Students participating in management decisions starts in the classroom and should be supported right through to governing bodies, a student experience expert has said.
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After the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, universities faced a dilemma that has become grimly familiar in the age of social media: what to do when a member of the campus community says something online that others find intolerable.
Within days, institutions moved with visible urgency. Some suspended employees. Others terminated them outright. A few launched “investigations” whose conclusions seemed preordained. FIRE has condemned these actions (when taken by public institutions) as violations of the First Amendment and intervened in over a dozen cases.
Yet the punishments themselves tell only half the story. Equally revealing were the justifications universities offered for them:
The message these colleges sent was unmistakable: offensive speech is not merely offensive, it is an assault on human dignity itself. And that, in the eyes of administrators, makes it punishable.
The impulse to regulate speech in these circumstances is understandable. When tragedy strikes, ordinary condemnations can feel hollow beside the enormity of what has been lost. Requiring respect for “dignity” seems to offer something more; something higher: a recognition of our shared humanity, a pledge to the campus community that while ideas may be contested, no person will be debased.
But the moment “dignity” becomes a standard of compliance, it stops inspiring behavior and starts regulating it. The language of virtue invariably becomes the grammar of control.
The moment dignity must be imposed, it has already been lost.
The trouble with “dignity” begins with its vagueness.
“Dignity” can mean many things: (a) the inherent value of the human person; (b) the social honor one commands in the eyes of others; (c) the inner self-respect that resists humiliation; or all the above. These meanings both overlap and collide. Which, then, is a university to enforce: the idea of respect, the appearance of respect, or the feeling of respect?
There is no objective way to make this decision. And when a rule depends on subjective perception, it cannot be applied fairly. What one dean calls satire, another may label cruelty. What one student finds invigorating, another experiences as demeaning. And all of these people may be completely in earnest. Under such conditions, enforcement becomes a matter not of principle but of preference.
And because “dignity” sounds so unimpeachably virtuous, its invocation cloaks coercion in benevolence. Who, after all, would dare oppose dignity?
From this vagueness comes overbreadth. When “attacking dignity” can mean almost anything, it ends up encompassing nearly everything.
Universities that rightly prohibit harassment or discrimination — categories of unprotected acts that may involve expression — increasingly extend those prohibitions to merely “undignified” expression, which is protected. The University of Michigan’s harassment policy, for example, forbids conduct that diminishes “individual dignity.” Similarly, Penn State’s harassment policy defines discriminatory behavior as violating “the dignity of individuals.”
Once disagreement itself is framed as a denial of dignity, even empirical or policy debates about healthcare, sports, or law are reclassified as “harassment” rather than legitimate discussion. The zone of the impermissible grows, and the culture of caution grows with it.
Faculty and students, uncertain where the invisible boundary lies, retreat into self-censorship. They learn to treat disagreement as danger and discomfort as moral injury. The less precise the rule, the wider its reach. The wider its reach, the more timid the discourse. Administrative control breeds emotional fragility, and emotional fragility, in turn, justifies greater administrative control. It’s a feedback loop of moral protectionism.
What is at stake is no less than the mission of the university itself. Higher education exists not to shield its members from offense, but to teach them how to confront it; to refine judgment through exposure to conflict; to cultivate reason through disagreement. The “dignity rule” diminishes the (ahem) dignity of that mission. It transforms the university from a marketplace of ideas into a tribunal of sentiment.
To be clear, none of this is to diminish the importance of human dignity itself. Indeed, any university worthy of its title should strive toward cultivating an educational environment wherein all members of the campus community are treated with equal dignity. But when vague and overbroad noble values become instruments of coercion, liberty is often the first casualty.
This is precisely why the Supreme Court has consistently rejected attempts to limit speech on the grounds of indignity. In Snyder v. Phelps (2011), the Court held that even the Westboro Baptist Church’s vile protest at a fallen soldier’s funeral — which most Americans would see as a profound affront to dignity — was protected expression. In America, the right to speak, to offend, and to argue is not the enemy of dignity, but its precondition.
That is, to affirm the value of human dignity is not to be shielded from ridicule or offense but to be recognized as a rational, moral agent capable of hearing, weighing, and responding in kind.
In short: the moment dignity must be imposed, it has already been lost. And when universities attempt to enforce it, they risk betraying their commitment to free speech and the mission of education itself: to cultivate minds capable of reasoning in the face of offense, and of finding in that encounter — not in its suppression — the measure of their humanity.
