Anthropic, the mind behind ChatGPT competitor Claude, is joining the industry-wide charge into education, as the tech company announces a new university and classroom partnerships that will put their educational chatbot into the hands of students of all ages.

Announced today, Claude for Education will be entering more classrooms and boosting its peer-reviewed knowledge bank, as it integrates with teaching and learning software Canvas, textbook and courseware company Wiley, and video learning tool Panopto.

“We’re building toward a future where students can reference readings, lecture recordings, visualizations, and textbook content directly within their conversations,” the company explained.

Students and educators can connect Wiley and Panopto materials to Claude’s data base using pre-built MCP servers, says Anthropic, and access Claude directly in the Canvas coursework platform. In summary: students can use Claude like a personal study partner.

And Claude is coming to higher education, too. The University of San Francisco School of Law will become the first fully AI-integrated law school with new Claude AI-enabled learning — as the legal field contentiously addresses the introduction of generative AI. Anthropic is also expanding its student ambassador program and network of Claude Builder Clubs across campuses, launching its first free AI fluency course.

“We’re excited to introduce students to the practical use of LLMs in litigation,” said University of San Francisco Dean Johanna Kalb. “One way we’re doing this is through our Evidence course, where this fall, students will gain direct experience applying LLMs to analyze claims and defenses, map evidence to elements of each cause of action, identify evidentiary gaps to inform discovery, and develop strategies for admission and exclusion of evidence at trial.”

Earlier this week, Anthropic announced it was joining a coalition of AI partners who were forming the new National Academy for AI Instruction, led by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Anthropic’s $500,000 investment in the project will support a brick-and-mortar facility and later nationwide expansion of a free, educator-focused AI training curriculum.

“The stakes couldn’t be higher: while the opportunity to accelerate educational progress is unprecedented, missteps could deepen existing divides and cause lasting harm,” Anthropic said. “That’s why we’re committed to navigating this transformation responsibly, working hand-in-hand with our partners to build an educational future that truly serves everyone.”

Scores of speech therapists across the country erupted last month when their leading professional association said it was considering dropping language calling for diversity, equity and inclusion and “cultural competence” in their certification standards. Those values could be replaced in some standards with a much more amorphous emphasis on “person-centered care.” 

“The decision to propose these modifications was not made lightly,” wrote officials of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) in a June letter to members. They noted that due to recent executive orders related to DEI, even terminology that “is lawfully applied and considered essential for clinical practice … could put ASHA’s certification programs at risk.” 

Yet in the eyes of experts and some speech pathologists, the change would further imperil getting quality help to a group that’s long been grossly underserved: young children with speech delays who live in households where English is not the primary language spoken. 

“This is going to have long-term impacts on communities who already struggle to get services for their needs,” said Joshuaa Allison-Burbank, a speech language pathologist and Navajo member who works on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico where the tribal language is dominant in many homes.

Across the country, speech therapists have been in short supply for many years. Then, after the pandemic lockdown, the number of young children diagnosed annually with a speech delay more than doubled. Amid that broad crisis in capacity, multilingual learners are among those most at risk of falling through the cracks. Less than 10 percent of speech therapists are bilingual.

A shift away from DEI and cultural competence — which involves understanding and trying to respond to differences in children’s language, culture and home environment — could have a devastating effect at a time when more of both are needed to reach and help multilingual learners, several experts and speech pathologists said. 

They told me about a few promising strategies for strengthening speech services for multilingual infants, toddlers and preschool-age children with speech delays — each of which involves a heavy reliance on DEI and cultural competence.

Embrace creative staffing. The Navajo Nation faces severe shortages of trained personnel to evaluate and work with young children with developmental delays, including speech. So in 2022, Allison-Burbank and his research team began providing training in speech evaluation and therapy to Native family coaches who are already working with families through a tribal home visiting program. The family coaches provide speech support until a more permanent solution can be found, said Allison-Burbank.

