

The Department of State is designating ACADEMICIAN A.L. MINTS RADIOTECHNICAL INSTITUTE JOINT STOCK COMPANY pursuant to Section 1(a)(i) of E.O. 14024 for operating or having operated in the defense and related materiel sector of the Russian Federation economy.  Academician A.L. Mints Radiotechnical Institute Joint Stock Company is involved in developing technologies and systems for Russian military air defense systems.

SANCTIONS IMPLICATIONS 

As a result of today’s action, all property and interests in property of the individuals above that are in the United States or in the possession or control of U.S. persons are blocked and must be reported to OFAC. In addition, any entities that are owned, directly or indirectly, 50 percent or more by one or more blocked persons are also blocked.  All transactions by U.S. persons or within (or transiting) the United States that involve any property or interests in property of designated or blocked persons are prohibited unless authorized by a general or specific license issued by OFAC, or exempt.  These prohibitions include the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any blocked person and the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person.

U.S. Department of State

The lessons of 1989: freedom and our future.