AUSTIN, Texas, Oct. 14, 2025 — A federal judge today issued a preliminary injunction blocking the University of Texas System from enforcing a new Texas law that bans virtually all protected expression on public university campuses after dark.
In his ruling, Judge David Alan Ezra of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas found that students challenging the law on First Amendment grounds were likely to succeed on the merits, and blocked the law from going into effect while the case makes its way through the courts.
“The First Amendment does not have a bedtime of 10:00 p.m.,” the District Court held. “The burden is on the government to prove that its actions are narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling governmental interest. It has not done so.”
“Today’s ruling is a victory not only for our plaintiffs, but all of those who express themselves on college campuses across Texas,” said Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression senior supervising attorney JT Morris. “The First Amendment protects their freedom of speech on campus, every hour of the day, every week of the year.”
Passed in the wake of several protests over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Senate Bill 2972 reversed Texas’s previously strong statute enshrining campus free speech protections into state law, and would have forced public universities to ban “expressive activities” from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m., which it defined as “any speech or expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment.”
That’s a shockingly sweeping ban that would have empowered colleges to punish everything from wearing a T-shirt with a message, to writing an op-ed, to playing music — even worship. That’s an intolerable attack on freedom of speech at public universities, where First Amendment protections must remain indispensable.
“Texas’ law is so overbroad that any public university student chatting in the dorms past 10 p.m. would have been in violation,” said FIRE senior attorney Adam Steinbaugh. “We’re thankful that the court stepped in and halted a speech ban that inevitably would’ve been weaponized to censor speech that administrators disagreed with.”
Another provision from Texas’ law required public universities to ban students from inviting outside speakers, or using amplified sound or percussive instruments during the last two weeks of any academic term. FIRE challenged those provisions on behalf of a diverse group of student groups and organizations who would be adversely affected if Texas’s law was allowed to go into effect on UT System campuses:
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending and sustaining the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought—the most essential qualities of liberty. FIRE recognizes that colleges and universities play a vital role in preserving free thought within a free society. To this end, we place a special emphasis on defending the individual rights of students and faculty members on our nation’s campuses, including freedom of speech, freedom of association, due process, legal equality, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience.
CONTACT:
Alex Griswold, Communications Campaign Manager, FIRE: 215-717-3473; [email protected]
The Department of Education has delayed the semiannual convening of its accreditation advisory committee for the second time this year, according to an email sent to committee members and obtained by Inside Higher Ed.
The meeting of the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, originally slated to take place in July, had already been pushed back to Oct. 21. Now, as a result of the government shutdown, it’s been rescheduled for Dec. 16.
“As many of you know, most department staff, including those supporting NACIQI, have been furloughed and the Department has suspended operations except for specific excepted activities,” Jeffrey Andrade, deputy assistant secretary for policy, planning and innovation, wrote in the email. “The Department will be publishing a notice in the Federal Register shortly announcing this change of meeting date.”
Inside Higher Ed reached out to the department for direct comment on the delay but did not get a response prior to publication.
The meeting was slated to include Under Secretary Nicholas Kent’s first comments on accreditation since he took office, as well as compliance reports from five different accreditors. Three of those agencies are institutional: the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, the New England Commission of Higher Education, and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior College and University Commission. The other two are programmatic: the Accreditation Commission for Midwifery Education and the Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy.
And while it wasn’t formally listed on the committee’s agenda, this meeting also likely would have served as the unveiling of six new Trump-appointed committee members.
When department officials announced the first delay in July, observers noted that by the time the rescheduled meeting took place, the terms of six of the committee’s 18 members would be over. With key decisions about the future of higher education accreditation looming, many policy experts took this as a sign that the Trump administration was trying to stack the panel in its favor.
Now, the new appointees will likely go unnamed for another two months, and the compliance reports will remain unchecked until the next meeting. And though neither of these agenda items is quite as high-stakes as a recognition review—the process by which independent accrediting agencies are granted the power to gate-keep federal student aid—one expert feared it could lead to a backlog in future evaluations.
“While [the accreditation agencies] are coming up before NACIQI on this compliance report, they are also likely in the process of having their regular recognition reviewed again,” said Antoinette Flores, the director of higher education accountability and quality at New America, a left-leaning think tank. “So it adds to the burden and could lead to compounding issues.”