Home visiting programs are “an untapped resource for people like me who are trying to have a wider reach to identify these kids and get interim services going,” he said. (The existence of both the home visiting program and speech therapy are under serious threat because of federal cuts, including to Medicaid.) 

Use language tests that have been designed for multilingual populations. Decades ago, few if any of the exams used to diagnose speech delays had been “normed” — or pretested to establish expectations and benchmarks — on non-English-speaking populations.

For example, early childhood intervention programs in Texas were required several years ago to use a single tool that relied on English norms to diagnose Spanish-speaking children, said Ellen Kester, the founder and president of Bilinguistics Speech and Language Services in Austin, which provides both direct services to families and training to school districts. “We saw a rise in diagnosis of very young (Spanish-speaking) kids,” she said. That isn’t because all of the kids had speech delays, but due to fundamental differences between the two languages that were not reflected in the test’s design and scoring. (In Spanish, for instance, the ‘z’ sound is pronounced like an English ‘s.’)

There are now more options than ever before of screeners and tools normed on multilingual, diverse populations; states, agencies and school districts should be selective, and informed, in seeking them out, and pushing for continued refinement.

Expand training — formal and self-initiated — for speech therapists in the best ways to work with diverse populations. In the long-term, the best way to help more bilingual children is to hire more bilingual speech therapists through robust DEI efforts. But in the short term, speech therapists can’t rely solely on interpreters — if one is even available — to connect with multilingual children.

That means using resources that break down the major differences in structure, pronunciation and usage between English and the language spoken by the family, said Kester. “As therapists, we need to know the patterns of the languages and what’s to be expected and what’s not to be expected,” Kester said.

It’s also crucial that therapists understand how cultural norms may vary, especially as they coach parents and caregivers in how best to support their kids, said Katharine Zuckerman, professor and associate division head of general pediatrics at Oregon Health & Science University. 

“This idea that parents sit on the floor and play with the kid and teach them how to talk is a very American cultural idea,” she said. “In many communities, it doesn’t work quite that way.”

In other words, to help the child, therapists have to embrace an idea that’s suddenly under siege: cultural competence,

Quick take: Relevant research

In recent years, several studies have homed in on how state early intervention systems, which serve children with developmental delays ages birth through 3, shortchange multilingual children with speech challenges. One study based out of Oregon, and co-authored by Zuckerman, found that speech diagnoses for Spanish-speaking children were often less specific than for English speakers. Instead of pinpointing a particular challenge, the Spanish speakers tended to get the general “language delay” designation. That made it harder to connect families to the most tailored and beneficial therapies. 

A second study found that speech pathologists routinely miss critical steps when evaluating multilingual children for early intervention. That can lead to overdiagnosis, underdiagnosis and inappropriate help. “These findings point to the critical need for increased preparation at preprofessional levels and strong advocacy … to ensure evidence-based EI assessments and family-centered, culturally responsive intervention for children from all backgrounds,” the authors concluded. 

Carr is a fellow at New America, focused on reporting on early childhood issues. 

Contact the editor of this story, Christina Samuels, at 212-678-3635, via Signal at cas.37 or samuels@hechingerreport.org.

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

Seventeen UK universities now rank in the global top 100 of the QS World University Rankings 2026, with Sheffield and Nottingham rejoining the list. Still, 61% of UK institutions saw their place in the rankings drop, amid rising global competition.

Overall, 24 UK institutions saw their positions improve, 11 remained stable, and 54 – accounting for 61% – dropped in the rankings. This pattern reflects a wider trend, where institutions in other countries are advancing more rapidly. For example, seven of Ireland’s eight universities climbed in the rankings, along with nine of 13 in the Netherlands and six of seven in Hong Kong.

Notably, Imperial College London holds steady as being ranked the world’s second-best university, only trailing Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US. Meanwhile, Oxford, Cambridge, and UCL have ket their places in the global top 10 – though Oxford and Cambridge slipped one place each due to Stanford’s climb to third.