Flores, who served in the same role as Andrade during the Biden administration, is worried that the delay could not only slow down future reviews but also hamper current ones, putting certain agencies and the institutions they serve at risk. When an agency is placed under compliance review, it has 12 months to fix the problem and prove it is meeting the committee’s criteria, she explained. So, if it hasn’t proven it’s meeting those criteria within that period, technically the agency’s authorization could be at stake.
Flores said she’s particularly worried for Middle States Commission and the New England Commission, because they each received letters from the Trump administration earlier this year pressuring them to take action against member institutions’ alleged noncompliance with civil rights laws. Neither accreditor has done so, and they won’t be able to present their compliance reports before the 12-month deadline.
“So is the agency in compliance? Is its recognition going to continue? … That’s kind of the underlying question,” Flores said.
Others are far less concerned.
Kyle Beltramini, a policy research fellow at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a right-leaning policy organization, said that to his knowledge there’s never been a time when NACIQI failed to meet and review an agency’s compliance or recognition before the deadline.
So while it remains unclear what would happen if the meeting never took place or the agencies were unable to present their compliance reports before deadline, Beltramini believes that any consequences of the delay will be minimal.
“I don’t think what we’re going to see is the nuclear option of an accreditor losing their authorization,” he said. “It’s partially because of the fact that even if that’s what the administration wanted to do—which I don’t think that that’s the case—they just don’t have the full majority on the committee.” (Although, technically, the under secretary and secretary of education do not have to follow the committee’s guidance.)
Either way, if and when the meeting occurs, Beltramini anticipates that it will set the tone for how the Trump administration plans to approach accreditation moving forward.
“There is a broad and bipartisan agreement that there needs to be change to the system, and what you’re going to see, more and more often, is NACIQI attempting to hold the accreditors accountable by asking them questions and getting them on the record in ways that may make them uncomfortable,” he said.
Your website is one of your institution’s most valuable assets, and also one of its more expensive and labor-intensive. It serves as the front door for prospective students, a resource hub for current ones, and a critical platform for driving enrollment.
But when performance drops — conversions are low, traffic is declining, or user experience feels outdated — many institutions assume a full redesign is the only solution.
Before you make that call, take a step back. A complete rebuild isn’t always the smartest or most cost-effective path. Sometimes, targeted improvements to your existing site can deliver significant results without the high price tag.
So how do you decide if it’s time to rebuild or if your current site simply needs smarter strategy and support?
Let’s walk through what to look for.
When a site isn’t performing, you need to pinpoint why. These common red flags often indicate underlying issues that should prompt a deeper evaluation:
To be clear, none of these should be considered death sentences for your website. But they’re strong signals that further evaluation should take place.
A clear-eyed look at your site’s current state can help determine whether optimization or a rebuild makes more sense. Start here:
If your site’s foundation is sound, targeted improvements may deliver high ROI at a lower cost. But if technical debt, poor UX, or fragmented infrastructure are holding you back, a rebuild could be the better investment.
Keep these ballpark figures in mind:
Also consider the hidden costs of delay — missed inquiries, lower conversions, and outdated experiences that don’t meet student expectations.
A side-by-side cost-benefit analysis, grounded in performance data and institutional goals, is the best way to determine your path forward.
Deciding between a website refresh or a rebuild is a big decision, and it shouldn’t be made in isolation. A strategic partner with deep higher ed expertise can help you evaluate your current digital ecosystem, identify gaps, and recommend the most cost-effective solution.
At Collegis, we work with colleges and universities to optimize digital experiences that convert. Whether you’re refining an existing platform or building from the ground up, our web strategy team can help you create a future-ready site aligned with student needs and institutional goals.
Let’s talk about how to get your website working smarter.
Higher ed is evolving — don’t get left behind. Explore how Collegis can help your institution thrive.
Ok, folks, today is voting day in Newfoundland and Labrador, and so, as usual, it’s time to look at manifesto promises with respect to post-secondary education.
Newfoundland is feeling pretty good these days. Just five years ago it was living with a budget deficit of about $1 billion, and the only reason it was that low was because of a federal bailout for the Muskrat Falls dam. Now, the province *almost* has a balanced budget, it has the fastest-growing provincial economy in the country (I know, low bar, but still), and it has a new Memorandum of Understanding with Hydro-Quebec to replace the Upper Churchill contract which will – in theory at least – transform provincial finances, though not everyone is convinced. The debt load is still considerable ($47 billion) and servicing that debt takes up more money than the province spends on education. But who cares about long-term problems when there are votes to be bought…er…sought?
Let’s start with the commitments New Democratic Party, which usually wins at least one or two seats in the House of Assembly. They promise three things with respect to post-secondary education. First, they want to reverse the Liberals’ decision to let tuition rise after a 20-year freeze. Because of the deeply opaque way the NDP’s presents its costing data, it is unclear if the NDP intends to actually reimburse College of the North Atlantic (CNA) and Memorial for this or if it is simply going to tell them to eat it (a little back-of-the-envelope math suggests the rise tuition is bringing in somewhere between $20-$25 million/yr by my estimation). Second, it is going to pay CAN $10/million to increase trades training. And third, it is going to find a way to give healthcare students paid work terms.
Now, over to the Conservative Party, which does occasionally win elections (in fact it won three in a row in 2003, 2007 and 2011, and held power for 12 years). Oddly, the Conservatives have published a document called “Platform Highlights” but not an actual platform. The party seems to be running on strictly three planks made up of precisely one adjective and one noun (“Better Healthcare”, “Safer Communities” and “Lower Taxes”). Post-secondary students get in on the action, but not institutions. Like the NDP, they want to provide paid work terms for students (though in the Conservatives’ case this doesn’t seem to be limited to health care). They also want to “guarantee jobs for students training in a program where there are staff shortages” (this does seem to be limited to health care), and finally, provide a tuition refund for graduates who work in the province. This is, of course, a policy which, as I have explained on more than one occasion, is as dumb as a bag of hammers.
So, now over to the governing Liberals, whose pitch can be summed up as “we signed an MOU with Hydro-Quebec to re-up the Churchill Falls agreement and boy are we going to be rich!” Yet, perhaps because of the enormous debt, while the Liberals are making a lot of promises, a lot of them are pretty small ball. A million here, a million there – in the big scheme of things, it’s fairly restrained. (Aside: one of the more interesting provincial pledges I have seen anywhere in recent years is the Liberal pledge on the Technology and Defense sectors, which I think points to an interesting possible future where National Security actually comes to be seen as an area where provinces have some agency and some responsibility).
Anyways, back to post-secondary education, where the Liberal manifesto promises, as I say, are pretty restrained. It basically comes down to three things. First, the Liberals promise to cover all the costs of tuition associated with all practicum courses for Newfoundland and Labrador nursing students, and offer all graduating nurses full-time permanent positions in Newfoundland and Labrador. Second, they want to create a one-time moving allowance of up to $500 per student for rural students to assist with moving costs to study in St. John’s. And third, they are going to work with Memorial and CNA to expand capacity in certain fields related to new construction in Churchill Falls.
In other words, friends: today’s vote in Newfoundland is another episode in that continuing tradition of the New Canadian Post-Secondary Consensus, in which every party in every province believes that:
1) Money for students is good while money for institutions is not, and
2) To the extent post-secondary education has value, it is exclusively related to Nursing and the Construction Trades.
So, God guard thee, Newfoundland. And God help us all if, as seems increasingly likely, this is the future of Canadian post-secondary education.
The MacArthur Foundation selects a diverse group of people for an award dubbed the “genius grants”. In doing so they help us redefine our measure of success.
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Some professors resist using teamwork in their classes because they mistakenly believe that team projects are too difficult to grade. One issue is that, as educators, we often only evaluate the team presentation, project or paper with a grade based on how well the team has met our learning objectives.
However, a single project evaluation at the end allows some members to potentially free ride on harder-working teammates, or enables one aggressive or dominating member to take over the entire project to ensure the team gets an A. If we simply grade team projects at the end, it is too late for our student teams to adapt or adjust and learn how to be better at working in teams, a key skill that employers look for in our graduates.
The key to effectively grading teamwork is to set up the grading process systematically at the start of the project. In this article, we offer four ways that you can grade team projects effectively to meet your learning objectives and help students become better team members.
Grading a team project may seem like a daunting challenge, but grading is by no means a reason to avoid giving students the experience of working with a team. By following these four principles for evaluating teamwork, instructors can account for the team’s achievement of the learning objectives as well as provide students with valuable teamwork experiences that they can take to future classes, internships, co-ops and employment.