However, the UK remains the second most represented country in the rankings, with 90 institutions on the list, only behind the United States with 192. International students studying at prominent UK universities spoke to The PIE News about how they perceived their university’s place on the list – with both expressing positivity about their institution’s ranking.

The University of Edinburgh experienced a modest drop, falling from 27th to 34th place globally. Seeing the drop in position, Sean Xia, a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, commented that they weren’t too disappointed to see the university’s QS ranking drop in recent years. “I am still proud seeing us staying in the top 50 universities in the world and it shows effort from all of us, especially when the funding situation is getting much more difficult than the past years,” they told The PIE.

“I believe the ranking will eventually be fluctuated back in the future as long as we keep the research quality world-class.”

I am still proud seeing us staying in the top 50 universities in the world and it shows effort from all of us, especially when the funding situation is getting much more difficult than the past years
_{^{Sean Xia, international student at University of Edinburgh}}

Two UK universities – Sheffield and Nottingham – made a notworthy return to the top 100, now ranked 92nd and 97th respectively. The strongest gain came from Oxford Brookes University, which jumped 42 places to 374th, marking the biggest single improvement for a UK institution this year. Other major climbers include Strathclyde, Aston, Surrey, Birkbeck, and Bradford, each rising by at least 20 places.

The University of Liverpool stood out among Russell Group members, climbing from 165th in this year to joint 147th in 2025, making it the most improved among the group.

Derek Zhou, a PhD candidate of the University of Liverpool, proudly stated: “As a PhD student who also got my MSc degree at the University of Liverpool, I am glad to see our university can rank among top 150. We are proud to say we are stepping exactly towards our aim which is to be the top 100 university before 2031.”

“I am also happy to see our academic research getting a higher rank than before. This means all of our research is truly contributing to the world and we are heard by the world,” he added.

Commenting on the rankings, Jessica Turner, CEO of QS, noted that the UK’s place as a coveted study destination could be at risk.

“While the analysis outlines detailed performances on a wide range of metrics for each institution, the picture for the wider country as a whole is more worrying,” she said.

She added: “The UK government is seeking to slash capital funding in a higher education system that has already sustained financial pressure, introduce an international student levy and shorten the length of the Graduate Visa route to 18 months from two years.

“This could accumulate in a negative impact on the quality and breadth of higher education courses and research undertaken across the country. While the UK government has placed research and development as a key part of the recent spending review, universities across the country will need more support to ensure their stability going ahead. “

And she noted that competing study destinations around the world are pouring investment into higher education and research. This is contributing to a global shift of higher education power seen through the 2026 QS World University Rankings – the US, UK, Australia, and Canada – are increasingly challenged by emerging study destinations across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

Among the big four, the United States remains the strongest performer in the QS rankings. With 192 ranked institutions, it improved the rank of 42% of its institutions. In contrast, the UK maintained its four universities in the top 20, while Australia lost one, signalling a subtle rebalancing in prestige.

Both the US and UK also saw one university each drop out of the top 50, while South Korea added one to the elite group, reflecting broader diversification in academic excellence.

Emerging players are quickly gaining ground. China’s top institutions continue their upward march: Tsinghua University climbed to 17th, and Fudan University rose nine places to 30th. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and Italy entered the top 100 for the first time, with King Fahd University at 67th and Politecnico di Milano at 98th, respectively.

The momentum extends beyond Asia. Ireland, Malaysia, the UAE, Germany, and New Zealand are among 26 countries where at least 50% of ranked institutions improved this year. Germany, notably, reversed a prior decline to see more universities rise than fall, while Hong Kong emerged as the world’s second most improved system, just behind Ireland.

“This retrospective data shows that policy and changes in higher education directly impact the rankings,” Turner added. “While emerging markets such as Hong Kong, Malaysia, and the UAE continue to improve, there is still a long way to go until they compete with the traditional study destinations of the UK, US, Australia and Canada.”