California State University, Fresno, celebrated the launch of a new program this fall called Finish in Five, which allows students to earn both a bachelor’s and master’s degree within five years. University leaders were eager to offer students at the Central Valley campus—which serves large populations of first-generation and low-income students, many the children of local farmworkers—a streamlined pathway to high-demand STEM fields in an economically distressed region.
But less than a month later, the program’s funding, which came from a Hispanic-serving institution grant, abruptly ended. The Education Department stopped awarding grants for HSIs and many other minority-serving institutions last month, claiming the federal programs amounted to “discrimination.” Officials argued the programs are “unconstitutional” because they require institutions to enroll certain percentages of students from specific racial or ethnic backgrounds, among other criteria.
Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval, president of Fresno State, said he doesn’t know what’s going to happen to the Finish in Five program now that the money is gone. In the past, the campus relied on about $5 million annually in HSI funding, which fueled a wide range of student supports and programs. The university was also expecting to receive $250,000 this fiscal year as an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander–serving institution.
“In the grander scheme of things, most of the innovative programs that we have at Fresno State that further student success and graduation rates started with an HSI grant or with an MSI grant,” Jiménez-Sandoval said.
Similar stories are playing out across the California State University system. Hispanic students account for almost half of the system’s more than 450,000 students. Out of the CSU’s 22 campuses, 21 are Hispanic-serving institutions, meaning they enroll at least 25 percent Hispanic students and at least half low-income students. In addition, 11 are AANAPISIs, which have the same low-income student threshold and enroll at least 10 percent Asian and Pacific Islander students. CSU officials estimate ED’s axing of the grant programs leaves the system $43 million short on funds it expected for the 2025–26 fiscal year.
CSU chancellor Mildred García called the move “deeply troubling.”
“This action will have an immediate impact and irreparable harm to our entire community,” García said in a statement. “Without this funding, students will lose the critical support they need to succeed in the classroom, complete their degrees on time, and achieve social mobility for themselves and their families.”
The sudden loss of funding caught system and campus leaders off guard.
Jeff Cullen, CSU’s assistant vice chancellor for federal relations, said he knew the HSI program was at risk when the state of Tennessee and the advocacy group Students for Fair Admissions sued the Education Department in June over such programs, questioning their constitutionality. But he expected the case to wind its way through the courts. He said ED’s swift decision to end the grant programs robbed campuses of time to prepare or fight on MSIs’ behalf. Cullen also pointed out that CSU campuses qualify as HSIs because of the demographics of their surrounding communities—not because they rely on affirmative action in admissions, one of the issues raised in the lawsuit; California banned affirmative action in 1996.
“Canceling grants midcycle and right in the middle of the semester creates unprecedented confusion and chaos,” Cullen said. “Our central goal is student success and getting students across the stage with a degree in hand. And this just continually undermines those efforts to do that.”
Meanwhile, CSU has no way to make up for the full extent of the funding losses, said Dilcie Perez, the system’s deputy vice chancellor of academic and student affairs. She called the abrupt end of MSI grants a “triple blow” at a time when the system’s campuses are already facing a $144 million cut in state support. The system also has only $760 million in reserves, a meager emergency fund compared to the endowments of wealthier institutions. She expects campus leaders will have to make painful choices, including cutting faculty and staff positions, to make the numbers work.
“I think the reality is we don’t know the magnitude yet,” Perez said, “but what we know is … we have folks who have lost positions, we have students who have lost support services, and that is not OK. What I know to be true is that no one campus can completely replace any of the funding that they lost.”
Jiménez-Sandoval, of Fresno State, said because of state-level cuts, he’s had to scrape together funds for “the basics,” leaving the university to rely on HSI funding to afford efforts to boost retention and graduation rates. More than 60 percent of Fresno State’s students are Latino, and about 65 percent qualify for Pell Grants and are the first in their families to attend college; many of them “need an extra little push in order to support them through their college career,” he said.
Despite some success with fundraising, he doesn’t believe philanthropy will ever make up for the missing funds.
The HSI program “is systemic and comprehensive in its support, and likewise, it is systemic and comprehensive in the tragic hit that we are taking right now,” he said.
Ronald S. Rochon, president of California State University, Fullerton, said he’s reaching out to alumni, donors and industry leaders in the hopes of keeping programs previously supported by HSI funding alive.
The end of HSI grants cost the campus at least $4.2 million, he said, endangering a range of student services. For example, money evaporated for the university’s Establishing Roots to Grow STEMs program, which offers peer mentoring and other supports to math and science majors, as well as the Fullerton ASPIRE program, which aims to improve graduation and retention rates for underserved students, including first-generation and community college transfer students.
Rochon plans to “fight hard” to preserve such programs. He emphasized that the university’s student success goals aren’t going to change, despite the losses. But he also pleaded with policymakers to “reconsider.”
While 54 percent of CSUF’s more than 45,000 students are Hispanic, “this is not just impacting students who identify as Hispanic,” Rochon stressed. “This impacts our entire campus community.” Some of these losses risk bringing “great devastation to our student body.”
Perez worries that the full effects of the funding losses on CSU students won’t be clear for years. She expects the sudden end of MSI funding will get in the way of the system’s long-term goals for students, including increasing graduation rates.
“More likely than not, there will be students who are not able to hit the finish line in the same time frame as they would have with this support and with this funding,” Perez said. CSU leaders are scrambling to figure out “how do we mitigate that as much as possible, because we’re not OK with students not crossing the finish line.”
After a 20-year career in higher education, including roles as a chief academic officer and faculty member, I left to have a child. I was one step away from a presidency on the higher ed career ladder, and in fact I had written my dissertation on what gets in the way of women moving into college presidencies. Yet it was not until I finally met my life partner and had the opportunity, in my 40s, to start a family that I understood how fully the higher ed career deck is still stacked against those seeking to have children, and especially those seeking to have children in nontraditional ways—largely women, LGBTQIA+ folks and anyone facing a difficult pregnancy, in vitro fertilization, adoption or fostering process.
In the United States, 2.6 percent of all births—95,860 babies in 2023—result from IVF, a time-consuming, costly and physically and emotionally challenging process. The percentage for women academics may be even higher, given their relatively high education levels, socioeconomic status and pressure to delay childbearing for academic careers. According to Pew, 56 percent of people with graduate degrees have gone through or know someone who has undergone IVF or other assisted reproduction.
The literature has well documented how the academy has been created by men and is designed to fit their needs and their bodies. Women who have sought professorships or academic leadership positions have, historically, needed to conform to rules written for men’s life cycles. Articles such as Carmen Armenti’s classic “May Babies and Posttenure Babies” speak to women’s attempts to give birth at the end of the academic year and after earning tenure. The tenure clock illustrates this issue well—the usual seven years in which a newly hired assistant professor has time to sufficiently publish and obtain tenure largely coincide with women’s most fertile years. Many forward-thinking institutions such as the University of California system have been addressing this issue by stopping the tenure clock for childbirth and related family formation. It is a step in the right direction that all colleges and universities should consider.
But what happens when the usual challenges of pregnancy and childbirth are compounded by infertility, miscarriage and the sometimes years-long process of IVF?
I met my husband during the pandemic, and we married the next year. Both of us in our 40s and having always wanted a child but neither having met the right partner, we quickly found ourselves going down the IVF route. At the time, I had completed a one-year executive interim role and was on the job hunt and doing part-time remote teaching, and this situation proved fortuitous.
I had no idea how grueling the IVF process would be—multiple rounds of more than a month at a time of hormone pills; nightly self-administered injections for weeks on end; weekly doctor visits, blood draws and ultrasounds—and at the end of each round, a day surgery under anesthesia to retrieve eggs. Several iterations of this, followed by more of a similar process to prepare the body for embryo transfer. The journey is physically and emotionally exhausting, time-consuming, and logistically challenging. It can also be incredibly expensive, with the medications and surgeries costing into the tens of thousands for those whose health insurance does not cover it.
My husband and I had a number of factors helping us on this journey. We had built a supportive network of family and friends. We were fortunate that I was less sick than many women are on these medications. Finally, we were privileged to have insurance (through my husband’s job, which is not in higher ed) that paid for the majority of our treatments. Due to working part-time and remotely, I had the flexibility I needed to take naps, wear comfortable clothes that fit my bloated belly without having to reveal my family-forming status to anyone at work and generally have the privacy I needed during a challenging time.
Other women who work full-time in-person during this process navigate a daunting gauntlet of frequent doctor appointments, exhaustion and sickness at work, while trying to hide a body that can look pregnant before it is. Not to mention that few people fully understand the process, and telling a little can lead you down an uncomfortable path of revealing a lot. Because everything is timed to the menstrual cycle, seemingly innocent questions inevitably lead to awkward conversations. It’s therefore hard to share what you’re going through or ask for support at work at the time you need it most.
And then there are the chemical pregnancies and miscarriages that can happen, and did for us. Grieving for both parents is exacerbated by the isolation and privacy of the whole process. Some companies and higher ed institutions, such as Tufts University in Massachusetts, now offer bereavement leave for miscarriage, something that happens in 10 to 20 percent of pregnancies but is still rarely talked about. All institutions throughout higher ed should offer similar leave.
During this journey, I was also interviewing for full-time jobs, and I was hired into a senior leadership position. My husband and I were taking a break from the exhausting process at that point and the opportunity was once-in-a-lifetime, and so we picked up and moved two states away. My husband’s job had gone remote, giving us the flexibility we needed for my career. We wagered that if I stayed in a part-time role too much longer, it would be increasingly difficult to climb back into a full-time position. The stigma around a résumé gap is alive and well in higher education, with little understanding that this gap often reflects people’s (frequently women’s) time away for family and other care-taking needs, rather than their work experience or abilities. Yet, even when I’ve tried to explain to search committees that I’ve led how discriminatory it can be to overly focus on résumé gaps, faculty and staff often have looked askance at me. This is something else that needs to change.
My husband and I waited almost a year before doing our next embryo transfer. I settled into the job, we settled into our home, we finally had a post-COVID celebration of our marriage. And then I was pregnant! Sadly, I miscarried again toward the end of my first trimester. I powered through at work, serving as a chief academic officer and supervising 200 people while trying to juggle meds, doctor’s appointments, exhaustion and then loss. I read students’ names at a stadium-sized graduation ceremony soon after a miscarriage.
It became clear to me over the following months that the stress and lack of flexibility of a senior role would not lend itself to a last chance at a healthy pregnancy. It was a difficult decision to leave, but also one that I had no doubts about once made. Within weeks we were pregnant again, this time successfully so with a beautiful baby girl who is now a year old. It was not an easy pregnancy, and our daughter likely would not be here had I stayed in my role and not been able to rest as much as I did.
Since her birth, I have launched a higher ed editing and consulting business, resumed teaching part-time, and otherwise adjusted to life as a new mother. For me, leaving higher ed senior leadership was a deliberate choice. I needed more flexibility and control over my own time to be able to care for myself and my child properly. I may or may not return someday to that leadership pathway, and that door may or may not be open to me if I attempt to do so. I’ve learned, however, that to address the question my dissertation asked—Why don’t we have more women in presidencies?—we need to better understand and respond to the many women (and many men and nonbinary folks) who find themselves going through similar family-formation challenges across higher education.
I recognize my privilege in being able to leave my job—privilege that enabled me to have a child when so many before me without the same economic resources have not been able to. My situation may seem like an outlier to those who are in their 20s or early 30s or who have had relatively easy and healthy pregnancies. But I’m sure that my story rings true for those who have delayed childbearing for their academic careers and then faced the rigors of IVF, or for people of any age who have faced infertility or more difficult pregnancies. For those LGBTQIA+ and other folks who go through the egg/sperm donation process and IVF and surrogacy. For couples and singles who may adopt or foster and face needs for legal meetings and other child-related time off that institutions do not always provide.
Higher ed has taught me so much about antiracism, feminism, LGBTQIA+ rights and other inclusive practices. However, higher ed writ large doesn’t offer the kinds of paid leave and flexibility needed for all employees to succeed at both parenting and work.
Higher ed is losing women with executive leadership potential. The majority of undergraduate and graduate students are women. Yet only 37 percent of full-time faculty are women. Only 33 percent of college presidents are women. Women melt away for a host of reasons. But this former chief academic officer, one step away from a presidency on the career ladder, left the executive pathway because it was the only way I could do so and have a healthy pregnancy and a healthy child.
As long as higher ed makes having a child versus having an academic career a zero-sum choice for many women, it shouldn’t be a surprise that we still have so few women in senior leadership. When the answer becomes “yes, have both” at institutions across the board is when we might start to see the numbers change.